A Taste of Childhood

For Christmas, my mum bought me The Great British Book of Baking. It is the official book that  accompanied the BBC series The Great British Bake Off which she and I both enjoyed.

Mum bought me the book after I admired the copy she had purchased for herself - one of many recipe books that she treated herself to last year. The funny thing is that despite having an enviable collection of recipe books, she hardly ever cooks anything from them. She has her tried and tested recipes that she knows by heart and rarely deviates from them. More often these days, she lets my dad loose in the kitchen while she gets on with her latest knitting project or goes on her computer. Dad and recipes really don't mix.

So despite a wealth of ideas and inspiration at her fingertips, my mum's cooking repertoire remains small. She is very competent with what she does but feels no desire to get experimental.

The other odd thing about my mum's cooking, is her obssessive compulsion to have everything perfect. Biscuits must be regularly sized and shaped. Any that fail to meet her rigorous standards will be thrown in the bin (or given to dad to eat!). Choc chip cookies must each contain the same number and distribution of choc chips (she places them meticulously by hand to achieve this). I laugh about it with her but it really is very alien to me.

I love to cook. I especially love to try new things or tweak old recipes to give them a new twist. I do take a pride in the presentation but if it all goes wrong and looks like roadkill (which it often does), I am fine with it as long as everything is vaguely edible.

Recently I was reminded of a couple of old favourites of my mum when I came across a two hand written recipes. I remember her cooking these particular family favourites in the  kitchen of the house I grew up in. I had a go at making them myself.

Although the recipes couldn't possibly have belonged to my mum as they were metric - grams is a swear word to my strictly pounds and ounces mother - the taste and cooking smells were very nostalgic.

Of course, if my mum had made them, the jam wouldn't have been so blobby and uneven and the sultanas may just have been a little more evenly distributed!

Chocolate Biscuit Dispensers and other Machines

When I was a little girl, my imagination transformed a panel of the garishly patterned 70s wallpaper that adorned my bedroom walls into a Chocolate Biscuit Dispenser, from which I was able to keep my collection of teddies, gonks and dolls lavishly bestowed with sweet treats. I remember it so well.

This is not the exact design of my wallpaper but it had a similar colour palette, a floral theme and  a repeating circles pattern. My parents must have thought it quite attractive! To a child's eyes (this child's eyes at least) it was a control panel and dispensing hole for imaginary biscuits.

I was reminded of this yesterday when my 4 year old (nearly 5 actually - where does the time go?) daughter called me into the conservatory to see a 'machine' she had made. Various household items and toys had been carefully arranged to create a rather interesting construction. Nothing was randomly placed. Everything had a function and she proceeded to explain in detail what it was all about.

I love her creativity. I love her imagination. I love that she has taken my "Chocolate Biscuit Dispenser" to a whole new level. I didn't love so much that I was instructed not to dismantle the machine. The strange collection of objects now dominates my conservatory.

If it was summer, this would be more of a problem but as the conservatory does not get used very much during the cold weather, I am happy for the machine to remain. Perhaps there is something to be said for those 70s wallpaper designs though. My plain walls painted with emulsion clearly do not fire any sparks of imagination.

Burns Night - In Sickness and in Health

My husband had a sick day from work yesterday. Lovely as it was to have him home, I am not good with sick husbands.

When I am feeling unwell, my husband is wonderful - attentive, sympathetic and loving. When he is the one shivering and feverish, I avoid him as much as possible, roll my eyes and tut when he asks for medicine and tell him to man up. In my defence, I do apologise for my behaviour and try to explain that I am simply not good with sick husbands.

He did ask me if I knew why it was that my normally generous nature deserts me in the face of ill health. I think it possibly stems from a time in my childhood when my mother was very sick.

I grew up in a small house that felt even smaller than it was because it was crammed full with large furniture. I was probably about 9 years old when my mother fell ill. I distinctly remember being in the overcrowded living room trying to watch television with my mother in a very sorry state, struggling for breath and saying that it felt as though she was being stabbed in her back, and my father telling her curtly that there was nothing wrong with her. This was not neglect or cruelty - simply denial. He could not bear the idea that his beloved wife was anything other than her healthy, vibrant self. My uncle called round, took one look at his sister and demanded that my father call the doctor. It turned out that she was suffering from Lobar Pneumonia.

My mother was ill for a long time and spent a lot of that time in her bed. In a fevered state she experienced a glimpse of the afterlife. Unfortunately for her, her hallucination was not a 'beautiful light at the end of a tunnel' sort of experience - she was visited by a horned Beelzebub complete with flaming inferno.

