White Haired Woman

Patty was always nervous. As children we wondered what she meant. Even as an adult, it was difficult for me to be empathetic when she said she was nervous. I still don’t know what she was feeling when she said that her ‘nerves were terrible’.

Of course, there are things that make me nervous, especially being driven somewhere by anyone except myself. When I started getting nervous about driving, I gave it up. I remember several times when I was at a junction, waiting to go part way round a roundabout and realising that I wasn’t always certain I had seen what everyone else was doing……did the car on the next junction indicate properly; is that car I see on the other side of the roundabout going to turn off or should I wait; what is the guy to my left doing?

Until that time I had been a fairly confident driver, particularly when going to places I went to all the time, like the Tesco Extra or the swimming pool in Ramsgate. I think I was about seventy six when I decided to give up driving. I had never had a speeding ticket or a crash that was my fault. (The only crash I had had was way back in the 80s when I was waiting to turn left into a 40MPH road from a side road. I looked right and started to pull a bit further ahead so as to see clearly what was coming from my right. The man in the van behind me assumed I was going and went – straight into my boot!

I was so surprised! I had two young boys sitting in the back seat to whom I gave a lift every day at the request of their mother so the first thing I did was check on them, they were fine, thankfully! Then I opened my window and asked the van driver, who had got out of his van to talk to me, “Why did you do that?”

I don’t remember what he said and, after exchanging details, I drove on to school.

It didn’t put me off driving nor did I worry about turning left. I was not made into a nervous driver.

When I was a young mother, I worried about doing everything right so as not to harm my precious daughter. I admit that when I was away from her I could sometimes be nervous for no reason other than that I wasn’t with her. There was the ridiculous time I was walking in an unknown neighbourhood and heard a phone ringing in a house I was walking past. I immediately thought that something terrible had happened to Veronica and that someone was ringing that number to tell me about it!!!

As she grew up, really the only thing I was nervous about was whether Veronica was safe – even today I can start feeling agitated if I should have heard from her but haven’t. Up to now there’s always a good reason why I haven’t heard when I thought I should have.

I get nervous on airplanes so I don’t fly anywhere. Sometimes I get nervous on trains if I start to let my imagination run away with me so I always have a book to read and my iPad to look at when I travel by train.

A couple of years ago Julian, Lola and I went to Centre Parcs in Longleat. All the way there the traffic rushing past, the sudden brake lights coming on in front of us, the huge lorries looming over the car, all made me very nervous.

Coming back from Longleat a week later, I hardly felt a twitch of a nerve. There is no reasoning sometimes.

If you’ve read this far you will see, I hope, that I don’t get nervous without a reason – even if the reason is silly! Patty, on the other hand seemed to get nervous when there was absolutely nothing to get nervous about. We could all have been home, maybe sitting around the living room watching tv and Patty would suddenly say, “My nerves are just so bad today! I need a drink.” meaning a quarter bottle of whiskey or brandy or gin – depending on the alcohol du moment.

And, I think, that may be why Patty was so ‘nervous’ all the time. Maybe it was alcohol withdrawal when she felt what she called her ‘nerves’. When we, her daughters, asked why she drank so much, she blamed it on 1) the fact that everyone drank like fish when she was young and 2) alcohol was the only thing that helped.

And it’s true that her mother and step-father both drank all the time. Ethel, her mum liked Scotch, Bill, her step-dad liked bourbon (or it could have been the other way around.) Both Ethel and Bill would hide their favourite tipple from each other, usually on a window sill, behind a curtain.

My father also drank to excess. Of course, he was of the same generation and perhaps he saw people around him drinking all the time. I didn’t live with him after I was about 3 so have no idea if he was ‘nervous’ too. Was that something that happened to the people born in between the two world wars in America. Perhaps that strange time when citizens were prohibited from drinking alcohol had the effect of making the people into big drinkers.

When I was a teenager around seventeen or eighteen, I went to pubs with my friends and would have a drink or two. Once I had more than I should have and felt so sick that I swore never to do it again. I actually gave up drinking alcohol until I was in my 50s and got a taste for very cold, dry white wine. And that’s my alcohol of choice even in my 80s! Cheers!

