Tag: nostalgia

Recalling November’s Cross-Country

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There is something about November which seems to lull me to memory. When the days shorten and the sun courses low, I am permitted to pause.  Here on Achill Island, I am wrapped in the silence of the night closing in.  I am sitting at the window looking out at the darkness. In the distance, I can see a few flickering spotlights, but nothing else.  The night allows me to wander into the labyrinth of my olden days, and such memories have shaped who I am.

November was the month of the dreaded cross-country running.  Back in the days of secondary school, our P.E. teachers took great pleasure in forcing us girls to sprint on the open-air area known as The Moss. The Moss had a natural terrain of grass, mud, dirt, and in November, all things decaying underneath.  I was never a runner; my footsteps could only be described as sluggish, as I staggered over branches torn by the wind from the trees.

Upon reflection, winters seemed colder than today, but perhaps nostalgia has coloured my midwinter memories.  My bygone days are cosy and warm, hot velvet chocolate topped with silky cream, slippery sliding on thin ribbon-like sheets of ice that went on forever. The bumps and bruises are forgotten.

However, the memory of November cross-country running is fixed.  It’s cold and uninviting. The recollection of me, a mere fourteen-year-old, puffing and panting on heavy earth often covered with a thin mantle of frost, still disturbs me.   T-shirts and shorts in a sickly shade of brown designed for further embarrassment were the order of the day.  Cross-country running helped build character, a view espoused by the sergeant majors, oops, I mean to write our teachers, an obvious Freudian slip, and if they hold onto that belief, it surely must be true, but for an uninterested teenage girl, it was torture. Anything that could be likened to attributes of weakness was removed from us, and nothing better than cross-country to achieve it.

If truth be known, I didn’t care if I was labelled a cissy. Not one bit. By year 3, everyone knew I was hopeless at sport, and the only people who mocked me were the PE teachers.  I accepted without fuss that I would be one of the last chosen for team sports, but I felt embraced for my other abilities, like my unique sense of style. So, I was always the last girl to enter the gym block, and the first girl to exit, but on the other hand, I was the first girl to have my transistor radio ready for Alan Freeman and the Tuesday charts. Obviously, I had my priorities right.   

I dreaded all sports, but cross-country was my worst nightmare. I would saunter along the damp, dead leaves to the place of torment.  “Come on, Rae,” my schoolmate Mary would coax as she clipped ahead of me to the starting line.   Mary O’Hara, bright, breezy, with the agile physique of a gazelle.  Oh, how I hated her enthusiasm. She would never understand my agony of soggy socks and fractured nails.

Our P.E teachers were harsh and wise; they planned the route with such exactness that no one could cheat by taking a sneaky diversion.  They also conceived that the route included the steep upward gradient at the end of the course, and I must assert that because cross-country always fell on a double period, we had to run this course not once but twice.  The one question I always wanted to ask – why winter?  Surely, cross-country could be run during the summer, at least the nipping blast of winter wouldn’t ice us over, but upon reflection, I would still have hated it.

By the end of October, the thought of skipping P.E. always came to mind, but I couldn’t skip class for four weeks without bringing attention to my absence. So, for three weeks out of four, I had no option but to face ninety minutes of relentless suffering.  

There is one day that I shall never forget. It was a grey, showery type of morning. The Moss was one giant puddle. Even the bushes complained about the raw wind that stole one’s breath that morning. As usual, I was at the tail end.  Bit by bit, I chugged forward on the lumpy, sodden ground, pushing through the white mist. The course attacked my core and my resolve to continue.   My whole body was blue with the cold. I am not ashamed to admit that I wanted to cry.  With every step, my mood became increasingly sombre but after what seemed an age, I saw the finishing line ahead.   I spied a crowd of girls over the line, and they were waiting for me, the exhausted straggler. I could hear the bellowing tone of our head P.E teacher shouting, “Come on, girls, get a move on, we haven’t got till Christmas.”

