Readies

Today

Yesterday evening Beatrice, with an air of surprise, pulled a £20.00 note out of her top. "I'd forgotten all about it," she said "I put it there when we walked to pub to keep my hands free. Very useful, bras are, to keep things in. Mamma used to do that."

Me too.

In My Day

I think it must have been about 1992. My choir had been asked to give a concert at a local church (Bruton, I'm certain). I was secretary and had told the organiser that we charged £200.00.

Dressed in our best we arrived at the church to deliver the concert. During the interval I went up to the organiser and said "How do you want to settle this?" "Oh, I've got the money here", she said, and handed me £200.00 in £10 notes.

As I looked at the wad, the conductor called us back for the second half. I, too, was not carrying a bag. Nothing for it; I stuffed the notes into my bosom and joined the choir for the rest of the concert, where the notes crackled alarmingly during the quiet bits. I hoped that no-one would notice it or my lopsided appearance.

It was the first time I've sung with a bundle of the readies nestling next to my heart and I expect it to be the last.

Armless

Today

I'm feeling rather annoyed with myself as I managed to trip over something or nothing coming down Dye Lane three weeks ago and have fractured my upper proximal humerus. "Proximal" means that it's adjacent to the shoulder. This fracture is "notoriously painful" as the A&E nurse cheerfully said (I can vouch for that) and is healed by a long process that doesn't involve plaster.

I've had many sympathetic and kind messages from people, but they are peppered with "what, again?" and "take more water with it, leave off the high heels" comments.

In My Day

So, do I fall over a lot? Well, I don't know what the average is, but maybe. Looking back over the past ten years or so, I recall tripping over a kerb in 2006 whilst delivering a box of fabric scraps to a friend, which resulted in a lot of bruising and a dent in my buttock that is still there. In the same year I felt over some uneven paving in London with no injury.

In 2012 I accidentally put my foot in my workroom rubbish bin, while carrying too many things as well as failing to put the light on, and fell against the wall. Some bruising resulted which I treated with appalling amounts of every available painkiller till it went away.

In 2013 I fell down the terrace steps at Spencer House when a paving slab broke. More bruising.

And in 2014 I slipped in a wet carpark, damaging my sciatic nerve

That's an average of once every two years. Mostly I just get bruised, rather than broken and I think that it's not the tripping that's the issue but a poor ability to right myself.

With regard to the other comments, I almost wish they were true because, not only would they give people something to laugh at, there would also be obvious solutions to the problem. The fact is that most of my tumbles have been in daylight, stone-cold sober and wearing trainers or Oxford brogues. The Dye Lane fall was down a steep-ish slope in the dark, which is probably why I did so much damage.

Well, it's all rather frightening, just how easily we can be upended and break bits; it's enough to make you wish we'd never decided to walk upright all those years ago. I'm glad to say that my recovery is rapid and I'll try to heed all the well-meant advice I've been given.

Slumming it

Today

I've been watching, with great interest, a BBC2 historical reality series, in which a London slum was recreated and where modern families attempt to eke out a living.

It is interesting in itself, but also sheds a bit more light on family history.

In My Day

As I have before blogged, Daddy, who was born in 1893, lived out his childhood in the slums of London. His father was an habitual drunkard whom his mother eventually left, preferring to find a way of managing on her own. I'm not sure that she was very good at this. I think that they lived in Clerkenwell and Daddy told me that she used to sell newspapers outside Old Street Station. She also did some sewing and he used to tell me of the speed at which she could stitch by hand. Daddy earnt a few pennies as a "dirt boy", sweeping away horse dung at crossings so that ladies could keep their skirts clean, in the hope of earning a 6d (reminiscent of Joe in Bleak House). I have just discovered that the slums that Dickens wrote about in Oliver Twist are based on those in Clerkenwell.

Often they couldn't afford the rent and, more than once, he and his mother did a "flit" with the help of an uncle who had a handcart into which they could load their scrappy belongings and flee at dead of night. I'm sure that their "landlords" were almost as poor as they were. He had a lifelong hatred of dirt, having lived with mice, rats, bedbugs, cockroaches and so on from the start. Many books written in the 19th century describe the mud of London streets and the complete lack of sanitation in the slums. Slum clearance often simply resulted in displaced people ending up crowding into another, even worse, place, or sleeping on the streets.

One of the new laws that came into effect during the 1890's was education for all children. Daddy's mother had tried to give her boy a love of learning and they would sit down together and work out the meaning of articles in the newspaper. although she was clearly semi-literate,  but now he went to school.

This was the start of Daddy's journey upwards. He told me that one day he just decided to walk out, having watched the rats running around his mother's home one too many times, which included turning his back on her as well.

I can't really blame him; times were desperate and, if you could, you just had to use any means out of the pit.

I wonder whether the children who participated in the series will return to their well-fed, relatively lazy lives with a little more respect.