Evita’s Cadiz Mystery by Adam Rutter

Edward looked at the view of whitewashed buildings from his hotel room, watching terraced houses turn crimson-red at sunset. Looking down, he saw a woman looking through a pair of binoculars, by the roadside. The binoculars were attached to a tripod. The woman had been looking in the same direction probably within the last ten minutes. Maybe more. She was still looking through the binoculars, at the same spot, shortly after sundown. Even when turquoise blue skies faded into twilight, it was still bright enough to see right across the village. She was at a viewpoint, which offered a panorama of Vejer De La Frontera for tourists. Situated in Cadiz province, in southern Spain, Vejer De La Frontera nestled in the valleys of Andalucia, a remote location that was isolated from a city. Edward had visited Spain many times. He used to go to the Pyrenees, trekking the entire breadth of the mountain range, from Cataluna, to Andorra. This was the first time he stayed in Andalusia. It was popular with hikers like Edward, including the occasional globetrotter passing through.

 

The woman opened her rucksack, and took out a camera. She attached the telephoto lens, and then began taking snaps. The village was built in a natural arena with the best vantage point from the hillside. Since his arrival, he had seen tourists taking selfies at the viewpoint. Had he seen anybody else looking at the vista through binoculars?Apparently not. The woman was the only visitor he had seen using binoculars. Edward saw the odd photographer taking single shots, whereas he was watching her taking multiple shots. By now it was dusk. There was only a few moments till nightfall. Edward walked out of the hotel, wandering to the other side of the road. He leaned against the wall, pretending to admire the view, watching the full moon popping up from behind the houses lining the crest of the hill.

‘You know this scenery will still be here tomorrow,’ said Edward.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, talking with a Spanish accent.

‘You can see this scenery a thousand times, but it’ll always look different every time you come here.’

‘I’ve not come for the scenery.’

‘So I take it that you’re on vacation.’

‘I’m here just for tonight.’

‘Are you visiting relatives?’

‘I will cut to the chase. I'm here on official capacity.’

‘A business trip, huh?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Is it the first time you’ve come here?’

‘My first and last.’

‘Let’s introduce ourselves.’

‘Let’s start with you first, shall we?’

‘Oh. Okay. My name is Ed. And you?’

‘Evita.’

‘It’s good to meet you Evita.’

‘It’s good to meet you Evita. I was thinking...’

‘Would please excuse me? I have an early appointment scheduled for tomorrow. I'm sorry to cut our meeting short,’ said Evita, putting her equipment away.

‘Have a good night Ed,’ she continued, putting her return on. She cut down a narrow cobbled street. Her anklebootsclattered on the cobbles, echoing underneath the arch, subsiding towards the valley, falling into silence. The street lamps flicked on. The village was as quiet as the evening.

 

The following day, Edward cut down the cobbled street, stopped at a café for a cappuccino, which was in the middle of a narrow street, just a few blocks away from the hotel. Walking out of the café was a woman wearing a black dress with a white collar, taking the cappuccino to Edward’s table.

‘Here you go,’ she said.

This time, she spoke with an American accent.

‘Hello Evita,’ said Edward.

She looked up, her eyes popping out like a cork.

‘Ed!’

‘You were here just for the night huh,’ he said.

‘I can’t discuss it now Ed.’

‘Discuss what?’

‘The mission.’

‘Mission? Oh, by the way, whatever happened to the lingo?’

‘Please don’t Ed.’

‘You were just shunning me last night.’

‘It’s not my job to shun people.’

‘No, because you’re working at a hospitality.’

‘Not for long.’

‘Oh, just for tonight again, is it?’

‘I’ll be staying as long as my services are required.’

‘Why? Are you on a contract?’

‘To cut the long story short Ed, I'm a private investigator.’

‘Oh so you’re investigating me, are you?’

‘Maybe.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Does the name Stephen Wentworth mean anything to you?’

