Families and friends

It's been an uneventful week, as far as I can remember. Well, it's featured a visit from a decorator to estimate for painting various rooms (that's going to be expensive, I fear), a visit to the dentist (ditto) and a mammogram (routine). So, not fun, though I've also had some friends round for coffee and a catch up, which was much better. One friend, much younger than me, is starting a new romance (while unhappily married) so that was rather startling. Rather her than me, but she's so happy!

Quite a few years ago I bought a book about childhood in Glasgow in the early years of last century. I read the beginning (on a train, maybe?) and then for some reason never got round to reading the rest until last week. It was written in 1987 and the writer interviewed lots of old people to get their memories. And when I got to the bit above, I was struck by the name Noble Boyd, because one of my father's many cousins was called Noble Boyd (actually Thomas Noble, but always called Noble to differentiate him from his father Thomas)  and he lived near the White Cart River in Glasgow. To translate the above: he was fishing for tadpoles, fell in, got very smelly and then was smacked when he got home. On the other occasion he went stealing apples (probably just the fallen ones) and got all wet again. 

Here he is near the bottom of my dad's carefully-compiled family tree. I never met him but now wish that I could ask him some of the questions that one wants to ask after there's no longer anyone there to answer them. It looks as if he had no children. 

Here he is again: 

He sounds quite a character. His father deaved him and his siblings about cribbage - there's no adequate English word for "deaved" but it means something like "pestered" - but with a real feeling of weariness. It's from the same root as "deafened" - but metaphorically. It hasn't anything to do with being loud. 

Here he is with various other cousins and their spouses at a golden wedding party. Luckily I know who most of them are because my dad left a key to the photo. My grandmother is on the far left in the second front row and my grandfather in the same row, but third from the right. I wonder why they didn't stand together. 

 This is Noble in the back row, middle, as a young man. 

We used to visit my aunt, my dad's sister, in Norfolk, and one year I got her to dictate her family memories. This is what she said about Noble's parents: 

Uncle Tom (Clarkston Tom) - (1872-1957) 

We thought of Uncle Tom as very posh – maybe he married above his station? He had a maid called Jean Ross. One time, when my mother was staying, they went to visit some friends who served dainty sandwiches and had finger bowls, which my sister Jean had never seen before. My mother very seldom made derogatory comments but this time she said that she thought they were showing off. Uncle Tom’s wife was called Ann(ie) McKendrick (1869-1936) . He worked as a traveller for suiting and gave my mother out-of-date books of pattern samples, out of which she made patchwork bedcovers [two of which I now have]. He came to Edinburgh in the course of his work and he had a car! He used to bring us a big box of chocolates. We children had Sunday clothes, including coats, made by Uncle Tom’s firm. They were beautifully cut. When we were older, Jean and I used to go to his house – which seemed posh - for holidays. It was right by the River Cart. We used to climb over the wall, scramble down the banks and explore the river.

 Uncle Tom was a Justice of the Peace, which increased our sense of his poshness!

And here are the quilts that my aunt gave me, made from Noble's father's out-of-date pattern samples about 100 years ago. Not fancy, but serviceable and warm. 

Daughter 2 and Littlest Granddaughter are coming on Monday to stay for almost two weeks. Won't that be lovely?

Spring is coming. Slowly

On Friday afternoons, there's no school and the children always come to us. Biggest Granddaughter wanted to paint with her hands. I hate getting dirty hands and so my instinct was to say it would be better to use brushes but... in fact there was no reason not to allow her so I did - even though she painted the backs of her hands too - hmm. Award me some Granny points, please! 

Though it's still January, just, there are definite signs of spring, such as the snowdrops in the garden and also the beginnings of colour in some crocuses. After the recent snow, it was quite mild today, and sunny, which was cheering. 

We walked along the river, which was still rather full and fast, presumably with snow still melting off the hills.  

We saw a cormorant (or possibly a shag, but Daughter 1's father-in-law thinks it's a cormorant and he knows these things) sitting drying its wings. We've never seen one here before - herons, yes, but not cormorants. People stopped and watched it and we had the cormorant/shag discussion. Human contact!

Up we climbed to the art gallery,

where, rather to our surprise, there was still ice on the pond. 

And then home, 

with the sun in our eyes. 

So it's all right really, but we do miss the absent family and, sadly, have no immediate prospect of seeing them. 

With the home-schooling and two evenings of choir Zoom and time spent emailing friends that I'm not seeing just now, I'm no longer making much progress with the photo cataloguing. I actually hit a bit of a wall when I got to the photos of my parents and their friends, in their oldish but still vigorous age, on lovely holidays in Crete and Tenerife and Madeira and so on. I know that they were very lucky with their friends and holidays and no one lives for ever, and I need to get a grip - but it did make me sad so... a break from that isn't a disaster. Except that the kitchen is rather full of piles of photos... which I'm not putting away because every evening I plan to get back to it. 

