spring

Fast Asleep at Crewe

Ocean Bream musings, The Story of Lenny, travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Folks, I am moving. House, city, garden. Moving away.

I’ve lived in Crewe for 9 years. Fruitful? Yes. Both my children born here, in the same hospital, probably the same room. Same midwives, nurses, same women administering the BCG vaccine because they have foreign blood.

When I first moved here I thought I would only be here a year. Two max. I planted tulips, hyacinths, peonies which are only just about to bloom, and I won’t see them blooming. Beautiful climbing rose bushes from David Austen and two others from somewhere else which are all healthy and doing so well – I will not be here to see them bloom. But I hope someone else can enjoy the scent and colour of them for me. I planted three hydrangea bushes – one of which was mercilessly beheaded by an uninformed brother in law. A cherry tree which is only just bearing fruit, and an apple tree which bore me three apples and didn’t blossom at all this year.

I was ecstatic to discover Crewe mentioned in T.S Eliot’s poem ‘Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat’ – more on Crewe and its heritage later – it’s now just a sad little forlorn and broken down town filled with people who are the shadows and ghosts of their respectable ancestors. Sad but true. Brutal? This country brutalised its people. Flying Scotsman versus Japanese bullet train – the world is leaving this once-great country covered in dust.

“You were fast asleep at Crewe and so you never knew
That he was walking up and down the station;
You were sleeping all the while he was busy at Carlisle,
Where he greets the stationmaster with elation.“

Not all doom and gloom. April was shower-less but we still have our usual May explosion of frondescence and ambrosia. This country comes alive in the spring, and opens doors to a truly glorious summer. Bees and butterflies and flowers galore.

But I choose to leave. Why? Why not. Never stayed anywhere solidly for a long period of time. I roam this earth like a nomad and stranger, and while deep roots, according to Tolkien, are not reached by the frost, my deep roots are internal, non-physical. My family, my friends, they remain the same. But my furniture and home can be discarded.

Home is where the family is, after all. Let us hold on to that.

Goodbye, Crewe!!!

I have MANY thoughts on Crewe, having lived here for 9 years, and I want to elaborate on them soon.

Watson, Harry; Crewe Number 1 Platform, c.1960; Crewe Heritage Centre; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/crewe-number-1-platform-c-1960-103038

Magnolia

Ocean Bream musings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

March came and went this year. My favourite month, filled with sweet sunny promises of pale green buds and the soft scents heralding trees full of bloom. I turned 31 in March, my husband turned 34.

My children appeared to become more self aware. Of the world around them and their own existence in it. Opinions firmer, questions deeper.

I think I grew a bit too, mentally resilient. I had to parent alone for a long time, I still am parenting alone, with the end in sight but not yet in reach.

But it’s April now, we have finally emerged from the darkness of winter, the sun is out for longer, it’s brighter, and my neighbour’s magnolia tree has exploded, vibrant pinkish white which gleams in this gorgeous spring sunshine.

It’s not our moods that get us down in the winter, it’s the lack of serotonin-inducing sunlight!

On February

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It’s miserable and gloomy here in the UK of GB and NI. The clouds hang heavy and there is a deep chill in the damp, dank air. A chill that seems to rise from the earth, trapped beneath the canopy that blocks the sun. It’s so terribly dark, all day, utterly dull. The roads are dirty and the bare trees feel sorry for themselves.

It’s always this way though, when February arrives. This country is tired of its winter, and wears its cloak in a bedraggled, patchy mess. It is too tired to cascade its jewels of beauty, and sunrises and sunsets are a thing of the past. Or future.

Sometimes at night the clouds will clear and the perpetual grey will be replaced with something quite marvellous. Stars, millions of them, glittering in the black wintry sky. And a moon which moves overhead and rises and sets in the most glorious fashion. We are treated, I daresay, once in a blue February moon to the wonders of the galaxy, and as it shines down upon the earth, for a few hours, it feels surreal and magical.

February is not such a terrible month. But ohhh I do feel the ache in my bones for some sunshine, for some heady long summer afternoons, for thick, dense, green foliage gently swaying in a breeze, the call of a myriad of birds, life rustling in every nook and cranny, long grasses and giant daisies creating a sea of waves in summery fields… it will be March soon. Blossoms will bud, the sun will stay a while longer and enjoy a final cup of tea before she departs elsewhere, and this perpetual darkness will end. Our exposure to space will be lessened, our world will be bathed in light.

So. I’ll stop here. I will enjoy the deep glumness of this chill that I feel permeating my bones. I will rest my achey muscles and await the spring with bated breath.

