Friday 26 October 2007

Scenes from a hospital Life


Tiny girl. Poorly sick. Meningitis? Leukaemia. Chemotherapy. Angel curls falling like question marks on the pillow.

Weak. Stronger. Weaker. Strong again. It’s worse. Shingles. Kidney stones.

It’s winter.

Nurses dressed as Ghosties from Scooby Doo entertaining bed bound child.

Nurses nursing a mother’s splintering heart.

Nurses holding a weeping father’s hand.

Nurses playing Barbies with big sisters and keeping life going.

Handsome boy Doctor flirting with small, brave, bald girl who flutters lashless eyes and giggles.


It’s spring.

Worse and worse. Better and better. Home. Hospital sleepover only. Chemo continues.

Stubble appears.

Roid Rage in nursery. Playing outside. A cold. No problem.

Angel curls unfurl again and signal the growing of hope.


Summer's coming.














This beautiful girl is my niece the day after she was diagnosed












Bald but beautiful still



















Our lovely girl is heading towards well.





In the worst times, she showed us the way to go. She is brave, resilient and out of her head on drugs in the video clip.




We know we are blessed and we miss those who weren't. This posting is in memory of our girl's friend Iona. She's often in our thoughts.



Trying to figure out what to do with your excess Lottery win or even that spare fiver? Leukaemia Research Fund, Edinburgh Sick Kids Hospital, Winston's Wish

Wednesday 24 October 2007

Three Word Wednesday

My First ever TWW! I'm working up to something spanky!

A Cutting Reply

“Take care, my boy – expect the unexpected and keep your powder dry,” the barber
quipped and clipped and snipped.
Gaily the young man tossed his glossy mane of tousled locks
and laughed
“A little something for the weekend perhaps?” and kissed the barber’s lips.

Clothes made out of old curtains. Don't do it.








Scarlett O'Hara in her Curtains (I know it's a cookie jar, just use your imagination)








There are some people who can successfully wear clothes which once hung at a window. Actually no there aren't. There's Scarlett O'Hara and even she looks a bit ropey. One has the impression that her dress may smell of cheroots and whisky (I think they look like old pub curtains frankly)and may perhaps not be as fresh as one might like if one was meeting one's fancy man.








Then there are the Von Trapp family. It doesn't surprise me one little bit that after a couple of minutes eyeing up the heavy brocade Maria whips up some nifty outfits for the kids - I know they were Austrian not German but it must be something about that neck of the woods. I lived in Germany for a while and if there's one thing I can say about German Fashion it is that no curtain is safe. There were times when I would catch my assistant casting a speculative glance over the window dressing in our office, I would make her chant "Curtains are not clothes!" until the moment passed and she felt better.



German fashion - note the curtains just torn from the pelmets and tossed casually over the




Recently my sister Jo and Ellie, her 4 year old, went shopping in Asda. Ellie had dressed herself and was wearing her Fifi Flowertots swimsuit, some stripey socks belonging to her older sister, a pink fairy skirt and her mother's high heeled boots. It was a statement outfit. I'm not sure that kind of statement should be allowed in supermarkets but it kept her 'roid rage at bay. I'm telling you this not because curtains were involved but to point out the difference in our childhoods. I was 15 before I was allowed to decide what to wear. My grandmother, Jessie, was a proficient seamstress but she had rubbish patterns. And taste. She would make me trousers that if you pulled them up so the crotch was somewhere near yours the waistband would chafe your armpits and the draught would whistle round your ankles. Put the waistband round your waist and the seam of the crotch would catch on your wellies. You get the idea. What she made however was not as bad as what she made them from. As well as recycling curtains she had special sources for other upholstery fabrics. Gill and I had hotpants made out of Pink and Lime Green Checked coarse tweed (Try having those seams on tender inner thighs; we walked funny for weeks). Then there were the Burgundy Corduroy Kick Flares (bus seats in a former life I think) that had purple flocked insets (possibly wallpaper at one time - who knows). You don't want to know what we had to put up with when she got an entire bolt of industrial supertough denim but I probably don't need to tell you that you could spot Gill and me from 3 miles away just by the way our arms stuck out at right angles from our sides.


