Christmas Again

Picture shows a typical dining table scene from previous years.

Alcohol and pyrotechnics

 As this is my private blog, and my husband will never see it, I share here my thoughts on our 45th Christmas since we became a couple.

We spent the day with our elder daughter. She cooked a roast chicken, (no turkey, stuffing, bread sauce, cranberry sauce, sprouts or stewed apple, all of which used to accompany the main course in our Yorkshire dominated household from days gone by).

I have never liked turkey, in fact I grew to loath it over the years. We did give up with the stewed apple quite early on, it was a relic of hub's grandmother, and the bread sauce was eased out too over the years. To be replaced, unfortunately, with celeriac and mashed potato mix (with garlic infused milk).

This year, at our daughter's, no alcohol was served at all with the meal or at any other time of the day.  Our daughter did not serve a Christmas pudding, or any other pudding other than one chocolate each after the meal.

This was the happiest Christmas I can ever remember in all my 70 years.

No one sulked in the afternoon, no one upset anyone else, and there were no arguments about anything.

I have put up with my husband's total domination of Christmas for the last 38 years.  First we had to go to his mother's, until his grandmother died, at 96.  Then his parents and sister came to us for the next 33 years. After his mother died, at 97, we stopped hosting and have spent the last two years at our daughters'. Our younger daughter hosted last year and did a roast ham buffet (well done, don't be a slave to tradition, I said). This year our elder hosted but not the whole family party of nine or ten adults, just husband and me.  

Again, a wonderful refreshing break with the obsessive tradition that EVERYONE must all be crammed in together for the 25th of December. Which, as I said, I put up with for 38 years, 33 of them hosting at our house. 

I was never asked, what would you like to do this year, it's your turn to choose. When his parents etc came, they always came for a full week, until I put my foot down and said they had to go after three days.  Every year we had an argument about whether they could stay for three days or four.

Alcohol was served every day with the main meal, which after a very long time (too long) I realised was making me feel tired, irritable and bad-tempered.  

On the big day itself, my husband always insisted on serving champagne at the start, on empty stomachs, and then opening a second bottle at the table as well as serving wine. There were arguments every year about the second bottle of champagne.

Every year, my husband made a huge performance of getting the camping gas stove out of the garage to heat brandy at the table and pour it over the Christmas pudding then setting fire to it. Everyone dutifully oohed and aahed and clapped.  He thought this was the star piece of the whole show.

This year he was prevented from showing off in this way because there was no Christmas pudding in our daughter's house. (Had there been one, he would have tried to get his own way, even just heating the brandy up in a saucepan on the hob).

Oh my god, how has our marriage lasted this long.  No wonder the solicitors' offices are full of people seeking a divorce in January.

Wonderful daughters, doing it their way (our younger just decided they wanted to have Christmas day in their own home this year, and would not be travelling anywhere).

Thank you God, for this lovely Christmas.

Wolf Hall Volume 3, Lockdown Reading

Lockdown reading, 900 pages

The long-awaited third, (and final) volume of the "Wolf Hall" trilogy.

I've written about "Wolf Hall" before.

Here is an account of an interview with Hilary Mantel, in which she described how she first got the inspiration for the book.

Here, I gave my experience of the difficulty of reading the original, the first volume, and some tips on how to overcome the difficulties.

My most important tip on how to read "Wolf Hall" is to start with the second volume instead of the  first.  The second volume is called "Bring Up the Bodies".

It's shorter (only 400 pages) and covers a more concise period of history, from the death of Katherine of Aragon to the execution of Anne Boleyn, (a mere four months) so the politics and the characters are simpler to follow.

Here is Volume 1, the original "Wolf Hall", weighing in at 650 pages,which covers the period 1500 to 1535.


The third volume "The Mirror and the Light" starts immediately after the execution of Anne Boleyn in summer 1536, and ends with the execution of Thomas Cromwell himself (no spoilers there, everyone knows he ended up a victim of Henry VIII.)  A period of almost exactly four years.

On finishing Volume 3, I immediately went back to Volume 2, BUTB, and started re-reading it.  It seems so much clearer now.  In fact, it becomes apparent as you progress through BUTB, that Hilary must have known pretty much exactly what she was going to include in Mirror.  Certain foreshadowing events now take on huge significance.  There are also numerous flashbacks to Thomas Cromwell's earlier life, as recorded in WH.

