Sunday, 17 October 2010
Thursday, 30 September 2010
Tuesday, 28 September 2010
Thursday, 23 September 2010
THS Reunion - Part Three (and the final part!)
Reunion – sweets, drinks, dinner and departures
The school tour was made even more memorable by the appearance of Baronness Tanni Grey-Thompson, Paralympic athlete, BBC Sports Personality of the Year, Honorary Blue at Heriot-Watt University, to name but a few titles we could give her. I had met Tanni when she came to my workplace, Heriot-Watt University, to speak to the Sports Union and receive her Honorary Blue in 2005. She had been accompanied by her young daughter Carys who was just three years old at the time. I took it upon myself to entertain Carys and brought some toys (no, i don’t have children but i do usually have some toys around!) so Tanni remembered me when we bumped into each other in the foyer of the junior school. I stopped for a chat and discovered that she has moved to live on the Avenue so that Carys can be educated at THS!!! The girls persuaded me to ask if we could have our photo taken with her and she very graciously agreed.
Carys and friend snuck into the picture too and apparently haven’t stopped talking about it since! What an honour, not just to speak with Tanni again but to be photographed with her, to discover how highly she thought of THS, and then to receive a personal email from her saying how much she enjoyed meeting US! It has left me with a smile that keeps turning into a broad grin. How can one small Welsh woman cast such sunshine to all around her?
After a final farewell to everyone at school we walked back up the Avenue and returned to the hotel...well, eventually, once we’d mourned the loss of the zebra crossing, checked that Sam the lollipop man really wasn’t still leaning against the wall waiting to cheerily get us across the road (memories of who came after he retired are hazy, Sam had an impact!), and walked along the road towards the train station to see if we could still buy a quarter of our favourite sweets from the corner shop. We couldn’t but there was still a shop there and we amused ourselves picking out bottles of pop (and i think somebodies bought some wine?), packets of crisps and bags of chocolates and Food Doctor luxury fruit, nut and plain chocolate drop mix. Yes, i confess, i was the only one who got excited about this product but Sarah was very gracious and kept me company and we even had a little chat about Dr Gillian McKeith’s posture and the possibility of scoliosis or some other musculoskeletal issue. Oh, Sarah! How lovely to get to know you, you might regret sharing your mobile number and email address with me in the days, months and years to come...
Extra sitcom moments were to be had as we turned the corner back on to the main road to discover that Melissa’s vehicle had been blocked into the hotel car-park. Granted it wasn’t our hotel’s car-park but did they not realise the important mission she was on? Sarah, who is obviously trying to get her Equity card, volunteered to go into the reception and plead with them to let her car out, despite the fact that she couldn’t drive it herself. The rest of us, barring Melissa, decided we should slope off rather than stand in the wings like extras on Coronation Street and were relieved a few minutes later to be honked at (now that’s not a phrase you come across very often, is it?!) by a jubilant Melissa and her diva passenger, Sarah.
We entered our hotel and immediately reverted to teenagers on an overnight school trip. Whose room should we crash in? Bring all the glasses and mugs you can find! Who’s got the bottle-opener? (actually, that last one’s completely fabricated as these recycled teenagers had wisely purchased screw-top bottles!) It was great to simply slob out for a bit in each other’s company. Davina arrived for a brief visit and soon there was excited chatter about children and careers and deeper sharing about the tragedies, crises, and other challenges girls have been facing. My other self observed from above, could sense the cameras shooting their film from the doorway, focussing in on faces as they were mobilised into shapes of joy, horror, surprise, sorrow and love, zooming in on hands gesticulating, wringing, and soothing. It was a scene of wondrous love, wisdom, humility and laughter. There was no time to linger in pools of pity but a sense of there being all the time we needed to reach out to one another, re-establish bonds of friendship, and remind ourselves that we are connected as kith.
