I want to share, I really do, but I am not ready, so I give you this, which is kind of sharing, only very very old.
1976 Which was sunny.
If you ask an english person old enough to remember 1976 they will tell you it was sunny.
In 1976 I was in love with the boy who delivered Wednesdays evening edition of the local paper, he was a Mod called Mark. Mark was dark and terribly good looking in a chiseled way just like his scooter - a boner (ha, a boner! for those of you not au fait with the Jam or two tone revival a boner is a scooter that has been stripped down to it’s basic form in the vain hope that it will go faster). I would climb uncerimoniously half way up the outer limits of our house to a ledge the width of a laptop computer and lounge seductively in my navy and lemon yellow nylon bikini (sic). I’d eagerly awaiting his arrival under the heat of the sun, turning this way and that, should my left leg go here, perhaps my ankle would be more attractive this way. I was 10 just about to go to secondary school and my mum’s house was at the top of a dead end hill, I could see him coming. I was also shy, so shy, as soon as I did see him 5 doors away I’d run inside. I’m sure he never had any idea of my existence. But I remember the prickly heat of th sun on my back, the smell of the melting asphalt on the ledge. A soaring intense feeling of freedom, unexplainable now. Youth I guess. Being in control, seeing the object of my desire approaching and being able to turn away to return to my childhood sanctum of books and pets and mummys calling one to dinner whilst the wolf of desire pattered down the drive outside and popped a paper through the letterbox.
For this little outburst I would like to thank ; http://theharridan.wordpress.com/ who is lovely and whom also put me onto ; http://52seductions.wordpress.com/2010/02/
On a positive note the flat is lovely...
“Alexandra Palace is situated in North London and known around the world as the birthplace of television.
In fact it was never owned by the BBC, but in 1935 the Corporation leased the eastern part of the building from which the first public television transmissions were made. In 1936 it hosted trials between the EMI-Marconi and Baird television system to decide who would carry the television standard for the future.
Studio A was equipped with the Marconi-EMI Emitron system, while Baird installed his mechanical systems in Studio B. The Emitron camera proved far superior to Baird's cumbersome film technique, which never developed beyond an experimental stage.
These early transmissions were famously introduced by one of the very first presenters, Elizabeth Cowell, with the words "This is direct television from Alexandra Palace…"”
Belle Mere had two parting shots across the bows and has now gone eerily quiet. We have been here 2 weeks. I was angry to the point of daily inner conversations at the time but thankfully that has passed. Time is a great healer and all that. The first of the final blows was our solicitor ringing up on the eve of completion saying Belle Mere had just cancelled the buildings insurance on the flat and would he be wrong in asking if she was a difficlut woman?
“You’re asking if my MOTHER-IN-LAW is a difficult woman?’’ I replied.
We had to chase around trying to find insurance at the last minute, no one wanted to insure just part of a building, it being a flat without the consent and signatures of all other owners. Eventually we went to our lenders who had a vested interest in insuring the building and did so whilst the completion was on hold. Panic over. We completed. Belle Mere rang and told me she was leaving Erbie’s toy cars in the flat, and how worried she had been about us finding insurance…
On the day of moving in, I went on ahead to retrieve the keys and check that nothing bad was waiting in store for us. The keys were where they were supposed to be with a scrawled note saying a friend had a spare set and she would get them at the weekend, these still haven’t materialised.
I went upstairs to see if anything was not as it should be but all was well. Breathing a sigh of relief I put Erbie down to play with the cars, but he didn’t once mention ‘Grammy’?
I did a quick sweep of the cupboards and found a box of my stuff Belle Mere had been storing in happier times and a pile of pictures. These pictures were The GR’s photographs from an exhibition he had when we lived in France. They once hung in the Belle Mere’s bathroom and now here they were, no longer wanted. I was devastated, no matter how I tried to look at it, it came back to not being good. I hid them away and put the bottle of Johnnie Walker black label I had got The GR as his moving in present on the table. This is from a standing joke from when he had moved his mother previously and they had found a bottle of Johnnie Walker left in a high cupboard. He had joked that it might be his reward for helping move his mum but she had refused and ended up giving it to her brother for doing nothing! Every time we visited The GR would jokingly say: ‘Where’s my bottle of Johhnie Walker?’.
When the removal men and The GR arrived all smiles and isn’t it a lovely flat, I bit my tongue. He saw the bottle on the table and said: ‘Ah perhaps that is a welcoming gesture, a peace offering, things might be looking up, that is a significant reference’. I bit my lip. A hour later he started to tell me the story of moving his mother (I know I was there I thought to myself, …and she obviously bought me that as a…. ‘I bought it for you’, I said almost inaudibly, but my lamb heard me loud and clear.
We heard through the grapevine that the really useless brother and girlfriend had beenflown over to see the Belle Mere’s new house that weekend and they all had a house warming BBQ in the garden. (Down the road!) How nice.
No one can touch us now, it may take a while to unwind but we keep smiling and saying it’s ours, it’s ours. Well, technically it is the banks but lets not pour water on the fireworks eh.
My balcony garden is coming along I now have a herb box of basil, coriander, mint and thyme; two red geraniums and a white cosmos. And I’ve been eyeing a dwarf olive tree on the internet for my birthday at the end of September.
I booked a removals company yesterday and am going to start packing up stuff on the 1st July. So we are really buying our flat and moving. In – gulp – 23 days.
I should come up with a list of things I’d really like to do in town before we go. Not that things won’t still be accessible, we’re only going to be a bus ride away, but it won’t be the same as getting up and walking there. I’m strongly considering the Zoo, although the last time I went, as a student, (admittedly several years ago) it made me cry – the tiger looked mad and was pacing back and forth in it’s tiny enclosure and the monkeys were sad and haunted. Plus it is ridiculously expensive, I’m not sounding like it’s a good idea am I!
It’s coming up to 7.30am, Erbie and I have already had a trip to the shop for waffles (this mornings demand for breakfast) and I need to shower and get us dressed before getting the bus up to visit Belle Mere in our flat to be.
I’m not sure what I’ll do when we actually have the deeds signed over, I’m not going to keep up these weekly visits, that is for sure, but then again I can’t cut her off from Erbie altogether, for his sake as much as hers. Once a month is enough for any grandmother surely? Unless of course The GR and the Belle Mere miraculously make up, stranger things happen at sea.
Posts
All Comments