My favourite restaurants nowadays are Sardinia (an Italian restaurant in Broadstairs) and Il Tricolore (an Italian restaurant in Ramsgate). If I had to eat Italian food every meal from now on, I wouldn’t mind at all.

But, Italian food really didn’t enter my mind – or my tummy – in 1955. As children, we accompanied our mum and stepdad whenever they went to the Busy Bee, where we ate ‘chicken in a basket’ or ‘shrimp in a basket’. The aforementioned meat/seafood was deep fried and served with ‘French fries’ – also deep fried. As far as I remember, the only vegetable we had, at least with the shrimp, was tartar sauce which has some vegetable product in it – I believe it’s capers. The Busy Bee was my favourite restaurant in Cincinnati – and the only one whose name I can remember.

In Zanesville I never (knowingly) was taken to a restaurant. My favourite place to eat was The Hut, a place where I could buy ice cream in many forms – in a cone, in a soda, in a milk shake, in a sundae. I probably visited The Hut every day of a visit to our Grandma who lived just a block or so away.

We moved to London in 1958 and ate in restaurants fairly often at first, because we lived in a boarding house for the first six weeks where we were given breakfast but evening meals were to be taken out, somewhere. We learned about Indian food, Chinese food, and occasionally about French food. Judy’s favourite was definitely Indian curry but with chips rather than rice. I seem to remember that I quite liked curry but I also liked the kind of foods we had in the Chinese restaurant. Sadly, I don’t remember the names of those two but I do remember the name of the French restaurant – The Villa d’Est. I imagine that it, too, has disappeared from its spot somewhere in Paddington or Lancaster Gate but it served delicious food – I can’t remember what actual foods we ate there, though.

Another favourite which we rarely visited was the restaurant in the Columbia Club, a place which American officers could use. Patty was a ‘Lieutenant‘ in the US Navy, though she was always, too, a civilian. We were allowed to visit the Columbia Club and use their PX, which stands for Post Exchange, I believe. The PX was really cool but quite small. It was the place to go to buy the ‘fags’ we smoked – Kent, Pall Malls, whatever, but mostly those two. We could also buy American sweets and sundries – like mascara, make-up, or beer. When I turned 16, I was allowed 200 cigarettes a week at very reduced prices. I suppose they didn’t have any tax (American or British) on them. At 16, I didn’t smoke much and 200 cigarettes lasted quite a while but, later…….

Anyway, back to restaurants.

We really missed American hamburgers and ice creams and tried Wimpy Bars – once.

In 1971 we moved to West Malling but rarely could afford to eat out so there weren’t any favourites among the few restaurants that were in the town or nearby.

Then, I met Julian. We married and had two incomes so we did go out to eat occasionally but nowhere sticks in my mind as a favourite until around 1997 or 1998. At some point, then, a new restaurant was opened in West Malling, called MacKenzies. Though it had a Scottish sounding name, and the staff wore a dark tartan uniform, the food was based on Italian cookery. There were pizzas and pastas on the menu. Everything they sold was great and, between us, I think, we tried all the items on the menu during the next few years. Even when we weren’t really earning much, we went to Mackenzies and if we really couldn’t afford it, we went to The Five Pointed Star and had egg and chips!

Now we have come full circle – back to Sardinia and Il Tricolore.

After I read The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, I wanted to be Mary Lennox, living in England and finding her secret garden.

I’m not Mary – nowadays I’m quite plump with longish white hair which could be described as ‘like candy floss’, and I am not a young girl, but I do have a garden. It’s not a secret and I do hardly any work in it as I have lost my youthful stamina. (I could try to get it back but I’m not sure I have the energy!)

When I was in my late 30s I had my first ‘garden’. It, too, was no secret. I have written about it in an earlier post (which you can find if you scroll back quite far). That was my introduction to digging, weeding, and growing some of my own food and, I loved it!

In the East Malling house I mentioned yesterday, we had quite a large plot of land which was mostly given over to large clumps of weeds. Julian and I worked really hard and tamed it so that we had a plot for growing Swiss chard, French beans and tomatoes. That work was in the first couple of years and in the following years we spent time on first one bit, then another until, after about six years we had the whole back garden pretty well under control.