Time to move the party downstairs where more girls were arriving. I was very grateful that there was no arrival en masse, that there was time to absorb each person’s appearance but it still all became rather a flurry of hugs, kisses, whispering in an uncertain ear who someone across the room was, checking on sisters, brothers, parents. Two of our teachers, Mrs Smith and Mrs Hartness, joined us for drinks, Kay and Michelle appeared (still best of friends and living round the corner from one another) and Gillian too and i had a moment of soul-ache as i realised how much i had missed being with these wonderful women. Looking round the room all i could see and hear was happiness. I had my laptop with me and sent messages on Skype to Jamie in Australia and Rebecca in the States. Soon i had Rebecca and her 6 month-old boy, Edward on my screen and, despite the slight time delay and the time zone difference, they were part of the gathering, chatting to various girls and also to the teachers. Davina had to leave again and the teachers went on their way too. More hugs and kisses! Susan arrived and then there were fifteen of us sitting down for dinner. Granted we were much later sitting down than we had planned but the head waiter’s strop-meter was hitting the danger zone and his blood pressure must have soared through the roof and through the ozone! Fortunately we were enjoying each other’s company too much to let his attitude bother us. During the meal we were able to chat on Facebook to several girls who couldn’t make the reunion in person and we also spoke with Helen on the phone. Melissa called Rebecca and completely forgot that she was making an international call on her mobile (a charity collection will be taken to get her out of debt once the bill arrives!).
We had such an amazing time. After the meal we went back through to the lounge and continued chatting until one by one we each slipped away, some to home and family, some to hotel rooms.
Saturday morning there were five bleary-eyed recycled teenagers. Some of us managed solids for breakfast before we packed up, checked out and headed into Yarm for a final cuppa in Strickland and Holt and then the final farewells came to pass...
[I don’t think this will be the end of my writing about the experience by any means but that’s the blow-by-blow account finished! Apologies for any errors or omissions. Please feel free to enter corrections by way of comments on the blog or email me directly and i’ll edit the entry as need be!]
Wednesday, 22 September 2010
THS Reunion - Part Two
Reunion – arriving, greeting, touring
I drove down from Alnwick where i had stayed overnight. I was on the A19 and driving past signs that were so familiar and yet had been utterly forgotten. I greeted them like old friends!
I turned off the A19 to come past Kirklevington where i had lived from the age of 4 until i was 12. I turned down Forest Lane, then up Strathmore Drive and finally up St Martins Way to number 4. The slope was tiny but in my mind it had been a long, fairly steep hill! The house looked the same, nothing special, still standing as it had been for 37 years when the estate was first built. I drove away. I pulled over opposite the village hall where i remembered bonfire nights with oxtail soup; i crept forward to the Crown. I have never been inside this pub. It was somewhere my parents went when my maternal grandparents visited so it has a poignancy about it.
So on to Yarm...past Yarm School with memories of rehearsals for Trial by Jury in my first year and discos later on then past the turning to where the GP, Dr Lawrence, used to be. I was early so i found a parking space, set the disc (deciding that the one i still had from a trip to the Lake District would be valid!) and went into Strickland & Holt for coffee. Then it was time to get to the hotel. I was the first to arrive but only a little ahead of Taniya and Melissa.
And then the joy really began to flow! Hugs and kisses aplenty as one after another arrived. After Taniya and Melissa came Lorna, Harriet, Juliet, Jo, and Joanne. We had time for a sandwich lunch before our magnificent organiser whisked us out of our reveries to start walking to school while she went to get flowers to give to Sue Brown, the headmaster’s PA. En route down the Avenue we were rejoined by Melissa and Taniya plus bouquet of flowers. We were anxious not to be late (after all, none of us had a letter from a parent though Taniya did offer to forge my mum’s signature if need be!). We entered the reception area to be greeted by the PA, receptionist, a little welcoming committee of pupils and then the headmaster as well. Just in the nick of time Sarah Hayton (who lives in Yarm – i’ve observed that the closer to a venue a person lives the more likely they are to be late! I do it myself. Somehow we believe subconsciously that minus-time is required to get from A to B!) arrived. So we were a small but rather lively group of nine women. The school photographer took some photos, first with the head boy (yes, there are now 99 boys at THS, once a girls’ school where the presence of boys was viewed with sniggers, blushes and gossip!) and head girl, and then just the girls! Later we were given a print-out to annotate with our names (past and present!). Where will it go next?!
