A recent trip to the land of my birth – Sidcup, Kent, on the edge of London’s urban sprawl – made me look afresh at the nature of change in residential areas. Many years ago, I discovered that half the garden of the house I grew up in had been sold to developers. A three-bed semi on a corner plot in a 1930s garden suburb, it had the generous proportions that came as standard in an era when housebuilding land was cheap and plentiful. When subsequent owners built a new house on that plot, requiring the demolition of my old swing, my father’s garage and his beautiful rose bed, I was outraged.

  Revisiting just before Christmas with a more mature eye, I noticed that newcomers had added style, substance and care to the whole neighbourhood – double glazing, extensions, new doors, smart signage. Even the humble bungalow where I was born had been extended upwards and outwards and had expensive cars on the drive. As a child, I travelled everywhere by bus. The area had leapt upmarket, yet the many parks and green spaces remained. I found myself thinking, What a lovely place to bring up a child!

  So I started the New Year feeling twice blessed for the double life I have led – half in the suburbs, half in the country – and grateful for the subtle changes that help both places to evolve and survive for future generations to enjoy.

  Finally Facing My Waterloo

  March 2015

  Until last autumn, if in a word association game I had been given “Waterloo”, I’d probably have responded “ABBA”. I vividly remember watching the Swedish pop group win the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974 and thinking it was a life-changing moment. (In my defence, I was only 14.)

  My second response would have been “Charing Cross”, because Waterloo East was the next station out of London on the branch line to Sidcup, where I lived until the year of Abba’s victory. And I’d defy anyone to think of the Duke of Wellington without also picturing Wellington boots.

  I fear my historical ignorance adds point to the government’s plan to focus the school history curriculum on major historic milestones. In my day, history lessons jumped from the Black Death to the First World War, leaving me to fill the void with details gleaned from books and museums. The most I knew about the Napoleonic Wars came from reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace for a bet about 25 years ago.

  This is why the Battle of Waterloo was low on my radar until just before Christmas, when a friend told me about the Waterloo Ball to be held at Westonbirt School on Friday 19 June to mark the Battle’s bicentenary.

  My crass response: “Who will know or care about that?” I recognise that in British eyes, the Battle of Waterloo is ‘A Good Thing’ because we won it, but for me it had much less resonance than last year’s centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, with which I felt a personal connection. I had met relatives affected by it, such as my Great Great Auntie Edie, widowed at a young age by the Great War.

  I’ve now realised the error of my ways. Especially in an election year, we should not underestimate the significance of what the Waterloo 200 campaign describes as “A Defining Moment in European History” in its strapline.

  So in preparation for this great event, I’m reading up on it, with a local reference as my starting point: the Somerset Monument in Hawkesbury Upton, built to commemorate a local man’s distinguished service at the Battle of Waterloo.

  My research is already proving more entertaining than I’d expected, uncovering anecdotal gems such as the Duke of Wellington remarking to the Earl of Uxbridge, riding horseback beside him during the Battle, “By God, sir, you’ve lost your leg.”

  “By God, sir, so I have,” came the reply.

  Now that kind of British pluck is definitely worth celebrating.

  Celebration Time

  April 2015

  Writing this month’s column in the run-up to my parents’ sixty-second wedding anniversary, I’ve been thinking about how we choose and mark the days we wish to celebrate.

  My parents’ choice of wedding date has always struck me as the romantic ideal: 21 March, the first day of spring, subtler and wiser than Valentine’s Day. If a Valentine’s marriage ends in divorce, that day is forever blighted with a reminder of rejection.

  For some events we must take pot-luck. My brother had the good fortune to be born on Midsummer’s Day – surely the perfect birthday, half way between two Christmases – whereas my sister’s Trafalgar Day birthday was fitting for the first-born of my father, then serving in the Royal Navy.

  When my grandmother asked my mother what she wanted for her tenth birthday, she said, “A baby brother”, and my grandmother duly obliged, albeit on New Year’s Eve – definitely a duff date for a birthday.

  Some coincidences are less fortunate. My Scottish husband, born on St David’s Day, landed a lifelong association with the wrong nation’s patron saint.

  On our school trip to Windsor Castle, my Greek friend Bill (short for Vasilios) realised he had the same birthday as Prince Charles when the resident band struck up “Happy Birthday to You”. Now, when the National Anthem airs on BBC Radio 4 on the morning of HRH’s birthday, I immediately think of Bill. Sorry, Sir!

  For my first marriage, I thought I’d chosen a good date for my wedding: 4 August, the same day as my sister’s. I’d not have done this had I known my new husband would die 10 years later, tinging my sister’s future anniversaries with sadness.

  Marrying for the second time, I picked a date with no prior associations: 2 April, inadvertently providing the opening joke for the best man’s speech:

  “When Gordon told me he was getting married on 2 April, I thought he was a day late”. (He had been a confirmed bachelor until then.)

  But who needs birthdays and anniversaries anyway? The best things in life are worth celebrating all year, any year. We may, for example, look forward to lionising the Lions (publisher of the Tetbury Advertiser) when they turn 100 years old (the organisation, not the individuals!) in 2017, but we don’t have to save up our gratitude till then.

