Just one day in February.

 On Friday we drove up the M6 to the old house in West End Morecambe and popped the heating on to warm it up.

...then  switched on the electric blanket to air the bed...

...and off to Arnside in the wind with big skies and rainbows over the Bay.

A train goes off to Whitehaven again.

It looks like a toy train as it trundles over the bridge on it's way up the west coast of Cumbria.

We sit and stare and promise...we'll do that trip this year.

 

...my mum loved seagulls...her favourite book was " Jonathan Livingston Seagull"...

Rosie bought it for her.

...we used to watch them from the old caravan at Ballyferris...fighting the winds and soaring over the wild seas.

...we were just in time to catch the "bore" as it powered it's way up the Kent ...roaring like a tractor...

...sudden downpours...

...caused many rainbows...I love a rainbow...it tells me " All will be well"...

(Julian of Norwich...thankyou..)

...then back to the old house and fish and chips with the blessed son...who now lives on The Bay.

A big fire in the grate and rugs around the knees and we talk of this and that ...

and are thankful.

Sunday's Short Story...Writer's group prompt.

Vicky said we should see how many times we could sing, "Rock around the clock". It was the end of the 1950s and we were in the domestic science rooms at school in Belfast.

There's a thought. Domestic.....were they planning that we should only end up as housewives?

Was learning to wash lettuce and make porridge really a science that our mothers hadn't already invited us to participate in?

My mother had regularly invited me into the kitchen for one science or another.  Washing up was well on it's way to a degree, if not an MSc by the time Vicky suggested this latest idea.

Elvis was hot news in 1956. Not that he or his music were played in my home nor I suspected...Vicky's.

Ungodly I think would have been the comment from my brother... older than me.

Anyway, I don't think I could have wound up my parent's gramaphone fast enough to keep a record playing long enough to be able to dance....that is gyrate...to the end of the song.

Can you remember the words?...one o'clock, two o'clock, three o'clock...oh you remember.

I was nervous. It was always difficult to say no to Vicky.

She wasn't exactly a bully, but let's just say extremely persuasive.  And I wanted to stay in with her as she also led the little gang of teenagers who gathered on the beach near where we both had family caravans.

Oh my...there's another tale to be told. The caravan.

Anyway I seccumbed to her hissing persuasion and chanted "Rock around the clock" quietly under my breath. My hesitancy was not only fear of being heard in the class...but also because I had already been in trouble with the headmistress.

Looking back now it seems ridiculous, but the wrong v-necked sweater from the wrong shop, the tilt of a beret on the back of the head rather than pulled well over the ears, or the length of hair touching the collar of the blazer, could get you hauled into her office for another lecture on "Unacceptable uniform".

I 've forgotten how many times we sang though Elvis's rock anthem. I would think Vicky with her uncanny ability to miss out on the lash of "miss's" whip like tongue, kept going the whole hour of the lesson. Then the bell would have brought me blessed relief.

The hour is imprinted deep in my memory bank. A bank that seems to have deposited some memories deep in a vault slammed the door and gone and lost the key.

Elvis's music and his Lemur-like hip gyrations were a turning point for a whole generation that was moving rapidly away from all the deprivations that period of our history brought with it.

And as the alternative in Ireland was either "Diddley da" music or Irish style country and western with those singing... slurring over both the words and melodies...Elvis and all that followed were a breath of fresh air.

Daisies

Donaghadee and the daisies that I picked as a child at Ballyferris to bring back to the caravan for mum.

You're still my favourite.

A Poem for Thursday.

A Poem for Thursday

Today at the writers' workshop the prompt was from Shauna. She gave each of us some pages with interesting lists, to make us think about our lives and the people associated with us at various stages of it.

Time Line..............I choose 10 - 15. ...it was the 50s, it was Co Down, and all was well in my world.

Before the Fall

Time was endless, friends were many.

Vicky and Sandy, and I was Gerry.

We laughed a lot, linked arms and talked

About boys we fancied and those we stalked.