Then there were the beach dresses. They were made from yellow towelling. Fine. They were made from yellow towelling curtains. Not so fine. They were made from yellow towelling curtains that had once hung in the kitchen and were patterned with teapots and onions. They were beach dresses for heavens sake! You don't have onions and teapots on the beach! You have buckets and spades and other cute things - not vegetables and crockery.


And my mother made me wear it... what was she thinking of?!! Certainly not how scarred my 8 year psyche would be!


Ellie has no idea how lucky she is but Jo has taken care to pick nice curtains for her rooms - just in case!


Monday 15 October 2007

Aunty Molly








I was looking for the recipe for something the other day (Baked Egg Custard – was obviously feeling in need of comfort) and I came across a recipe for Spicy Peanut Liver. The recipe book is The Dairy Book of Home Cookery. It’s generally an excellent cookbook but it does have the odd foray into slightly strange combinations which made me think of the Seventies when we Brits really began to get into experimenting with flavours and textures in food. No one was keener on experimenting with flavours and textures in food than my Great Aunt Molly. Can any of us forget the Salted peanuts in Raspberry jelly combo, or the Raisins in the Fish Pie? How about that timeless concoction “Cornflakes in Treacle Toffee”. You could always wash it down with a glass or two of “Pitbauchlie Special”, a blend of dusty orange squash and flat lemonade. Most memorable was the Mackerel, Egg and Spaghetti mash which prompted Uncle David to look at his plate and ask “Is this something we’re about to eat or something we already ate?”





It wasn’t only food that she mangled. G.A. Molly was someone who could just never leave well enough alone. Nice simple frock? Let’s add 4 yards of rickrack and perhaps some sequins. She was well ahead of her time with activities such as decorative paint finishes, or at least drawing twiddly bits on things that really just did not need twiddly things, light switches for example. She was very inventive in her problem solving. When she found her face was becoming spattered with cast off when creosoting her garage (the word slap-dash was invented for her painting technique) she solved the problem by wearing a pair of tights …on her head - one leg left dangling so she looked a bit like Isadora Duncan about to rob a bank.





Molly and her ex-naval husband, Frank, never had children and after he died there was no one to keep her eccentricities in check. Most of the time they were small idiosyncrasies – turning up at Susan and Tom’s wedding wearing a woolly bobble hat with a rose pinned to it with her Berketex suit; taking directions literally when you said “Go straight on at the Roundabout” and leaving tyre tracks across the municipal flowerbeds as a result. Would it surprise you to learn that she drove a Morris Minor with a split windscreen and sticky out indicators? Didn’t think it would. Of course, being Molly she had done a bit of improvement on it but using house gloss paint to do it, creating a subtle and intriguing effect not dissimilar to a crackle glaze. She was only trying to cover up the dunt in it that had left some of the paint flaking.


She wasn't actually barking mad just potty and what concerns me most of all is that occasionally, usually when I find myself thinking about adding some tassels and beads to an unadorned jumper, I am struck with the realisation that I have some of her genes in me. As Jo said when I mentioned it "For god's sake - give them back!"

Sunday 14 October 2007

Breast Cancer Awareness Month - Look after your breasts & have that Mammogram!


Someone sent me this and it made me laugh so I thought I'd share it!


MAMMOGRAMS


Many women are afraid of their first mammogram, but there is no need to worry. By taking a few minutes each day for a week preceding the exam and doing the following exercises, you will be totally prepared for the test and best of all, you can do these simple exercises in and around your home.


EXERCISE ONE

Open your refrigerator door and insert one breast in door. Shut the door as hard as possible and lean on the door for good measure. Hold that position for five seconds. Repeat again in case the first time wasn't effective enough.


EXERCISE TWO

Visit your garage at 3 am when the temperature of the cement floor is just perfect. Take off all your clothes and lie comfortably on the floor with one breast wedged under the rear tyre of the car. Ask a friend to slowly back the car up until your breast is sufficiently flattened and chilled. Turn over and repeat with the other breast.


EXERCISE THREE

Freeze two metal bookends overnight. Strip to the waist. Invite a stranger into the room. Press the book-ends against your breasts. Smash the book-ends together as hard as you can. Set up an appointment with the stranger to meet next year and do it again.You are now totally prepared.


Send this to all women to have a laugh AND, don't forget to have a mammogram!