[When i started writing about this reunion i think i imagined it would be a brief piece of reportage but the more i relive the experience the more detail i want to include so hold on to your hats, ladies the journey ain’t over yet!]
We all signed the Visitors Book and were given Visitor badges to wear. Then the tour commenced. Past the library to the staff room. So began our liturgy of “Oh my goodness! Did you used to be this small!”, the response being “No way!” The staff room door was opened and we were invited to step inside...no cigarette smokescreen to drive us back these days. As we continued along the corridor we marvelled at the fact that it is now carpeted and that none of the pupils were shouted at when they broke into a skip and a run.
Memories of the telephone remained just memories. The payphone had been removed. Of course all the pupils have mobile phones these days! Encountering the classroom that was the needlework room and also the first year form room for those of us in Mrs Hathaway’s Upper Three Alpha caused new gasps and squeals and brought the teacher to the door and all the pupils’ heads to turn. Back in the Eighties i don’t think our behaviour would have been acceptable but in this brave new world of the 21st century we were indulged, welcomed, invited in, and listened to as we burbled away with our various remembered stories. Each turn, each door, every single stairwell and corridor provided fresh calls and responses.
Teesside High School these days is a place where individuality is encouraged, difference is embraced, and the desire to share diversity more important than enforcing uniform conduct or appearance. I felt happiness and warmth as we wandered round the buildings and grounds. I saw evidence of community, of both academic and emotional intelligence, and several of us wished we could go to school again just to be there! I think it really hit us when we walked down to the riverbank. We took it all for granted at the time. We were so blessed to have access to such wonderful green space. We were safe and free (though perhaps the parents of those girls who did apparently once end up in the river might regret that freedom being given to us!). Towards the end of the tour we were treated to tea, coffee and cupcakes in the refectory. At the end of the school-day this is now a space where parents can sit with the children, where pupils can get a snack and, as happened while we were there, impromptu guitar-playing can be heard!
Tuesday, 21 September 2010
THS Reunion - Part One
Reunion – reconnecting, remembering, recollecting
In my current state it is difficult to catch hold of the fine threads that started drawing us all together months ago. I am in a haze of bittersweet memory, in a daze that makes even the simplest task almost beyond me. I want to rewind, play, rewind, play over and over again the documentary that could have been made of the events of Friday 17th September 2010. I was so engrossed in being there that there were only the briefest of moments when i drew myself to one side to observe and see our gathering as the best kind of reality filming that one could make! I didn’t even take my usual 500+ photographs, managing only about 300, which is one of my methods for “staying in the room”, not running away from a situation. I won’t try to imagine what the reunion means to any of the other girls who were there nor to those who weren’t there. I will only tell my own story and even that is already being reframed constantly by the passage of time.
When Taniya first contacted me through Facebook to suggest that i became friends with one Melissa Brinkler she had to inform me that this woman was little Melissa from school, the one who always had something in her mouth, from bus ticket (poor conductor!) to ink cartridge (her poor mother!). And from there it snowballed. Within a short amount of time i was friends with Davina, Wendy, Lorna, Helen, Jo, Sarah, Gillian, Rebecca, Joanne, Emma then girls from the other two forms including Harriet, Sarah, Susan, Juliet, Sarah, Helen, Sue, Barbara, Elspeth, and then the hunt was on for other girls. Jamie and Helen joined FB, Liz, Michelle and Kay were tracked down. Melissa took hold of the helm and started trying to organise the rabble that is a bunch of 40-something year-old women with various appendages such as children, pets, and partners into agreeing on a date and venue for a reunion. It is a wonder that Melissa didn’t throw her hands up in despair, utter some beautiful Gallic expletives and simply return to the Alsace ski slopes but she stuck in and finally we managed to agree a date and venue that suited at least some of us this side of the next Olympics.
Throughout all of this time we were all having some wonderful chats mostly on FB, catching up, sharing our stories, our joys and sorrows, learning about each other’s present worlds through posts and comments, and sometimes even meeting in the real world (Helen and Gillian, Wendy and Joanne amongst them). Jamie is in Australia, Rebecca in the States, Lindsey in Canada. More hunts continued for other girls, including Jemma Heath, Jane Pinkney, Fiona Skelton. These continue...
