Springtime for Grandmas

On Easter Sunday we ate the almost traditional lamb roast and the glorious mixture of lemon, orange, eggs and sugar that Mum had combined to make a fluffy pudding. Then we set off for a place I had tucked away in my memory as a suitable Nice Under Glass destination.

It was indeed, 'nice under glass' as Mum and Peggy tucked themselves into the Honda with walking sticks, tins, handbags, magazines and the small Easter gifts we had exchanged. The sun shone hard and we all remarked (several times) (per minute) how the weather had at also changed and the spring had definitely arrived. 

Our conversation alternated between how awful the weather had been in the recent past, evidenced by the lack of visible green buds on the trees and how mild it had been evidenced by the profusion of flowers. This type of conversation where they directly contradict themselves is not unusual: it is not the content of what they say that matters to them only merely that they are saying something. That something is acceptable so long as it had has a vague context to the immediate circumstances and that it is polite. Such is their way. Thus, a pleasant half hour passed while we negotiated the roads to avoid the A483 roadwork at Rough Hill at Chester and got into to the A51 towards Delamere.

Springtime at last!

I may (I hope gently) mock their delight at the wonderful spring sunshine, but I wonder if to them spring has a special significance? Winter with all its threats of ice, dropping temperatures and flu has passed and they have got through it without breaking a hip, getting a chest infection or ending up in hospital. It is well known that many elderly people meet their maker during the winter months and so spring with its herald of birdsong is perhaps reminder that they have triumphed again. 

Turning left past Delamere onto the A5152 to Frodsham took us through the forest road, busy and packed with picnickers and walkers. But the forest was for another day and instead we carried onto to reach The Lady Heyes Craft Centre .

This is a delightful venue packed with antique and curio shops, craft centre, and even a brewery, oh

Who knows what you might find
at Lady Heyes?

yes and and a campsite too...... The original Lady Heyes Farm dates back several hundred years. It is believed that in the 1800s it was used as a watering hole for the local gentry. No longer a working farm, it now comprises a complex of individual buildings providing over 15,000 sq. ft.to sell a whole range of products and services. The sewing centre also runs an intriguing array of craft classes.

We were not tempted by the beer at the brewery, inviting though it looked, and stuck to our tea provided by the café with chip shop attached (well, it is a campsite). We sat outside in the sunshine drinking a good pot of strong tea at £1.40 a cup. Just as good as beer to drink to the incoming new season. Cheers!




 

Iron Ladies

Mother's Day March 15th 2015 and my phone is buzzing with loving messages from my own offspring as I prepare a special Sunday Lunch with our Mums. Mother's Day lunch is an M&S feast of roast beef and sticky toffee pudding followed by the giving of gifts of framed photos of their families

Then we clambered on board the Honda and set off on another mystery tour. The weather was not even 'nice under glass' as gloom and cloud threatened rain, but despite this, the Mum & Peggy's conversation was in full flood. Peggy's about the latest happenings in Corrie and a convoluted explanation about complications with the collection of one of her umpteen prescriptions: Mum's about her TV telling her there was no signal, her shifts as a volunteer at Erddig Hall and how she has ordered more ready meals on the phone. Both of them chatting away quite happily on different planes….



Mum & Peggy enjoying their 'I never knew this was here!'
surprise outing....

As a treat for this special day our destination was a real gem - The British Ironworks Centre, Oswestry. I am sure that people pass this on their way to somewhere else (as it is on the very busy A5 leading to Shrewsbury and all routes south) and idly think that they will visit it someday, but never get around to it. Also they might think ‘Why would I want to visit an ironwork centre?’

But the first time you motor up the sweeping drive you are awed by the wings of massive iron eagles. Looking to your left you glimpse life sized metal animals of every description in the meadow and gazelles leaping over the fence. It is just wonderful and it is all free!

The centre provides metal work for home and garden and you can find unusual statues, benches, gazebos should you wish to buy. There is also a great showroom where you can buy anything from life sized figures to numbers for your garden gate - if it made if metal this is where you will find it. There is also a quirky little tea shop. Add to this specialist displays from onsite artists and a blacksmith and you have a very special way of losing a few hours.

Joy in the simple things.. a good cup of tea at
The British Ironworks café

I hope you will forgive the rather contrived title to today’s blog, but seeing the resilience of some of the figures sitting outside the Ironwork Centre I am reminded of them and I think it is somehow appropriate to describe my Mum & Peggy as Iron Ladies. They have lived through a war and often tell me how hard it was literally living with death and destruction and the very real fear that Hitler may be in charge very soon. The small daily hardships such as rationing which went on for many years after the war – how bananas and nylons were a luxury and a teaspoon of butter was your week’s ration. Peggy and Mum both agreed that the blackout was terrifying as you had to stumble your way through the dark if you were out at night.