I had an ally in a girl called June Fletcher, who was petite and blonde with Bambi-like eyes.  She, like me, despised P.E. and we became kindred spirits bonded by our mutual torment. Breathless and sore, we both came to a gully, which babbled and bubbled over granite rocks. It offered us the choice of running through it or jumping over it.  Neither choice thrilled us. We fixed our gaze upon each other and made the decision that we would jump; after all, we had both made it safely over in the first lap.  

Unfortunately for us, we both lost our footing, twisting and coiling, we curled awkwardly into balls and flopped headfirst into the ice-cold water. The gnarling thorns scratched the skin on my elbows and knees, and my newly feathered hair got tangled in the barbed briars.  June had sustained a deep gash on her knee from the rocks.  My shrieks split the icy air. Then realisation hit hard, I was covered in what I can only describe as a thick paste of slime.  

I was cold, weary, and angry. Breath by breath, half step by half step, I traipsed deeper into the winter wind back to school. I could see that June desperately required some medical intervention.  Her face, gaunt and phantom white.  No real words of concern were offered other than, “You’d best get along to the nurse.” Another girl and I assisted June by giving her our shoulders for support. There are times when silence speaks more than words, and this was indeed one of those times.  June’s moist eyes betrayed the smile on her face. Unlike me, she felt great shame that she, in her own words, ‘was hopeless at sport.” 

As we stepped through the gates, a mass of amused eyes fixed on us. We were two zombie-like figures who looked like we had risen straight from the deepest abyss. My body shuddered at the cold as ice-cold darts numbed me. I hoped that the showers would be warm rather than their usual tepid cold.   My wounds were overall superficial, but of course, I would still have to go to the nurse.   Later in the day, June hobbled into double maths; her knee required stitches. Double P.E and double maths on the same day, no wonder I require therapy.

In my view, cross-country is primarily intended to reinforce social conditioning and to shape individuals in ways deemed suitable for good character.  I think it totally missed the mark with me.  In my case, cross-country made me better at making excuses to avoid it. If cheating were possible, I would have certainly done it—there’s nothing admirable about that.  I fully understand that fitness is essential to well-being, but I would have to add that by no stretch of the imagination was I unfit. I was a willing pupil at my weekly dance classes, and I was rather cool on roller skates.

It’s so easy to have the ebbing and flowing of thoughts here in Achill; a thought flutters into my mind, and then another.  The moon is showing, and the rain is pounding the greying landscape. Living in a caravan at the foot of a marsh certainly has its challenges, especially in winter. 

If I want clean clothes, which I do, I must travel twice a week to Westport for my laundry, approximately fifty miles each way.  Now that’s a bit of a chore. The wind is knocking into my caravan. She’s loud, and one can’t help but notice her wails. Achill is different; the island captures imagination, and it’s easy to feel that one is inhabiting a time before time.  

Perhaps, without realising, dwindling along on The Moss actually did shape my character.  What I considered agony at the time lay the germinated roots for my character of today.  Perhaps my self-resilience and strategic thinking harken back to that brooding moor.

Yet, my story still contains sadness.  My memory of The Moss is of a miserable landscape.  It was only at a later stage that I began to see the beauty that lay in The Moss.  Somewhere in the middle stands an old silver Beech tree, which often resembles an old woman in a shawl, her branch-like arms holding onto its dried copper-coloured leaves till Spring. And if I weren’t too weary, I would have heard her cheering me on as I passed.

Outside, despite the wind, all is quiet.  Now my thoughts are drowsy.  I will go to my bed and rid my mind of them and wait for sleep to take me. 

Until next time.

Names have been changed for confidentiality and privacy.

Clunky Boot Footsteps By The Luggie

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Photo by Charles Keay, Luggie Watch, Facebook.

My eyes gazed towards the broody sky; I sensed a storm coming.   I waited for my hot steamy bowl of cauliflower and spring onion soup with crisp earthy bread.  I am rather fond of soup for lunch, I suppose it yearns back to the reminiscences I have of my grandmother who always had a pot on the boil. Carrots, turnips, radish, onion and other vegetables fresh from the garden would tease my nostrils every time I visited her. Perhaps, the memory of soup is a constant, a sense of comfort in my otherwise uncertain world. 

