Moving on

Time to move on to a new blog. The Nico Ditch - the title will be explained when you take a look.

Binns' Broken Biscuits

I realised I'd crossed some kind of line when I started reminiscing about the local grocers' shop where you could buy broken biscuits. I was very young, and you could still buy a halfpenny chew there too back in those days of plenty. I've been on a coach trip to the Isle of Man with my mum. We had taken advantage of a door to door service, hotel included, to go and see my godmother, my aunt, my mother's sister who lives there. My mum has been over a couple of times already in the last few months. I haven't been since 2008. There was a great crowd on the coach, couples, widows and widowers, mothers and daughters. I'm guessing I was the youngest and Stan celebrated his 92nd birthday while we were there. I wouldn't like to calculate the average age. As we got to know one another over our evening meals there were some amazing stories of recovery and courage. Unexpected illness,sudden loss of a partner. Some of the older couples had a great life, taking several trips a year with the coach company. Many were very well travelled as a result. Most were from Derbyshire, and one or two were from very close to home and I imagine we'll meet up again. In some ways it was very Alan Bennett, great material for a radio play, snippets of conversation, funny travellers' tales. I found myself on a personal journey through the past, revisiting places I'd loved on my trips to the island as a child and teenager. In my twenties I went over for the TT. In my thirties I took my own children. In my forties I made new friends there. In my fifties I have visited to enjoy family connections. I'd last stayed at the Palace Hotel for my cousin's wedding in 1973. I wore a lovely Afghan dress from 8th Day! I found the cottage in Castletown where we regularly stayed for the TT. The next door neighbour confirmed that it was owned by the same woman, wryly adding that it probably hadn't been touched since the seventies!

We visited Maughold Churchyard with its amazing collection of Celtic christian and Viking crosses. It used to be where I wanted my ashes scattered and was written into my will. I have changed it to somewhere more local now, but it's still a very special place for me.

I went to Port Jack, the little beach just below Douglas Head where my sister and I spent hours scrambling on the rocks and skimming slatey flat stones. There's more litter and graffiti now, but it still has presence.

There were memories at every turn, my great aunt and uncle in Port St Mary, my aunt who died a few years ago in Castletown. Lunch at Cosy Nook cafe on the beach in Port Erin. Fuchsia hedges and palm trees. Meeting the grand daughter of the Manx cat we have a photo of from our last visit to Cregneash. The farmer told me a bit more about Goblin. He was such a good mouser that the day before he died he had a mouse trapped under each front paw and a third one in his mouth. Supercat! It's a beautiful island, full of history and folk lore. As a child I was amazed by how much Manx people knew about their past. It inspired my own interest in folklore and local history. It's had its ups and downs. The tourism declined as the financial sector took over. Now that's in decline,places like Douglas have lost some of their identity. But the coastline and the mountains, the farming and the gulf stream climate, the presence of the past through its Viking heritage and archaeology make it a very special place. Magic is never far from the surface, whether it's the protective quartz rocks placed on boundary walls, or the presence of the little people at Fairy Bridge.

Return to Casablanca

Strange as it may sound, I realise that Manchester reminds me of my time in Casablanca. It has the same energy and feel. A mix of new buildings and derelict sites. A cosmopolitan feel, with unfamiliar languages on the streets. A kora player in Piccadilly gardens. Lots of young faces. Layers of history at every turn. I loved walking through Casa on my way to work, discovering areas and neighbourhoods. Instead of the French colonial and art deco architecture of Casa, there are Dickensian and high Victorian styles in Manchester. Different vocabulary but the same language. It wouldn't surprise me to see a Moroccan water seller in the Northern Quarter. Maybe it's the unusually hot summer. I walk round with my eyes wide open, enjoying the sights, sounds and smells of the streets. Exciting times.

Under the bridge

Last Sunday I spent the day in Longsight at their neighbourhood festival. I was there for work. Archives+ took a stall at the festival. We displayed some photographs of Longsight in past times. I have my own memories of Longsight. In the late 1970s I worked and lived there. I did my shopping at the market. I walked all round the area and up and down Dickenson Road, as a travelling English teacher, working for Manchester Council for Community Relations. I took children to school and to join the library as part of my role working with the Asian Community.It was strange to be back,thinking of that personal history. At the same time it was very familiar and comfortable. Friendly people, conversations in Urdu that I tried to follow, Bollywood background music. I used to catch the bus into town from a stop near this bridge.On Sunday I caught the train to Levenshulme and walked underneath it. I realised that as children this had always been known as my dad's bridge. Each Sunday he would drive us from Eccles to Little Hayfield to visit my mother's parents, my grandparents. Our journey took us through Longsight and under this bridge. Studying it, I could see that it had been widened and strengthened . The rail tracks run over it and the road runs underneath. He was a civil engineer, working for a company called Leonard Fairclough at the time . Yes, the name was borrowed for a Coronation St character . It looks like it was modernised in the 1960s, which would fit in with his working life in Manchester. It wasn't long before he was off to work abroad, Nigeria and Malaysia, and then back to Yorkshire until he retired. I must have walked under that bridge when I lived in Longsight, but I'd never been so aware of its place in my life until last Sunday.

Three degrees?