‘Sure. He's the guy who went missing in 2021.’

‘So you know about his disappearance then? ‘

‘Of course. He was my best pal.’

‘Where is he now then?’

‘How should I know? I haven't seen Stephen since he went missing.’

‘When was the last time you saw Stephen?’

‘A few days before his disappearance. Why are you asking me all this?’

‘What if I told you that Stephen Wentworth is in Frontera?’

‘You've got to be kidding me. What! Stephen out here? No way.’

Evita’s face was as serious as somebody being told bad news.

‘He is here. Isn't he,’ asked Edward. ‘He is in this village. Tell me,’ he continued.

‘Yes. He is.’

‘How d'you know?’

‘I saw him.’

‘When?’

‘Last night.’

‘Hey!?’

‘The moment you spoke to me at the viewpoint, that’s when I saw Stephen.’

The Cut by Jennie Hart

 Cut feels like a sharp word; it is very short and literally, to the point.

‘To Cut’ can be a verb, meaning: ‘an incision or a wound from a sharp-edged object’. ‘Cut’ can also be a noun, meaning ‘a narrow incision in the skin caused by something sharp’.

If the letters are reversed, it becomes TUC, a popular, salty cracker available in every British supermarket; or, with the same three letters, it can stand for the TUC, an acronym for Trades Union Congress, a federation of trade unions. I knew and was an admirer of the deceased Lord Len Murray of Epping Forest, the President of the TUC until 1984. His son Stephen, the longest serving member of Epping Forest District Council, is still my good friend, and, like his kind and caring father, has a passion for equality. But ‘tuc’ is a diversion, and so I return to ‘cut’.

Recently in a Somerset pub I talked to a stranger, a young man called Ben who eventually told me he had a disability. Although it was a sultry, warm, summer’s day, he wore a brown cloth, trapper hat, which he removed to show me a deep indentation in his skull. He described how a heavy scaffolding pole had crashed on to his bare head with great force. He announced with pride that he had endured fifty stitches from neck to forehead. I confided that I too had needed sixty- five stitches transversely on my skull after the removal of a meningioma. We had both endured significant cuts which miraculously had ensured our present wellbeing.

‘The Cut’ is the name of a street south of the Thames near Waterloo Station with both the Old Vic and the Young Vic on either side. Leading from the Cut is Lower Marsh Street where there used to be a shop called Radio Days. After his death, I sold my father’s clothing to Radio Days, a vintage outlet. My dad was a bit of a ’clothes-horse’; he had grown up in an era when working class men would dress smartly and with pride on their day off, possibly emulating their bosses. Unlike most men, dad loved to shop and although a working-class man, he would buy high quality well-made clothing; bespoke suits, elegant bowler hats, soft felt trilbies, and spectacular ties and braces. Radio Days promptly made me an offer for his unique wardrobe although they were not over-generous. I was also glad to sell them several boxes of Playboy magazines which had once littered our home when I was a child. I had hated them.

I often listen to This Cultural Life on Radio Three and only this week heard Salman Rushdie speak about his life and the fatwa placed upon him by Ayatollah Khomeini in the nineteen seventies. Salman’s latest autobiography is titled The Knife and recalls the violent knife attack made upon him on August 12, 2022, by a would-be assassin. The black-clad stranger leapt out of the audience of a thousand devotees gathered to hear Salman give a lecture on safety in the public domain for well-known people; a terrible but ironic happening. I read a few reviews and learned it is a tale of many cuts. He was stabbed over and over again and describes how his eye lolled on his cheek like a large soft-boiled egg. The content sounds painful to read and tells of his slow recovery. One reputable review describes the work as a courageous attempt at free speech, but as being shot through with self-regard, making it a hard book to admire. Salman has made a remarkable recovery, not least because of the devotion of the medical profession, but to have endured such an attack and survived, should have made him very, very humble.