It was the sound of a notification that drew my eyes to my phone and then in the blink of an eye I was transported away from the hustle and bustle of the restaurant to a liminal state. The place where my bygone days gather. 

A photo by Charles Keay posted on ‘Luggie Watch’ on Facebook, caused me to pause. It was a photo showing a path which aligns the River Luggie in Scotland.  A salty tear slips from my eye.  My footprints are etched on that path. It was the path that I sauntered to school with my clunky boots, duffle coat, my military style school satchel flapping in motion.  It was also the path that led me to ‘The Record Den’ where I would become penniless after spending money on the latest chart-topping single.  The Record Den was an Aladdin’s Cave filled with posters, magazines and badges. It was a community hub for young people. Oh! how I loved rummaging through the neatly stacked albums, choosing one and then going into a booth to listen to a track.  I am so grateful that I am of the vinyl generation, downloads don’t really have the same sense of amazement.  The mere beauty in an album cover and the anticipation of evenings listening to good songs.

For the first time in my life homesickness came upon me.  A sharp scorching burn hit my heart and a salty tear slid down my cheek.  I was unsure how to deal with this bizarre feeling; I had never experienced the deep sense of longing for home. I wanted to dissolve into the photo and be transported back to the path.

As is the way of things, life moves on and waits for no one. In my case time has sped by and has done so without being breathless.  And now it’s nearly fifty years since I, the girl with feathered hair, strolled along that path and amid the chatterings of the café. I felt that I was a relic of the past.

Oh what a blessing to have freedom with very little conditions.  I never ran feral, there were some as there should be for a minor. For example, I had to be home for a certain time, dependent on whether it was summer or winter, and I had to be in school for 9 am – sharp.   However, despite leaving with ample time to spare, there were occasions when I was late for school. I was a dreamy child, and I liked nothing better than slowly meandering on that path with my imagination lost in the world around me. I believe walking that simple path taught me independence and responsibility. And by the way, I soon learned that each action had a consequence, and dilly dallying was best not done on a school morning.

In the Autumn I marveled at the stunning golds and browns of leaves in their last moments of life, straddled on the ground. After an embarrassing slip I learned to be careful as much as I could hobbling on two-inch platforms. Beautiful as those leaves were, they were slippery when soggy.   

As I sipped my soup, I recalled the winter chill, the tip of my nose ice cold. It was time for scarves and gloves in bold shades, rather than the boring navy of regulation school uniform. More than often, in winter I took the bus with my friends.  However, despite the cold there was something enchanting about walking the path when it was dusted with frost and there were occasions when I decided to walk.  I loved my solitary strolls along the path my eyes observing the barren branches and frosted landscape. Oh! the freshness in the crisp cold air that settled in my nostrils, informing me of the approach of my favourite time of year Christmas. Then of course, a few months later, the heart-wrenching beauty in witnessing the arrival of the humble milk white snowdrop, the bringer of hope that Spring is nearing.  

It is said in sociological circles that our environment has a big impact on who we become, and I would certainly espouse that. I had an abundance of nature around me, and I had freedom to embrace and enjoy it and it has to be said that I was shaped by it.  There was so much experiential learning to be gained farther than the official channels of education especially for someone like me who faced academic challenges.

As I sat rekindling the memories in that photograph my mind jumped back to summer days in The Campsie Fells. Little by little a smile budded my face, a good memory burst into my mind. Strange how those memories are always played out in the sun. Away back in my childhood days like many children I hung around with a small group of neighbourhood kids. Catherine and myself took on the role of elders we earnestly took it upon ourselves to mind Margaret, the youngest of the group.

