Life – Page 3 – Call Me Mother

Slugs, Spiders and Hen Food

Country life and its difference from that of the urban experience was emphasised, yet again this week, as I chatted and socialised with friends. Fern, who has lived in the village all her life (as have many of the others) and who still sees her parents every day, reduced me to tears with the retelling of a day last year. Her two year old daughter wandered in from the garden chewing merrily and determinedly. Upon inspection, she was discovered to be clutching the remains of a slug. Chuckling at my appalled expression, Gill chipped in with the tale of a local mum who had summoned her daughter after spotting two lines on her bottom lip. Mouth prised open, said child was interrupted in her attempts to consume a large house spider. The remains of the slug and the damp, but otherwise uninjured, spider were retrieved and discarded with minimum fuss. Life went on. It is definitely different from London!

Filled with determination to embrace the “have a go at everything and expect almost certain success” attitude I admire so much in my local friends, I decided to purchase and take home a 25kg sack of food pellets for our hens. (It’s a task I usually delegate to the men in my life!) Using a trolley – no mean feat in itself – I wrestled the sack from the floor and conveyed it to the till of the animal feed store. Focussed concentration and dogged determination got the sack from the trolley to the car, but no further. After much contemplation – and a cuppa! – I realised that the answer to everything was our trusty wheelbarrow. Surveying the horizon to check that none of my sensible and eminently respectable neighbours were in view, I dashed into the road with the wheelbarrow and positioned it next to the car door. Muttering and grunting, I hoisted the sack from the vehicle into the wheelbarrow (of course, just as a neighbour appeared from nowhere) and after a smug jig of victory, I drove the sack to the back garden. It wasn’t much in the eyes of the world, but to me it was a giant step in my resolution to live more positively in 2012 than I have ever lived before. How are your resolutions going?

O Christmas Tree!

Having spent the last week being trained for my new job – and loving it – I walked into town to pay my weekly visit to the greengrocer. Basket in hand, I set forth in hot pursuit of coriander leaves, butternut squashes and boiled sweets. En-route, I was leafleted by an acquaintance distributing invitations to the official “switching on” of the Christmas tree lights. An event to be followed by a live nativity complete with animals, a four day old baby, mince pies and hot drinks!

Thus propelled into the festive spirit, we went in search of the unillumined topiary. Oh dear, oh dear! If there is a sadder tree propped crookedly for all to witness its pathetic inadequacy, I would hate to see it. Our poor tree is – well, average. Its height, shape and colour are all average (at best) and its only remarkable feature is its wonkiness and accompanying crib scene “kindly donated by the Knights of St. Columba”. (If you’ve never heard of them, join the club; we hadn’t either. But, like everything else, they can be googled.)

This evening, festive spirit firmly in place, we shall watch the miracle of fairy lights transforming our mediocre specimen into a tree “fit for purpose”, before dashing to mince pies, live animals and a newborn baby. Happy days!

True Worship

I went to London, this week, to be interviewed by a social worker on behalf of friends desiring to adopt a child. Such a long way to travel and a rare opportunity to meet friends afterwards, we conspired to rendezvous at Westfield Stratford, study the Olympic Park in progress and share a meal before wending our weary ways home. What an eye opener.

The tube, always one of the least attractive aspects of London and that day home to a suicide at Embankment, has further disintegrated into a heaving and entombing mass of sweaty, seething, censorious humanity. Ears afflicted by tinny tones, shallow conversation and neighing guffaws (trust me that was just the businessmen), I alighted into a bottle neck of eager worshippers tortuously snaking down steps and through doors to the temple to materialism which is Westfield.

Propelled through doors, a mere panic attack away from the station entrance, Westfield is the essential experience for the 21^st century. Thousands of bodies bejewelled, bedecked and often prancing on six inch killer heels and platformed soles, writhed, seethed and simpered their way around the modern day tower of Babel. Every class, colour, creed and nationality appeared to be represented. Literally thousands of bodies being whisked up and down elevators, in and out of units, queuing for LSD styled thrills in artificially darkened retail outlets. This truly is The Age of Aquarius. Fondling coats and jackets priced at hundreds of pounds a piece whilst validating and venerating the creators, true worshippers were satiated.

Across a bridge spanning railway tracks (literally and obviously on the wrong side of the tracks) lies Stratford Broadway; the old, dishevelled, fast-becoming-redundant shopping centre – reeling in the shadow of its larger, glossier, endlessly more decadent successor – which has faithfully served its impoverished community for more than twenty years. Surrounded by struggling, dingy and depressing independent shops whose exteriors – and interiors – are rundown, familiar, once-essential aspects of the traditional environment of East London, Stratford Broadway (where shawls cost a pound and coats, eight), appears to hear its own death knell and eulogy.

No juxtapositioning could better sum up the cause of UK rioting and dissatisfaction. Yet the faithful pilgrims, consumed by their passion, fail to notice the plague already rooted in their midst as they blithely worship at a shrine in which not one single shop is life sustaining or prolonging.

I invite you, I encourage you – visit Westfield Stratford. Don’t just take my word for it; stand and watch – go to hell yourself.