The one thing that haunts me most about those grim days was not the coughing up of blood streaked sputum, or the the disruption to our daily routines and my dad's lumpy porridge - it was the smell of illness. It is well recognised that smells have a remarkable power to evoke memories. The smell of illness embodies the fear and the uncertainty a young girl felt when she saw a mother frail and weakened and a father no longer able to hide behind denial, having to face the hard reality.

My mother recovered. The permanent damage to one lung did not seem to bother her. The ordeal strengthened my parents' relationship with each other but to the detriment of their relationship with me. I always felt in the way.

Darkened room, fevered body shivering beneath clammy duvet, barely audible plea for medicine or a glass of water, subtle but unmistakeable smell of illness - I'm rolling my eyes, tutting and avoiding. My poor husband deserves so much better!

Thankfully, he had perked up enough by the late afternoon to peel a load of potatoes for the 'tatties' part of our Burns Night traditional Vegetarian Haggis, Neeps and Tatties.

We had an almost perfect evening. A roaring fire was a good antedote to the snow battering at the window. The Proclaimers provided the soundrack to our Scottish feast and Lidl's provided the themed Burns Ale to accompany it.

Bad recitals of Burns' poetry and the retelling of my favourite Scottish Folk tale, The Milk White Doo filled the interlude before bringing out the very unScottish homemade Lemon Bakewell Tart dessert (I didn't have the ingredients for shortbread!).

The only thing that prevented this being a perfect evening was the fact that my little Addy's temperature started to soar.

When my children are the source of the smell of illness, it doesn't have the same effect on me at all. No eye rolling, no tutting - just cuddles, kisses and Calpol!

M is for Movie Night

My husband and I have good reason for wanting to crack on with our Alphabet Dates - not simply because we enjoy the excuse to make time for each other but because we have another project in the pipeline that is going to keep us busy.

We thought about climbing a mountain together for our M date but then settled on a less adventurous cosy night in with a Movie. In keeping with the M theme, we planned to make a Mushroom curry to get things started.

Our town has a thriving street market every Wednesday. I am not a great lover of markets but I do have one or two favourite stalls that I sometimes frequent. One stall sells fruit and veg and often has large boxes of mushrooms for a couple of pounds. My plan was to buy one of these for my curry.

Unfortunately, as is often the case on Wednesdays for some unfathomable reason, the God of Market Traders was not smiling. It poured with rain. Not just ordinary rain but great big hailstones. By the time I got into town to hunt down my primary dinner ingredient, the boxes of mushrooms were reduced to a soggy, slimy mess. Tragic.

I had a rich mushroom sauce in the freezer, leftover from the last box of mushrooms I'd purchased. My husband used it to knock up a never to be repeated, mushroom and chickpea spicy concoction which if we'd been blessed with imagination, we could have named something beginning with M!

Choosing a movie that we both wanted to watch wasn't that easy. I like horror films - he doesn't. He likes espionage and political thrillers. I don't. Then we had a brainwave.

I have an early childhood memory of staying up past my bedtime and seeing a snippet of a film that my parents were watching. I clearly remember a circus ring, a woman dressed in black leather riding a white horse and a ring master with a whip. The ring master whipped the woman, slicing into her leather    clothes until she was naked.

Although the imagery stayed with me into adulthood, I had no idea what film it was from until a chance facebook conversation some time ago. A friend of mine (also from my childhood) supplied me with the title of the film and the leading lady of the black leather fame.

My husband bought me a German import of the film but I was in no hurry to actually watch it in case it did not live up to my memory. It sat gathering dust on my DVD shelf. The film (from 1968) was Girl on a Motorcycle and the leading lady was Marianne Faithfull.

There would really be no better time to confront my childhood memory than on our M date!

We were late starting the film so we went to bed to watch it. We had a few false starts because we couldn't find the remote control and then we couldn't work out how to change the audio from German dubbing back to original English but we eventually got there. The iconic scene, etched in my memory was very early on in the film and I had no memory of anything that followed. (I am guessing that  at that point, my parents must have realised I was watching, deemed it unsuitable viewing for a child and sent me off to bed!)

I'm sure that it in its day, the film would have been spectacularly ground breaking and risque but I'm afraid it was just a bit too slow and dated to keep me awake all the way through. I did, however, love being snuggled under duvet and in my husband's arms, snoozing! As for the circus scene that made such a dramatic impact on me all those years ago before I could have had any comprehension of the significance of it all - it will remain one of my favourite film sequences of all time.

Whistling women...

...and a crowing hen, are neither good for God nor men.

This saying was apparently a favourite of my grandad on my mother's side. I never really got it but neither did I ever forget it. It jumped back into my mind this weekend as my four year old, after months of trying and becoming ever more frustrated by her lack of success, finally managed to make a tiny little whistling sound by blowing air through pursed lips.