  By the same token, on any day of the year, when I see my parents walking down the street, still holding hands after nearly 62 years of marriage, I throw metaphorical confetti. So today I wish them, and everybody like them, a very happy un-anniversary – and may there be many, many more.

  Springing into Action

  May 2015

  The unseasonably warm weather after Easter makes me buck up my ideas about housework, a topic never front-of-mind for me. With spring sunshine streaming through smudgy windows, I can no longer pretend that it’s fairy-dust adorning the piano.

  I brace myself to brandish a duster and head for the under-sink cupboard. First task: awaken the cleaning materials from hibernation. Second task: dust the can of polish.

  In search of a duster, I move aside a dozen blue, green and yellow bottles, mostly unopened since I bought them in an optimistic extension of the “new broom sweeps clean” theory. I’ve since decided that only applies to brooms, because brooms can be used straight after purchase without any more ado, unlike these fancy products, which require you to read small-print instructions and find accessories – cloths, sponges, buckets, or squeegees.

  Some of the products I don’t even recognise. Unable to remember buying them, I half-expect their price labels to be in shillings and pence. What a good thing they don’t bear a use-by date.

  In the absence of spring sunshine, the second best trigger for housework is to schedule a party, because my loathing of housework is exceeded by my fear of being branded a slob. Fear of a visitor’s judgemental finger running through the dust on top of the piano spurs me into cleaning mode, but family fingers are less effective. The “Clean Me” message that my daughter wrote in the dust on my husband’s laptop has lain undisturbed for several days.

  This notion that the best way to get something done is to do something else is what I call “Janet’s Principle”, named after my sister-in-law, who once declared, just before serving us home-made apple pie, that “The best way to clean your nails is to make pastry”.

  In other areas of my life, I prefer a more direct route to results. One of my favourite mantras is “The best way to get something done is to do it”. Or alternatively, hire a cleaning lady.

  That option wouldn’t have been open to the original working-class inhabitants of my Victorian cottage. Even so, they will have kept it much cleaner than I do, with little more than a broom, a rag, and some old-fashioned soapflakes. Our forefathers didn’t need gimmicky modern products, because they had two vital ingredients that I so clearly lack: enthusiasm and elbow grease. I wonder what reaction I’d get if I asked for those in Tesco?

  What’s in a Car Name?

  June 2015

  Last month, the law of unintended consequences dictated that I should acquire a new car. Dropping in to a local garage to chivvy progress on my dad’s car’s MOT, I found myself wandering around its used car lot and falling in love at first sight with a Fiat Panda. If only actual pandas had the same impact on each other, there’d be a lot more pandas in this world.

  For some time, I’d been meaning to replace my aging Ford Ka. It had a lot in common with the proverbial spade that the old man claims was his grandfather’s before him – except the handle and the metal part have each been replaced several times.

  Although I loved my Ford Ka, I’d been constantly irritated by its name. I could never decide whether to pronounce it to rhyme with “car” or as the initials K A. The only redeeming feature was the suffix “Sublime”, in honour of its leather seats and air-conditioning.

  In the same way that you get “Friday afternoon cars”, haphazardly assembled by demob-happy workers, the Ford Ka brand name must be a Friday afternoon marketing job. It’s about as sensible as Mr Kipling launching a new product called “Kayke”, hard to differentiate from the rest of his exceedingly good cakes. (He hasn’t done this yet, by the way – but, Mr Kipling, if you’re reading this, please don’t go there.)

  But what’s not to love about a car named after an iconic animal? Not to mention its endless potential for jokes.

  “There’s a panda in my front garden,” I’m able to say to anyone gullible enough to listen to me speculating as to whether Waitrose stocks bamboo. Or “I’m thinking of taking my panda to the zoo at the weekend.” You get the picture.

  Other cars named after animals are usually associated with speed: Jaguar, Cougar, Impala. Even a beetle moves fast in relation to its size. Pandas are famously inert, as our visit to Edinburgh Zoo two summers ago hammered home: the crowd jumped the first time Tian Tian moved. Optimistically, the Zoo has installed a “panda cam” so you can watch live action footage around the clock. Most of the time, there’s not much difference between the video and the still photo at the top of the webpage. If it’s action you’re after, click on “penguin cam” or “squirrel monkey cam”. It must have been a close call in Fiat’s marketing department one Friday between the Fiat Panda and the Fiat Sloth.

  Still, it could have been worse: I could have opted for a Vauxhall Nova, which may sound fine and shiny-new till you drive to Spain, when it morphs into the Vauxhall Doesn’t Go. Which is where I came in with my Ford Ka.

  Booked Up for the Holidays

  July/August 2015

  As the Tetbury Advertiser prepares for its summer factory shutdown, I’m planning my holiday packing.

  This task is straightforward, because most of our holidays are spent in our camper van, essentially a giant suitcase on wheels.

  Or in my case, a mobile library. Because for me, packing clothes is a minor task compared with choosing my reading material. Books and writing essentials always form the bulk of my luggage. It’s a good thing I don’t have to worry about a baggage weight allowance.