They are now are waging their own battles with the challenges of aging, the loss of friends, the horrible ways that their bodies let them down, facing up to their twilight years. But spending an afternoon with them is not a gloomy experience, they face up to their lives with the fortitude and resilience they built up over those difficult years. They laugh as they realise how others see them old and decrepit – although they don’t feel it. They take joy in small things, cups of tea, a decent night on the telly and an afternoon out in good company – perhaps we should learn from them.

Abakhan & Peggy's Extraordinary Recall

This Sunday we set off for the Deeside Estuary to find a place which has a huge reputation amongst anyone who knits, sews or does any sort of crafting. In a former life, I was very involved in the Operation Christmas Child shoebox appeal and many of the volunteers who made goods for the shoeboxes loved this place and visited from all over the UK.

The Abakhan fabrics, hobbies and craft centre is the attraction of many coach parties and visitors from all the over the UK. It was started by the Abakhan family over thirty years ago and I remember it in my teens as a place where dressmakers flocked to as it sells some of its fabric by weight not length.

As well as a successful 'hobbyist' retail outlet it is also a site of considerable local historic interest, the company has taken great care to preserve the buildings resulting in the presentation of an award by children’s play area was added. With tea at £1.40 a cup it was a pleasing destination for us despite it being some years since my elderly companions have picked up a knitting needle.

It has to be said that the site – not too far from Saint Winifred’s Well (the fascinating story of which is for another post another time) is in a rather unlovely part of the coast, but I can’t help but admire the area’s determination to succeed. There is the Greenfield Heritage site, a regular Sunday Market and lots more on offer, despite the broken down buildings and the ugly hulk which has had so many set-backs that is ‘Fun Ship’ at Mostyn.

The drive home towards Chester is enlivened by the beauty of the estuary and the way that it has so

The Dee Estuary viewed from the A55 homewards
towards Chester

many colours embedded in its environs. Our conversation drifts and Peggy tells us about the happening in the lives of people she know and who she met that week.

I do greatly admire Peggy’s constant ability to remember people and their family connections. The other day she was sitting on a bus next to a middle-aged chap and passed the time of day. Then she said to him, “Are you Edna’s son?” and he looked at her in surprise and said that he was. Edna was someone she had known long ago and had actually recognised him as this woman’s son from over 50 years ago.

Sadly, apart from being a good way to make a bus journey go quickly, Peggy's talents go largely unnoticed and underused. She would have made a fantastic networker in today’s world and how she would have loved and taken advantage of LinkedIn, Friends Re-united and Face Book. But mostly we tend to ignore this tremendous flair she has for remembering all the people she has met in her life.

My husband, who has a very poor memory for faces and people, is always at a loss when she asks him if he remembers Rosemary who was in Primary School with him. Or tells us that the driver of the bus which took his brother Dave down to meet his cruise at Southampton was the nephew of Alan who used to be in school with him…..

Peggy, who seemingly remembers the
name of every person she has ever
met

Perhaps some of these connections will always remain buried only to be revived by people like Peggy who have no real way of recording them. Perhaps you suspect, as I do, the internet and digital media will somehow lose and swallow up our blogs and precious photographs.

Last week however, I saw a really good idea which goes a small way to solve the problem of lost family memories. Family Legacy Cards* are a way of encouraging people to write down their memories, family stories and history. They are printed on long-lasting - printed on special paper with a minimum longevity of 200 years. The cards have different themes and thought provoking front covers, intended to rouse different memories. Christmas sorted!

My lasting thought is that it is sad that are not more people like Peggy in the world as we may pass people in the street to whom we might have an interesting connection or to whom we are related and never even know about. I resolve to talk to people a bit more and stop being so insular, you never know I might discover a connection.....

 

*Disclaimer Disclosure: I have not been given any free goods to recommend this product nor have I any connection to the company.

To Shop is To Do

I often ponder the difference between the ways that women and men view shopping. I have come to the conclusion that for women, ‘shop’ is a verb; we shop, we take time over the activity and we may or may not end up with something – whether we needed it or not. For most men I think that ‘shop’ is a noun. The shop is there to get what you want and then you buy it and go home.

For this reason, my husband never accompanies us on our Nice Under Glass trips if we are going anywhere near shops. It is no matter, men in shops flap around and get in the way like fish at the bottom of a wardrobe. But for the grannies and me, pottering around a good shop or two, is a pleasure. As autumn draws in and Christmas beckons shopping becomes a richer experience.