We had some gorgeous shrub roses which we were given by my in-laws, Ralph and Angela, and the roses were put in along the long side of the plot next to the farm track leading to other homes and, eventually, to the Fife’s farm. Sandy and Jim Fife who owned the farm, grew wonderful crops of strawberries and raspberries – and most likely, other crops that I knew nothing about. Every year when the berries were ripe, they ran a Pick Your Own business and I would walk up the path to do my best and always came home with too much fruit!

After twelve years we moved to Wateringbury where we bought a very interesting old house, part Victorian and part 16th century. The house came with the most beautiful garden and, for three years, we enjoyed the incredible space, the old trees, the ponds, and the solitude of our garden but, life happened and we needed to find a workshop for Julian’s new enterprise!

We bought the premises of an old pub in West Malling which was directly across the High Street from Market Cross Cottage where I lived before I met Julian. (Stories about Market Cross are in earlier posts.)

I had no garden at Rose and Crown Antiques but I did have window boxes along the first floor windows. I watered my boxes every morning via a contraption that we set up which had thin tubing which I attached to the kitchen tap each morning. I had to remember to turn it off so that pedestrians walking to the library or the charity shops weren’t drenched!

After seven plus years, we retired! We moved to the seaside and bought a nice house with a garden. It’s not a ‘secret’ garden, though. We’ve had many barbecues in it with neighbours and friends and a few days when painting friends of Julian’s have come to sit, chat and paint.

As I said at the beginning of my post, I don’t do much work in the garden, nowadays, but, from around this time of year until late autumn, I use the conservatory we built on the back of the house in 2019, so am inside but also in the garden! And, at Christmas time, when family members are here, we use the conservatory as a big living and dining room, heating it for those few days.

So, I’m not Mary Lennox and I have never had a secret garden but I quite like being Candy Lovegrove and enjoying our back garden!

I have little experience with any pets other than cats. Though I’ve been lucky enough to have two dogs, both were when I was over 65, so most dogs are still a mystery to me! I did have a bowlful of guppies when I was 9 or 10 but they all died one weekend when we had gone to Zanesville and forgot to clean their bowl and leave them some food!

Of those I have had, I can recommend cats or dogs. Each has its downside. If you own a cat on a busy road and it goes in and out, there is a chance that it will be injured or killed by a speeding car or even, a slow car. If you have a cat who stays inside, you have to provide it with a place to pee or poo which, itself, can be a big downside if you are unable or unwilling to change the contents of its toilet box pretty often.

I wrote, in an earlier post, about the pregnant cat who came out of the blue one day in 1968 or so, and produced five little kittens at my feet as I was sitting outside, enjoying a bit of sunshine. At that time we already had a cat whom we called Daisy. She was not a very friendly cat, particularly with other cats, and so we had to keep the babies and their mother apart from Daisy in our flat. The first few days were easy enough as the kittens and mother stayed in the box room at the top of the flat and Daisy had the roam of all the rest.

But, it soon became evident that they would have to live somewhere other than the box room as it was so far from the kitchen and, from there, the outside world. The kitchen was the “bottom” room of the flat, up a short flight of stairs was the lounge, up a longer flight were Judy’s bedroom with the bathroom opposite, then another short flight to the bedroom where Veronica and I slept, followed by another flight to Jennie’s bedroom and then another to the box room – and I had to go up and down many times a day, letting Mama (the mother cat), out of the room to go outside, then letting her back in to go upstairs and open the door to the box room, then close it so Daisy wouldn’t get in and cause havoc.

It was decided that Veronica’s and my bedroom would be ideal (!) so the kittens, Mama, the food and water bowls, and the toilet box all joined Veronica and me in our spacious bedroom. (It was very big as was the room below which was the lounge.)

So, that’s what happened.

Mama fed her babies for however long mother cats feed their babies then, one day, went out and never came back. I believe she was probably hit by a car in the busy road outside. Luckily, the babies had all started eating cat food and didn’t suffer too much from their mother’s disappearance.

We named the kittens Orpheus (who was all black), Poppy, Dudley, Frankenstein and Winnie (each one a mixture of black and white in varying amounts). Over the following months we found homes for Frankenstein and Dudley. Sadly, Poppy and Winnie, as well as the unrelated Daisy, all succumbed to cancers within the following year, leaving Orpheus to go on to live to a very healthy nineteen!