Bluebell Woods

Ocean Bream family, motherhood, musings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

It’s bluebell season, or rather, the start of it. My son wanted to hunt for a carpet of bluebells under a canopy of sparse spring foliage so off we went. Meandered through several villages, stopped by a couple of cafes and village shops in the sloping hills of the cheshire countryside to ask if anybody knew where we could find bluebells.

One kind lady drew us a map and we parked our car next to a quaint little church and made our way over a stile and into a pine wood. My kids moaned and complained about the steep climbs and the many holes in the ground – badger setts? Fox dens?

Oh they WHINGED and it got on my NERVES and I told them so! My son was afraid of a little fluffy white dog and I told him not to be such a baby which was really mean in hindsight, given that he was attacked by some dogs when he was two and still harbours a (sensibly healthy!!!) fear of canines. I feel awful about it to be honest. The frustration with the moaning, the lack of patience with the fear….

But we found bluebells. Carpets and carpets of them, flowing and rippling in the wind over little slopes in the wood. My son picked a bunch and said they were for me because I was the most beautiful and best Mama ever. See? So much guilt. Why can’t I just be what he says I am. Why do I have to be such a witch sometimes!

Then when we had our fill of bluebells we drove to the ruins of a castle, climbed up a steep hill to the top (more moaning, more whingeing), and then the children’s screams of laughter and joy on the windy summit, the glorious view of sunny Cheshire all around us, oat crackers and grapes in hand – and suddenly it was all worth it.

Is it all worth it? I asked my five year old.

He asked to sit on my lap and I said no, but you can lean on me.

So he leant on me and I stoked his hair and he said it was so amazing up here.

There’s guilt and joy and sadness and regret and guilt and then so much joy and love in their presence and being and existence… and then there is me promising myself, after they are in bed, to be more patient, more kind, more lenient, more validating, more wholesome….

Tomorrow we walk to the library (I expect more whingeing but they must learn to walk long distances!) and then to the hospital for an appointment, and then perhaps stop at the shops on the way home for some seeds and laundry detergent.

Hopefully my phone will be out of sight and mind, I will be more patient (despite knowing i will need to nag a million times to get their toys put away and their shoes put on), and I will be more accepting of my children as they are in their own precious little spaces.

Because dear God I love them.

NOT my photo! This photo was taken from here.

Spring and Aging

Ocean Bream The Story of Lenny Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 16 Comments

On the 11th of April, or even a few days beforehand, it really started to feel like spring. I could wear a light dress and enjoy the breeze on my skin instead of shivering under a large coat. My kids walked barefoot on some grass. The smell of freshly mowed lawn hung in the air and daffodils and tulips nodded blissfully in a sunny, tolerable breeze.

No more winter coats, my daughter wore a dress with nothing on top, and my son raced about in a t-shirt. I turned thirty years old but the woman in ASDA asked me for ID because I looked under twenty five.

That joy I felt at being mistaken for being less than 25 years old made me realise that I am in fact old.

I am a parent, a mother. I had a relaxing soak in a hot bath and my muscles felt more at ease than they have in five years, and I could have sunk into my bedsheets into a deep and healing slumber afterwards but did that happen? No. Of course not. My son was up every hour with burning fever, wheezing and vomiting. I was by his side with a bucket, his inhaler and an oxygen meter. The next morning he was right as rain, ignoring a niggling cough and rushing about with his cousins like he had wings on his feet.

But we’re old. Older. My sister in law has lines around her eyes and my other one says her back is full of knots after consecutive night shifts.

Can’t fix the problems of the world but can ensure your presence in it doesn’t cause anybody any harm.

Kevin Hill

On Things

Ocean Bream motherhood, musings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 6 Comments

Hello! (Said in a voice like Izzy. Loud, there is an upwards inflection on the ‘o’ at the end, it’s cheerful, but there is a hint of trying something – too hard?)

It’s March! (Said in a voice like ME. A GIRL. No. Not a girl. A WOMAN. The child me cringes at that word, I used to think a ‘woman’ was an awful thing. I always wanted to be a ‘lady’. The woman me cringes at ‘lady’. Seems to me that to be a ‘lady’ is a patriarchal invention. To keep the WOMEN looking pretty for the male gaze. Staying prim in their kitchens and nurseries and painting pictures and filling their heads with frills. A WOMAN hoes onions. Hoovers stairs. Lifts two children with her solid, muscular arms. Works hard. Loves fiercely. Fills her mind with knowledge. Whatever it may be. She writes and reads and [read the following as verbs] mothers and daughters and sisters and wifes [no not wives – she VERB wife’s] and she is an entity in and of herself and…. I DIGRESS!).

it’s march.

the month I adore.

mainly because I was born in march.

i was loved when I was born. i was loved till I was 8 or 9, and then I was just… there.

