Tongue in cheek

[My tongue-in-cheek emoticon, which I have rotated, does not enlarge too well, because of the diagonals, but I thought it worth a shot.]



Well, that last blog was fun, but I hope you realise I was 'having a laugh' - at my own expense of course! It was written in a moment of reckless abandon, and your comments are already giving me cause to think more carefully about what I said.

First and foremost (as he is in so much, good friend that he is) Stephen has called me on my "electrifying experiments", and I have had to admit that I cannot at present make good on that claim. I cannot recall any experience I could so describe, but perhaps it is yet to come!

Then I said I had no regrets. Well, I think that is probably true in regard to the majority of the men in my life, but certainly not all, and certainly not about every aspect of my life.

And finally I suggested that alliteration was 'vulgar', which upon reflection I wish to withdraw. In excess, yes, it may well be, but I am sure it is considered a legitimate device in effective writing. And Pauline took up the alliterative challenge with relish in the comments!

I think I must remember in future to use my 'cheekicon' to flag up the post, if ever I have any more moments of 'reckless abandon'.

And now, since we are rapidly approaching Halloween, I offer you my Witchicon, devised a couple of years ago to make a Halloween badge. It really works out quite well, I think. Maybe somebody else can make use of it too.

The men in my life

How about I write an autobiographical book with this title, and make no bones about it? My recurring memories of old boy friends seem to have had a good reception here, and I'm sure there are plenty more to be dug up.

Of course, to be fair, it would have to start with my father, with perhaps a quick backward look at my grandfathers; and then my younger brother. And at this end of my life there are four sons and four grandsons - (sorry, granddaughters!).

But in between, and outside the family: oh boy! what recollections of romance, what moments of madness, what purple passions, what electrifying experiments, what melancholy mistakes, and what sighs of sadness. (Wasn't that fun? I love alliteration, however vulgar a tool it may be.)

Regrets? No. I'm with Edith Piaf here - me and 'The Little Sparrow', we regret nothing.

Timothy grass

Sometimes the tapestry of one’s life's memories seems to conceal too many sharp needles of sorrow, for missed opportunities, for unfinished business, or for useless and heartbreaking tragedies.

The last two days have been extraordinary for me in that respect: I found an old photograph of an American medical student I knew in Geneva, and hardly had I finished writing about it, when I opened an old wallet and out fell this piece of Timothy Grass (Phleum pratense). Now it’s hard to believe, but I really think that this dried and pressed remnant has been with me for some 50 years, since the time when I knew a young man called Timothy, and picked the grass for his sake.

I was staying with my cousin Mirabel in the Clee in Shropshire. She and her husband lived on an old farm, no longer a working farm, but they had a good friend Tim who worked a sheep farm in a neighbouring village. Ever attentive to my welfare, my cousin determined that I should meet this young man, as she was sure we should like each other – and indeed we did. We became quite close for a while and several times I spent a few days on his farm, when visiting my cousin. It was there, in one of his fields, that I picked the piece of grass that bore his name.

Tim was dark haired and good looking, sturdy and tough, but slightly handicapped by a forshortened arm, due to a clumsy forceps delivery at birth which had damaged his shoulder. This did not seem in any way to interfere with his competence as a farmer however, nor did it make him any less attractive in my eyes. But alas, it may have been instrumental in his tragic death at an early age.

We went our separate ways eventually, and each of us got married and had families. It was some years later that I heard from my cousin that his life had been lost, when he swam out to sea to help some people who were in trouble in rough weather. The attempt cost him his own life, and a good, kind, courageous man was gone.

So I shall not throw away my piece of Timothy Grass.

Revisiting old loves

Sometimes a blog opens up an interesting discussion in the comments section, and I wonder how many people get back there to join in, or whether I should bring it into the main blog. So I am going to do that now, and continue here from my previous post.