  Before each trip, I carefully assemble an assortment of books to complement my destination. First, essential reference books: a phrase book and dictionary for the language spoken at our destination. (Yes, even when we’re going to Scotland – Teach Yourself Gaelic is permanently on board.) Next, maps and guide books. I learned this habit the hard way a few years ago, after arriving in France for a month-long trip with neither country map nor Rough Guide. We certainly took the scenic route that holiday, though not always on purpose.

  Then comes the leisure reading material: a combination of non-fiction and fiction. For this summer’s trip to Scotland, I’ve stockpiled a biography (The Lighthouse Stevensons), a collection of nature essays by a Scottish journalist, some modern Scottish poetry, and a murder mystery set on a Scottish island. Most of these were purchased on previous trips to Scotland, local books being among my favourite souvenirs to collect en route.

  My holiday reading planning strategy is so ingrained that I was startled to learn today from my nephew, Dan Gooding (a writer and librarian), that it’s common advice to do the opposite: take books that contrast with wherever you’re going. I should therefore now be packing tropical adventure stories, gourmet food guides and biographies celebrating Tory MPs.

  Other friends prefer to pick a particular writer and work their way through his or her complete oeuvre. My author friend Calum Kerr chooses a thriller writer every summer. My old English teacher spent one summer reading Proust’s A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu. Well, you’d need a teacher’s holidays to get through that lot.

  One busy friend subcontracts the decision. Having time to read only when she’s on holiday, she allows her mother and sister, both year-round readers, to lend her any books they think she’d like. It’s like having a personal shopper for clothes, except she doesn’t have to buy anything.

  A kind teacher I know takes second hand paperbacks bought from charity shops and leaves them behind for others to enjoy. My brother-in-law uses this approach with holiday clothes, taking his oldest and tattiest so he needn’t bother bringing them home. Of the two, I know whose wake I’d rather follow.

  So why not splash out on some paperbacks from one of Tetbury’s charity shops? That way you not only gain great new reads, but also help a good cause. When you leave them behind after reading at your holiday destination, you’ll not only lighten your luggage for your journey home, but also leave plenty of space for holiday souvenirs.

  The Library, the Witch and the Wardrobe

  September 2015

  On arrival at their holiday cottage on Brownsea Island, Dorset, the birthplace of Scouting and Guiding, what do you think was the biggest hit with my daughter’s Girl-Guiding unit? Spotting copious red squirrels, finding exotic tail feathers dropped by the resident peacocks, or discovering the beach at the end of the garden?

  Trick question! Actually, it was finding an ancient wooden wardrobe in each dormitory.

  “I’m just off to Narnia!” the girls would call, taking it in turns to step inside the wardrobe. Their imagination did the rest to keep them entertained.

  Variations on the game soon arose.

  “Our wardrobe takes us to Rainbow Land.”

  “Ours leads to Hogwarts.”

  Did C S Lewis realise what a timeless icon he had created with that wardrobe? Surely the promise of a secret world of adventure behind a mundane facade is never far from the thoughts of anyone who has ever read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – or is that just me?

  Only the other day it struck me while taking the shortcut to Tetbury Library that the winding, blinkered alleyway leading away from the hubbub of the shopping streets provides a Narnia-like transportation to a secret oasis of calm. As when entering the fabled wardrobe, those crossing the library’s threshold will find different adventures according to their character and attitude. But unlike Narnia, where it is always winter but never Christmas, in a public library it is always Christmas. Any day you visit, you can walk away laden with gifts: books to read on free loan, DVDs, games and invitations to courses and events. All you need is the courage to open the wardrobe door and step inside, and, with faith, you’ll find what you’re looking for. And if you’re not sure what you’re seeking, you’ll be readily assisted by expert librarians, who are not likely to resemble Mr Tumnus or Mr and Mrs Beaver in appearance, but they will share their generous and resourceful nature and specialist knowledge.

  Only if there are enough people keeping the faith will libraries like Tetbury’s survive. Otherwise they will slowly morph into just another lost mythological world. I hesitate to imagine the conversation with my grandchildren years from now.

  “Yes, that’s right, dear. The books were all free. Thousands of them, there were, on every subject and in every genre.”

  “Yet people just didn’t bother using them?”

  “Yes, dear, and that’s why they shut them down.”

  To me, closing a public library is as unthinkable as locking the Professor’s wardrobe and throwing away the key. Who would want to live in a society in which the most adventure to be had from a wardrobe is assembling an IKEA flat-pack?

  By the way. I’m reliably informed that there are no witches in Tetbury Library. I’m not so sure about IKEA.

  Queen, Cousin, Bishop – My Topical Take on Rock, Paper, Scissors

  October 2015

  Was I the only person holding their breath last month till the moment the Queen officially became our country’s longest serving monarch? Knowing my Scottish husband’s Republican tendencies, I kept to myself my anxiety that the Queen would fall at the last fence (a metaphor of which she would surely approve), until my daughter (12) piped up out of the blue “So exactly what time did the old King die? I don’t want to celebrate too soon.”

 

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