My mum as a child with my grandparents

Imagine all your memories, amassed over a lifetime, handwritten in tiny lettering on a deck of cards, neatly stacked in chronological order. Then imagine someone deftly shuffling this deck: fancy fingerwork as they expertly weave and riffle the cards until there is no order whatsoever. They replace the shuffled cards carefully on the table in front of you and look you directly in the eye, stony-faced. You’re confused: why would they do that?

A sudden gust of wind from an open window blows the cards into the air, sending them in all directions. You scrabble to catch them, to gather your precious memories up and re-stack them as they were in the original pile, but it’s no use: some have disappeared out of the window; one has gone, unnoticed, down the back of the sofa. A few have slipped under the television unit. The ones you have left are jumbled and, try as you might, you just can’t seem to sort them into any logical order. Distressed and frustrated, you scatter them over the table, rest your head on your folded arms, and begin to cry….

My maternal grandfather has dementia.

As I contemplate the way the illness has robbed him of his memories, that’s the image that I conjure up in my mind’s eye: of an elderly man, sitting alone at the table in the modest council house he shared with my nan for most of their lives (before she passed away some years ago), desperately trying to remember things.

He is surrounded by nick-nacks and keepsakes and fading pictures in frames; stacks of old black and white films on VHS that he used to watch continuously but whose storylines he now struggles to follow. The decor is old-fashioned, the swirly carpet a nod to the Seventies, yet the house is neat and carefully maintained. Murphy, his faithful Irish setter, sits at his feet, his head resting on Grandad’s knee.

For several years we would visit him; the trips to the house in South East London taking me back to my childhood, when Nan would serve up beans and sausages from her 1950s stove for my sister and I; my grandad smoking a pipe and twisting his pipe-cleaners into stickmen for us. In the summer my nan would show us how the snapdragons growing in their little back yard looked like bunny rabbits, whilst grandad tinkered away fixing things in his shed. When my mum came to pick us up they’d wave from the gate until our car rounded the bend.

Returning as an adult always felt strange as the house seemed to shrink: I felt like Alice In Wonderland after drinking the potion. Years later I’d visit him occasionally after work; Grandad preparing milky tea and a Fray Bentos pie for me, whilst Murphy the red setter casually released silent stinkbombs under the table.

Gradually it became apparent that Grandad would not be able to live alone for much longer. He started misplacing things; getting increasingly paranoid, confused and upset; calling the police to report perceived thefts of “stolen” belongings; starting his morning routine with a wet shave in the middle of the night.

Eventually he moved into a care home. The thing with dementia is that long periods of total memory loss, whereby the sufferer cannot remember what happened two minutes ago, are interspersed with occasional spells of complete lucidity. It’s fair to say that many of the residents of the home have less frequent lucid moments than Grandad, so sometimes he gets bored. Recently, he spoke about “escaping” – breaking out of the secure residential building and making a break for freedom. My mum, who is also his main caregiver outside the home, brushed it off and changed the subject.

A strong-willed old chap, 89-year-old Grandad is in otherwise rude health. Never one to do as he’s told (I wondered where I’d inherited that trait from), he hatched a plan – a plan so cunning that the local mischievous fox would’ve struggled to better it.

Waiting till the dead of night, Grandad got out of bed and dressed silently, putting on an extra layer against the December chill. Tiptoeing along the corridors, he ducked past the carers’ office, slipping into the laundry room and out of the unlocked fire escape. Excitement building, he scurried down the path out into the crisp night air, leaves and twigs crunching underfoot in the rural setting of the Kent countryside. Freezing cold, but warmed by the euphoria of victory, he marched on…

Until some time later, when one of the carers noticed the open door and, panicking, alerted the police – who duly located him walking along a deserted street in the early hours of the morning and returned him safely home. It was the first time the home had ever had a resident “on the run.” When my mum got the call in the middle of the night, she immediately feared the worst. However, upon arrival at the care home at 5am, she was greeted by the sight of Grandad, ruddy-faced with cold and excitement, sipping a mug of hot tea as he animatedly regaled the police officers with tales of his escapades in Kenya during the war.