I have written about the concept of 6 degrees of separation before . I am going to have to try and redefine what's going on for me. Last Friday I visited the North West Film Archive to do some work research. I met Will who works there for the first time or so I thought. I was taken aback when he asked me if I had been a homeopath. Turns out he started working for the college where I studied as I graduated so me and my group of fellow students were familiar names to him. Last night I went to the preview of the Dior exhibition at the Gallery of Fashion in Platt Hall. I realised that the last time I went to a preview there was when my now grown up daughter was a babe in arms. This morning I travelled into work on later train. There was a young mother with two children sitting in front of me. The little girl reminded me of my daughter. At one point I watched their bags for her and we started a conversation. She lives near where I used to live in Sheffield. She asked me if I knew a friend of hers who had lived on the same road. Her friend had been my next door neighbour. Not only did she live next door, but she and her sister were the wonderful teenage babysitters who made such a difference to our lives when we moved to Sheffield. Somewhere I may still have the note they had put through the letterbox when we arrived offering their services! It was lovely to hear about her. Some say there is no such thing as coincidence.I'm not sure.

Aquae Arnemetiae

A young soldier soaks tired bones dreaming of olive groves. A captive queen unpicks a thread embroidering her life’s story. A man with a purple nose steps into a sedan chair. A train steams into the station and Paxton jumps onto his platform. A horse blows steam waiting for his groom. A young woman opens a letter and dreams of becoming a nurse. A nurse observes her patients watching from the quiet balcony. Frank Matcham builds for gaiety and the Beatles play the Opera House. Brian Clarke designs a stained glass roof and a bride flings her bouquet into the Dome. Snow stops play in June whilst old ladies shop for vests at Potters. The water flows from St Anne’s well. The goddess dances in the grove. And all the while Foucault’s pendulum swings measuring the earth’s rotation.

Wild Geese

In spite of working in a city, I do not feel at all cut off from the natural world. I find the city buildings create their own landscape, towering into the sky, defining roads and pavements.The architectural range of styles, heights, colours, reflections and shapes is as mesmerising as any of the views in the Hope Valley. This morning I heard and saw two geese fly over as I left Piccadilly station. It's the third time I have been aware of them in as many weeks, and this morning I stopped and considered why they might be there.At first I thought they might have adapted to navigate by roads, and then I realised that the canal runs through Piccadilly Basin. So in the time honoured habit of geese, they are navigating by following the waterways to their next destination. From the train I can see birds, trees coming into bud, primroses on the railway banks, horses in fields, pigs in their arks and ewes and lambs everywhere. The lambs no longer run to their mothers when the train passes, but romp around in little gangs, playing king of the castle on any patch of higher ground.Tonight on the train I even had another passenger's dog fall asleep resting on my feet. On my way to and from the station I pass this lovely garden, tended by residents of Piccadilly Basin.A lovely sight on May Day.

Down Town Train

I have started to take a short cut up to Platform 1 at Piccadilly Station. There are more fellow workers and fewer people with wheelie suitcases on this route, following the service road up to the station, past the wonderfully named pic-a-deli sandwich shop which is also a car valeting service. The station concourse isn't quite on a par with St Pancras, but there are plenty of shopping opportunities and a range of cafe choices. Very different from a late night passing through when I was 17 and saw my uncle, my father's identical twin for the last time.They were the exception that proves the rule about the closeness of twins, and he wasn't completely identical because he had lost an arm.A one - armed bandit? Certainly a black sheep. Years later one of my cousins told me it was as a result of a drunken car accident in Kenya, but I don't know if that's true. My daughter found him on Ancestry. He had died some years before my father, he had remarried, and he ended his days in Exeter. I can still see him in my mind's eye. I don't know who was more surprised to see the other. I was with an unsuitable boyfriend and we had just had a run in with the transport police. We had boarded a London train at Cheadle Hulme without tickets, and they were convinced we had sneaked on at Euston.I have my weekly season ticket now, all above board. I'm getting to know regular commuters and have met some other fascinating people on a more random basis.I have seen snow melt and lambs appear, and snowdrops turn to daffodils. The Hope Valley route passes through a stunning landscape for most of the journey. I have watched a child on a little white horse (one of my favourite childhood books), let off the lead rein to canter on her own. I think of my son Charlie working in his Youth Hostel kitchen as the train passes through Hope at 7.45am. We are both early risers nowadays. Prayer flags flutter in a friend's back garden in Hathersage, where there are sadder memories of my brother in law who lost his life there. As well as the chat, there's the chance to read. I choose slim volumes off my bookshelves to read again. Kindles are no fun because you have no idea what people are reading! Last year I was told about an app that identifies people nearby that you might have something in common with. Even the person giving the workshop thought it was a bit like stalking.Forget the app, sit on a train, listen to the conversations, observe the clothes, glance at the books and if you like what you see, smile.It seems to be working so far.

Love goes to building on fire

I feel like a tourist in my old home town. I moved back and forth from Manchester through childhood, teens and twenties, finally leaving in 1987. I continued to shop and socialise in Manchester, and made sure my children, two of whom were born there, knew their way around. Working there is fascinating - not just the work itself but the personal memories and associations that are sparking up because of it. I reckon I could walk a different route from Piccadilly Station to the GMRO every day for the next year, weaving my way through the Northern Quarter with its strange mix of fashionable bars, vintage shops, vinyl exchanges and the rest. Old warehouses, nineteenth century terraced houses, remains of the rag trade heritage, main roads and rat runs. Derelict sites turned into all day parking lots, the skeletons of the old Smithfield markets, alongside fancy flats and apartments. Some stand out buildings like the ones at Piccadilly basin and the chrome and glass of the old Daily Express offices. Band on the Wall is across the road, and there are still lots of pubs that were once part of the market traders and porters daily round. No licensing laws for those who started work at 2am back in their heyday. My dad had tales of Band On the Wall in his youth - the band literally played on platforms that kept them out of trouble and off the dance floor, and at the end of the night you fought on the side of the room where you found yourself standing!I once won an Olivia Newton John look alike competition with Jimmy Hibbert when the film Grease first came out!Tib Street is part of my favourite route - memories of childhood weekend trips there with my dad, my sister and I loved the pet shops, and he went record shopping. Last week one of the buildings on Oldham Street, once Dobkins department store, specialising in coats and raincoats, set on fire, around 6pm in the evening. Part of the road is still shut, and the building is being demolished.Seeing the fire engines and the smoke and flames pouring from the windows was slightly surreal, like watching a film set. Speaking of which, I was told last week that this area of Manchester is sometimes used for New York by film makers, as the architectural mix looks so authentic.It's not just the music then.