I will probably re-read WH again as well, after finishing BUTB.

Mirror is undoubtedly a work of genius.

If anyone is quaking at the thought, please let me recommend the audio version.  My local library supports three different platforms which enable users to download audio-books, completely free of charge. Fortunately I had already signed up for these a couple of years ago, and was therefore able to take advantage of them when lockdown closed all physical libraries.

You can also download e-reader versions, but I prefer either a book to hold in my hand, or the audio version.  I listen as I go for my daily walk (one hour in lockdown), while I do dusting or ironing, (not hoovering, too noisy), and some cooking activities (not clattering and banging ones).  I listen when I want to retreat to a separate room behind a closed door and make it absolutely plain to my husband that I am absorbed in an exclusive activity and don't want to chit-chat.

(It's chit-chat that erodes a relationship in lockdown, not silence.  Silence strengthens a bond of 41 years, and reminds me that we have survived many challenges.  Chit-chat generally causes irritation, and often ends in an argument).

I started off by listening to a section on the audio-book (so as to make the best use of the time), and then carrying on from there with the printed version.  So interesting and addictive is the narrative, however, that very often I both read and listened to whole chunks in duplicate, to get the full impact of the writing.

The audio version of all three volumes in the trilogy is read by Ben Miles, who played the lead role, Thomas Cromwell himself, in the Royal Shakespeare Company stage version of WH and BUTB in 2014.  (Tickets sold out in minutes, the furore over the whole project was so great).

Ben Miles reads it beautifully, and fully enters into the mind and character of Thomas Cromwell, even giving him a faintly rough, common South London accent which indicates he was a blacksmith's son from Putney (although the accent would have sounded very different in 1530's). He even manages to make Cromwell sound like a burly, solid bruiser of a man, which he allegedly was.

Ben also reads Henry VIII exceptionally well, conveying perfectly the monarch's selfishness,  petulance, childishness, deviousness, insecurity, and cruelty.

At the end of the audio-book, a bonus section gives an interview between Ben Miles and Hilary Mantel.  This is illuminating.  In it she says she was planning and drafting the third volume as she sat in on the RSC's rehearsals in 2013.  And that the actors playing the parts influenced how she saw and heard the characters in Mirror. She said that the TV actors in the BBC version influenced her also.  That makes sense, as I found myself seeing them in my mind's eye as I listened.

Ultimately, in this bonus section, Hilary Mantel says that these three novels are the great project of her life, and took her fifteen years to complete.

Fantastic work.  Definitely genius.  I want it to go on. I want Thomas Cromwell's ghost to peer over the shoulder of the nasty Jane Rochford when she gets her come-uppance at last (she was executed for facilitating the sexual liaisons of Henry's fifth wife, Katherine Howard, who was likewise  executed, in 1542).  Jane Rochford had, in 1536, betrayed her husband, George Boleyn, (Anne's brother). She testified against him, thus helping secure his and Anne's conviction in 1536.  Jane Rochford went mad, apparently, while awaiting her fate in the Tower. Cromwell would have relished the spectacle.

I want to see Thomas watch the nasty Earl of Surrey (Anne Boleyn's cousin, eldest son of the Duke of Norfolk),  arrested. He put up a spirited defence at his trial but he, too, gets his come-uppance.  Surrey was executed for treason two weeks before the death of Henry VIII.  I particularly want to see Thomas enjoying the spectacle of wicked old "Uncle Norfolk" (the Duke,  uncle to both Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard, wives 2 and 5 respectively), sweating out his last night on earth in the same Tower, after his son's death.  Norfolk was due to be executed the next morning, but Henry VIII died in the night, and so he escaped his fate.  He did spend the entirety of the next reign (Edward VI, six years) in the Tower.  I suspect Cromwell would have haunted him there, just as Thomas Wolsey and Thomas More, previous victims of King Henry VIII, haunted Cromwell.

Then there's nasty Wriothesley, Cromwell's former friend and protege, who betrayed Cromwell and went over to the Duke of Norfolk's side, to help arrest Cromwell and secure a conviction.  He wasn't executed, but must have been terrified that he was about to be, when in 1546 he marched confidently into the King's presence to arrest Henry's sixth and final wife, Katherine Parr.  He was confident that he could have her executed for treason as well, and had already plotted to search her papers, and had tortured (illegally) on the rack a woman thought to be a supporter of the supposed treason.