I clearly remember going through the same process as a young girl myself (possibly causing my grandad to quote those favourite words of his).

Now that she has cracked the mystery of whistling, she is experimenting with pitch and volume and thoroughly enjoying herself.

I can't believe that my joyous little tuneless whistling woman child would not be good for God nor men. She certainly warms my heart.

Happy Hallowe'en

My little ones are tucked up asleep in their beds, Ivy has returned to Uni after her Hallowe'en weekend visit and my teenage girls have retired to their rooms to do whatever it is they spend so many hours in their rooms doing.

The candles that have been casting their eerie light over our proceedings this evening are all but burnt out.

It is my moment to reflect.

It has been a hectic but satisfying Hallowe'en.

My three year old had her weekly dance class this afternoon. The little dancers were allowed to forget the strict dress code for one day and wear their Hallowe'en outfits if they wished. My Addy was not at all convinced by this having only just become the proud owner of pink leotard, tutu, tights and crossover.

I managed to persuade her to wear part of a witches costume - a purple and black tutu - in place of her pink regulation ballet skirt. She then surprised me by insisting on having "green eyes".

I wondered if she had been inspired by the eye make up worn by Jason Donovan on this weekend's Spooktacular Strictly. I am not very adventurous with my make up palette and knew that I had no green eye shadow so I got out the face paints and had visions of painting delicate pumpkin tendrils from the outside edge of her eyelids, weaving organically across her brow. She protested saying quite adamantly that she wanted green eyes. I had no idea what she meant until she marched off to the dressing up box and came back with this glow in the dark alien mask, presented it to me as if I was an idiot and said "See - green eyes".


(It may not be obvious from the photograph but the eye portion is made from green plastic and when you wear the mask, the world has a decidedly green tint)

By now, we were actually looking like we might be late for the start of the class, and I remembered that the car needed filling up with fuel so I didn't argue.

We were only a tiny bit late. Addy joined her class.

During the sessions, most mums wait in the kitchen area. It is just possible, if you bend down and squint, to see through a tiny gap at the bottom of the interconnecting serving hatch shutter into the dance hall. I couldn't resist taking a peek.

It was a delight to see the tiny tots prancing daintily in their lacy, sparkly witch costumes.... and my Addy clomping enthusiastically behind in her oversized glow in the dark alien mask! Full marks to her for individuality and eagerness.

Back home, we added a few finishing touches to our Hallowe'en decorations with some half price bargains I picked up earlier and we all sat down together to a gothic banquet of veggie sausage, egg, chips, beans and ketchup (Addy's choice!)

It is so important to me that my children grow up with great memories of their childhood and I hope that Hallowe'en at our house will rank highly amongst them.

My bowl of treats prepared for any trick or treaters that came calling remains untouched. I guess the damp weather put them off and they settled for buying their own treats from the selection of half price merchandise that the retailers are so keen to be rid of to make way for Xmas stock.

Hold onto your witches hats - Christmas is definitely coming!

Swaine the Meerkat

Do you remember the names of the toys you had as a child?

It is more years than I care to count since I lined my teddies and dolls neatly at the end of my bed and ticked their names on a home made register to play 'schools'. Not one of my inanimate childhood companions survived the rigours of time - they have all ended up in the great toybox in the sky - yet I still remember their names and it isn't difficult to conjure up memories of how they looked and felt and even their own special smells.

My three year old has just started naming her toys. She has considerably more than I ever had and is fickle in her affections but one toy is emerging as a definite favourite.

This particular toy was purchased from Dudley Zoo's gift shop and was a birthday present from her sister. She chose it herself out of the huge array of different stuffed animals and promptly named it Swaine the Meerkat.

Standing tall and stiff, Swaine the Meerkat isn't particularly cuddly but she does often sleep with it in her bed. Swaine the Meerkat doesn't have what I would class as a friendly face (I'd go as far as to say it looks bit evil) but she loves it.

Maybe in years to come she will think back with fondness at the memory of a small, stiff, slightly evil looking Meerkat named Swaine in much the same way as I do about my old teds Cuddly, Humpty and Footso and my dolls Patricia and Michelle. Or maybe he will be a long forgotten, dusty and discarded, mass produced piece of tat who, if such things were possible, would dream of the glory days when he was the favourite, much loved possession of a little girl who gave him a name.