Anyway. I adore March.

March in the UK this year is blustery, I am afraid. Cold. But we have glorious blossoms on glorious trees and my neighbours recently trimmed their apple tree and a couple of the branches fell over into our side of the garden, and I could see the buds forming on the branches so I seized them, precious things that they are, and put them in old glass jars filled with water and in my kitchen, right now, a miracle is happening. Buds are opening their delicious petals to the warmth of my oven and hob and the hum of my woman self humming as I prepare meals for my family. There is a spring in my kitchen. And it makes me so glad.

But folks, I am tired. I am on my feet from 5 am most days till about 1 am. And then I sleep a deep sleep only to be seized out of it and shaken viciously awake by a new day and my responsibilities.

I have no time to write or read. Just work. And kids.

And I am also prioritising time with my kids. To play with them and teach them. Things like fungus growing on old tree trunks and how not to slap each other when one doesn’t get their way. Things like washing one’s hands after one eats and how to not squash a ladybird to death everytime we examine one. Things like a cup full of fat juicy wriggly worms. Things like not eating soil. Things like ‘mowing the lawn’ with a pair of scissors. Things like not pulling Grandma’s cat’s tail. Things like days of the week and months of the year and years of the decade and century and what people did. Things like not wiping your hands on the chair in the same breath you use to tell me about the solar system.

Wondrous wondrous eyes.

Wondrous children.

Bittersweet, sad, joyful and frustrating.

If you are a parent, and if your child has long flown the nest, how do you manage the heartbreak? Or are you sensible about your emotions?

March

Ocean Bream love letters, writing Tags: , , , , , , , , 10 Comments

March is a pretty month.

A fair month.

A blooming month.

March starts out grey but ends up golden, a full spectrum from bare branches to boughs dusted in pink and white. 

March is the gateway to longer days.
Brighter evenings.
Warmer rays.

March breathes and her breath is sweet.
She roars and her wind is fresh.
She beams and her sun is a ray of promise.

Image Credit

Anomalous

Ocean Bream musings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 6 Comments

I am always looking for odd things within the normal. It is never good enough.

I am waiting for a plane to drop out of the sky. Is that too morbid? Hair made of cloud. Running so fast my feet lift off the ground, and I am leaping through the air. Not flying, no. Powerful through the kinetic force of my leaps and bounds. Why is a sunny day just a sunny day? It can’t be. There must be more to it than that.

What are brains whispering behind the closed doors of faces?

How many universes really exist, through the perspectives of billions of people.

Can the heavens and the earth sense our tread? And if so, are we hurting them?

A piece of heart. I pick up a ‘piece of heart’ with my toes when I am too lazy to bend down. It was a paper, but all the girls made fun of me. They said, ‘Eurgh you have real human hearts lying around your house!’ Cackling in that cruel way six year old girls have. Tears sprang to my eyes. I was only trying to be part of the conversation. I glanced at the boy who was my friend. He looked away.

A pair of knobbly, bright-red feet under a door.

A cluster of girls.

One brown face looking up at me.

‘What do you want?’

Hurt, walking away from the group I always associate with, because one newcomer decided she didn’t like this foreigner.

Or maybe it’s because I was weird.

But none of the other girls stuck up for me. None.

Why?

I feel like an outcast most of the time; but then I slurp some coffee and I am vibrant, energetic; ripples of laughter rippling outwards from my circumference.

Awkward silences. Lots of them. Lack of eye contact. Insecurity. Power. Speeding along country lanes; the sky is a different colour every single day.

If it wasn’t for the clouds, I think our sunsets would be monotonous.

 

But it is never any good. Not good enough.

I want an inspiration to seize my fingers, but I am learning that you have to create your own inspiration.

So this is mine, today. A mixture of memories and daily thoughts.

What inspires you? Do tell me. What makes your brain tick, your fingers itch?

Comfort

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There is honestly nothing like a hot, buttery crumpet, with a scrape of jam on the very top, washed down with a mug of sweet, well brewed tea on a sunny day in spring.