Unfortunately for Wriothesley, Katherine Parr managed (unlike her five predecessors), to effect an affectionate reconciliation with Henry, and Wriothesley was sent packing. He must have feared for his future, but got away with it and survived into the next reign.

Hilary Mantel is very taken up with ghosts, they play a marked role in Thomas Cromwell's thoughts, particularly when he realises he is on the downward slope of the King's favour, and there is little hope that anyone or anything can save him.

Hilary Mantel's own memoir, a fascinating account of her childhood, is entitled "Giving Up the Ghost", and this is a book I intend to look at in a future post.

100 Good Things About Growing Old (continued) - Numbers 21- 22 - Husbandry

It's a long time since I started my list of 100 Good Things About Growing Old.  Intervening events have somewhat shaken my notion that there could be so many.  However, now that the air is warmer, the soft spring rain is gently rejuvenating parched trees and shrubs, and we have successfully completed a week of holidaying together, I am able to look again. This time, specifically at my (nearly 40-year-old) relationship with my husband. 

21.  Mental compatibility

As we sat down to eat yesterday my husband looked up briefly from his plate to ask me if I understood the universe.  That's the kind of relationship we have. 

No, I replied, even though I do think it is made of dust and originated when bits of swirling dust collided and formed solid objects.

But where did the dust come from?  he asked.

I don't know, but one thing I am sure of and that is that God didn't have anything to do with it.

But I have a question for you, I went on.  Why is it that human beings have a moral dimension?  Even though many of them prefer not to use it.

He didn't have an answer to that, any more than either of us had an answer as to where the dust comes from.  So we lowered our heads, I to my book, he to his i-Pad, and continued to eat in silence.

22. Weirdness

Which of us is the more OCD?

Me - picking up the liquid soap bottle with rubber gloves, before using it to wash my hands.  (But only when very germy person last handled it).

Him - discussing the idea of buying a cyclist's face mask to wear to the office, when very germy people are about.

I think he is the more extreme, because people would see him!  (I haven't admitted to my own failing in public).  In fact, I told him his colleagues would have him certified!

Thus we tolerate each other's eccentricities, while aware that to other eyes we probably both come across as weird and unattractive oldies. 

A Great Love

Here's what wrung my heart, and nearly brought me to my knees:

My Bookcase

Now no longer mine.  I remember the day we first brought it home  - like bringing home a new baby. It was for my personal use.  This was thirty five years ago.  We had just bought an old stone house in a deeply unfashionable suburb of Leeds, and wanted some antique furniture to put in it.

We then moved to a brand-new house, and although the bookcase did not fit the period, we kept it, as most of our furniture consisted of ancient hand-me-downs anyway.  Over the next thirty years, the hand-me-downs went, one by one, and finally, the house now being decorated and furnished in contemporary styles,  my husband got rid of the bookcase.

He sent it to be stripped, according to the advice given by a Laura Ashley design consultant who visited the house, and it never came back inside.  This would have required it being reassembled, which I waited patiently for him to do, eventually realising that he had no intention of so doing.

It languished in the garage for five years, miraculously avoiding ruination by damp (my husband is not totally heartless - he carefully wrapped all the dismantled parts up in bubble-wrap). 

Then our younger daughter acquired, within the space of a year, a serious boyfriend and a Victorian house.  The boyfriend is full of energy and totally practical - he owns a sanding machine, and can fix shelves.  I ventured to suggest, cautiously, emphasising that there was no obligation, that they might like the bookcase as it would fit their décor and period home rather well.

They agreed!  The boyfriend's extensive contacts book included a removal man who would take the dismantled parts, (free), from the East Midlands to the Sussex coast, in an empty van intended for the return journey.

The boyfriend put it all together again, bought some new dowelling to put the internal shelves back up, and sanded the whole thing smooth.  The stripping process had left it a bit raw.

When we visited in September , and I saw my bookcase standing proudly in their sitting room, full of their books, I nearly cried.  It was a moment of strong emotion.  I wanted it back, of course.  And looking at it there brought back so many memories, of the various stages it had gone through in our lives.  A repository for professional study materials, a children's toy cupboard, a place for storing sewing materials.  As well as a bookcase of course.