Monochrome by Irena Szirtes

A nurse in Nazi Germany

 She is a paper person with

No name, face alone,

Fixed within a tiny square,

Phantom-frail, ever-framed

By nurse’s headdress,

Cross falling forward.

Marbled, monochrome,

Flattened, unflustered,

Compressed and conformed,

Her eyes conceal soul.

Yet the bone and blood of her,

The Germanness of her,

The medical white-aproned starch of her

Saved his life, a Pole,

At risk of her own.

He escaped on discharge,

Paper person pocketed

Flimsy as a fairy-wing.

Did love skulk through the

Brain-splattered, blood-flavoured,

Lymph-spilled, limb-wracked

Shrieking wreckage of war,

Of which he was ashamed?

He must find Polish forces –

Did she know? Faded yet full-on,

The photo does its utmost

To frame her as a follower -

Yet I am here because

She gave him penicillin.

She stole herself, breath, bone

And blood, to fight fear of

Firing squads, to risk herself,

Her beating heart, her living soul

For love.

Cruel Cuts by Elizabeth Obadina

June 2024: Nigeria's First Lady leads the campaign against FGM 

My normally happy baby would not stop crying. She reached out to me from her grandmother’s arms. Her grandmother minutes before had asked me to do a stock check and I had left my daughter with her grand mother whilst I counted bales of newly imported cloth in the storeroom of my mother-in-law’s home. What had caused this sudden infant meltdown? More to the point, why were there threads of red cotton dripping with engine oil dangling from my four-month-old baby’s ears?

“You see, it’s nothing to worry about,” my mother-in-law sought to reassure me. “I took her to the clinic (next door) and had Obalende* do it.”

‘It’ - was ear-piercing, and Mrs Obalende* was a London trained midwife who had returned to Nigeria to provide midwifery services to women in the Lagos neighbourhood my mother-in-law lived in. She was a lovely lady, who ran a spotless clinic nevertheless I had been quite explicit. I had not wanted my daughter’s ears pierced whilst she was such a little baby. My mother-in-law however had other ideas. How was my daughter going to wear the gold earrings she had planned for her to wear at her christening if her ears weren’t pierced?

“Just keep moving the thread and putting on new engine oil until she’s ready to wear gold studs,” my mother-in-law continued and, misconstruing my appalled silence for concern about the method of the ear-piercing, she added, “that’s how we do it. It’s fine and the engine oil is antiseptic.” She handed me a pot of engine oil with my baby. “Use it until I bring the gold,” she said.

My silence could not be broken. If I had spoken out, I probably would have screamed unprintable, unforgiveable things to my mother-in-law. I might have done worse, but I bottled my explosive feelings and forced myself to be ‘sensible’. In 2024 google maps tell me that I could make a 3-day, 2-hour and 45 minutes’ drive, ‘in light traffic’, from Lagos Nigeria, home to Greater London via Marseilles, the Sahara with several Islamic and military insurrections en route, but in 1980 the 4,200 plus miles were even harder to bridge. I couldn’t run home. In 1980 I couldn’t even easily phone home. Besides ‘home’ had been Lagos since 1979 and my unwitting husband wasn’t responsible for his mother’s actions – but he was going to have to ‘do something’.

I was fearful, and adrift in an unfamiliar culture, I saw the ear piercing as the tip of an ugly iceberg of female harm perpetrated by women upon girls in the name of tradition. I had been working with doctors, social workers and UNICEF writing reports about female genital mutilation, glibly dismissed then as ‘female circumcision’. Nigeria is a country made up of over 300 different groups of people, speaking over 300 different languages but some traditional cutting practices united many of them: namely male and female circumcision and facial marking. I knew that the Edo people of the ancient Benin Kingdom practised female circumcision from time immemorial. My mother-in-law was Edo. She kept telling me, “When in Rome …” – a phrase she’d picked up from her British managers whilst working in London – and I feared for my child. I insisted that my husband raise the issue with his mother – there was to be no cutting of my daughter, no cultural misunderstandings at all.