First Job, Worst Job, Dream Job

My first job was working as a "Saturday girl" in Boots the Chemist. I worked on the chemist counter and had to wear a white overall with attractive flowery bits on it, which only slightly detracted from the I'm-a-person-you-can-trust-with-your-embarrassing-symptoms look we were all aiming for. It was a lie. Each Saturday Ronnie and I would choose a product, usually something that smelt really bad or turned your skin a funny colour, with the aim of selling as many as possible that day. The winner got nothing except the satisfaction of knowing that somewhere somebody was rubbing their chest with haemorrhoid cream. Old people were the easiest to convince - anything that smelt that bad has to do you good! My favourite selling technique was to let them sniff the embrocation or linctus - one whiff would have them choking and gagging "Aye hen, that's guid and strong - gies twa of they wans."

Condoms were an endless source of entertainment. This was in the days before condoms were on public view and so anyone who wanted them had to ask for them. I had some very bizarre conversations, usually held in a whisper, as a result. There were requests for Aspirin accompanied by a lot of nodding and twitchy winking. I liked to torture these people (invariably men) by asking if they wanted them soluble etc. My favourite condom customer though was a slightly scatty looking woman I remember asking me "How much is it for a pack of 3 durex?" "39p madam" I replied perkily

"Acht, I'll just have a Caramac instead..."

I was 15. I thought that there was some fail safe way of using a Caramac as a contraceptive. Luckily I didn't try it out.


My worst job was working in a vegetable packing factory. In winter. Night shift. I had to watch Brussels sprouts going past on a conveyor belt and pick out the mushy ones. There were 4 of us and we were all students working in the holidays. We used to play eye-spy (Something beginning with B.S.!) and take the mickey out of the full time workers and their enthusiasm for the veg they happened to be packing. No wonder they hated us. I used to wear so many clothes I couldn't get my arms down to my sides but it didn't help, I was still freezing. Not only that but I smelt of Brussels Sprouts.


My dream job is to do something that made everyone I came into contact with have a better day, some extra joy in their life. Maybe to be the person who hands over the winners lottery cheque? That has the benefit of being very part time and I could carry on with my faffing around with other stuff for the rest of the time!

Wednesday 10 October 2007

Spanners



I have been clearing out the garage. Again.

The garage was Dad's space and he filled it with things that he thought might come in handy. At some time. And they may well do, but it will be for somebody else. I reached the conclusion a while back that if I have no idea what it is I'm looking at then I'm never going to use it. It's taken a good long while to summon up the motivation to get in there and get on with it, two reasons really

1. It reminds me so much of my Dad, it's the smell mainly - a sort of oily, metally, petrol-ly type smell - clearing out the garage would make it go away.

2. I couldn't be arsed.


What I found when I really got into it was stuff which made me laugh and cry. I found:
  • a box full of really old photographs, taken when Dad was a boy and visiting his godmother and her pal in Cambridge. It was odd to see him as a child with his parents who in the photo are younger than I am now.
  • an old inflatable dingy and remembered the day we discovered it had a puncture - down at Elie paddling like hell as the dingy slowly folded in half with us sandwiched in the middle.
  • 147 spanners and wrenches. Why? Why do men need so many spanners? and don't try and give me the "for the same reason women have so many shoes/handbags" argument. It doesn't wash. Shoes go with outfits. Spanners don't - unless we're talking about a kind of "Jings, I can't use my Stilson Wrench with these overalls - it'll have to be the Mole Wrench or nothing!" kind of deal.
  • letters from me and Gill to Dad when he was working away from home - mine was a litany of test scores from school and patronising spelling corrections for him - self-satisfied little twerp that I was.
  • The roof rack for the Chrysler. I wrote that car off in 1979 and we haven't had a car the roof rack has fitted since then. Mind you he did love that car. He had to hitch to work for months afterwards. I bought him a Ping golf club to apologise, Gill told him if he kept on teaching me to drive he could end up with a whole set. Maybe he didn't like golf that much really, because I didn't learn to drive until was 24 and I had lessons from Harry Parr, who sang"There was a Wild Colonial Boy!" and smacked my hands with the pointy end of a pool cue if I crossed my hands on the wheel.
Anyway. It's done now; the garage is neat and tidy. Not only can you get a car into it but you can also walk round the car when it's in there. We have dumped or given away 98% of Dad's treasures. We still have an entire toolbox full of things that really actually might be useful, and I still have an oily, metally, petrol-ly something that I sniff every now and again.