A caravan was where we gathered 

Under the stars at Ballyferris

Our bare feet kicking the silver sand.

Where time was endless, nothing planned.

"There's  Cassiopeia and there's the Plough".

"Oh your luck's in, there's a shooting star!"

We raced down maran covered dunes

And harmonised on Western tunes.

And miles away on the far horizon

Were ships bound for ports in the land of England.

We seldom thought of our futures then,

But time and tide don't wait for man.

They pass unseen and never waver

Then gather up all in their net without favour.

And I daren't go back to that holy place

Where time stood still. A time when space

And mercy was real, before the fall

That enveloped and overwhelmed us all.

Before everything...dad.

Dad's garage....was not for the car.
For on a rough wooden bench...with oil stains from sump oil spilled from the pot that was used to seal the wooden and tarred roof ....stretching across the garden end ... the important joinery was carried out.
 An ancient wooden and metal vice...with a long handle slotted through the turning screw and two balls of metal...one at either end  to hold the bar in place...was screwed to the bench.
Along the walls, held in place with strips of wood tacked on to the vertical structure, were off cuts of timber kept for use in future assemblages.
Under the work bench and to the right in the darkness was an ancient travel trunk with a domed lid and wooden slats that held down the oiled fabric on the top.
 In this trunk were kept scrolls extolling the different members of the Williamson family and their academic successes.
 And also in this treasure box under the scrolls were hidden beautiful 1st world war postcards with  messages of love embroidered on silken gauze and pictures woven to depict exotic places.
To the left and behind the side door, a dog's bed with straw and water dish, for dad was born a farmer's son and took a hound with him when he went hunting .He was always a country man at heart.
His woodworking tools were beautiful . Handmade by himself at the City technical college in his free time. Oak and mahogany handles turned and often enscribed with his name D.G.McC. There were wooden boxes on the top of the workbench holding nails, screws, hinges and other equipment in separate sections.
A window above the bench looked out to his garden of roses and perennials.And always a bed of sweet pea to scent the air at the end of summer.
Above his head, slotted along the roof joists were more lengths of wood. Whether they were ever used I cannot say but it all seemed to me to be a sacred place. Nowadays I suppose it would be called a man cave...and there is no doubt that it was a place of refuge from the hustle and bustle of family life.

In this holy space, a caravan was conceived and built.

The Story of Ballyferris....Chapter Eight...The Beach

The Beach

The name... Ballyferris...  is enough to set me off on a sweet daydream.

Growing up in the suburbs of Belfast city... life lived by the Co. Down coast meant freedom.

 The flat landscape, the open skies, the ever present blue-grey Irish Sea, became a raison d'etre for living ...yes I think it's not going too far so say that this became a truth for me .....and the main reason for this obsession was definitely the beach.

 Nowadays, with cheap air travel we  have a greater knowledge of beautiful expanses of golden sand and turquoise sea, from Portrush to Portugal, India and beyond..at least on the internet!!

But nothing can compare with early memories, and mine are of the beach at Ballyferris.

 Waking up to the smell of an Irish fry, bacon,eggs, mushrooms and toast. Knowing that a whole day and the exploration of the beach was ahead of me. No homework, no responsibilities,this was tantamount to heaven. I didn’t analyse it then, and it’s taken me a lifetime to work out even a little of why I loved it so much.

Come with me, as we walk over the little grassy ridge at the coast edge of the field.  Come down to the beach, there you will find yourself treading the worn path that many have taken before. Around you, the smell of  beach daisies.... a type of camomile. My love for these innocent flowers  has stayed with me since.( I even wrote a song about them once... “I love the flowers, I love the trees, but most of all I love daises.” ...not exactly  Larkin or Heaney!...)

When I walk on other beaches, Morecambe, Southwold, Portrush or Brighton... I strip some seeds from the abundance of the seedheads, to drop on coastal areas bare of daisies.

 Rarely did I return to the caravan without a bunch of these flowers for mum.