I was so pleased it had found a loving home, a place where it is appreciated and cared for.  Secretly I hope that a new generation will use it as a toy cupboard again.  I haven't uttered a word, of course.



More information About The Old House

The one that looked just like the Bronte parsonage, that is.

Well, the house was like the parsonage in that it was built of stone which had weathered to that black colour, so different from the golden honey-coloured stone of towns in the Cotswolds and Northamptonshire.  Due to the Dark, Satanic Mills, of course, the proximity of industrial activity.

It was about the same size and shape, being quite squat and more than one room deep, again unlike Northamptonshire vintage stone properties, which tend to be only one room thick until extended.  Chimneys and windows all a bit old and wobbly in our case.

UNLIKE the parsonage in that it was set on a corner of two main roads, therefore not at all peaceful, and positioned between a pub and a chip-shop on one side, and a housing estate on the other.  Therefore a lot of litter and worse ended up in our gateway.

The first thing we had to do was put on a new roof, (which we installed with the help of a council grant).  Next there was the fact that it had no central heating.  A house with stone walls a foot thick does take a long time to heat up, and, contrary to popular myth, cools down again very quickly.  So husband designed a system with the help of a book called "Install Your Own Central Heating", and fitted it himself.  OMG, he was so young and energetic then!  I remember that every floorboard in the house (or so it seemed) had to be pulled up.

I recall another epic row about food, this time a roast dinner I had cooked (again, very proud of it, saw it as a work of genius).  I was furious that husband did not immediately down tools to come and eat it at once, but rather carefully finished what he was doing.  OMG, I was so young and spoiled in those days!

The house had previously been occupied by an elderly couple and their even older mother, plus her two small dogs.  After about thirty years of the couple's constant smoking the walls were all yellow and streaming with nicotine, and the carpets stank of it.  Also the carpets (1970's shag pile) were full of dog hair.  We had nothing to spare for re-decorating or new carpets.

As soon as we moved in, everything started to fall apart.  You know how in your own house, there is a special way of doing things, like turning a door handle, to avoid trouble? All the door handles fell off under our callous hands, and the ancient gas heater in the kitchen packed up altogether.

Then there was the drainage.  A mains water pipe was leaking in the back garden, and the house  clean-water system drained into a soakaway under the street outside, so no washing machine could be connected until mains drainage had been installed.

The mice were despatched by next-door's cat, the most efficient method I have ever seen.

Another memory I have is of being woken in the middle of the night by our next-door neighbours entering our bedroom.  In those days we both slept completely naked, so it was quite embarrassing!  Luckily Mr Next-Door worked for a brewery so they both had a great sense of humour, and were used to late nights.  Our burglar alarm had gone off, and our stone walls were so thick we had not heard a thing.  

In the kitchen (which consisted of an ancient cooker, sink and some 1950's formica cupboards), there was a large chimney breast which had once held a range and after that an Aga.  Both long gone, but had left a big problem.  The Aga fumes had caused the mortar to disintegrate and the chimney breast was in a state of collapse.  Husband's building background again to the rescue, he got some Acro-props installed to hold it up.  I am not sure what was supposed to happen next, but what did happen was that he was offered a job move 100 miles further south, with a payrise and company car.  We decamped, and put the house on the market.

Amazingly, someone bought it, complete with Acro-props and drainage problems.  I think the fact that he had no wife was probably a critical factor.  I can't imagine any wife agreeing to buy the house in the state it was in.  He had been widowed,  and his mother lived in the housing estate a few hundred yards away, which made the house a useful proposition.

We later discovered that he dug the channel and fitted the pipes to connect to mains drainage himself.

On moving to the East Midlands, we spent more than a year living in rented accommodation, determined never again to make the mistake of falling in love with a totally unsuitable house.  Eventually we picked a brand new box, which, while ugly from the outside, was warm, clean, easy to run, and equipped with state-of-the-art plumbing and heating.  A perfect place to bring up a young family, which we then proceeded to do, and we are still here to this day!

Husband and Cake

A post on Caked Crusader has led my mind to dwell on the subject of husbands and cake.  I have been married to my husband for a long time, and we have been a couple for 35 years. 

One event in particular sticks out in my mind, on the subject of husband and cake.