Easter was a special occasion for us. We would leave early morning for our annual picnic. An Easter Egg, a couple of sandwiches, a bottle of ‘ginger’ and a bundle of cheap penny sweets shared between us cemented the tribe into family. Buying those sweets were an exercise in itself. We pooled our mone y and then we had to make a choice. “I don’t like liquorice laces” “I want ginger tools” I want toffee” “I don’t like black jacks “but we always managed a good compromise without anyone having a huff.

I am saddened that freedom has been curtailed because our present day society has become less safe. As I write I wonder how safe the path is to walk now!   

I would be uncomfortable growing up in what I call ‘locked in’ culture.  It is my term for a life that is spent restricted, perhaps hours spent wired on one’s phone or computer with very little time spent in nature enjoying spontaneous activities.  A ten-year-old child would be in the care of the Social Work Department if they imitated what I did in my childhood.  

Major societal change has occurred since my childhood and it involves a measure of shifting where that which might once have been considered appropriate, gradually becomes unwise. Protective measures began to occur and then switches are pulled and soon a simple walk by the river becomes something one must think about.

Nowadays, most children are dropped off at school, and extra-curricular activities are more than often planned rather than the spontaneous fun I had.  I certainly would not have been a happy bunny if any one of my parents dropped me off at my dance class. I would rather the ground open up and swallow me whole than die of a ‘riddy’ (embarrassment).

I fully understand the concern; I get it. I have a five-year-old grandson in California, and I share similar worries regarding his safety in school.  The gun safety drills must allow for some form of caution to seep into his mind. Yet another thing for someone to be alert to. Madness.

Modernity has certainly not gone on plan; I would actually state that it has been a huge failure.  We live in age of distrust. We are wary of our neighbours and that is if we at least know them.

Surely, a lived experience in the arena of scraped elbows and knees from endless trails in nature differs from that of someone who spends endless time at home on their computer. Of course, there are memories made in all generations, but I wonder about the new social cues that taken on by being corralled into an online pen. I suppose I was conditioned to accept that one could navigate life by walking alone it could be said that it shaped my emotional intelligence and how I relate to myself and others. A fall from a swing teaches that life has rough edges. It teaches one to think before embarking on a course of action. We can’t live life wrapped up in a fluffy blanket and as we are all aware online danger lurks.

My article is not intended to be a full lament of freedom lost, because there are some aspects of today I like. Perhaps, at risk of sounding like someone with a tin foil hat, maybe in the eyes of those in power restriction has always been the goal. It is easier to control when society is restricted. In other words a well thought out plan preparing us for a brave new tech world.

So sit back and enjoy Slade.

Until next time.

Wrestling with the Unfamiliar

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Having a cup of hot chocolate in Galway

A scudding grey cloud hovered around me on the journey from Achill Island to Galway. For, the first time since I arrived in Ireland twenty two years ago and much to my astonishment I missed the city of Glasgow.  Thus, I was downhearted despite the promise of spending Christmas in Galway.

It has to be said that in recent years I became moderately untouched by my visits to Glasgow, becoming somewhat detached and if I am honest, sorrow often came upon me as the city was no longer familiar to me.  I often felt alone, a stranger walking in alien landscape.  There are  few recognizable faces, my family and friends having either moved on and as is the way in this life, some friends are no longer alive.   

As I travelled to Galway, there was a hollow in my heart and maybe I was trying to fill it with the re-creation of memories. My memories give comfort and assist me in making sense of my life. There were few passengers on the coach and as I moved with the movement of the wheels over the road, it afforded me the opportunity to reflect back.  Oh how, I desired to go to the local church, a church that was my home for several years.   I recalled the many enjoyable Christmas Eve Night Service, me with my croaking voice singing carols, a joy to me but perhaps not to those by me. Memories of a sanctuary dimmed, a lush green tree, with ribbons of fairy lights and dangling sparkling baubles.

Ah the warmth of a memory rekindled. Away back in my bygone days, maybe Christmas 1995, I recalled walking home from the Christmas Eve service. The night was surprisingly mild and the air especially restful.  My journey home was interrupted by Ian who bounded over to me and surprised me with a beautiful and unexpected gift. A gift which unlocked the door into a relationship.  Two years, shy of one month, our relationship had turned sour.  Nowadays, it seems another lifetime and I often wonder where he is now.