Thursday 4 October 2007

Dad





My Dad, Brian Childs


Four years ago my Dad died. He died of a heart attack. We decided that his funeral would be a chance to remind his family and friends of the person he was. We decided I would speak about him and Gill and Jo would stand with me as I spoke. The music that was played was Elgar's Nimrod - a reference to Dad's RAF days. Bizarrely it was one of the peak experiences of my life where I understood the effect of a life lived well and with love on those around you. One of the our friends had brought with her a new boyfriend who none of us had met before. He told me "I never met your Dad, but I wish I had - he sounds like a great guy." He was.



This is the eulogy that I gave.




As those of you who ever heard Dad expressing his thoughts about the parking outside the Salvation Army Citadel would know, he was not a religious man and so it seemed inappropriate for us to remember him with a religious ceremony. What I’d like to do is tell you a bit about Dad and what he meant to us, his family and his friends.

Dad inherited his eccentricities and vaguely Eeyore like tendencies from his father, Les, and gained his New Man skills from his mother, Jessie. It was her intention that he would be able to care for himself without needing someone else to do it for him. These skills came in useful in later years when, as a young father, occasionally looking after his children on his own he was able to produce such culinary masterpieces as Blue Porridge and Grey Soup.

Dad was 5 when his sister Jennifer was born and he immediately saw it as his responsibility to take care of her. Jennifer particularly remembers a time when as an 11 year old with great sporting aspirations she was taking part in a 100 yard race at an athletic meeting at Pitreavie. Jen fell on the cinder track only feet from the start. Dad immediately jumped over the barrier and strode of to where Jen lay, picked her up and ignoring the jibes and shouts from the crowd, carried her off the track. To this day Jen can remember the feeling of mixed humiliation and gratefulness that her big brother had rescued her.

He wasn’t all sweetness and light though. In the stories he told us about “when I was a little girl” we were always delighted to hear how naughty he had been. Stories of him and his gang of mates trying to set fire to the scout hut by shooting arrows wrapped with cloths soaked in petrol at the building. Only the fact that they had soaked the rags the night before and the petrol had evaporated saved Dad from adding to his criminal record gained when he was caught breaking street lamps with his catapult.

The curiosity he showed as a child about the way things work was something that he carried through to adulthood. In the garage at home there is still a watch he took to bits as a 9 year old. He just hadn’t got around to putting it back together again. Mind you that’s not the only thing in the garage. It was a moment of great amazement to the family and the neighbours when he recently managed to clear enough space in the garage to actually get a car in it too.

Mum and Dad's Wedding



When Mum and Dad met it was the beginning of a life long love affair that never diminished in its intensity or passion. Dad was always romantic but not always conventional. One evening a policeman spotted a car parked in a quiet lane, he tapped on the heavily steamed up window and when it was rolled down asked, in a knowing way, “What’s going on here then?” He probably wasn’t expecting the answer to be that Dad was steaming up the windows in order to draw circuit diagrams for Mum.


Dad is on the end at the right



Dad had chosen to sign on to stay in the RAF once his national service was done and so their courtship and early marriage was interspersed with fairly long periods apart and indeed Dad was away from home when I was born. He hot footed it back from the Outer Hebrides to Dunfermline and rushed to see his new baby. He wasn’t someone who had a lot of contact with babies and so was not quite sure that the scrunched up hairy, chimp like thing (and I’m quoting here…) he was presented with was normal, so it seemed only logical to ask the nurses if he could see another one. Mum was a bit miffed and the nurses were hysterical.

His fathering skills improved but were always a little quirky. Many fathers carry their offspring on their shoulders – but how many of them sprinkle peanuts in their hair to keep the kid amused?