“Of course not!!” was my mother-in-law’s outraged reply – but her caveat was hardly reassuring. “Your husband’s father’s people don’t do that,” she said, which then left me fearful about what the traditionalists amongst my husband’s father’s people did deem permissible regarding cutting babies. My husband’s father, a very modern Yoruba-man from western Nigeria had not married a Yoruba, but an Edo girl with traditional beliefs. Sadly, he had died. He had been a city-man, western educated, Christian, who preferred western fashions, not Nigerian. He had rejected most traditional titles and practices, but he was no longer around to protect his granddaughter. What might my mother-in-law think appropriate for the first-born child of their first-born son? I didn’t know and to be completely fair my husband didn’t either, but what I did know, was that what my mother-in-law thought should happen in order to honour her late husband’s culture, might not be what my late father-in-law would have approved of or sanctioned at all.

Adetutu Alabi - A Yoruba-Nigerian model with facial markings

I did know that many Yoruba people, like many Nigerian people, bear facial markings. Scars which might indicate first born status or royal heritage both of which applied to my baby daughter. I vowed to never leave any of my little children alone with my mother-in-law again. Who knew what facial decoration they might return home with because their grandmother had decided to ‘do the right thing’ by her husband’s people? My husband thought my fears somewhat ridiculous, absurd to say the least. He was OK; his father had rejected such old-fashioned ways, but then, his father wasn’t around anymore. 

Whilst my husband’s work as a journalist made him intimately aware of the politics and economics of Nigeria my work as a journalist had opened my eyes to the more traditional aspects of Nigerian life and in particular the challenges faced by Nigerian women.

Maternal and infant mortality was a major health concern in 1980. It still is. Some despairing mothers kept giving birth to babies who never survived childhood. Such babies, known as ‘abiku’ by the Yorubas and ‘ogbanje’ by the Igbos of western and eastern Nigeria respectively, are now believed to be born to parents probably carrying the sickle-cell anaemia trait which without treatment often killed them. Mothers would do anything to keep their latest baby alive and facial marking was one of those things. Cuts were made to disguise babies from being recognised by their spirit siblings and drawn ‘home’ to the spirit world of death. ‘Disguised’ by their cut faces they would be left alone to live out their lives on earth.

Happily, none of my family carried the sickle-trait, so no babies would receive the ‘protective’ cuts. Facial cutting was also an ancient form of ID – the patterns showing which part of West Africa, North Africa or the Sahel people came from. During slavery days the practice intensified allowing those captured and destined for the Americas to find their own kind – even if, in reality, they never would.

Female circumcision and facial marking were two cutting traditions Nigerian healthcare and social workers were campaigning hard to eliminate. I loathed and rejected both traditions, but the third cutting tradition, male circumcision, was something I took control over. When my sons were born I took on board that virtually all West African men were circumcised, in the 1980s to argue otherwise was to fight a losing battle, but I refused to let my sons be cut by either a North London rabbi who provided an ‘at-home’ kitchen-table service for the expatriate Nigerian community in north London, nor would we go to Nigeria where the boys might also end up in the clinic next door to my mother-in-law. The traditional face cutters known as ‘okola’ also specialised in boy babies’ circumcisions. No way. No. No. No. My boys were cut by qualified NHS surgeons in proper UK hospitals – although I had some persuading to do, as even in the 1980s medical opinion was split on the subject of male circumcision.

Times have changed in Nigeria. Since the 2003 Child Rights Act it has become illegal to harm a girl through female circumcision – now correctly termed ‘female genital mutilation’ or FGM. Carving facial markings on babies is also illegal. But this wide-ranging child protection is a federal measure which has to be ratified by each of 36 state legislatures and whilst the whole of south and central Nigeria has adopted these extensive human rights for children, five deeply conservative Northern states have yet to accept this federal law. In June 2024, Nigeria’s First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, lamented that of the 230 million women in the world subjected to FGM, Africa is home to the most - 144 million – and worse, that after a period of steady decline, the practice is beginning to grow again as conservative political forces champion a return to traditional cultural values. Face-cutting too, whilst widely abhorred now in Nigeria’s biggest towns and cities is also having a moment in the spotlight thanks to Tik-Tok posts and Instagram influencers celebrating their ‘traditional’ facial markings.