We moved two or three times in the following years and, where we went, so went Orpheus. He gained new brothers and sisters, losing some and finding others along the way. Our last cat was supposed to be a pedigree brown Burmese who was given to Veronica by a family friend called Georgia. His pedigree papers were “on their way” for the next twelve or fifteen years but never appeared – and I’m certain that, though Georgia paid for a pedigree cat, Dizzy was a mixture of breeds just as all our others were!

Dizzy (Disraeli Ozymandias) was named by Veronica, who was obviously going through a history and literary phase. He was so tiny that he could sit on the palm of my hand and was possibly removed from his mother too soon. He had, what was at the beginning, a very endearing habit of sucking on earlobes as though he were suckling. He carried on doing it for another three years or so by which time it had become very painful and then, luckily, he stopped finding earlobes attractive!

After Julian and I met and married, we moved, with Veronica and four cats to our first house which was on the outskirts of East Malling. The house was set in a lovely area with fields and orchards all around and the four cats led a lovely life there. Orpheus and Dizzy along with sisters Piggy and Tiggy seemed to enjoy their new home and also welcomed a new sister who appeared one summer in the space under the shed/workshop. When I discovered Mitzi I offered her food and she would come out to eat but always spent the nights under the shed. In the late autumn, winter and early spring, though, Mitzi gave in and spent her time indoors – and often there was a pile of cats sleeping altogether at one end of the settee, keeping each other warm.

Sadly, the inevitable happened and – one by one Piggy, Tiggy and Orpheus crossed the so-called rainbow bridge. My sweet baby, Dizzy went on for a few months before, he too, left me.

Julian and I were moving house in the summer of 1994 and Mitzi, who still spent her summers under the shed, was a problem. Should we take her with us? Luckily, our next door neighbours, Sue and Keith, said they would look after Mitzi and also our tortoise. (We were moving to a house with a vast garden and couldn’t be sure that the tortoise wouldn’t wander away or bury herself or simply hide.)

We lived in our next house for three years with no cats of our own but were visited by Belle and No-belle. (Two black cats with small white patches, both wearing collars, one with a bell and the other without.) The two cats obviously had a home as their collars changed from time to time.

Then, one night, Julian found an orange cat in our garden who was bleeding from wounds we assumed were made in a fight with another cat. We took Sandy to the vet and bathed his wounds and he decided he loved Julian and wanted to stay near him forever! So, we had another cat who chose to live with us for a couple of years before his demise.

By this time we lived in West Malling in a flat above our shop which was in the High Street. After Sandy died, we could only have an indoor cat. Our friends, Sue and Keith, had a cat named Ozzie, who only lived indoors, having got very old so they gave him to us. He was a very pleasant old cat who appreciated our flat and spent his last years rarely moving from his seat on the settee.

That was our last cat!

As for dogs, both of ours have been ‘rescue’ dogs. All dogs need ‘walkies’, feeding, and training. They also need worming, flea treatment, and injections every so often. Rescue dogs are usually not puppies and many have an unknown past.

Rosie was a mixture of ?Staffie and ?Lab? She had the wide jaw of a Staffie and was the colour of a golden lab. She looked like a smallish Rhodesian Ridgeback but she didn’t have a ridged back. The only thing the rescue centre could tell us was that she was found in Doncaster – which isn’t really helpful when it comes to knowing about a stray dog. What we learned by living with her was that she hated other dogs and there were some people of whom she was not fond! (And we never found out why!)

We had her for about 12 or 13 years. She was a very loving dog and she was especially fond of Julian, even though I was the one who fed her and spent each day with her. I took her for her walks many times until the day I ended up on my face on the pavement, as she had spotted two dogs on the other side of the street and tore her lead from my grasp before I knew what was happening. Luckily, the lady who was walking her well-behaved dogs who were Rosie’s target, was able to grab Rosie’s lead and hold her away from her dogs.

That was the last time I willingly took Rosie for a walk!