When Mum rang to tell me about Grandad’s little adventure it was hard not to chuckle, as we admired his sly determination and resourcefulness: “Good old G-Dad!” was my initial reaction (obviously after hearing that he was safe and well). “There’s life in the old dog yet!” I joked, marvelling at his “great escape.” Mum recounted how he’d told the officers with an eyeball roll that it was “like living in Pentonville.”

There was a brief pause, as we both let that comment sink in. The mood turned sombre. In the cold light of day, Grandad had absolutely no recollection of the previous night’s shenanigans, asking instead where various relatives were – all of whom have long since passed away.

We both know – we ALL know – the reality: that it’s not the care home holding Grandad prisoner.
It’s dementia.

My grandad and I

The post Grandad’s Great Escape appeared first on Life: A Birds Eye View.

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Having been a big blonde fish in the small pond that was Foster’s Primary, it was quite a shock when I rocked up for my first day at the imposing Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School, aka Chis ‘n’ Sid, or “Chis ‘n’ Sad” as it was sneeringly labelled by the local rival school pupils.

Standing head and shoulders above every other eleven year old didn’t preclude me from being picked on; within days I was blubbing into the foyer payphone to my mum, having had a swarm of older kids buzzing round my solitary seat in the dinner hall, swiping my lunch from under my nose and devouring it in seconds as I protested weakly.

My family had earlier nicknamed me Olive Oyl (remember Popeye’s love interest?), albeit a blonde-haired version, due to my trademark slicked-back low ponytail, long gangly limbs and lanky, awkward gait; despite my best efforts I struggled to blend into the sea of uncertain babyfaced pre-teens whose eyes were level with my washboard chest.

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I didn’t know a single soul in this seemingly huge, intimidating school, and consequently was overcome with loneliness. My starchy new uniform felt alien, it’s newness making it stiff and itchy: oversized lurid purple blazer (“you’ll grow into it!”), unflattering grey A-line skirt, lilac shirt, box-fresh black shoes….all regulation down to the elasticated purse belt and grey granny knickers. I may as well have had “newbie” written on my forehead in black marker.

Despite my fears, I soon formed tentative friendships with a gaggle of kind-faced girls and we slowly settled in, customising the ugly garb as best we could: rolling the waistband of the school-shop skirt up a few inches here, untucking our shirts a bit there, scrunching down white knee-high socks around skinny ankles. Although all the pupils were united in our collective dislike of the uniform, the vastly differing personalities beneath the ensemble started to show and various cliques began to form: The Cool Kids, Boffins, Geeks, Inbetweeners and Goths.

Unlike at primary school, it quickly became apparent that showing any hint of intelligence was not a good thing, at least not in the eyes of the Cool Kids, who gained credibility by being as disruptive as possible, much to the blood vessel-popping frustration of some of the teachers. To be labelled a “Boffin” was the most scathing of insults.

The roll-call of teachers’ names read like characters from a Roald Dahl* novel: Mr Clarence Trotz, Mr Forsdick, Mss Rust and Crust the PE teachers, Mr Pitts, Tony Tipping (nicknamed Angel Delight as he was a schoolgirl’s dream topping). Miss Naylor (nail-her?), the voluptuous young English teacher who’d make the testosterone-pumped teen boys drool.