In many ways it seemed weird to be so deeply connected to girls i had spent only 5 years with and yet they were 5 years during which i went through puberty, experienced my first migraine, suffered low back pain for the first time, succeeded at hockey, netball, long jump and discus, failed at tennis, rope-climbing and cross-country running, discovered that i was short-sighted, scared of heights and very squeamish. The list could go on for many pages. This was the time in my life when i started to learn about myself and the world around me. For the first time i was at a school without my mother’s presence. My sister was two years above me and seemed very sophisticated, i was part of the small-fry again, not quite filling the brand-new uniform, already too big to fit into girls’ shoes. So the friendships i made left their imprint in my soul. We went through rites of passage until it seemed as if we were living in a labyrinth – first menstrual period, first kiss, first drink, buying my first 7” single (Squeeze Labelled with Love bought on that trip to Stratford i seem to remember!), reading Jackie and discovering that other girls had problems i didn’t even have the capacity to imagine let alone experience. It was also during my time at Teesside High that i saw injustice starkly enacted in front of me. The girl i labelled my best friend (was she? have i added that to enhance the story? is it ok to say i probably had more than one best friend at a time? Oh all the fragility of adolescence comes flooding back!) was the only black girl in school. She was treated variously as extra-special and extra-troublesome and it frustrated her constantly. Interestingly when the teachers were asked at the reunion how they remembered her one of them commented that she was a little monkey. An innocent comment? A sign of the racism that was seemingly acceptable still in the 80s? All i know is that she, Sarah Green, brought laughter, fun and vibrancy into my life. She was scared of my father and of the Darleks but she was fearless when it came to being true to herself. I have strong Technicolor memories of a few episodes with her, the first being possibly on our very first day at school. We were sitting in the canteen having our packed lunches. I see Wendy, Sarah and myself there. Sarah is opening her Thermos flask. Suddenly it explodes its contents all over the table. I can feel it now. I freeze, wait for the telling-off, wonder what will happen to us. Sarah bursts out laughing! I am surprised, relieved, confused and i’m hooked from that moment on. This is someone who can show me another way to live! The other very clear memory i have is of her being expelled from the school. In my version of the story she is fed up with how the teachers treat her, she has fought with at least one teacher physically, and has decided to rebel. She comes to school with her hair shaved into a Mohican. This is not acceptable and she is sent home. She reappears (a day or so later?) with the Mohican dyed bright pink! And she is expelled. I am distraught, furious, desperate, inconsolable. I hide amongst the coats crying. I remember being hauled back out. What was i so upset about, for goodness' sake? The sense i am left with nearly 30 years later is that it apparently made no sense for a white girl to be upset that a black girl had been expelled. After all she wasn’t really a suitable choice for a friend. Whether that’s a fair recounting of the events or not doesn’t really matter. The perception is what counts. How relieved and overjoyed am i now to have discovered that she did not succumb to the prejudices all around her in the North East. Perhaps she did for a while but she came back fighting with her astounding gift for fashion and design, her deep desire to trace her birth family, and with a daughter who will always know how special one’s roots are, how essential to being a whole person is an understanding of one’s background, and with opportunities to ask questions, make discoveries and know true love. It would have been the icing on the cake if i had been able to make direct contact with her. Instead i am content to know that she survived, succeeded, and knows her true worth. Who knows? One day perhaps she will pick up the messages, open the post, join FB, let me find her again...
Back to the reunion!...
Monday, 20 September 2010
Sunset Tenement
not a royal terrace or crescent
but each evening since i've been here
i've been treated to wondrous skies
vistas laid on for free, for me
and this is life, this is it
time to stop and stare and be...