Our next dog was (and still is) Lola. Lola had not been a stray so we know that her birthday is in mid-May and that she will be10 years old in about a month. She was owned by someone who loved her and cared for her but had to give her up for one reason or another.

She is a ‘velcro’ dog in that she is always right there next to me, often demanding a cuddle, needing my attention. At the moment that I’m writing, she is around a foot away from me and turned away because I’m not paying attention to her. She is many times smaller than Rosie, though she is almost as good at pulling me along the pavement faster than I want to go! There are dog stories and one about our tortoise scattered among my earlier posts where you can find out more about Rosie and Lola – and the tortoise.

Through the many years I have existed, I have occasionally seen someone with a tattoo (or many tattoos) and considered whether I might consider having one and where would I have it.

I have always believed it would have to be small and out of sight.. Perhaps a tiny butterfly near an ankle or on a shoulder? Or, perhaps a little heart? Definitely no words! Aside from being fairly large, a word (a name?) might not be special enough in a few years’ time to warrant a place on my blemish-free(!) body. I mean, what if I had had Geoffrey or Dylan or whatever scrawled across my arm and then turned around in a few weeks and started going out with Joseph or Shawn!

And then there’s the pain!!! Why would I deliberately go to the trouble of asking someone to stick a needle many times on my arm or neck or backside (!) and then put an unknown substance under my skin into the needle holes? And risk germs and diseases and a hot, feverish arm, leg or upper lip (or backside!)

That may not be how tattoos are made but, as you will have guessed by now, I have not succumbed to the great pleasure(!) of carrying around a drawing or a name in a place, seen or unseen on my magnificent(!) body. What happens when my arm (for example) expands through the years? What would then happen if I dieted and lost weight? Would a tattoo on my arm first look like a gigantic butterfly then, with weight loss (and encroaching old age), look like a picture on a balloon which has lost all its air!

Now, at just under 83, I am so glad that I never really contemplated spending my hard-earned cash to do such a silly thing to myself.

[for information only – I have never gone out with Geoffrey, Joseph, Dylan or Shawn; my body had not been magnificent ever, though it wasn’t bad when I was younger; and, though I have no tattoos, I do have skin tags and other unsightly blemishes in my very old age! ]

As I type these words, it is Thursday the 12th of March which leads to……Friday, the 13 of March. Am I superstitious about that? Yes, and no.

For as long as I have been aware, it seems to me, people have warned about Friday the 13th being an unlucky day and for as long as I’ve been aware, nothing particularly untoward has happened to me or members of my family on Friday the 13th. But, I’ve always been aware, on Friday the 13th, that it is an ‘unlucky’ day.

The same goes for doing a load of washing on New Year’s Day. Before Veronica married her first husband, David, I had never heard that doing washing on New Year’s Day would mean that I am ‘washing a member of my family away’! This was something passed on from Veronica’s ma-in-law and which Veronica passed on to me. Now, I tend to keep the day clear of housework of any sort – mainly because I dislike housework but also because….well, just in case, you know, I love members of my family, and want to keep them safe – although of course, I don’t believe the superstition!

Walking under ladders is another superstition I’ve known since I was a child (and I was a child, once upon a time!) Now, I am grown up enough to realise that walking under a ladder could be dangerous, particularly if someone is standing on the top rung of the ladder, reaching a bit too far just to paint that last little bit of window sill and they tip over and fall on you – or the ladder falls on you – or the pot of paint falls on you. Mostly, though, I walk under any ladder I see that’s in my path, just to prove I’m not superstitious!

In America I was taught to ‘knock on wood’ when discussing something that I hoped would happen. This had to change when I came to England – now I ‘touch wood’ to get what I want – except I very rarely do. And, I am completely mixed up as to whether a black cat crossing one’s path is lucky or unlucky. It’s lucky in one country and unlucky in the other and I don’t remember which is which. I especially like black cats and would always feel lucky to see one, whether crossing my path or sitting in a warm and sunny spot somewhere.

Magpies, umbrellas, salt and mirrors all seem to have superstitions associated with them and that’s before you find out about what’s lucky or not in other cultures besides the US or UK. I’ve just seen that in Italy Friday the 17th is unlucky and in South Korea you could die if you leave a fan on in your bedroom over night!