My Top 5 Retro Sweets - Listography

It was such a treat to be given a few pennies to spend in the sweet shop on the way to school when I was a kid. The sweet shop, quaintly named The Chocolate Box, has long gone and the kindly sweetshop owner who had so much patience for our lengthy deliberations would most definitely be weighing out quarters of bon bons in the great confectioners in the sky. Even so, if I close my eyes I can picture the layout of that little shop, still smell the slightly musty but tantalisingly sweet odour, hear the rustle of the paper bags and the clattering of sweets tumbling into the scales. As for the excitement of feasting your eyes on row after row of glass jars holding sweets of so many different colours, shapes and flavours... it can still make my heart race a little faster.

Despite the world of choice available, I was a creature of habit and only ever picked from a small selection of the sugary treats. I had my favourites and I stuck with them. I remember them all so well. There was always the playground trading that went on but I stayed loyal to my favourites:

1. Pear Drops.
A quarter of pear drops would last all day. The distinctive ketone smell of them, like nail varnish remover, was a big part of the appeal. The fact that the soft tissue on the roof of your mouth would be ripped to shreds after a day of sucking on them was never a deterrent.

2. Fruit salads.
You could buy eight of these for a penny and they would make your jaw ache. I bought myself a pink and orange summer top a couple of years ago. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to have it because of how much it reminded me of fruit salads.

3. Spangles. 
Square, fruity boiled sweets in a tube. Not the most exciting but delicious to suck and handy for popping in your pocket.

4. Candy Cigarettes.
In a more innocent world when cigarette smoking was considered sophisticated and harmless,  I loved to 'smoke' candy cigarettes with the authentic red lit tip.

5. Lemonade Sparkle Ice Lolly
Not strictly a sweet I know but still a Sweet Shop favourite on a hot day. Sparkle ice lollies came in orangeade flavour too but Lemonade was my favourite. Refreshing, sticky... lovely.

Thanks to Kate Takes 5 for sending me on a mouthwatering trip into my childhood memories.

My Friend Next Door

This post was originally published in  December 2010. I have re posted it as a contribution to the Friday Club Life Carnival: Your Favourite Childhood Memory.

My friend next door wouldn't come to my house and knock and ask if I would come out to  play - he would stand in his back garden and shout in his pre-pubescent high pitched voice PAAUU-LLAAA! This was such a regular occurrence that their parrot, who was often put out on the coal bunker in his big metal bird cage for some air, would imitate the sound.

Our back gardens were long and thin and separated by a waist high rickety fence. His side of the fence was formal fish pond set in neatly clipped lawn edged with flowerbeds and vegetables growing in rows in weed free soil. Our side of the fence was overgrown and neglected. Our side of the fence was paradise.

The bottom of our garden was a place where my dad would dump stuff - old beds, the decaying remains of what had once been a shed, tangled bits of rusting metal, some great lumps of concrete torn from I don't where and an old Belling cooker. This was where we made our camps.

We fought battles there (mostly in our heads) to protect our camp from the enemy (my big sister, who in reality would have been hanging out with her mates at the Rec and had not even the remotest interest in our world of rotten planks and plastic sheets). It was our world. A world we created for ourselves where the idea of having to grow up didn't even exist.

We were both escaping from reality. He was the offspring of a single parent in a time when that was  scandalous. He lived with his mum and his grandparents and for the life of me I couldn't work out why he had "two mums". He was fat.

The reality from which I fled was the violent exchanges between my father and his hormonal, larger than life, eldest daughter.

Physical punishment was still quite normal then but when my sister would answer back and fail to live up to the expectation of my father that "when you're  in these four walls you do as I say", he would lose control. You always knew when he lost control. His face would change. He would stick his curled tongue between bared teeth and bite down on it. It terrified me. I loved him and I hated him.

Later, when I would become the recipient of his angry, uncontrolled outbursts, my friend next door would be there for me. He would help me to see things from my dad's point of view. He would take away my anger at myself for not being good.

Both our houses have been demolished now and my friend next door is a grown man with a beautiful wife and two fabulous children.  I wonder if sometimes, like me, when the demands of life are pulling in different directions, he still feels that childhood memory urging him to 'make camp' and escape.

Here are the other entries in this carnival:

My Friend Next Door from QWERTY Mum.

My Mum was the best storyteller from Baby Budgeting.

A Favourite Childhood Memory from Patch of Puddles.

Domino Trails from Mummy From The Heart.

Freedom from Live Otherwise.

A Favourite Childhood Memory from The Gingerbread House.

Birthday Memories from The Diary of a Frugal Family.

Please Turn Over from Bibsey.

Not Tonight Josephine from Cheeky Wipes.

Freedom from Little Legends.

A Favourite Childhood Memory from Who Teaches Whom.

Holidays from Seasider In The City.

Making Paper Boats from Red Ted Art.

Remembering a Fishpond from Mymumdom.

Canada from South of the River Mum.

Goodbyes from Notes From Home.