I was travelling to Galway to reconnect with my good friend Dave, someone who I have known for at least twenty years and I shall be in the familiar surrounds of Galway.  This will be a new recollection that I can place into my memory satchel.

As Dave and I watched TV, ate lunch and chatted together, I began to become aware that I wasn’t really missing Glasgow. Somewhere in the deep moments of  honest conversations, it became evident that I was yearning for familiarity – the old Christmas of the past.  Despite liking Achill Island I had nonetheless uprooted myself to a place where I knew no one, thus everything is unfamiliar.  Perhaps the human condition requires the comfort of some familiarity especially in older age.  Therefore, the curse of the restless spirit which allows no space for consolidating roots and with the passing of time, there is no anchor of familiarity.  

It isn’t just the absence of friends, it’s those precious moments of connection.  For example, it’s the friendly remarks to the bus driver who knows one’s name due to the fact that you have journeyed on his/her bus for at least twelve years. It is there in is the recognizable faces of the library staff who know you because one is a frequent library user and have facilitated workshops and joined various groups held in the library. It is just that sense of familiarity, of feet walking on well tread pavements, passing acquainted faces.

Christmas in Galway turned out to be wonderful and I enjoyed every moment.  Three wonderful days then:-

As soon as I arrived home, discovering that there was no electricity nearly brought me to tears.  I stumbled through the pitch blackness to locate candles, walking into the corner of the fridge freezer. The thump to the side of my head stunned me into silence.  The mobile was steely cold which caused my body to shiver and the dank air stuck on my hair and eyebrows.    Poor me! I lamented.  All I thought about was leaving this dark nightmare, packing up all my possessions and going back, but then I really didn’t want to go back. Deep within my heart I wanted to explore Achill further. I wanted to stay.   

With a sense of defeat I stumbled onto the sofa and cocooned myself with the duvet.   Oh why, I wailed, could I not come home and things be fine?  And the pity party carried on with – why can’t anything go right for me? And so, the night ahead lay long and endless. The wind in Achill is determined in its roaring, it is loud and incessant.  In my dejected mood, I became angered and desired to shout, ‘Be Quiet’ but of course that would be a fruitless endeavour.  In reality it wasn’t the storm blowing outside, it was the squall in my head that I truly desired to calm. 

As I lay in the shadows of the night, faces of significant people of my past appeared before my eyes.  My childhood friend, Megsey with her strawberry blonde feather cut and the whiff of gingham perfume caused a tear to prick my cheek.  Then in the quietness of the ‘what if’ night I wondered what would have been if I had kept in touch with her.  Ah, the ‘what if‘ night, a concept which I am rather familiar with.

Then my memories are ruthlessly broken by the bleakness of bemoaning – ‘why did I come to Achill in winter?   Perhaps, if truth be told I was running away, sprinting towards the attempt to discover something which doesn’t exist.  Perhaps, it’s a natural stage of approaching one’s elder years.  I came because strange as it may seem, that determined wind had my name in it. I desired time away to consider my future without the safety net of familiarity.

As the wood stove offered its gift of warmth and the flickering candle gave calm, I eased into the night.  My eyes gazed upwards to the wine gum blue sky, a breath-taking sight, I was never privy to in Ballydehob. It tugs my heart and I am reminded that I am truly blessed to be in Achill.  Time will pass and soon the island will become familiar.

As each minute ticked I began to experience that having no electricity blocked out the incessant chattering of the outside world. No television, no film networks, no Facebook. I was no longer party to the mind thumping words breathed by others.  I had freedom to think without interruption and found that without all the sound bytes which continually bombard us, my sense of authentic self kicked in.

I spent five days with no electricity and I can’t believe that I am reporting that it was actually a positive experience, one which gained so much knowledge from. My electricity is back on and one thing I am certain of is that I am grateful for being able to switch on a light.

Until next time.