But the public mood has changed. There are almost 234 million Nigerians now and their median age is almost 18. 42% are youngsters under 14, and 70% of the population is under 30. Most Nigerians are urbanites and in 2024 most urbanites are educated and more influenced by the internet-world than by traditional ideas, even elderly Nigerians. I honestly think the fears of my daughter being cut, that I had in 1980 would sound utterly ridiculous in Lagos in 2024 – except – that in 2024 - one in ten of FGM survivors in the world is still Nigerian and that for the millions of young women who still live in mainly rural, and mainly northern areas where such traditional practices still hold sway those fears aren’t so ridiculous. Their fears are in no way far-fetched, little girls are still being harmed in the name of ‘tradition’ and babies are still having their faces cut, and in 2024 that is still a disgrace. 

*names have been changed

Read more: Female genital mutilation is on the rise in Africa: disturbing new trends are driving up the numbers (theconversation.com)

 

Cut! by Andrew Harrison

What are you?

You painfully remind us of a brief encounter with a sharp blade or object

You’re an action that deliberately removes a body part or divides something into smaller pieces

In skilled crafting hands, you shape the material world in wood, cloth, stone and more

You fashion hairstyles and trim our lawns

You provide a gap through which roads, rail or waterways can pass

You provide vinyl records with the ability to make sounds

You are editorial omissions to text, film or performances that tell a story

You remove text in a document for pasting elsewhere

Buyers use you to reduce the costs they are prepared to spend on a house

You can end or interrupt supplies to foreign territories

Your dark side mixes illegal substances

With words you are a mocking injury or insult

You are to a final film what editing is to a story

And with your command a director ends a scene or filming stops… CUT!

 

The Vanishing Landscape by Andrew Harrison

July ice melt in Norwegian Fjord                    credit Nike Knudsen

 Sailing through the ‘night’, if such a word can be used to describe a land where the sun does not set for part of the year, we headed north under day lit, grey nimbostratus choked skies. Gently rolling seas rocked our boat, the M/S Nordstjernen. On the morning of Friday 12^th July, we left the sea behind for the calmer waters of Magdalenefjorden. The fjord stretched away to the east with a light breeze rippling its almost mirror like surface. Finely ground sediment, washed off the surrounding landscape, gave the water an almost milky blue-grey appearance. 

Surrounding the fjord on three sides, jagged mountainous peaks rose sharply. Deeply incised valleys, stretching down to the water’s edge, separated the mountains or, on occasion, were left hanging half way up the mountainside. Frozen fresh water lay as pristine white icy patches upon the mountain sides or sat as grubby white glaciers in the valley bottoms.

From the fjord shore to approximately one third up the mountainsides, stretched a noticeable horizontal brownish-grey band like a grubby tidemark. Bare ancient rock and shattered conical scree slopes gave the band its appearance. Above this band, where no ice lay, lichens and mosses covered the upper slopes in deep green and dark brown shades. 

Small icy lumps, like mini icebergs floated on the fjord close to shore. Mini-icebergs and exposed boulders provided ideal resting places for an occasional harbour or bearded seal. Guillemots, little auks and puffins flew about the M/S Nordstjernen or floated happily on the water. Nesting little auks could be heard calling noisily from one onshore vertical cliff. Seals and seabirds alike were all very happy to call this place home. 

However, despite the nature of this tranquil view, all was not well. The floating icy lumps and appearance of the enclosing mountainous slopes, signified an important change to the local landscape. One with global implications.