Then there was Mr Jenkins, the red-faced French teacher who was partial to a tipple so constantly wore dark sunglasses, even in winter. He’d secure the boys to the desks by their ties and kick our rucksacks out of the gangway as he paced up and down reciting ‘topic vocab’ from the overhead projector, sometimes opening a first-floor window to casually sling out a bag that crossed his path. One boy in my class took umbrage to this, so cunningly placed a few bricks in his rucksack and left it in the walkway. We all held our breath as he took a swing at that bag…

The teachers with a sense of humour but an iron fist were generally the most successful. It was a battle of wills; they knew that any sign of weakness on their part would quickly result in chaos. Some resorted to aggression to restore order – throwing board rubbers at pupils’ heads (Mr Franklin, History) was effective, slamming down books on tables…less so. Mr “Angry” Anderson the English teacher kept a water-filled Jif lemon bottle in his drawer, squirting it in people’s ears if they played up, which was quite innovative, I thought.

‘Orrible Mr Horrobin the PE/Rugby teacher frequently terrorised us as we passed his turf of the Games block, appearing like a troll from under a bridge, firing off orders machine-gun style “Get off the grass!” “tuck in your shirts!” “bags off shoulders!” – the consequence for repeat offenders being mind-numbing plimsole-whitening detentions.

The German teachers had a management style all of their own: Herr Fischer’s risqué remarks and lingering glances simply stunned us into silence; Mr Ashby’s Spam obsession (the cheap meat variety, not junk emails) and classroom sheepdog trials were just plain random. The only German I remember him teaching me was “Is the sausage married?”  “No, he’s Die Wurst” (divorced). Groan.

Mr Sennett was our headmaster, a wizened old vulture, half-moon glasses perched atop hook nose. We nicknamed him Senex, the Latin word for “old man”. (Well, we were grammar school kids; even our jokes were intellectual). The thick-skinned velociraptor would stride around, teeth bared, muttering “Guttersnipes!” under his breath, his chosen descriptor for his most unruly charges. He was offset by the kindly Mr Lightwood, his top-heavy deputy, who I remember as rotund and jolly, like a friendly robin red-breast.

There were daily dramas to be punished: boys fighting in the playground, girls smoking in the toilets, metal spatulas heated in bunsen burners then held on the backs of necks during chemistry experiments, water-filled balloon bombs in summer, half-dissected organs tossed at squeamish, squealing girls in Biology.

Like today’s anti-terror police, the teachers had the exhausting task of constantly trying to foil fresh and inventive attacks whilst simultaneously attempting to educate us. If this was how grammar school kids behaved, I can only imagine what was going on down the road at the comprehensives: Hurstmere for boys and Blackfen for girls.

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Two things every secondary school pupil had in common were raging hormones and dubious Eighties fashion sense. By ’89 we were teenagers, sporting Savile-worthy shellsuits and poodle-like perms. My wardrobe was a lairy mix of Naf Naf, Ton Sur Ton, Nike Air Max, Kickers, Wallabees, bellbottom flares, leggings and Benetton sweatshirts, accessorized with red Rimmel lipstick, a gold belcher chain, a keeper ring and gold hoop earrings. Even Mr T would have balked at that weighty jewellery combo. When I say gold, I may actually mean gold-coloured. It’s a wonder my ears didn’t turn green and drop off in protest. The boys didn’t fare much better, with long hair tied in a ponytail being the style of choice in neighbouring schools (ours had a strict ‘no hair below the collar’ rule), and ‘curtains’ for Chis and Sid boys, or those simply preferring a less effeminate ‘do’. It’s a miracle anyone got a snog, ever.

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The theme tune to my early teenage years was anything by Bros. I was a bona fide Brosette, right down to the Grolsch bottle tops on my shoes: Matt Goss was my God and I would bow down before his poster on my wall. I also loved Madonna, Kylie, Salt N Pepa, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, En Vogue, Technotronic, Soul To Soul and Nirvana, as well as my parents’ Beatles and Motown classics.

I would lie on my bed listening to the Top 40 on the radio or a mixtape I’d made myself, with toothpaste smeared on my pubescent pimples reading More magazine, Smash Hits or Mizz, or poring over a Judy Blume novel such as “Forever,” which read like a self-help manual for angst-ridden teens. Then I’d pour my innermost thoughts into my diaries, until my younger sister got her mitts on them and read them aloud Jackanory-style to my horrified mother.