This of course is not just on Sundays. As Jo and Peggy get older shopping is one of their main reasons for getting out of the house and having a need for something - be it a loaf of bread or a pint of milk - is a good excuse. Mum sometimes tells me forlornly that she went to town, ‘but I didn’t really want anything’. Peggy often only goes to meet with her friend and not shop as she can’t carry things home.

But living through a World War means that the elderly have a loathing of wasting anything and are probably more careful shoppers than my generation. So it not often that we actually purchase anything on our Sunday afternoons. No, the shopping we do is all in the eye, but it is still shopping to my mind. What we do is what I think of as like extreme window shopping. We look, we ask, we feel we even try on… but we rarely buy. But it is none the less pleasurable for that.

There are days when only a bit of shopping will do. When we have spent a few of our Sunday afternoons doing worthy walks and cultural activities like a visit to the local National Trust or  lazily sitting in the car letting tarmac fly by beneath us viewing the beauty of the countryside, then a 'bit of a shop' is just what we need. It's also quite a good place to go if it’s raining.

We check our handbags for our bags for life and we're all set to go. If I've been organised I have told them in advance and the grannies are armed with their lists for the final visit to a supermarket (as food shopping is quite different).

Ready to shop:
Peggy & Mum at Eagles Meadow

A short easy drive along the A55 is Broughton Retail Park which has the somewhat perfect design of a large car park surrounded by shops. The Fontanella café in Tesco at Broughton holds the record for the cheapest cup of tea – just £1 – it’s in a pot too.There is also Eagles Meadow in Wrexham which has an M&S and many opportunities for a cup of tea, but the car park is very expensive.

So another afternoon comes to a close and we reflect on the things we have seen. We often pretend that we will buy a particular item 'next time', but the unspoken thought probably passes through all our minds.... shopping is just another very interesting walk.

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Erddig's Place in a Child's Memories

....and the band played on...
Erddig's Apple Festival Oct 2014

The large country house and its surrounding estate, Erddig Hall served as a backdrop for many of us growing up in the town. My generation knew it when it was in a state of sad decline in the 1960s. This once grand house was cracked and literally falling down around the ears of its last owner, Philip Yorke. My impression had always been that he had a sad end to his life – living his days in one tiny back room with a black & white TV surrounded by the remnants of the former glory days of the house.

However, this was not the case, as the facts (unknown to me at the time) have emerged as I research this piece. Philip, as the last surviving Yorke, had actually started negotiations with the National Trust to hand it over to them in the 70s and, restored, it opened to the public in 1977 just a year before Philip died – so he lived to see the wonderful transformation begin. Now it is one of the jewels in the National Trust’s crown, illustrating perfectly the relationship between the servants and the family down the ages. It has a fascinating array of pictures, antique furniture and soft furnishings and extensive well-maintained gardens and grounds.

But as a child who lived nearby in the 1970s for me, it always felt like a somewhat hellish place. Rumours of the eerie ‘cup & saucer’ being haunted by a child who once drowned (untrue I think) there cowed my childish imagination, not helped by the muted banging which could sometimes be heard nearby. The river sometimes ran blood red. Add to this memories of a bloody afternoon when my middle sister, (always the one to get into scrapes) gashed her foot on glass in the river when we had trespassed there for a picnic.

But forward to the 1990s when Mum, newly widowed, became a room steward at Erddig. She has been a stalwart volunteer there twice a week ever since. Thus, she has an encyclopaedic knowledge

A display of the various apples grown
on the Erddig Estate

of the place and is always ready to take us there when we are short on anything to do. Even better, she knows she is valued and needed and at 92 that is a rare thing.

Erddig is a splendid place to take any elderly person on a Sunday afternoon. The grounds are perfect for an afternoon stroll and there are rare fruit trees and formal 18th Century Gardens of great historical importance. But you don’t need to have a knowledge of garden history to enjoy them as the NT puts on special days such as Teddy Bears Picnics, Christmas Fairs, walks and markets.

The first weekend in October is reserved for the Apple Festival, so for once, the suggestion for our ‘Nice Under Glass’ trip came from Mum and so we made our way along the long country lanes to get to the house which is just 2.5 miles the town centre. The band played and the unseasonable sun shone as people sat in deck chairs and queued for tea. The smell of the apples belied the sunshine with the promise of the Autumn to come.

As I looked up at Erddig's great façade I reflected how my feelings for the place have changed. As a child its very name gave me nightmares, but now thanks to the stories of a happy and wonderful place that my Mum regales us with every week and the knowledge that it has given her a reason to live…. well, I have real reason to be grateful to it and I expect the many thousands of visitors would agree for reasons of their own.