More than 100 years past, this scene would have looked very different. Glacial ice would have covered the fjord’s eastern end forming a towering wall that hid the shore beneath. Today, the grubby white glaciers are a fraction of their former size and sit, tongue like, in the bottom of their incised valleys. This grubby appearance stems from eroded and ground up soil and rock within the icy body. Lateral moraines formed the scree slopes surrounding the fjord perimeter. Where two glaciers met, their lateral moraines coincided to form a dark streak or medial moraine. The greyish-brown band encircling the fjord, was testament to how far up the enclosing mountainous rim, the glaciers historically rose. 

Where icy mass met the water in the fjord, the glaciers appeared heavily crevassed and blocky. In places, bare rock was visible beneath the glacier front with the entrance to an ice tunnel receding deep into the glacial heart. These tunnels and occasional, thunderously loud cracks were another sign of the glaciers retreating due to melt water entering the fjord or the glacier carving to form the mini-icebergs. 

Time did not allow for a landing at Magdalenefjorden. However, during lunch we sailed on to the next fjord, Smeerenburgfjorden, where in the afternoon we landed and experienced a ‘dead glacier’. That is, the Smeerenburg glacier is no longer growing because there is no precipitation to replenish the ice. Instead, it is thinning as it melts away into its host fjord. 

A deep hole, or Moulin, formed from deep blue and green ice on the glacier surface, was testament to how unstable the ice was. The Moulin was produced from melt water, which it funnelled to the glacier’s base. Here, the melt water acted as a lubricant making the glacier flow faster, causing extensional stresses to build up in the ice. The result was crevasses that could open at any time. 

Walking back to our landing boats, we crossed pinkish brown granite moraine that varied in grain size from coarse sand to small boulders. According to our guide, Jakob, five years previously we would have been walking on ice. This was how fast the glaciers were retreating. We were informed that we would be amongst the last people to land at this spot. Next year, new government rules were coming in to change which spots could be visited and reducing the number that could be landed upon.

Getting back into our landing boats to head back to the M/S Nordstjernen, we took in the scene for one last time with a rather melancholic feeling. Receding glaciers, exposed moraines, floating ice blocks and occasional thunderous cracks. Not only would we be amongst the last people to land here, we would also be amongst the last to see this fjord and Magdalenefjorden as they currently appeared. 

September 2024 Meeting

 Meeting in The Spirit Room at Peepo’s in the High Street Bridgnorth

 

Tuesday 24th September 2024

 

Present: Adam, John, Sue, Stuart, Liz, Ruth, Jennie, Irena  

Apologies: Suzie, Ann, Andy, Kath,

Chair: Jennie

 

Jennie told the group that she and Liz proposed that only 1,000 words maximum should be read out from now on because of the growing size of the group, but also to make sure of holding everyone’s interest. The writer can explain before reading where the extract takes place in the story. 

If anyone disagrees with this, please raise it at the next meeting

 

Group task

To create a character based on someone you know, taking into consideration interests, strengths and weaknesses, personality, appearance, style and body language. And anything else!

 

The group read their writing on last month’s homework: ‘Cut’

Liz read Suzie’s poem, Cut’, but Andy’s didn’t arrive in time. Andy can read his next month

 

Homework

The Barn: write a short story, prose or poem involving your created character. 

 

The next meeting is on Tuesday 22nd October 2024 at 7pm

This Saturday!! - Good Luck from all your friends in High Town Writers 😉

Cooking Smells - the smells of the week and 'Surprise Saturday' by Kay Yendole

My Mother was an extraordinary cook. When I say extraordinary, it does not mean wonderful, more unusual.

Her life was orderly and neat and whether it was due to post war rationing and availability or to her sense of order you could always tell the day of the week by the smells emanating from the kitchen.