So, on past the daisy strip, which by the way could take any thing up to an hour, on down the beach, heading to the sea.

If the tide was out , I squelched my way over a mound of sticky brown seaweed, treading lightly in my bare feet, for fear of some squirming creature having been caught there, left by the receding tide. The hard sand was cold beneath my feet.Truth is it was very cold, and this was probably why my patient mum always shouted after me to put on wellington boots ...as I ran off from the caravan. Clothes for Ballyferris were basic.... a t-shirt or at the most a felted woolly jumper, a pair of cotton shorts and bare feet. I’m convinced,  this is one of the reasons why I still have fairly healthy... if rather large feet! Reach the water and take a tentative dabble at the edge with toes in, before running  back up the beach to warmer sand.

At the end of the summer the sand at the top of the beach had dried up in the sun and shone like silver dust. It was very fine and a joy to scrunch under your feet until they were covered by the earthy warmth.

This poem below was on a post by Anthony Wilson ...writer , poet and blogger...

and reminded me of that girl and the freedom she had in those days...

Who?

Who is that child I see wandering, wandering
down by the side of the quivering stream?
Why does she seem not to hear, though I call to her?
Where does she come from, and what is her name?

Why do I see her at sunrise and sunset
taking, in old-fashioned clothes, the same track?
Why, when she walks, does she cast not a shadow
though the sun rises and falls at her back?

Why does the dust lie so thick on the hedgerow
by the great field where a horse pulls the plough?
Why do I see only meadows, where houses
stand in a line by the waterside now?

Why does she move like a wraith by the water,
soft as the thistledown on the breeze blown?
When I draw near her so that I may hear her,
why does she say that her name is my own?

Charles Causley, from The Collected Poems for Children  

The Story of Ballyferris. The Field

                                           

       Chapter Four

      The Field

*

I had a wonderful conversation this week with the younger son of the farmer who owned the field...Neil Hope...sadly he says no wild flowers are now to be found in the field nor skylarks singing high above the caravans...such is the way of all flesh I think...but we can all do our bit to restore these precious parts of nature in our own little corners of this country.

                                                                            

In the early years our caravan was positioned along the back edge of the field. Behind us was the potato field and beyond that the coast road, leading left to Ballywalter and right toward Millisle. In front, a field of long grass and wild flowers, beyond that the beach and after a rocky foreshore the grey Irish Sea. The field was reached down a narrow lane which led to the beach, and on the right it was bordered by another caravan field . It was the first time that I had ever seen the kind of wild flowers that I had loved in the Flower Fairy books. Heartsease, wild thyme, marguerites, buttercups and lots more to thrill the soul of a dreaming child. Skylarks sang overhead as they soared higher and higher into the air luring us away from their nests hidden in the long grass .The air was sweet and spicey and when the wind dried on your lips they tasted salty and full of the sea. In later years pride of place right in the middle of all this was a flagpole and flying proudly from the top, the British Union Jack. Dad said that the farmer who owned the field, called it the “Flag of Prosperity” -pronounced “persparety” but this may only be a family fable. Caravans of various sizes and shapes were sited all around the perimeter of the field and thus began for me a life totally separate from the routine of home , school , home, in Belfast.

National Trust: Ards Peninsula.
--------------------------------
■sandhoppers, a little shrimp-like crustacean

■seaweed flies, insects which are food for turnstones, starlings and badgers

■sea aster (Aster tripolium) flowering from July to October

■scurvy grass

■thrift (Armeria maritima) flowering from June to August

■sea lavender (Limonium spp) flowering from July to December

■wild thyme (Thymus drucei)

■stonecrops and squills flowering in the summer

■bell heather (Erica cinerea) flowering from June to September

■bee orchids (Ophrys apifera) flowering from April to May

■pyramidal orchids (Anacamptis pyramidalis) flowering from June to August

■twayblade orchids (Listera ovata) flowering from May to July

Of course I didn't know the names of any of these wonderful bits of nature, I just reveled in their beauty and in my new found freedom.