So – am I superstitious? In some ways I have to admit, I am, if only because I still think about the superstitions associated with dates or things like cats and ladders but, on the other hand, if I had to wash a shirt or some socks on the 1st of January or go without, I would probably get out the detergent and do a bit of hand-washing because, for the approximately fifty years of my life before I knew of the superstition, I probably washed many loads of clothes without anything nasty happening to any members of my family.

I love my house. It is the place I’ve lived for over 20 years and the place I hope I will live in until that old Grim Reaper comes and gets me.

That doesn’t mean that I sometimes see an Omaze house or a castle or an old country mansion, and not want to live in it! I love the idea of a many-roomed house – one with a huge dining room, two or three reception rooms*, and six or more bedrooms. Of course a big house would come with big grounds and a swimming pool and pool house and several outbuildings. The huge house would have to be well-heated and draught-free and the water in the swimming pool would have to be heated to a reasonable warmth! (Two very unlikely conditions, sadly.)

But – I hate house-work and all of these rooms would need attention, weekly if not daily. And the upkeep for the house, pool and grounds as well as the heating bills, the salaries for the staff (cook, maid or two, groundsman, gardener and pool boy) would definitely eat into our pensions. (More like our pensions wouldn’t begin to address the costs!!)

So, after my mind has wandered off in this glorious day-dream, it almost immediately begins to think of the downside – mainly the cost. And, then, I begin to think bigger! Would I really be happy with six bedrooms? Maybe a dozen with en suites! And a chauffeur to drive the Bentley – Julian prefers them, for some reason. And, (okay, I’m taking a leaf out of the orange turd’s notebook, here), what about a ballroom? And a pastry cook and a sommelier and an upstairs maid and a toy-boy!

Okay, Candy, this is, getting beyond a joke!

I love my house! I’ve always loved the house I was living in but this house is home to me and I won’t be changing it anytime soon. (Except, would it be within the realms of possibility to add the toy-boy? No, that’s too silly!)

I love my house! It has draughts, the central heating doesn’t really warm the whole house, we have a bit of damp (most Edwardian houses have a bit of damp!) and we can’t use the conservatory this time of the year unless we turn on the heaters and, often, seal the cat (doggie) door. But it will be spring soon and, on days when the temperature reaches 16 or 18 outside if the sun has shone into the conservatory for an hour or so, it will be warm enough to use during the day – Hooray!

*Reception rooms – in England these can include the lounge (living room), the dining room, a study, library, snug (small sitting room).

The last few days I’ve opened my website’s statistics page to find that an unbelievable number of people have viewed some of my posts. I’m not unhappy about it but I am bewildered.

For the first few years that I was writing these posts, I found two or three views once or twice a week and that was okay. The statistics don’t include those people to whom a post is automatically emailed, many of whom I know – members of my extended family, a few friends and several people who were lucky enough(?) to be in my class when I was a teacher, so I knew that those people had seen (and enjoyed?) my posts.

Occasionally, though, I would find that twenty or thirty people, often in faraway countries, had read a certain post all on the same day. I came to the conclusion that, perhaps, a tutor would have set a class full of young people learning to speak and write English, to read one or other of my posts. And that thought made me quite proud, really!

Then there were a few times when loads of people signed up to receive my posts by email, all on the same day. I was really pleased to think that so many people enjoyed my writing so much that they wanted to read more. It turned out that all those people never actually opened those emails and I found this out, by chance, when the statistics started including the number of emails which each person had opened. I went through the list and found that there were quite a few – maybe 40 – who had opened 0% of them! Those who had never opened any were deleted from my email list.

Two days ago I was stunned to find that 37 visitors had viewed 63 of my posts! Who are they, where do they live, why choose to read mine? But, yesterday was incredible! 73 people had viewed 134 of my posts! On both days, there was a large variety of posts read.

Today I eagerly opened my statistics to find that – wait for it! – two people had each viewed one post – a different one each. I’d like to thank each of them and all those others. And, if you were one of those who added to those large groups and read one or two of my posts, perhaps you could send me a message to tell me why you picked that time on that day and if you enjoyed my writing. But, thanks to you all, anyway, from the curious whitehaired woman.