We have all been here before

The line from Crosby,Stills, Nash and Young's Deja Vu keeps going round in my head. Maybe not all of us, but I feel I am revisiting some aspect of my past on a daily basis since I started working in the Greater Manchester Record Office two weeks ago. I mentioned last week's connections in my last piece, My Back Pages. This week started with a conversation on the train, as a group of fellow commuters included me in their conversation. ' I'm sure I know you!' said the woman next to me. She recognised my voice and we tracked our past meeting back to my time at On the 8th Day in the late 70s. This isn't the first time this link to 8th Day has happened to me. I am exploring the Documentary Photo Archive daily as part of my new role as archive trainee. I brought some of the material into the archive when I worked at Manchester Studies in the 1980s. My name is on the information sheets, my writing is on the labels for each of the contact prints. What was more surprising is that my new colleague also knew some of my interviewees. We found a letter tucked into one of the files, addressed to me, discussing an exhibition I had helped put on in Wythenshawe in 1983.Flicking through bound copies of the New Manchester Review from 1977 and 78 in the City Library, I came across a photo of one of the artists I met recently at the St Ives Arts Club, Colin Johnson.On Thursday I went for a drink with an old friend after work. We found a bar near where I work, in the Northern Quarter. It was a Kahlua pop up bar, serving a lot of Kahlua. The barman told us it was really The Market restaurant. I realised that many years ago my former husband and I had celebrated moving in together there, and some years later we had battled through January snow to have my birthday meal there the night before we became parents for the first time! Significant occasions. Circles in spirals, wheels within wheels. There's more to come!

My back pages

This has been my first week in my new role as a trainee archivist. I have become a trainee on a train, commuting into city centre Manchester. It's an early start, not least because of the hour change with British Summer time. No school traffic, but lots of dog walkers. It makes me realise that if I had acted on impulse a few months ago and got a dog,I would be up and out just as early! The week has taken me through some of my own back catalogue.I arranged to stay with a friend of a friend in Manchester at the beginning of the week. One of her close friends is the midwife who delivered my daughter at home all those years ago. She showed me her favourite handbag, bought from my former husband when we lived in Didsbury back in the day. The temporary city library is now housed in the building where we got married, and my familiarisation visit to the North West Film Archive reconnected me with one of our witnesses! I found photo albums on the archive shelves, labelled in my handwriting, credited to my maiden name when I worked for Manchester Studies. In the Manchester Collection I found my grandfather and great grandfather at their address on Mulberry St in the Cotton Exchange directories. I found bound copies of the New Manchester Review, though I didn't have time to find my pieces on food politics, written when I worked at On the 8th Day. Quite a week!

Roll away the stones

A friend's recent post on Facebook set off a train of thought about stones. It is thought that the stones that form stone circles can be dowsed to reveal detail of a person's life. They represent the person who has stored that information through them. It's a fairly common explanation for ghost stories too - a building or a place can hold memories and impressions which are sometimes accessed and replayed.For the 2007 Sotheby's sculpture exhibition at Chatsworth Michal Rovner created a piece called "Makom" made up of stones from archaeological sites in Israel. The stones were numbered and reassembled overlooking the house. Within it were projected ghostly images, open to the viewer's interpretation, which could only be observed through narrow apertures in the walls. It was a very powerful piece on many levels, and 'Makom' means sanctuary. Living in Derbyshire I am surrounded by stone circles and ancient burial sites. All these places still inspire and confound in the 21st century. Looking back over the history of art, classical sculptors sought to recreate the human or animal form and even the gods in stone - granite, marble, limestone. By the 20th century artists were recreating the power of landscape - I'm thinking of Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, and more recently Richard Long and Andy Goldsworthy. Recent research tells us that birds can see magnetic fields, and geologists and geophysicists can explore what lies beneath the surface with their technologies. So who can say that a stone can't hold a memory.My children and I have all loved collecting stones from beaches and on walks. They spent pocket money on fossils and crystals. Friends have studied and practised crystal healing. Gemstones are revered by all cultures. I have collected pebbles off beaches around the world, wherever I have visited, and many lie around the house and garden. I still feel the loss of a beautiful piece of pink and white marble found on a beach in the Isle of Man as a child. I have a pebble given to me recently by my son in my coat pocket. I have another from Anglesey in my handbag. It's a reminder of the place and time, the mood and the inspiration. In the last few years, when I have visited a beach, I have chosen the stones I am drawn to by their shape, colours and beauty, made a cairn of them, and taken a photo, rather than bringing them back from their true resting place. On a very recent visit to Priest's Cove at Cape Cornwall, Penwith, there were signs reminding visitors not to remove stones as it is a Site of Special Scientific Interest for geology.It makes sense. I have been watching the BBC4 series Pagans and Pilgrims and reading the book it is based on, Britain's Holiest Places.I was reminded that at St Hwywyn's Church in Aberdaron, visitors are invited to take a stone and write a name on it, as a form of prayer. These are placed on a cairn in the church, and on the last Sunday in October they are given back to the sea. How lovely. I have only scratched the surface of stone. But if you think some of this is far fetched, consider the roles quartz and silica have had in modern communication.If you can gather information about an individual from their mobile phone or personal computer device, who is to say that a stone can't carry something from the past.