But possibly not tonight.

 

Looking back in times of Covid

The days pass quickly enough - too quickly in some ways. I'm still going through old photos, such as these from when I was - how old? - eight, maybe? with my brother. I'm wearing my party dress, made by my mother. These were Polyphotos - the photographer took lots of photos quickly, printed them out small and then the customer had lots to choose from as bigger prints. It was a very modern idea and worked well, but maybe it wasn't profitable because I don't think it lasted many years. 

Here are both my grandmothers, the one grandfather whose life overlapped with mine, my parents and my infant older brother. I think it's the only one we have of both grandmothers together. This photo was colourised by Son-in-Law 2, and while I don't think my grandmother would have worn a pink jacket, it does bring the people to life. This grandmother moved down to the south of England with my aunt when I was five and we saw very little of her from then on - travel wasn't nearly so easy in those days and she developed dementia after a few years. So though I remember her, it was the other grandparents, who lived just up the road, who were important to me - particularly my lovely smiling granny on the left. I wonder if the southern granny missed my brother and me, as I miss my grandchildren? We were her only grandchildren and it now seems odd to me that she moved  so far away. But she'd been widowed a few months before I was born, the older daughter had moved abroad and the younger was now going down south. She made the choice to go with the younger daughter. My father (her son), mother, brother and I were still in Edinburgh, though. I wonder if she found it an agonising decision? I never thought about this until recent years - she was just fairly absent from our lives and I took this for granted. 

Look, snowdrops. Spring is coming, if not precisely round the corner. 

It's been very wet recently, though mainly at night. The river is very full and muddy - and I suppose there's also snow melt from the hills. 

There are supposedly otters and a kingfisher around here so we walked down to see them - but didn't, sadly. 

Here we are again, in the back garden of the house where we lived till I was nearly 13. We've each got a ball, giving the totally erroneous impression that we're interested in sport. I imagine my brother was actually working out the physics of inflatable balls. I walked past that house with the children today during our after-school outing for fresh air and exercise. It's a bit scruffy, though the other houses in the street are very neat. I imagine that this wall is still there. And at least these sunlit children are still around - one in Edinburgh but the other far away in Surrey. 

I must return to the photos, which I'm sorting into lots of different envelopes on the kitchen table. It's taking ages. I will get these and the other archives all organised by... let's say the end of February. (The schools are to remain shut, it's just been announced today, till at least the middle of February - and I'd bet it'll be longer - so I'm not at home as much as usual at the moment.) It's an interesting task, though inevitably a bit sad. I'm firmly resisting the lure of my fabric cupboard; well done me.

This is Donald Trump's last day as President. That's something. 

Revisiting 2020

So now we're in lockdown proper again, much the same as in March (how discouraging is that?) but with a few differences. One of these is that golf courses (in Scotland) aren't closed, which I think is very sensible, though personally disappointing to us, who so enjoyed roaming over them. However, today they were closed because of the remaining snow, so we walked up to the golf course on the hill for the first time since May 28 last year. It was so lovely to be up there again, though the weather was dull, the ground was muddy and in places still a bit icy and the trees were bare. It certainly felt like winter. 

Still, on the positive side, the gorse is starting to bloom. 

We looked down over the south of the city towards the Pentland Hills, 

which were not inviting. Or, not to us. 

Since now would not be the time to break a limb, we didn't go up this path, as we did before so many times. Look at all those dead twigs, which used to - and will again - look like this: 

Isn't nature amazing? Beautiful red campion. 

We admired the heather, which is of course winter-flowering but which we chose to regard as another sign of spring. 

And we said hello to the distant city skyline. 

On the way out, I noticed that this very long-flowering hellebore is starting to flower again. I wish I were the sort of person who has the nerve to pop round with a trowel and dig a tiny bit up. But I'm not. 

So we're trying to be cheerful but are, like everyone else, fairly fed up. Under the current rules, we're allowed to spend time outside as long as there are a maximum of two people from a maximum of two households - though children under 11 don't count. So we can both go for a walk with the Edinburgh grandchildren but not their parents, or one of us can go for a walk with our daughter but not our son-in-law. This seems a bit mad to us, but I suppose they're trying to make it simple (it would be a lot simpler if England and Scotland were the same, though). We can't go into other people's houses except for caring duties, and since home-schooling starts on the 11th and Daughter 1 is working, I shall be going into their house to help Son-in-Law with the children. He's not very well; and all in all, caring will be involved. So at least I'll be able to see them, though Mr Life won't - apart from walking as above. 

It's a bit drear. 