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As I got older, being the tallest amongst my pals had it’s advantages: I could saunter into the off-license dangling a spare set of ‘borrowed’ car keys from my finger and casually emerge minutes later laden with booty.

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Despite my best efforts to the contrary, I kept getting selected for the cross-country team and swimming gala, the mere mention of either causing me to break out in a cold sweat, not least because we had the most unflattering PE kit imaginable. It had clearly been designed by a nun for maximum sex-hormone suppression: a white aertex (so far, so standard), but the Bridget Jones-style purple knickers with circulation-stopping elastic around the thighs were unforgiving to say the least. Add thick knee-high purple hockey socks and voila! The look was complete. The only reason I was so good at running was my theory that the faster I moved the harder it would be for anyone to actually focus on that horrendously unbecoming attire. Sloshing through muddy bog, legs mottled like roadmaps from the cold, I’d grit my teeth and vow to run more slowly in future.

Then there were the overseas school trips: first to Boulogne in France where we stayed in a grotty hostel munching horsemeat burgers, then later to the Black Forest in Germany where the teachers foolishly allowed us kids to buy cheap alcohol at the supermarket and everyone got completely trollied on the last night, resulting in an emergency doctor being called to treat the resulting casualties and the frazzled teachers vowing never to run another trip. It wasn’t just the pupils causing scandals though, quite the reverse, with one married music teacher having a torrid affair with a teenage pupil, another allegedly being caught getting frisky al fresco (and rumour had it, al-desko) with another man.

Am I painting a murky picture of my school days? Maybe. But despite all the angst and drama, drinking and detentions, there was plenty of studying too. That part just isn’t such fun to recount.

Like ugly ducklings to swans, we finally emerged from incarceration seven years later clutching a plethora of top-grade GCSE and A-level certificates.

Feeling euphoric at our new-found freedom, we stepped across the threshold of the dimly-lit school foyer and out into the big wide world, blinking in the sunlight, ready to begin our adult lives…

*Roald himself was a Bexley boy, who worked with the brilliant illustrator Quentin Blake, a former pupil at our school who remarked that he took inspiration from his teachers

Sam x


Fancy reading my back-story before you go any further? You can find my other blogs at:

www.costaricachica1.blogspot.com
www.samgoessolo.blogspot.com
www.mummymission.blogspot.com
www.worldwidewalsh.blogspot.com

Follow me:

Twitter: @SamanthaWalsh76 (Life:ABird’sEyeView)
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The post Smells Like Cheap Spirits appeared first on Life: A Birds Eye View.

I’m no religious nut, but indulge me in a moment’s imaginative thinking here, if you will. When God/Allah/Will o’ the Wisp/<insert name of your chosen deity here> was sitting on a cloud, idly coming up with his “commandments” during a quiet moment when he wasn’t inventing a flesh-eating spider or unfairly distributing the world’s drinking water, he left out the most important one of all : Thou Shalt Not Take Shit.

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Now I’m not advocating nutting anyone who happens to step on your toe on the 7.56 cattle-class commuter train to Charing Cross, or dreaming up new and novel ways to execute that colleague who doesn’t share your ‘alternative’ world view….nah, we’ll leave that stuff to ISIS. What I’m referring to is having a finely-tuned BS detector, a Wrong’un Radar if you will, and not, under any circumstances, letting anyone take advantage of your agreeable nature.

For me, it’s a no-brainer. It has simply always been thus. As the eldest child, you have to assert yourself from an early age. Show the younger sibs who’s boss. If you don’t lay down the law of the land the minute your mum spawns the second child, there’s gonna be a mutiny. You can’t have the third in line to the throne getting above their station. That way trouble lies. They’ll have their clammy little mitts in your Play Doh mixing up all the pretty bright colours into a mulched murky mass of camoflaged green before you can say “Doh….n’t you dare!”

I reckon birth order definitely plays a part when it comes to no-nonsense attitudes.