Cat's cradle

This Easter weekend is a time of reflection and new beginnings for many. For me it's the cusp between leaving one job on Maundy Thursday and starting a new challenge on Tuesday. A year as an archive trainee with the National Archives, based in Manchester. I had got my head round the commute - short car journey, long train journey through the Hope Valley, and short walk in Manchester. Then the snow started last weekend. It snowed, and snowed some more, and the wind blew drifts that cut off Buxton completely and Bakewell to some extent for days.I had thought that I would have a good six months of not worrying about the weather, and the blizzard conditions threw me. I realise that I don' t like to feel life is going out of control. I love change but not unpredictability! It's got to be manageable. I think it's because I have spent over 28 years as the responsible adult - a role that kicked in with my birth of my first child. I then remembered the events of my first honeymoon - in truth my only 'honeymoon' in spite of being twice married. We set off for a friend's parents' house in Burton Bradstock, Dorset in late June. The weather was lovely. We had an old Ford Corsair and a very pregnant cat on the back seat. We couldn't leave her behind. She gave birth to her kittens that evening, whilst we were staying in the best man's flat in London. Back in the car with the cat and kittens in a cardboard box, we carried on with our journey to Dorset. We were stopped by a policeman on the motorway. We had to explain that we couldn't open the window to talk to him because of the cat family on the back seat. In Chippenham an essential part of the car fell off. Somehow we found a garage. Somehow we had the phone number of the best man's brother in Bath. We found a phone box and called him.He came and picked us up in an MG Midget.Cat, kittens,cases - how on earth did we do it? The cat and her kittens were fine. The house was lovely, an old mill by a stream. Later that week we headed back to Chippenham by public transport, leaving the cat back at the mill. How did we find the timetables? How did we co-ordinate the journey? On the way home we stayed with friends in a rural cottage in Shropshire.The cat must have been stir crazy and she escaped overnight. Search parties went out.Food was left by the car in the hope that she would return to the only familiar object in the landscape. Our friends began to look for a foster cat for the kittens. She did come back, clawing our friends hand badly when he grabbed her. We got cat and car back home, the kittens thrived and found homes. I don't remember feeling anxiety at any stage of this scenario. It unfolded , we dealt with each aspect of it as it arose, and everyone survived, including the car.Don't worry, be happy!

Studio in the Sand

As I watched the snow fall yesterday afternoon, wondering if my son would make it to Leeds to see one of his favourite bands, Gaslight Anthem, I switched on the radio. The dial was turned to Radio 4, and coincidentally Robin Denselow was presenting Studio in the Sand, his programme about the music of the Sahrawi.I say coincidentally because many years ago, 1980 to 1981, I lived and worked in Morocco. Morocco had claimed the Spanish Sahara in 1975 and the Polisario movement for independence had sprung up as a response. The conflict was kept under wraps in Morocco, but we all paid an extra tax out of our salaries which we knew was going to fund the war. I had Moroccan friends who told me about the Green March, when young Moroccan conscripts had been mobilised into the desert. In pre Internet days it was hard to follow progress of the conflict when I got back to the UK. The Sahrawi had been under Spanish colonial rule in that part of the Sahara before this. I spent Christmas in Tenerife the year I worked in Casablanca, and the plane stopped in Layoun on its way to the Canaries. Whilst there I met Domingo, who wrote to me for a while when I returned to Morocco. He sent me a couple of photos of him as a child in the family villa in the Spanish Sahara. Imagine going from the green lushness of Tenerife to the Sahara for your holidays!So aside from an interest in the music, I knew a little of the political history behind Robin Denselow's inspiring programme. Music and culture is an important part of the Polisario stand for independence. Young people were being taught sound engineering skills, to record and perform their music.Women are important carriers of the cause and the culture, in contrast with what is happening in many Islamic communities. 'The Sahara is not for Sale' is the battle cry song. A half hour programme - 3.30pm on March 23rd, Radio 4 if you want to listen again - only scratches the surface. As I remember it, the conflict was about who had control of valuable phosphate deposits in the Western Sahara, and none of my Moroccan friends approved of the action. Conscription for an unacknowledged war brought its own difficulties. Perhaps the hope was to develop music festivals in the area. Sadly the recent problems in Mali and Algeria have put everything with the studio in the sand on hold. I am glad to be reminded of the successes and resilience of a people I once knew something about.

Blue sky thinking

This time last week I spent a wonderful afternoon at Tremenheere Sculpture Garden outside Penzance, with a newly discovered old friend who lives in the area. The sun was shining, daffodils were growing in the surrounding fields, and St Michael's Mount was a magical mirage out in the bay.The cafe and gift shop were in a simple light bright and colourful building, reminiscent of the Level Centre in Rowsley where I used to work. It had the same spacious, contemplative feel, almost a place of worship. Which is interesting, because the surrounding gardens were once the vineyards for the monks at St Michael's Mount. The sculpture garden is small and very beautiful. Different from the Bretton Hall sculpture garden, which to me has a very Yorkshire feel to it - sheep and rough pasture. This garden is exotic in its gulf stream lushness. There's something of a fantasy or faerie landscape there. The sculptures are amazing. A James Turrell skyscape, similar to the one at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in the old deer shelter, but oval and mediterranean in it's white and sky blueness. His water reflective installation was closed last Saturday, but I have a sense of what it might be like. Many years ago when I lived in Morocco some friends took me to see a famous cistern in El Jadida. It had been used as an underground store for water since Roman times.As you stepped into the space, your mind played tricks. The water was so completely still that the walls and vaulting were a perfect mirror image and you couldn't tell if you were on your head or your heels. Unforgettable. David Nash's blackened oak trunks looked like a family group in a clearing. A camera obscure messed with our minds - slight panic as I tried to find the door handle in the pitch dark! The whole experience was a treat for the senses. Today I am looking at three foot of snow in my Derbyshire garden. Cornwall really is another world.