I've been going through old photos and writing information on the back, like a good person who doesn't make quilts. It's pleasurable in a way but on the other hand also rather sobering to see these young people smiling and looking forward to their lives when I know that these lives are now over. And seeing our three children all together as little ones - now so far apart, which is something I never expected (though possibly I should have) - well, it does tug at the heart strings. Ah well. We must just accept the inevitable and get on with things. I do long to see them, though, and their little ones. 

 

Faces, hair and time

Life is so busy! I'll never have enough time to do all the things I want to do. But it's fun. The Edinburgh grandchildren have been here, not adding to the tidiness of our house but adding so much to the happiness.

It's been very wet! I tried to go for a walk in the Botanics the other day, but they were closed! - I assume because of flooding on the paths. Instead, I walked in Inverleith Park, which is opposite the Botanics, and got rather muddy.

This path (yes, it's a path) was impassible so I had to walk on the grass. Hmm, yes.

More from the archives. My parents took our family and my brother's to France to celebrate my parents' Golden Wedding in 1996 and the children made a joint book about it to thank them. They all wrote some entries. Food figures widely in these. The one below is written by my niece. She's rather disrespectful about her mother, my delightful sister-in-law!

And then - photos. This is my father's paternal grandfather. He died at the age of 40. He was a house painter but also painted pictures - which we sent to auction when my mother's house had to be cleared, on the grounds that you can't keep everything. I feel bad about that but on the other hand, we've saved the dilemma passing itself down to our children in future years.

This is his wife, my dad's paternal grandmother. Good hair.

This is my dad's maternal grandfather, the reason that I'm astonished that Son still has a thick head of hair.

And here's his wife, my dad's maternal grandmother.

My dad's parents, children of the above.

The chap with the moustache looks like the same chap, my paternal grandfather, but is actually his brother Angus. Here he is with his mother, grandmother and baby son (my dad's cousin) in 1910. Sadly Angus was killed in the war five years later. But these ladies are our grandchildren's great-great-great grandmother and great-great-great-GREAT grandmother. Which astonishes me. Imagine being able to see such a good picture of one's GGGGgrandmother! - and she's smiling at having her first great-grandchild on her knee. She was born in 1829, in the reign of William IV, Victoria's uncle.

And here's my paternal grandmother (as seen two photos above with her husband). She's on the right. She was the third youngest of ten children. Sadly, the little boy, Henry, was also killed in the war in 1915. Poor mite.

I needed a photo of myself for other purposes and tried taking a selfie. The result was too horrendous to contemplate. So, to cheer myself up, I took a non-selfie in the bathroom mirror, with kind, gentle light from the side, thus making myself look better than usual instead of worse. I'm not particularly vain, but there's a limit. Ah, it's a terrible thing, getting older. I used to have curly, shiny brown hair - it was never hugely thick but it was acceptable. Now it's greying and straightish and there's far less of it. Ah well. (It might have looked better if I'd at least combed it.)

This is my mum's wartime diary from 1940. She was living in London and working for the Civil Service. Now, she had lovely thick hair. My dad was visiting her when he was on leave from the army but so were various other young men. She had at least three marriage proposals. One chap, Geoffrey, said he'd become a monk if she didn't marry him. She didn't but he didn't.

It's all terribly interesting (to me; probably not to anyone else apart from the daughters) but also very time-consuming. And that's not to mention the 132 (out of the projected 144) tumbler shapes I've so far cut out of my friend's deceased husband's shirts, at her request, to make a quilt of them. Busy busy busy.

Pictures

We went to the BP portrait competition exhibition (the last one, since the galleries have decided that BP isn't very suitable as a sponsor, hmm) the other day. This portrait got third prize. I know it's very photographic and some people think you might as well take a photo but look! The skill in using paints in such a realistic way!

Look at the veins and the slighly chipped nails! Her clothes are slightly bobbled and the hot water bottle is a bit grubby. Amazing! I'd have given it first prize, myself.

Another day we went up to visit the Unbloggables. Little Grandson is so cute! - full of grins, so soft and squashy and trying to walk - as yet unsuccessfully, since he's only eight months.

Medium Granddaughter is lovely too.

I'm continuing my trawl through the archives. Here's Son at 3. He was very cute too, in my maternal opinion.

This is from a 1948 newspaper, the year that Mr L was born. Sixteen babies died that week in Edinburgh and lots of older people from diseases that sound Dickensian, like phthisis. I didn't know it was still called that then.

This dates from when Son was a little boy, probably seven, when he announced that he'd drawn a rude picture. Somewhat horrified, I investigated. Not too rude, really.

And here's one of Mr Life's great-grandfathers. This means that he's our grandchildren's great-great-great-grandfather. How wonderful (I hope they'll think, one day) to have a photo of one's great-great-great-grandfather. I know the names of mine, but that's all.