Traditional roast on Sunday, cottage pie on Monday, liver and onions on Tuesday, Irish Stew on Wednesday, sausages on Thursday, fish on Friday and a surprise on Saturday.  Surprise Saturday was when Mother would cook something, different, something more exotic like a Bolognese or Goulash, it wasn’t always a success though. Her daily cooking comprised overcooked vegetables and very little seasoning other than salt pepper and a bay leaf.  The natural flavours of homegrown vegetables and good quality meats were her saving grace, not her culinary skills. But surprise Saturday brought out a completely different woman who would present to the table an exciting concoction of flavours and an irresistible smell of something foreign that lingered round the house for several days afterwards.

Nasi Goreng was a particularly remembered dish. The everlasting string of garlic was only used on Saturday and an array of bottles and tubs of spices would come out from the back of the pantry. Sambal Orek was one ingredient never forgotten, my curiosity curbed once after I sneeked a taste from the jar and fire hit my palette. Mother just laughed at the look on my face as this Indonesian spice imprinted its memory on me forever. It is a spice that needs to be cooked out for a few hours to really appreciate its true deep rich flavour but it is not finger licking good in its raw state.

The Saturday surprise seemed to take all day to cook, once early morning market shopping was out of the way a continuous stream of chopping and frying with each component of the dish was carefully done. Occasionally usually a birthday it would be twenty one different dishes, a Ristofel of which Nasi Goreng was only one dish. The smells and taste of each one was distinctly different and I was fascinated as a child to sit and watch this magical preparation of food take place. Gado was one of my favourite components where for once the life of the vegetable was not boiled out of its skin but simmered gently in a rich spicy peanut sauce.  We were also delighted  to have a choice for once as Mother never dished this meal up on a plate but presented each dish separately on its own little platter and you could help yourself  to what you liked but only one spoon of each.  To have more than one protein in a meal was in itself a treat, to have egg, meat and fish as well as an array of vegetables, pickles and rice were true smell and taste sensations, activated strongly, by the exotic different spices.

It wasn’t just our house the smells invaded but half way down the street I could swear I could smell it still. Even dessert was a surprise on Saturdays. Away from the bland bread and butter pudding and blancmanges we would have pineapple upside down cake or banana fritters with ice cream.  Also apart from rice pudding it was the only time we ate rice, sometimes white or yellow or even orange coloured and differently flavoured.

The only names I remember apart from Nasi Goreng, and Gado are Soto, Rendang the hottest one, Satay a peanut chicken dish. Such an explosion of smells and flavours; hot, warm, cold, crispy, crunchy and smooth textures; salty, sweet, tangy, sour, bitter and of different strengths. The array of spices carefully measured was astounding, all those colourful yellows, oranges, red powders and different fresh green herbs were such a contrast to the salt, pepper and a bay leaf regime Mother usually employed.  It was an assault on the senses, the colours, the smells, the tastes and how beautiful it all looked spread out on the table. Mother would even say she could hear the Roti Gambang bread when it was ready to take out the oven.

It was a lot of work but Mother would spend all day in the kitchen in its preparation and I loved to help. Marion and John kept well out the way and I felt privileged to be allowed to handle these precious spices and endlessly chop herbs. I was not allowed to chop the chillies though and again my curiosity taught me why when my eyes streamed after touching the seeds.

Later early in the sixties I remember the first local Chinese take away restaurant opening, my Mother was keen to try it but my Father said ‘I’m not eating foreign muck, making bullets for the yellow army”. But surprise Saturday never bothered him.