Ghost walk in St Ives

St Ives was full of memories - memories from the past and memories made for the future. We missed Shanty Baba's Sunday Ghost Walk, but we heard him perform his beautiful piece about the shifting times and tides of the town. I will never forget the Thursday night Frug at St Ives Arts Club, a place I had always wanted to visit. It exceeded all expectations thanks to the mix of artists, musicians, poets and players there. The Bootlegger DJ and his amazing collection of blues and psychedelic 45s, played on a customised record deck that featured mermaids and pirates. Natives of St Helen's connected in St Ives.Poetry was performed. Virginia Woolf's lighthouse could be seen from the upstairs window. Mere days before our visit the waves had crashed over the roof of the boat boarded building. Barbara Hepworth had danced on those floorboards, by the red velvet curtains. Who had babysat for the triplets that night? Every view of the sea was an artist's impression. I watched old cine films from the 50s and 60s, shown in a church with a welcoming congregation, braving the torrential rain for a fund raising evening. Many in the audience recognised friends and family, local characters and events. Fisherman in shirts and suits, baiting their lines. Little girls in white dresses dancing round the Knill monument to a tune played by an ancient fiddler. One of them grew up to become the wife of the man sharing his father's old cine films.Streets of fisherman's cottages still had lines of washing strung across them. Cats thronged the quayside. It was poignant, a time past, alive in the present for those watching. Perhaps film really can steal your soul.I stood in Bernard Leach's pottery watching old film footage of him at work, his boots in the corner of the room next to me. Dead man's shoes. We visited Barbara Hepworth's garden and studio, where her presence is palpable,not just in her work rooms, but in the simple single bed with its blue and white cotton bedspread, still made up in the summerhouse.There were postcards in a file, written by children who I am guessing must have visited with their schools. Arthur wrote in his newly acquired handwriting , after the heading 'Dear Barbara" - "I am sorry you are dead'. I know just how he feels, but the wonder of this liminal place on the cusp and threshold of so many worlds, sea and shoreline, past and present, land and sky, is that it's all still there just waiting to be recognised. I was sorry to miss the Ghost Walk. It was a ghost walk in St Ives many years ago that inspired me to start mine in Bakewell, and that in turn helped me to do an MA in folklore and cultural tradition.The rest is history.

Teach your children well

In 1970 I was 16. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young brought out Déjà Vu and my boyfriend of the time introduced me to their music. I knew about Graham Nash because of the Hollies and I lived in Manchester. Graham’s love song for Joni Mitchell, ‘Our House’, was our dream, but we never did get to live together. A few years later I went off to teach English in Morocco humming ‘Marrakesh Express’ as I got on board that train for Casablanca. As I got older and thought about having a family, ‘Teach your Children Well’ was the song that expressed my feelings about having and bringing up children. I have three, and spent many years as a single parent, supporting them, loving them, keeping them safe, providing a roof over their heads, encouraging them to be themselves and follow their dreams, whilst trying not to lose sight of my own in all the responsibility. In 2011 I had the amazing experience of seeing Crosby and Nash at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, and their set included ‘Teach Your Children’, as powerful then as back in the day when I first heard it when I wasn’t much more than a child myself. A couple of weeks ago my nineteen year old son left home. My older two are in their mid and late twenties, and had left to go to university. Neither have come back home, and both are doing well, following their dreams. My youngest son didn’t want to go down the university route and I was seriously concerned that he would find it financially impossible to strike out independently. A live in job has now given him the chance, and I am thrilled. Then suddenly it hit me that I am now on my own – always a parent, but no longer the responsible adult. I tried not to feel tearful, and was doing OK until I realised that I had fulfilled my teenage dream to teach my children well.