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Loggerheads and King Arthur’s Unlikely Leap

I am aware that my last few posts have been wandering off the primary objective of the blog - to give people ideas about places to take the elderly for a short afternoon out. So this week I will redress the balance and ask you to take one of the many roads out of Wrexham towards Mold and thence the A494 towards Ruthin.

On a day like today, we bask in the smugness that only a sunny day in mid-September can bring. We talk about the strength of the sun and the pleasantness of riding through the countryside. It is indeed, 'nice under glass' as we are warmed through the glass of the car by the sun giving its last display before autumn must surely take hold.

We pass the standing stone that is known as Carreg Carn March Arthur - The Stone of Arthur’s hoof. Like many areas in the UK, Wales has associations with the ubiquitous King Arthur. The stone is said to bear the hoof print of King Arthur's horse as he leapt from a nearby cliff to escape the invading Saxons. Although my preferred version – the best legends always have to have a magical quality about them – is that the horse leapt from the adjacent Moel Famau mountain to thus mark the old Flintshire/Denbighshire boundary - presumably without breaking its neck.

As we come in sight of the mighty Moel Famau with its iconic Jubilee Tower on the top, we turn right into Loggerheads Country Park. Mum tells me that Loggerheads used to be run by the old Crosville bus company who bought it in the 1920s to run bus tours from Liverpool. They handed it over in the 1970s and now it is run by Clwyd CC. It has a real draw for walkers of all abilities as Loggerheads is the starting point for walks which explore the rolling gentle hills of Clwydian Range. There are many times when I have dragged myself there footsore, weary and happy having completed another 6 miler.

Lovely flat, even walk through the trees.

Our time of arrival was 3.30pm when many walkers were ending their walks with a visit to the centre. It has a good car park but we were still quite lucky to find a spot. As well as walkers, there were families with small children, buggies, babies and dogs playing on the grass with no thought of walking anywhere.

The site is beautifully maintained site at the base of imposing limestone cliffs. It has a lovely and mercifully flat, walk through the river valley under dappling trees.

There is the occasional bench on which we sit and watch the parade of dogs, children and all forms of life in between as they debate how far to go before turning back for an ice-cream or cake at Caffi Florence. We strolled for about 30 minutes before we went in search of refreshment.
We sat outside with our tea to take advantage of the sun I would like to say that we shared our thoughts about King Arthur and more on his legends, but we didn’t. But we did decide that Caffi Florence served up the best cup of tea we had had in a long time….

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The Case of the Disappearing Grandmas

Viewing the entire process of ageing is almost impossible. We see our children grow up and we watch our parents age, but rarely do we see an entire life span, as we inevitably die ourselves and (hopefully) never have to see our children's lives end.

I believe that ageing speeds up and slows down throughout our lives. The first 5 years of a life sees huge changes as the child's bones in the skull re-arrange themselves after birth and the child learns to walk and gain posture. The following years are often characterised by the child having to listen to the phrase 'hasn't he grown?' many times as they shoot up and out in all directions. As they approach adolescence their faces lose that baby cuteness and the change can sometimes be startling.

But past 20 and through to 40 the changes are fewer and far more subtle. I am often quite at a loss to guess the age of someone in that age bracket. Of course, we are getting very good at hiding the classic signs such as grey hair and wrinkles so I like to think that we look almost the same until we reach our mid 50s. Depressingly, I read that the age I am now-57-is the age at which it all starts to happen. But I still feel 20!

Similarly, I think that once the greying and wrinkling process has finished and a person has given up using the hair dye and the Botox, then it is very difficult to tell the difference between a 75 year old and a 90 year old.

Mum and her Danish son-in-law Steen
in April 2013

I look at photos of Peggy and Mum over the past few years and yes, there are changes, but they still look 75. Apart from one thing.... they are shrinking.

Mum's posture has always been pretty good and only recently has she developed the widows hump so characteristic of old age. She is also very much shorter and thinner. Peggy, who has always been a healthy weight, also says that she is losing weight. They both eat well and are healthy in most respects, but are diminishing before our eyes. I am only 5 feet tall, but I feel as though I am towering over my little Mum and as I am her child it feels wrong somehow....

They were discussing how difficult it was to get their skirts to stay on now that their waists are smaller. Action needed to be taken to prevent an embarrassing 'skirt round the ankles' scenario. So turning a negative into a positive, I decided this was the perfect opportunity to make a Nice Under Glass trip to M&S in Ellesmere Port to buy clothes that fitted - sorted.

They both agreed to this trip .... as one thing they have in common is that they believe that 'letting yourself go' is a slippery slope down to dementia which should be avoided at all costs. So complementary scarves are applied to outfits, lipsticks to their faces and regular hairdresser's appointments are kept. Their bodies may be getting smaller, but their pride and determination is as big as ever.