Very early on, when we bought our first house together, we were quite naive and romantic.  We bought an old stone house which looked very like the Bronte's parsonage in Haworth.  The house was in a suburb of Leeds which was very unfashionable then, and had structural problems, which is why we got it quite cheap.

One of the problems was that it was absolutely freezing cold.  It had no loft insulation, and no central heating.  There were also mice.  Even our house was warmer for the mice than a hilltop between Leeds and Bradford in winter.

The first year we were there, I went to some considerable trouble to make a Christmas cake.  I was quite proud of this, not being a particularly domesticated young woman in those days.  (I remember scoffing when I first read Shirley Conran's book "Superwoman", that this book was" all about housework", and I did not intend to do any!)

Husband, looking for anything near to hand to put into a mousetrap he was constructing, broke off a corner of the beautiful untouched cake I had made, thus ruining it for icing.

It took about twenty years for me to get over this and these days, I do not make a Christmas cake.  He does, or we don't have one.

Story

Friends moved house, a distance of about 12 miles: not far, but enough to unsettle the cat deeply. 

After urinating in the car on the way to the new house, it hid behind the kitchen cupboards and was trapped behind the washing machine after the latter was fitted. It marked its first week in the house by keeping everyone awake yowling all night long.

Then it disappeared and hasn't been seen since.

I was rather upset by this.

I told my husband that the cat had run away and was possibly dead.

This is how he comforted me.

"Well that's the cat's problem, isn't it. The cat decided what it was going to do, and did it."

I regret to say that this made me laugh out loud.

Booker Prize Won by Julian Barnes

Here's an example of breakfast-time conversation in Bookblog's house:

"The Booker prizewinner this year is Julian Barnes."

"Who's Julian Barnes?"

"I'll never forget Julian Barnes.  He came to give a talk in our local library, in 1985.  Our elder daughter was just about a month old.  I went to the talk, sat down in the front row, and immediately fell asleep.  I went up to him afterwards and apologised.  'It's not you - I've just had a baby.'

Complete silence and lack of response.

This dialogue unfortunately revived many bad memories for me.  Instead of thinking about the (then young and handsome) author, whose early semi-autobiographical novel "Metro-land" had charmed and beguiled me with its recognizable picture of my teenage years, and congratulating him on his hard-won success, (at the fourth attempt), I thought about the early days of motherhood.

The apparently complete lack of any understanding of maternal exhaustion and sleep deprivation.  Insisting on going out on New Year's Eve, taking a two-week old baby to friend's house, so that instead of going to bed at 8.00pm, I had to stay up until the small hours.  Moving out of the marital bedroom until the babe started sleeping through the night, on the grounds that "My needs are more important than yours.  I have to go to work - you don't".  Never once making me a cup of tea during a night feed, unlike the famed "other husbands" in the neighbourhood.

I am sure that his side of the story would be different.  However, there is no doubt that the birth of this first child stuck daggers in the sides of both of us, and the relationship was never the same afterwards. 

A Very Dry Season

Have hardly posted anything since the early summer.  Not surprising, perhaps, in view of the fact that I have been on holiday five times.  Whilst I have read books on holiday, I haven't had time to review them, archive them, and place them in a context.  Too busy clearing the decks at work before holiday, catching up with work after holiday, and doing all the pre- and post-holiday cleaning, fridge-management, washing and ironing.

I went to:

Somerset in April, joined for part of the time by husband and elder daughter
Lake District in June, with husband and both daughters
Canada in July, with work colleagues for a conference and then a short holiday
Norfolk in August, together with a  book-loving friend (she brought her Kindle).
Italy in September, with husband.  This was an exhausting holiday. Husband doesn't read books.  Clearly some of the others in the group (it was an accompanied tour group of 40) found it somewhat odd and thought we were mismatched.  However, many of them were on their second marriage, and I was proud to point out that we have been together over 33 years.  Sometimes things are not as they seem.  There is some very deep bond between us that nothing so far has been able to break.  And there have been some epic moments in this relationship.  As there are in all relationships.

The dry season continues.  It hasn't rained here for weeks.  I haven't written a proper blog-post for months.  This week the weather is due to change. I will start to write again. It would be fruitful to write a history of our relationship. However, a list of books I have read on holidays is more relevant to this blog.