Saturday, 28 August 2010
Petals leave...
two champagne flutes,
tokens from the bride,
rose petals sprinkled inside
a charm on a ring around the base
name card with rose to mark the place
sat on a shelf
from Valentines Day
for seventeen sweet months
but the petals faded
the glasses clouded
our love became obscure
time now to scatter the petals
to lay that love to rest
i pour from the flute
then again from the other
into my cupped left hand
i step over the threshold
into the garden
the scene of so many projects
and i tip my hand
watch leaf follow leaf
some float, some fall,
all leave.
Thursday, 26 August 2010
so fine
and come up with jewels
which you offer so freely
when you would be forgiven
for grabbing fistfuls
of mud
I look at the trenches you have had to dig
simply to survive
and i gasp for air
get dizzy with vertigo
just looking
The slender thread that is,
the silken tightrope that floats
the surface of a raindrop that reflects -
all these and more cannot come close
to the fragility and yet the resilience of love
that you show me over and over
you open yourself wide
invite me to share the shelter
that you dug with bare hands
until your finger nails came away
until the sweat threatened to flood the earth
and
i
hesitate
i
fear
to tread
where
angels
rest
i
am
not
worthy
and
yet
i
hear
whispered
liltingly
in
my
ear
those
old, incense-infused
Roman words
i
am
not
worthy
to
receive
you
but
only
say
the
word
and
i
shall
be
healed.
and
i
listen
and
i
hear
and
i
begin
to
understand
to follow
one
another
is
to
follow
the Christ
i step in
and bathe
in
the
warm
mesmerising
pool
that
is
the blending
of
our
souls.
borrowed not blue - found at last
I wrote this poem in response to my sister's wedding on Valentine's Day 2009. I have just found it in a notebook while packing for my imminent house-move. The floral background is a collage of images i have photographed this August.
Wild Things
 |
| Flowers in the Bield Walled Garden |
Wild and wanton flower heads
root and stem give forth
bees hum inebriated tunes
hoverflies stumble dazed and drowsy
the nectar has fermented,
its scent is heady,
petals flirtatious.
Wednesday, 18 August 2010
Made for myself last year at the Bield, shared now for Alison from my soul
 |
| drawn by the pattern - walking with God... |
walk the labyrinth with every part of your being and you will discover the question you had not dared ask. Then walk the labyrinth with that question plus an open heart and you will learn how to live into the answer.
Say No! to that which crowds out God.
Say Yes! to that which makes space for God to come in.
i must walk my own path and share the journey with those whose paths crosses mine...
I need simply and only to wait upon God
without expectation and God, all longing, resting in me,
will breathe in me the music of my soul.
Edwina Gateley.
Friday, 4 June 2010
Cast Iron Shadows
meadow flowers sweet and soft
girlfriend stretches out
- camera close by, always
ragged robin blossoms
woodpecker calls
crouching figure is silent
shadowy, strong, enigmatic
cast your shadows, Firmament
wiggle your fingers, ragged robin
people come with their comments,
cameras and children
in wonder, in awe, rarely silent.
written at Jupiter Artland, sitting on the grass by Antony Gormley's "Firmament".
Note: ragged robin is also known, at least by Gail, as "grannies fingers"
Thursday, 13 May 2010
Reflection-Distortion
Disgusted by myself
Seeing the world in reverse
Seeing myself melt and warp
reflected, distorted...
Monday, 10 May 2010
Sandwich meditation
To help me be more mindful,
to celebrate the beauty of food,
to appreciate each mouthful,
and pay attention to its goodness
- this is my houmus and salad sandwich.
Friday, 7 May 2010
Monday, 5 April 2010
Sunday, 28 March 2010
Zen Spring
The quote was on a Facebook friend's Daily Zen for today. The photo was taken in Princes Street Gardens east end on Wednesday evening.
Thursday, 25 March 2010
Jewel in the Crown, Swan in the Royal Park
I was privileged to spend the day yesterday based at Historic Scotland Education Office in Holyrood Park. I was facilitating a training day for a very ethnically diverse group and we were taken on a ranger-led walk which included making a nature's palette and learning what to feed and not feed the swans. We reckon we were the most ethnically diverse group to have walked together in the Park!
The swans are looking wonderful as they are in mating plumage and showing off to one another. These swans belong to the queen, the Park belongs to the queen hence the swans being jewels in the crown...
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