In Morocco they have a similar sort of food, a pancake called ‘Baghrir’, fluffy and filled with holes just like a regular crumpet. They refry these pancakes in olive oil sometimes, but my favourite way to eat them is fried in butter and honey, sweet and succulent, with a small glass of sweet mint tea, steaming and oxidised from pouring from a height. My dad was a baker back in his student days, and when I was particularly small, he used to make them for breakfast every so often. A massive family breakfast. Usually when we breakfast together on a weekend we have a fry-up. Eggs and beans and toast and mushrooms and hash browns and sausages and whatever else you can add to a fry-up. My dad hates baked beans. He doesn’t really like much English food because he is not English, you see, and growing up his palette included much more savoury, aromatic Middle Eastern foods. So on his breakfast days we had moroccan pancakes, Spanish omelettes, cream cheese, honey, olive oil, plenty of olives and round, flat arabic bread. And lots of fruit!

Both kinds were comfort food to me. A plate of buttered crumpets with a moroccan teapot (ibreeq) and lots of small, gleaming little tea glasses, bits of mint floating on top. A nice contrast of cultures, in a way!

Moroccan mint tea is made in a special way. You don’t just pour boiling water on the mint, because you then have tasteless peppermint tea. You put in half a tablespoon of gunpowder tea, or Chinese green tea leaves into the pot and simmer with some hot water for a while. Then you pour it out and add more hot water until the metal teapot is filled to its workable capacity. You boil it until it bubbles, and then add your carefully cut and washed fresh mint. You close the lid and boil for about a minute, then you can sweeten to taste. Moroccans love their tea sweet. Too sweet, sometimes. But oh the taste of that fresh liquid, hot down your throat. I can have five or six glasses in a row. When I was in Morocco they would joke about how many glasses I would have, one after the another, greedy in anticipation.

When I was very small my father used to cool the tea before he gave it to me by pouring it from one small glass into another a few times until the heat dissipated enough for me to drink. When I went to Morocco last summer, I noticed that the Moroccans did that a lot for their little ones. I hadn’t known it was a thing they do.

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This is how to pour Moroccan tea. From as high above as you can manage!

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Ah, the fluffy, buttery hot English crumpet.

 

Yeezys

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When I went for a walk yesterday I wore my grey trainers. The ones I got for fifteen quid from TK Maxx. I remember the first day I wore them to school after that one of my year five students ran up to me calling, ‘Miss, Miss, is it true you’re wearing Yeezies?’

I stared at her. Her big bushy blonde hair waving in the winter breeze and her stark green eyes blinking cheekily at me. I saw her gaggle of friends giggling behind a wall.

What the heck is a yeezie?

‘What the heck is a yeezie?’ I said, ‘these were fifteen quid from TK Maxx’

Thank goodness no other teachers were nearby, saying ‘heck’ in front of a student is probably a no-no.

I googled a yeezie when I got home. First, I found out it was actually ‘Yeezy’ and not ‘yeezie’. Second, I was not impressed. Yeezy is pretty much some bone headed celebrity clothing line.

So I wore my fifteen quid NON-yeezies on my walk yesterday when I discovered some fields. The sun was shining brightly, igniting each blade of grass and turning them from sombre green into brilliant emerald. I sighed happily and walked on, letting the cool spring wind take me whichever direction it chose. I had plenty of fields to walk in, and some were filled with bright yellow rapeseed (what a nasty name) flowers taller than my five foot four frame. I was in my element. My shoes, which were severely permeable because they’re supposed to be running shoes, were doing their bouncy thing.

You know.

And I was just. So. Happy. Until I walked into what looked like a particularly fresh patch of grass, severely green, blooming and luscious, and my shoes, feet and all, sank right in, right through the deceiving little patch all the way up beyond my ankles with a wet squelch. The mud beneath bubbled up and burped satisfactorily when I tried to lift my foot out. I was well and truly stuck, and nobody around to hear me scream. I could feel the muddy deluged splotching around and soaking into my socks, it was a very cringe experience I can tell you that much.

There was a feeling of resignation, after the initial shock, when I realised that, well, now my feet and shoes were soaking and muddy and probably a bit shitty too, considering the huge cowpats everywhere, but that was that, and there was nothing I could do about it. I just stared down for a few moments, then went, ‘Oh well.’ and proceeded to squelch myself out of there, getting mud all up my leggings in the process.

I got out alright, else I wouldn’t be here to tell the tale, but my shoes, alas, did not survive. The end of the ‘yeezies’ as it were.

I enjoyed the rest of the hour and a half I spent walking after the incident, clearly mud is not a deterrent on a sunny day in England – we don’t get many of those, we tend to savour what we have!

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