Once a Catholic

Pope Benedict announced his resignation this week. What is going on with the Catholic Church? The first pope to resign since 1415. It’s an historic occasion. Back in early April 2005 I was sitting in a café in the sunshine in Dharamsala, Northern India. I was spending a week there, taking the opportunity to see the Dalai Lama and the home of the Tibetan government in exile. It was the fulfilment of a long held ambition. I had read Heinrich Harrer’s ‘Seven Years in Tibet’ when I was about seven years old, and was entranced by the story of the Dalai Lama. The news had just broken that Pope John Paul II had died. An Irish couple shared the café table with me, and we discussed popes and Catholicism. They had been in India when the previous pope had died, on their honeymoon. Here they were, visiting India for their own significant anniversary, and history was repeating itself. I was very aware that with the death of the pope the only spiritual world leader on the planet was living and preaching a matter of yards from where I was sitting. I appreciate that the Dalai Lama has handed over political power to Tibetan representatives, but he is still considered to be a spiritually motivated political leader by many, including the Chinese government. A couple of years later I visited Rome, and went to St Peter’s Square on the Sunday morning to see the Pope give his blessing from his balcony. I was there for the rugby, and it was my non Catholic companion’s idea to go and see the pope. Catholicism is still something I resist and reject in many ways, and a pope’s blessing would not have been high on my list of ‘to do’s’ when in Rome. It was fascinating to see the crowds of tourists there, most of them spiritual tourists I am sure. There were the obvious groups of nuns, but there were also young people bursting into happy hymn singing for the occasion. It was a very different way of identifying yourself as a card carrying Catholic. Some years later I attended a series of lectures at Nottingham Arena, given by the Dalai Lama on one of his visits to the UK. There was a question and answer session, and someone asked him about the difficulties he was experiencing becoming a good Buddhist. The Dalai Lama gave some very interesting advice, and I am sure many people there may not have welcomed it. He recognised that many of the people who are drawn to Buddhism in the west are spiritually inclined, and this inclination comes from having been born into a recognised religion. Basically he said follow the religion you were given by birth, work to make it what you need it to be. For me this was a very radical statement, and I think for many there it went over their heads. It set me thinking. I have been drawn to Buddhism throughout my life, perhaps as a result of reading Heinrich Harrer’s book. I have even thought of becoming a Buddhist nun, but I have never taken the decisive step of becoming aligned to any of the Buddhist organisations that exist in the West. I am one of the growing number of people who describe themselves as spiritual rather than religious. I have struggled with Catholicism most of my life to. As a teenager in a convent boarding school I became very sensitive to its hypocrisy, and resisted having religion shoved down my throat. Luckily at a girls’ school it was only religion that was. As the years have gone by a series of scandals have hit the Catholic Church, usually involving priests and those they were responsible for. I am sure it was ever thus, but there is a culture of revelation now, both within the church and in the wider media. The Magdalene Laundries, ‘Oranges and Sunshine’ and the scandal of Australian orphanages, powerful films like ‘Doubt’, the Jimmy Savile scandal – people forget he was a Catholic. My own education and upbringing was as a Catholic in Manchester, with a lapsed Catholic father, but my mother took us to church every Sunday and we went to Catholic schools. It was an appealing culture influenced by the Irish backgrounds of many of our school friends. Convent boarding school was something different. The nuns there were part of the culture that could maintain and condone the Magdalene Laundries. Teenage girls in the late nineteen sixties and early seventies were seen as the embodiment of occasions of sin, damned before we had started, in spite of going to confession and communion weekly. There was an insidious cruelty, sometimes physical, but more often than not psychological, part of the creation of the famous Catholic Guilt. Everything we did was wrong, and we were worthless sinners. There was a comic element to all of this too – boxes of tampax and non-regulation underwear were confiscated when discovered. Psychological cruelty started at the junior branch of the school, where children were made to sleep in a room they thought was haunted as a punishment. The nuns wouldn’t have believed for a minute that it was haunted, but they knew the power of fear. Throughout my four years there my younger sister was a pupil at the junior part of the school. My middle sibling and I were at the senior school, literally across the road. We were not allowed to cross that road to visit or maintain family contact with our youngest sister, who started at boarding school when she was seven. The older I get, the more horrifically unkind and uncaring I find this attitude. At worst, religious Catholics, especially the clergy, consider themselves above the law of humanity. They can go to confession, make penance, have their sins forgiven, and guarantee their place in heaven with the Nine First Fridays. How ridiculous is a religion that bans contraception, makes the use of condoms a sin, even where Aids and HIV is rife, insists on celibacy for its clergy and dares to tell people how to manage their personal relationships. As teenagers we were intrigued by the rebel Dutch priests who broke away from the church and married in the sixties. I wonder what became of them. It’s no wonder that the abuse of power has resulted in priests sexually abusing those in their care, whilst vilifying same sex relationships. How can I reconcile myself to the faith and the church I was brought up to be part of, as the Dalai Lama suggests? Strangely, I find myself drawn to fellow Catholics, especially lapsed ones. There’s the shared childhood history, attitudes of generosity and acceptance, ‘do as you would be done by’. It’s the ones who have rejected the pomp and circumstance of the religion who seem to live the most thoughtful and caring lives. The Catholic Church has done much for the poor in some parts of the world, and priests have been punished for being political rebels. Perhaps a new Pope, elected in these strange circumstances, before the death of the old Pope, heralds in a shift of attitude. I don’t imagine that he will be anything other than conservative, whichever country he comes from, but at least the possibility of a non-European Pope is being talked about. I have enjoyed the Father Ted related Facebook posts, proposing Dougal or Father Jack for Pope. In fact ‘Father Ted’ with its very Irish Catholic scenarios and humour helped reconcile me to Catholicism when I first discovered the TV series. Recently there has been a lot of publicity about American Catholic nuns working for ecology. I have bought the book ‘Green Sisters’ and look forward to reading about them. The Catholic Church has been responsible for so much harm in so many ways over the centuries. I’d like to think I could reconsider its role in my life, as the Dalai Lama suggested, even if it is simply to reconcile myself to the fact that I was once a Catholic.