Me and Dad



Mum and Dad enjoyed parenthood so much that they decided to do it again and three years later Gillian was born. Dad was still away a lot and I remember the huge excitement that there was every time he came home. Gill and I would frisk him for presents, the dog would pee on his foot and then we’d all get heaved off to bed early for some reason. Mum would occasionally get some time off for good behaviour and leave us in Dad’s capable hands. He’d start fairly well and keep us entertained, I remember a whole gang of us kids being lined up with pots and pan lids, milk bottles half filled with water, the fire guard and poker and so on to form an impromptu band of which he was the conductor. He recorded the efforts so that we could play them back. It was great fun. He was also a great storyteller. We would plague him to tell us stories about when he was a little girl, or to make one up. His made up ones always began with “Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, before television was invented and when your Mummy was just a little girls there lived a handsome prince called Brian…”
Mum realised that there was no point in threatening us kids with “Wait till your Father gets home!” Dad was a soft touch, which we all figured out pretty early on. Unfortunately for us, he realised it too and would always reply “Ask your mother” when anything remotely contentious was being negotiated.
Joanne arrived 7 years after Gillian and shortly before we moved to Germany. Her earliest memory is of Dad rescuing her by breaking down the door of the toilet she had locked herself in when she was 3. He was our hero and we all wanted to marry him at some point in our childhood.



Dad, Me, Jo and Gill



He was every bit as wonderful a Granddad as he was Dad. He was the first person to hold Stephanie and he was the man in her life. Steph would like me to tell you a story that made the whole family, except Dad, laugh – he just shuddered every time he thought of it. One day when she was about 4 she was sitting at he table with a packed of mini cheddars which she had emptied out, put into a line and was counting. Jason, the dog, was watching her very carefully. Dad came in and pinched one of the biscuits, as he was about to put it in his mouth he said to her “This feels a bit damp – have you had it in your mouth?” “No” she replied. He stuck it in his mouth and she added “but Jason has.” Dad was horrified and spent the rest of the day cleaning his teeth and wiping his tongue.
When Jo married Steve and they began a family of their own he had even more opportunity to be a doting Granddad with Holly, Hannah and Ellie. I asked the girls what they would remember best about Granddad and they remember him teaching them to swim and giving the best cuddles when you were poorly.



Dad and Holly




Dad with brand new Ellie



We have had great fun as a family and Dad was the instigator of much of it. He never lost his curiosity and would often become completely enthused with something. These enthusiasms would often burn themselves out and the evidence would be added to the stuff in the garage. Ever since he was a child he has had an interest in discovering a means for perpetual motion, this had never gone away and may be the reason for us having enough magnets in the garage to be in danger of attracting every other bit of metal in Fife.
He was convinced he could make his fortune on the stock market if he could just figure out a pattern to the forecasting. Unfortunately this was another project he never quite finished!
He was great at DIY. Mum and Dad have a lovely conservatory, Kitchen and bathroom which they put in and which are all nearly finished.
He did have his gloomy turns which we all took the Mickey out of by calling him a MOG. This stood for Moaning Old Git – and believe me, in full flight he could give Victor Meldrew a good run for his money.
I think what we will all remember though is Dad’s friendliness, kindness, generosity of spirit, humour, pride in his family and the love he never failed to show for all of us.

Mum and Dad went on a cruise together in June. It was the first time since their Honeymoon that they had holidayed alone and they had the most marvellous time. Being together for that time had reinforced what they have always known, that they are best friends as well as lovers, who will never tire of each other’s company. Dad came back full of enthusiasm for the holiday and the week before he died we had collected a stack of brochures for them to choose their next one.

Dad died very suddenly and horribly unexpectedly, but he died in the arms of the woman he has loved with all of his heart for the past 45 years with her words of love in his ear. As we have never doubted how much he loved us he can never have doubted how much he was loved in return.

Wednesday 3 October 2007

Well known for our tact and diplomacy

I have come to the conclusion that Holly has a huge chunk of her great grandmother, Jessie, in her. Jessie was an outspoken woman of strong conviction, so not always comfortable to be around. She, however, thought she was discreet and thoughtful in her approach to others and was often heard to say "We Childs are well known for our tact and Diplomacy...!" usually after saying something buttock clenchingly awful to someone. This is the phone conversation with Holly tonight:

"You know, even though you're quite rich (remember she's 12 so that means I have more than £10 on me occasionally - no begging letters please) I think probably people don't think you look attractive, but you have a nice personality so I expect they like you anyway."


Thanks. I think.


I'm still trying to figure out the conversation that went like this:


(Both of us snuggled up together under the duvet on a sleep over)


"Aunty Les, Why have you got two bottoms?"


I haven't, honestly!