August 5th 2020 Our Ruby Wedding

You may congratulate us. We've been married 40 years. That's a whole lot of days!!! It's hard to believe.                                                                                             

The cake was a one-off made by a local Swansea baker who'd always wanted to make this cake but nobody else wanted that design! I didn't see it until the day. It looked utterly fabulous!

The groom had hair!! Best man was Noel's school friend John Stanley Quirk who became director of music at The Grand Theatre, Swansea. John's still around.

I wore a waterford crystal cross. The earrings were a gift from a lady I met at uni. Her name was Guadalupe. She was merely an acquaintance and I asked how on earth there was a pearl at each side of the ear. She took them off to show me and insisted I keep them despite mny protests. She would brook no refusal and I promised to wear them on my wedding day. They are real pearls.

My sister Esme was bridesmaid and made her own dress. I allowed her to choose and appropriately she chose RUBY -- well burgundy I suppose -- silk with a leaf print. Isn't it beautiful!!I carried the same white Bible that my sister Margaret carried in 1962. I'd scribbled on the iside of it with a biro -- naughty child!!! She had my initials stamped on it in gold letters. Had a lovely chat with her at the weekend when she phoned to congratulate us.

                                                                I still love that dress!

My mother was the same age I am now. I think she wore it better but then she was, in her way, quite vain and really looked after her skin!!! Noel's Gran looked elegant. That coat was designer and silk but always thrify in her ways she spotted it at a charity shop 😉 Because Noel's grandfather was a brittle diabetic, he could not attend but later we had a little party at the house. About a year later I put the dress back on before I sold it, just to have a photo taken with Dad. I'd put on weight already!!

It was only a small wedding party that windy Tuesday in Swansea. My brother Stuart, just peeking out behind me, and his wife Mary managed to come from Hull with my niece Jackie and her at the time, spouse. I suppose the sad thing about a RUBY anniversary is that the photo is full of dead people.

                                                       me teetering on high heels

My brother-in-law Hubert McCosh as Father of the bride, 'father' was a role he'd played very responsibly every day since our father died when I was 5 and until he died 7 yrs ago aged 79.

1980 it seems was a good year to get married. Congratulations are also due to out friends Alun and Mary Norman and Hywel and Sue Davies. We used to hang round together in Cardiff asnd Swansea back in the day. HEY -- It takes committment but we all made it this far! 
                        So here we are 40 years on and some would say, not a day wiser 

        💖Esme made us this card -- her depiction of Noel and me at Belsay.💖

July 2020: of Lilies and Shamrocks

Today would have been my brother-in-law Hubert's 86th Birthday. A bit like my husband (born Guy Fawkes Night) there were bonfires on his birthday and he always joked they were in honour of him. He was a good man and like my father an Orangeman but for us it was always just a bit of fun, an excuse for icecream and to watch the big parade. It wasn't that partisan! We lived in a peaceful mixed housing estate. Everybody repected everybody else's traditions. It was a good time and place to grow up. This poem reflects the sadness I feel that it all went wrong -- as if it was ever 'right'. But I am fairly certain that the Union is breaking up and that the lily and and shamrock will reunite at some point in the future. Not everybody will welcome that. I know that my father regarded it as inevitable because England has never really cared about any part of Ireland. It was just another part of Empire to be exploited.

In my garden today

Two wrongs

­

It was always the tall orange lily-o

and the sprig of sweet william I loved;

the drum beat, the drum beat, the rain of July

fashioned black bowler hats and white gloves.

There was oh such regalia all strutting with pride

danced on silk banners and gables and flags,

bands on the tarmac, ice-cream in the field,

a litter of people and fags.

Wide were the eyes of those innocent days

down unperturbed marches of years

upheld by religion, supported by crowns,

yet still barricaded in fears.

But the lilies, exploded, exploded in grief,

disunited like tattered flags lie

ghosting green hedgerows the bullet, the knife,

red pools for both shamrock and lily to die.

© 2020

Also in my garden today 

The Jade Mountain

My favourite museum exhibit anywhere I have ever been reside at the Oriental Museum in Durham. It is an intricately carved jade mountain. I keep having to back there to see it again. If I could own one piece from any museum on earth it would be this.

May and June: The Bridge Between

It's June already and in many ways it feels like we should get a refund on the first half of this year.  We've been short-changed. Living has been interrupted. But I am reminded this year in particular of May and June -- not the months, but two sisters I never knew. They were born either side of midnight on May 31st and June 1st 1940 and so would have been 80 today but they died in infancy as, two years later, did another sister Eleanor. They never had a life but of course they were never forgotten and so on behalf of my other sisters, Annabelle, Margaret, Esme and Christine and the broader family, I remember them today by reading this poem for you The Bridge Between, on Facebook and posting it here too.  

The Bridge Between

On days of foxgloves we were taken a walk
to the wee stone bridge that united
the twin town-lands of Dunclug and Kirkinriola.

One foot in each parish
astride its gentle hump
within sight of the churchyard

their names would fall
like droplets in the family floe.
May and June

the twins who'd bridged those months
and spanned the 15 years between
pre and post war siblings,

shadow-sisters sleeping
in eternal double summertime
whose only bridge to us was DNA

never forgot by those who remembered
their brief days

before our lives began.

I wondered often but durstn't ask

were we replacement
or continuation?

That little bridge

is in a the folk museum now.

Dismantled, rebuilt stone by stone

it lost its place in time and space

and stands unnamed
in all but memory.

(published in Gyroscope Review 2017)

I have had 66 years on this good Earth. We have life every day. Let's treasure it.

                                                        My parents 1950-something

May's political shenanigans

Web of Deceit

Won't you come into my garden said the Cummings, on the sly

It’s quite the largest garden that you will ever spy.

You only have to get your head around my lying core

to see the biggest pile of shit you ever saw before.

I have no friends but Boris said the Cummings -- that’s okay.

He’ll never let me down you know, in case I go away.

He can’t survive without me. I can bring him to his knees.

He may be the Prime Minister but I am the big cheese!

Won’t you come into our garden and listen to our lies.

We have you in our sights you know with apps and media spies.

No gatherings, no protests now, no visits to your Mum

Do as we say not as we do. You low class slick of scum!

Staying Power

Staying power

Trying to stay in

for the good of my health

yet take a daily walk

for the good of my health  

I feel a bit like Schrodinger's cat!

When they open the box

will I be alive? or dead? 

I can only hope

that after this crisis

the 'little' people holding

everything together

are valued a lot more for their work.

Those at the top are really thick as shit, aren't they?

They'd be ‘dead in a ditch’ if not for the workers.

Writing's on the wall.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

Stages of Soda Bread

Soda bread is quick and easy and ready within an hour. It's like a scone mixture (and can be cut as scones which take 10 mins to cook!) so it needs a light touch. A little oil makes it keep better and makes it a bit softer but you don't have to add oil or you can rub in some butter before the salt and soda. Like any other bread, you know it's cooked when it 'sounds hollow'.

Bakes in 35 mins at 220 and it great with anything from jam to cheese. 

It's worth frying it when it goes a bit stale (day 3)

preheat oven

9oz of self raising white and 9 oz wholemeal bread flour 1 level tsp Bicarbonate of Soda and 1 level tsp salt

300mls buttermilk (or plain yogurt and a squeeze of lemon juice)

add a tbs olive or other oil

Add to the flour

mix with wooden spoon (right to the bottom)

bring together by hand

a light knead to shape it into a ball

use a palette knife to make a deep cross and place in hot oven 35 mins