Taste and Trust

This week has been full of the scandal surrounding horsemeat masquerading as beef. I am a natural vegetarian. I never liked the taste and texture of meat as a child and growing up in the hippy era, it was easy to avoid it once I left home. I have eaten meat to avoid embarrassment when it has been cooked for me. I know it doesn't make me ill or sick. When I worked in Morocco I would be invited home by some of the students, and meat was what was served to guests. I have cooked chicken and bacon for my children. It's a matter of taste most of the time, and ethics some of the time. Vegetarian cuisine is so much more varied and international, and because I am squeamish easier for me to cook. I appreciate that the powers that be are saying horsemeat isn't harmful. The jury still seems to be out on whether it might sometimes contain potentially harmful drugs.I also recognise that there are many creatures that provide food in different cultures, including squirrels, rabbits, ostriches, hares and even rats and dogs. It's a cultural thing.When I lived in Casablanca there was a horse butcher's stand in the Marchee Central with a beautiful plaster painted model of a horse's head to advertise its wares. When my friend's son made the connection he turned vegetarian. Meat was raw there- exposed to the flies, out on the street, whole sheep or goats slaughtered in public, bunches of chickens hanging from their legs on motorbike handles. In this country we have become very distanced from our food sources, not least because of the popularity of processed food, especially meat products. At boarding school we were served beef and gravy that came out of a tin. I am convinced that those slices of meat were horse. I have never seen beef with that sort of muscle fibre. Years later on family holidays in Anglesey, I was aware that some of the horses grazing in the fields next to the caravan site were on their way from Ireland to the continent as a food product. Not so many years ago I was told I could purchase a rescue pony for my children via the business connection of a friend. The business sent horses and ponies from the UK to the continent for slaughter. Earlier this week, with all the fuss about horsemeat, I wondered if I had remembered this offer correctly. The local press ran an article today about proposed protests at a Bakewell based business, doing just this, so I guess that would have been the source of my rescue pony. We don't eat choose to eat horses here - at least not knowingly. While I am sure there are meat eaters who would be curious or unconcerned if they did, this is about trust. It's not just about whether anyone has been harmed by it. It's about food being what it claims it is, doing what it says on the tin. In this time of banking scandals and government spin and u-turns we are treated as fools in so many ways, but please don't assume we are foolish.I will never forget reading a very small article in a national paper when the scandal of BSE broke. I was weaning my daughter on home cooked vegetarian food at the time. Heinz had released a statement to reassure customers that their baby food did not contain brain or spinal cord. I wonder how many of us had ever considered that it might.

Family history

I went to a good friend's 60th birthday party at the weekend. I have to say that 60 must be the new 40. None of us look our age! Or maybe it's more about not acting the age you once thought 60 represented! Everyone there was young at heart and having a great and lively time. Tamla Motown to dance to and a very nice live band to listen to,featuring my friend's husband and fellow blues musicians. Friends are the family you choose for yourself or so they say. That's how it feels for me, and there were people there I have known for more than forty years. It's a different style of family history. When we were young we called our parents' friends by the title of Aunty or Uncle. That tradition seems to have been lost, but there's nothing to replace it. Some of my good friends play that role in my youngest son's life, and have helped him to find a full time job with their caring and practical support. Family history for my youngest son is already turning out to be a very different experience too. His father has children by 3 different women, so my son has 5 half siblings who share his father, as well as his brother and sister who are my older children from my marriage. When his father left us, I never imagined that we would connect with the oldest family of siblings, but one night Charlie was watching his dad's performance at a folk club on YouTube. He posted a comment about his dad. Within minutes someone else had posted, that's my dad too! You must be my younger brother! And so Charlie connected with a whole bunch of half brothers and sisters, in-laws , cousins and nephews.My daughter is working on some aspects of our family history, and I used to help people trace theirs when I worked in the local library. I can't imagine how future generations will unpick their family stories, though I am sure the Internet will help, perhaps in some unexpected ways.

Flog It! Blog It!

Flog It! Blog It! In early October BBC’s Flog It! got in touch with Haddon Hall, where I work, to discuss the possibility of filming in November. Members of the production team came to have a look at our facilities and to discuss how Haddon could be used for a Flog It! Valuation Day. The proposed date of filming came during what is now laughingly known as our closed period in November. They came at the end of a week that had included a two day Rowan Yarns photoshoot and a TV shoot for David Starkey’s new series ‘Music and Monarchy’. The Hall may have been closed to the public, but it was certainly open for business. When Flog It! choose a venue they have to be sure that everything from power supplies, parking and refreshments can be provided, as well as a steady stream of people with items they would like to have valued and ultimately sell. One of the attractions for Haddon was that the programme is due to be aired in March or April 2013 – ideal publicity at the start of the season. They make 5 episodes from each venue, and then they repeat and repeat and repeat – you get the picture! I am involved with the Old House Museum in Bakewell, an award winning independent museum, run by volunteers. The Museum is part of the Bakewell and District Historical Society and had been left a very generous bequest by a former member of the Society. There were some interesting antique items and a decision had been made to keep the Blue John and Ashford Marble pieces as they could be included in the Museum’s collection, but the ivory pieces were more problematic. I realised that I could take them to Flog It!’s valuation day, and possibly get some publicity for the Museum into the bargain! At this point we weren’t sure when the pieces dated from, and the magic year is 1947. After that CITES rules came in, and ivory can’t be sold on. Some of the pieces were a mystery – a long stick, and an elongated dragon carving looked as if they might have belonged together once, but been broken. There was also a small round ivory container with a lid – the kind of thing that might have once been part of a dressing table set. The two main pieces were carved groups of figures – an Indian god and his rather voluptuous attendant, and some Chinese or Japanese boys playing with a horse. Having dropped various hints to the researchers, I didn’t get an offer to be fast-tracked, so at 10am on Saturday November 17th I joined a long queue of hopefuls outside Haddon Hall. It was great fun, because everyone had a story, and in the two hours it took to get through the main queuing process I heard them all! Paul Martin, the presenter, was filming short pieces to camera, and I am always amazed by the tediousness of a presenter’s job! It’s a lot of repetition and re-takes. I have seen the Antiques Roadshow being recorded several times, and was once on a TV quiz, as well as on a Time Team dig. To me there’s nothing glamorous about it! As lunchtime approached James Martin, Bamford’s auctioneer came and asked if anyone had items they definitely wanted to put forward for auction. Some people go for the valuation and information, but don’t wish to sell. Unlike the Antiques Roadshow, Flog It! depends on people going to auction for its entertainment value. I was able to catch his eye, and Michael Froggatt , their expert on ivory, came over to have a quick look at the carvings. I was then taken into another waiting area – where hot drinks and sandwiches were provided! - and again was there for a couple of hours. More interesting people with fascinating stories, especially when they came back to report on their valuations. On the Antiques Roadshow you get taken into hair and makeup before filming – even the men - but there was no such preparation here! Eventually Michael Froggatt sat down at a table with me and told me about the pieces, repeated a couple of times for the camera. All were pre-1947, which was good news. The Indian god was Krishna, and was probably 1930s. It was very good quality ivory. He turned the Japanese carving upside down to show me that it was carved from a walrus tooth. There was even a little design underneath to disguise the soft centre of the tooth, and the artist had followed the curves of the natural tooth. To my surprise he told me the ivory ‘sticks’ weren’t connected. One was Indian and possibly ceremonial. The other was Chinese, and was probably a parasol or walking stick handle. He painted a lovely picture of a woman strolling in Shanghai in the late 19th century with a beautiful parasol, its handle formed from an exquisite ivory carving of a dragon with the pearl of immortality in its mouth. He gave me valuations too, and guide prices for auction. The pieces were signed for and taken away to be photographed and catalogued for the sale that would take place at Bamfords new salerooms at Peak Village, at the beginning of December. I was glad I didn’t have any attachment to them. Michael’s enthusiasm for them and the information he gave would have made me want to keep and appreciate them! The Flog It! team kept in touch with me about arrangements for the auction on December 5th. There were several familiar faces from Haddon and the Old House Museum, as well as new acquaintances from the valuation day. Everything was behind schedule, but eventually it was my turn. Huddled in front of the camera with Paul Martin and Michael Froggatt, with a massive stuffed animal display cabinet as backdrop, there was hardly time to think as the bidding for the Indian figures started. No second takes here, I was disbelieving as the bidding soared past the estimated £120 to a magnificent £340! Unbelievable! The Japanese figure reached its top estimated price of £120, but sadly the group of bits and bobs, including the parasol handle didn’t attract any bids. The parasol handle had become a favourite for Michael and I. Bamfords offered to put it into the next sale, so perhaps by now it will have found a loving home. The programmes will be broadcast in March or April. I was aware that Paul Martin was trying to give the museum a plug during the auction, so I hope it doesn’t get edited out!