And birth signs? Possibly.

I’m not one for sitting cross-legged gazing into a crystal ball with a chunk of rose quartz in my bra to balance my heart chakra, chanting “Ommmm” with a joint dangling from my lips, but there may be some truth behind birth sign behavioural traits.

I, for example, am the very definition of an Aries, the first sign of the Zodiac as symbolised by the ram, and rams do not take any shit. Forceful, decisive, spontaneous; a fracas with me is likely to involve me dipping my head and charging full-throttle, horns first. About as subtle as a brick through a window, my mouth engages long before the brain has a chance to question the wisdom of my latest outpouring. It’s like I have no control over what comes out of my mouth – I’m genuinely as surprised by what tumbles out as the person I’m chatting to. I have no filters.

Having spent a lifetime surrounded by those from different zodiacal zones, I can vouch for air and water signs displaying much more laid-back qualities. Being married to a super-chilled Aquarius certainly made for some interesting scenes. In his words, I was a human pestle-and-mortar; my headstrong nature eventually “ground him into a paste.” Meanwhile, his meandering lackadaisical attitude bordering on total inertia drove me to near-demonic distraction.

As I get older, it’s getting harder to suffer fools. In my younger days, my direct nature was countered somewhat by the awareness of my inequality in terms of life experience; I respected my elders.

Now I AM an elder, it’s harder to bite my lip when someone digs me out. One bonus of having under-eyes wrinklier than an elephant’s scrotum is that people know they can’t talk down to you anymore. Even if you work in retail. Especially if you work in retail. Comments that may once have sent me bawling hysterically to the stockroom to sob are now just water off a duck’s back.

Come at me with some derogatory remark and it’ll simply deflect from my hardened shell. I’m tougher than a stag beetle’s back these days. My wings are like a shield of steel. No wait….that’s Batfink. But you catch my drift.

Put simply, I ain’t taking no crap from nobody.

So is it nature, nurture, or a gradually-developed skill?  Perhaps a combination of all three.

We all know people who are perpetual victims. The human doormats who question why, time and again, people wipe their big muddy Doc Martens all over them. It’s painful to watch as they get repeatedly taken advantage of, as those clumsy clodhoppers gradually wear out their “Welcome.” If you don’t want to be a doormat, get off the damn floor.

Being mates with a doormat is like watching an old flickering black-and-white movie where the vulnerable woman is screaming as she’s tied to the railtrack, the steamtrain chugging furiously towards her. You watch the unfolding scene through your fingers as you know she’s about to get hit. Only this real-life victim has willingly laid down on the tracks, her arms outstretched as she lamely allows herself to be tied down with rope. In the life of a true victim that steam train doesn’t stop at the last second. It doesn’t stop at all.

People only treat you as you allow yourself to be treated. You have to stand up for yourself. Of course, I don’t advocate violence, and anyway it’s not necessary. If you assert yourself early on, people know not to cross you. You teach people how to treat you.

When I was leaving primary school, all the children were given a dictionary, which our teachers wrote good luck wishes in. My form teacher, Mr Redman, wrote a message which did not make much sense to my eleven year old self:

“You are a child of the universe,
No less than the trees and the stars”

 

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That was one of the most valuable lessons you gave me, Mr Redman. The poem is inspiring in so many ways, with so much accurate advice. But the part that you were highlighting was the part that my insecure, vulnerable younger self needed to hear. I finally understood what you were telling me with that message all those years earlier:

“Know your value….and don’t take any shit.”

me sitting next to Mr Redman

Sam x


Fancy reading my back-story before you go any further? You can find my other blogs at:

www.costaricachica1.blogspot.com
www.samgoessolo.blogspot.com
www.mummymission.blogspot.com
www.worldwidewalsh.blogspot.com

Follow me:

Twitter: @SamanthaWalsh76 (Life:ABird’sEyeView)
Facebook: @lifeabirdseyeview
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