Our Day out at Wigmore Abbey - a memory explored at the 'Do The Write Thing' Workshop - by Adam Rutter

credit Adam Rutter

Mum, Dad and me visited Wigmore Abbey

Home of the actor John Challis

We knew him as Boycie

In the TV sitcom

Only Fools and Horses His house

In rural Herefordshire September 2003

Last day for summer sun

Large wrap around green

Encircled the house

People wandered leisurely

Admired flowers

Chatted with John

Market traders sold plants

Collecting proceeds for Red Cross

‘Della would’ve like it here,’ said Mum

I was happy to be there Sad that Della wasn’t alive to enjoy it

Crowds gathered round

For photos and autographs

Dressed in my captain Jean Luc Picard T-shirt

‘You can’t come here with another actor,’ said John

Pretending to draw hair and moustache

With his felt-tip

He stood behind us being Boycie

Camera button clicked

The Kite by Irena Szirtes

 

I was his little girl;

I was his laughter,  speaking

‘Lily of the Lavvie’ before

I knew I meant ‘Valley’;

I was his laughter,

Insisting on my ‘Lizzie Hat’,

Calling my doll ‘Gaitey’,

Imitating foghorns,

Saying ‘gongits’, my sister’s word

For iron-work on roof corners.

His words were laughter, too:

He called sleet ‘snizzle’, how

Easy to mix snow and drizzle

When English is new.

We stored, stirred, reconstituted laughter:

Often remembered the man

Who skiddled down Winder,

Sliding the scree, flailing,

Raising his hat as he racketed past,

Pretending all was well!

He let laughter explode through

His whisper,  let it ambush us:

‘Let’s wait!” he said, and how

We relished shared naughtiness

When the show-off lady plunked off the weir

Stilettos flying, her yellow blouse and

Vermilion skirt billowing, bouffant,

Like pirate sails in the Rawthey!

I was his little girl, his laughter,

So when I lost the kite he made,

When I flew it alone In disobedience,

When it snagged a tree-top,

When it flailed and flapped

Like seagull wings stricken In wire,

 I was afraid to tell.

And three days after the kite

Died impaled,  shreds blowing

And blinking from summer sun,

I came down for breakfast

When I knew he’d gone to work,

When I knew disappointment

Had walked out the door.

And then I saw a new-built kite.

It stood sharp and shiny,

As white and red and ribboned

As a Polish flag, and I knew

I was still his laughter,

Still his little girl.  

Dad's Summer Holiday by Jennie Hart

Throughout my life with my parents, I do not remember a family holiday. Mum owned a shop selling groceries and sweets, open every day of the year except Christmas Day. She was a hard worker and only when I was old enough to manage the shop in the school holidays, did mum take a break with her mother, my grandma.

My dad was not the kind of person who ever went on holiday; he was small in stature and elegant, a working-class man who also enjoyed life’s luxuries. He dressed in suits from Austin Reed and bought Sobranie Black Russian cigarettes with their dull black covering and exotic gold tips. He was especially fond of Glenfiddich scotch whiskey. Sometimes he told of memorable experiences when he was stationed in Gibraltar during the war. Once, having watched his army pals swim in the island’s harbour, he was envious of the fun they were having, so jumped in, off the harbour wall too. He couldn’t swim and nearly drowned but was fortunate to be rescued.

Throughout my life, dad was nervous and a little unworldly; he rarely travelled far from home. A day out for him was taking the bus or train to Kingston upon Hull, twenty miles away. It was therefore a surprise one particular summer when dad announced he would go on holiday to Coventry to stay with brother Cyril. I was not fond of this uncle, a creepy, intrusive sort of man who occasionally came to stay with us.  Years later, when I told mum about his behaviour, she confided that he was predatory with her too. She disliked his visits intensely.

Mum helped dad plan his journey to Coventry, beginning with a train from Driffield where we lived, to Hull, followed by a connection to Birmingham New Street. Cyril had assured dad, that once he reached Birmingham, the bus station was nearby and he should find a bus to Coventry. He told dad the number to look out for. Once in Coventry, he must stay on till the terminus, then a taxi to take him to Cyril’s home in Marlborough Road.

Dad accomplished the journey to Birmingham successfully but then became flustered and uncertain; instead of taking the designated bus to Coventry, he missed out that step in the instructions and took a taxi from Birmingham to Cyril’s Coventry door. The fare was exorbitant and cost him all of his holiday money.

 Dad never went to Coventry again!