It's a new year

I claimed in a recent blog that I could probably remember most of the Christmases in my life. I love Christmas as a time to get together and celebrate mid winter. I find New Year just as meaningful now. It' s a time to review what's gone, leave behind what you don't want to carry with you, and a chance to look forward to the adventures and changes to come. Looking back over the years, and all the New Year's Eves I can recall I would struggle to choose a favourite. As children my sister and I would leave a stocking at the end of the bed. In the morning there would be some sweets and an orange in it. What a lovely tradition to raise the spirits after all the excitement of Christmas seemed to be over.Family parties before my father left to work in Nigeria were another highlight.He made ham and pea soup in a pressure cooker and created multi layered club sandwiches, cut like a cake. I heard She Moves Through the Fair sung for the first time by Angela Mangan, not much older than me. When my parents lived in Sarawak I had a couple of strange equatorial New Year Eves.For one I was so ill with a tropical fever that I watched sunrise to sunset flash past my bedroom window in a matter of minutes. After I left school I had difficult few months, and was whisked off to Devon by an older and very kind friend. We went to stay at an amazing manor house outside Barnstaple with a well known band he was doing some work for. Wives,parents, children and friends made it an unforgettable house party, and at midnight on New Years Eve we rang the bells of the private chapel in the grounds. Another year,when my family were back in England I got a New Years Eve transatlantic phone call from a boyfriend in San Francisco telling me he was coming home because he missed me so much. He didn't materialise, but my dad did make me my first Rusty Nail. I didn't know alcohol could be so delicious!I saw my first New Years Eve fireworks in Casablanca, and heard the ships blow their foghorns in the port there at midnight. I saw Christmas tree bonfires in Rotterdam. What a practical way to celebrate a New Year. Once I had my own children, there were New Year Eves with young babies, coughs and colds, and occasionally friends and their offspring gathered round for impromptu parties when none of us could afford or secure babysitters. We always stay up until midnight, and first footing is part of the tradition most years. A dark haired person sent to stand outside in the cold at five to twelve, with a lump of bread, a piece of coal and a coin.It seems important to be with the people you want to be with, whether family, friends or very occasionally one significant other, and in a place that feels like home, my own or someone else's . Pubs, clubs and hotels don't work for me, and I don't like kissing strangers !My father died in the early hours of New Years Day 2010 and some of the family spent New Years Eve at the nursing home with him. My mother was there with him to the end. It was a blue moon, the second full moon in a calendar month that year, and I thought it was a very good time for him to leave us. The following year I spent New Years Eve watching TV with my mum, quiet and cosy.Nowadays its Jools Holland and his Hootenany (recorded in September I am told!) rather than Andy Stewart's White Heather Club.Last year I spent it in a remote country cottage with someone who I thought was going to be significant in 2012, but like the Californian boyfriend, it didn't materialise. This year I was with good friends and my daughter and her partner. It was lovely. My youngest son had a gig, and I remembered the frustration of his father having a New Years Eve gig when he was a baby and we were left home alone.That's the beauty of looking back. Every year starts with hopes, resolutions and expectations, and then life intervenes, and I go through the whole process again 12 months later.Happy New Year!