Monday 6 August 2012

An old biscuit tin

I thought I would post this, seeing as the horrific ex-boyfriend* who wanted me to write something for his history blog is clearly never going to.

*he's alright really.

These are pieces from an old biscuit box that my Dad has had in a cupboard for as long as I can remember.  When I was a kid I thought it was stuff which belonged to my Grandad during the war. I never met my Grandad – he died when I was about eight, and he didn’t have much contact with my Dad. Around the time he died I was shown a photo of him taken in 1944, in his army gear, feeding the pigeons in Trafalgar Square. So I always thought of him as a soldier, and I probably assumed the box had been his because it was from the war, and because I only ever (and only still) listen to and put together the bits of stories which I like or which grab my attention, and this usually leads to me accidentally making up a lot of stuff without realising.

When I persuaded my Dad to take the box down again and let me take pictures for this blog, it became obvious that this wasn’t my Grandad’s box. It turned out that it belonged to a guy called Robert William Sumpton, who was a boyfriend of my Gran’s. I was a bit pissed off about that to be honest, because it meant a bit of what I thought I’d known about my Grandad was gone, and that I only had the pigeons in Trafalgar Square. Then I started looking through it.


Wednesday 28 March 2012

Tea and Zen

“Now you understand the Oriental passion for tea," said Japhy. "Remember that book I told you about: the first sip is joy, the second is gladness, the third is serenity, the fourth is madness, the fifth is ecstasy.”

Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

 

Madame Defarge

A few weeks ago I finished reading A Tale of Two Cities. I was put off Dickens at university because they made us read Oliver Twist, and novels with simpering orphans as protaganists apparantly fail to even twitch my cold, dead heartstrings. But Two Cities is great because it's about the French Revolution, and there has always been a tiny part of me which wants to wear red trousers and find new ways of using big blades. Or, you know, just, vote Labour.

There has also always been another part of me which loves knitting. Several years ago I knitted a scarf so big that when I wear it, children have been known to follow me and point. Seriously. It took me three months. I put my heart and soul into that scarf. It became part of me.  I can well believe that someone would get so caught up (no pun intended) in their knitting that they'd start coding in the names of people they wanted dead. Knitting is making something with your soul.

I think Madame Defarge is fantastic. 

That's all really. I just absolutely love her.