Pauline asked if I would try and contact Sy, and I replied that I would dearly love to do so, but that I have not found anything to locate his present whereabouts. I followed the clue about the University of California, and the clue that his doctoral thesis was about cancer of the liver, so he may well have become an oncologist. But although I searched an American website for locating doctors by name I didn't find him in San Francisco, and I haven't time to search the whole of the US! Anyway, he's probably retired by now, even if he's still around.

I did once find another old boyfriend on Google, though, as he has become a well-known author in the UK. I sent an email to the college he seemed to be connected with, but nothing came of it, which is probably just as well.

There was another doctor, a surgeon, whom I very nearly married, and with whom I continued to exchange Christmas cards for many years. Thirty years after we had parted, I found myself in the town where I knew him to be working at the general hospital. I surprised him with an unannounced visit, but it was not a rewarding occasion. I was saddened to find that the aspiring young surgeon I had known was now greatly aged, with hands already so badly affected by arthritis that he could no longer operate properly. And inevitably, as we had both married other people, we really had nothing to say to each other.

As Knowleypowley said, "should the past be kept in the past?" I reckon it's just some sort of vanity trip really, to want to revisit old loves, like writing one's memoirs! Indeed, I see that my memoirs are in danger of turning into a history of the men in my life! The pieces I have written which have the most feeling in them – my ‘mood’ pieces as I tend to call them, are all about blokes it seems, and I begin to feel a bit embarrassed about it!

So I’ll write another one for my next blog …………..!

Fifty years to say goodbye

I came across a photograph of an old boy friend yesterday, and it reopened a small wound which had left a permanent scar on my heart. Due to an idiotic mistake which was never explained, we parted without saying goodbye, in a way which was not only frustrating but painful, as it left each of us feeling let down by the other. But he was a good guy and would not have done that to me, I am sure, and I would not have had him think that of me for the world either.

It was during my time in Geneva, working for the World Health Organisation. I shared a flat with a girl friend, and across the road from us lived two American medical students. They were Jewish, and had come to the medical school in Geneva because at that time it was difficult for Jews to get places at the schools in the US. The four of us got on well and saw a good deal of each other, and for Sy and me there was soon more than friendship between us.

By the beginning of 1956 however, I was preparing to leave Switzerland and return to the UK, as my two-year contract was up. The man I would eventually marry had stopped off in Geneva to visit me on his way home from India on leave, and I was pretty certain that I was going to say “yes” to him this time. I explained this to Sy, and as we had both known that our relationship would not be long-term, there was no difficulty about agreeing to say a sad but friendly goodbye over dinner, one evening before I left for home. So we set a date and a time, and fixed a place to meet in the centre of the town.

The evening came and off I went to the rendezvous. I was not late – (I rarely am) – and I waited happily for a while... and a longer while ... and an even longer while ... until eventually, in disbelief, I rang the flat and spoke to his flatmate. He said that Sy had gone off to meet me as arranged, and he could not understand that we hadn’t found each other. He would come along to where I was still waiting, though, and take me out to dinner himself.

Sy rang me next day and said he had been where we had arranged, and where was I? I said that I had been there, and where was he? We checked what the arrangement for meeting had been; there seemed to have been no confusion, and we could not understand how we had missed each other. It was too late by then to make another date before I left, and so we never saw each other again – our last contact was that unhappy exchange on the phone, when I could hear the hurt in his voice, as I am sure he heard it in mine. Good mates should not part like that - it still hurts.

EPILOGUE

A moment ago, just for fun, or sentiment, or curiosity, or whatever, I put Sy’s full name into Google Search, and came up with a listing in the digital library catalogue of the University of California, San Francisco: it was his doctoral thesis written in Geneva (in French) in 1958, two years after we parted there. It has to be him, I cannot believe anything else. I was strangely moved by this, as though we had touched hands again, even managed to say our last goodbye – at last! It was like laying flowers on a grave that one should have visited 50 years ago.

Call for help ..........

Somebody who visited my blog recently and whose blog I visited in return, had slideshows of photographs on her page. I commented, and I think she gave me an URL for a website which would do it for me. But I've lost the information. If you recognise yourself, would you be kind enough to leave the information here for me?

Thanks in advance. xxx

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