Christmas present

I read another blogpost from an old friend today. Like me, she hadn't posted for a while, and like me she has had a big year of changes on a personal and family level. We both grew up politically through the sixties and seventies, and like me, she is struggling to make sense of what is happening as we move towards a new year and what seem to be turbulent times. The dark days of winter are symbolic of many things. A time for growth, underground and unseen, ready to burst forth in Spring. A time of hibernation and dreamimg, as we prepare for the challenges of the new year. And because we don't hibernate like the lucky bears and tortoises, the butterflies and the dormice, it's a time when we can surround ourselves with those we love. If they can't be there in person, they are there in spirit. My own run up to Christmas has been a strange one. Working in an environment that makes a commercial business out of people's desire to get into the Christmas spirit, the pressure to fulfill visitors'expectations has been exhausting and relentless since early November. Work colleagues have been a great support, and there have been some magical moments scattered like fairy dust, but serving up the Christmas experience is very different from enjoying it. Inevitably at this time of year, I have a sense of Christmas past. Childhood memories of waiting for Father Christmas, the first Christmas when my dad was working abroad, the first Christmas when both parents were abroad and we travelled on our own, three young sisters, from a miserable boarding school in Derbyshire to the exotic jungles of Borneo to join them. A Christmas in Casablanca and Tenerife. A Christmas when I dropped out of University. A Christmas waiting for a January baby, just as my daughter is doing now. Christmas with and without my children, as we took it in turns as parents after my marriage broke up. If I put my mind to it, I can probably recall where I was and how I felt for most years since childhood. This Christmas present has been about helping my daughter and son in law turn their first house into lovely home for them and their imminent first baby. It's about having my children with me for our first Christmas in my new home. It's also about the relief of knowing my mother has managed a successful move to a new flat at the age of 87, thanks to help from other members of the family, who pulled out all the stops when I couldn't. This Christmas present is also about the pride I feel for my three children and their achievements this year. Christmas future is about having a grandchild to join us all next year.

A single to Sheffield

I often ponder my relationship status, having been single for many years now. There have been times when I have longed to meet a soulmate. There have also been times when I thought I had, only to be disappointed. I've been thinking about this topic as a suitable subject for discussion for a while, and I have to admit that it is the inclusion of the fictional singleton, Bridget Jones, on the Woman's Hour power list this week that has spurred me to action. Much as I enjoyed the book at the time, I can't begin to identify with her desperation and never did. At a completely different stage of life, with three children, two former marriages and about to become a grandmother for the first time, I can look back over my years as a single parent and responsible adult with a sense of achievement. I embrace my single status and appreciate celibacy and all. Sometimes I wonder if I'm a natural nun, in spite of the traumas of a convent education. Do I have trust issues? Definitely ! I also love my strong friendships and they haven't always been compatible with being one of a couple. There are times when it would be wonderful to have someone in my corner with practical help and emotional support. To have someone make me a cup of tea first thing in the morning and rub my back last thing at night. Someone to admire and appreciate me. I think it was Adrian Henri who wrote' Love is a fan club with only two fans'. I'm lucky because I see those strong and loving relationships close by me, for my children and my good friends. I know they exist and I can admire and appreciate them. Over the years I've resisted well meaning attempts to match make or to get me to sign up for Guardian soulmates and Internet dating. Not my way, though I'm sure it works for some. There are times when I wish I was part of a couple. I never expected anything else when I was younger. There are times when I realise how much I enjoy living alone. There are issues of freedom and status in society that still take me by surprise. People say a trouble shared is a trouble halved, but I am aware that in a relationship the opposite can happen, and it results in double trouble. Life is so complicated! So thank you family and friends for being the love of my life.

Stumbling on the side of twelve misty mountains

Bob Dylan's song A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall has been in the news this week. Patti Smith sang it for him at the Nobel prize ceremony, stumbling over the words of the second verse, the black branch with blood that kept dripping. It's a song I have been familiar with since it was first recorded, thanks to my father's passion for Dylan, Joan Baez, the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem and the rest.The lyrics have meant different things at different times in my life and I associated them with the civil rights movement, the Cold War and nuclear threat during my teens. Listening to the lyrics again this week, images were conjured up that reflected the history of the last half century, images that didn't exist in popular consciousness when the song was written. The song looks to the past and to the future in its form and meaning in a remarkable way. It comments on world events, environmental concerns, politics, war, famine and greed in a way that is as relevant now as it was in 1962. That should be depressing, but somehow it isn't because it's the fate of a poet to speak to truth, to enlighten and to create awareness. From awareness comes the opportunity to make changes. One line leapt out for me : I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains. That line sums up this year for me. Each month has brought unexpected challenges. I've been negotiating my way through unfamiliar paths, uncertain if I'm heading in the right direction across those misty mountains. But as the landscape of the year reveals itself, as the sun breaks through the mist, I'm aware of a huge sense of achievement for myself and my loved ones. I salute the poet.

What will survive of us is love

Listening to the news this morning, I heard an item about Philip Larkin's memorial stone in Westminster Abbey. It doesn't include what has become his most famous quote, but it does include the equally meaningful line I have chosen as the title for this post. A friend asked me this week ' What's happened to the Ditch?', and I realise it's been months since I wrote on this blog. There are several reasons for my silence. One is to do with my move earlier this year. Prosaically, now I'm living on the Edge I'd wondered whether to change the name. In reality I live below Brincliffe Edge, but the play on words works as this has been a challenging year, beginning as it did with a major move. And those challenges, which have involved family and friends in my close circle as well as political events in this country and elsewhere, haven't stopped me thinking, but they have made me reconsider my writing and what it's all about. As the national and world view became more incomprehensible to me, I found myself focussing on those I love and their place in my life. Focussing on what I can understand, influence, support and cope with. This doesn't mean I haven't tried to get to grips with Brexit and Trump (and the rest), but I need to be grounded in my own world when the wider world seems so alien. It has been a year of dislocations. Not only have I moved, but my children have had moves and changes. Even my elderly mother is on the move. It's been about finding personal places of safety and refuge, comfort zones and familiarity. For me, it has been about moving back to an area I knew over 23 years ago and finding my place here. It's been a good move and next week I will have my daughter and her husband living round the corner, with a baby on the way. First time granny. I can't wait. So I have been thinking a lot about living in hope. It isn't naivety. Hope is as important as love. It comes back to the old trio of faith, hope and love. So when I woke this morning to Philip Larkin's quote it made a lot of sense. Perhaps one day I will write about his better known quote!

Back to school

It's the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness once more. The shift from late summer to autumn, when you realise that the possibility of a perfect summer has fled. Autumn may be lovely, but the nights draw in, there's a chill in the air in the morning in spite of the promise of a sunny day. Birds are gathering, heather is flowering and the rowan berries brighten the trees. My journey to work through the Peak District is increasingly beautiful, dark green, orange and purple under a clear blue sky, criss crossed with vapour trails. Lines from songs run through my head, all around the blooming heather, the birds on the telegraph line this time. Too late for the summer, but not quite late September when I really should be back at school. Coincidentally my journey to work retraces some of my journey back to boarding school in Derbyshire. Leaving home in Sheffield one morning last week I was overwhelmed by the familiar feeling of dread and longing that accompanied the days leading up to my return to school after the summer holidays. It was something to do with the scent of vegetation after rain, the chill air and clear blue sky, the rowan trees in residential gardens.It may go deeper than that, as the days and nights move towards the equinox and like a bird, I feel it's time for me to leave, with all the emotions that accompany that feeling. Of course I don't have to go anywhere. September hasn't been a physical or geographical turning point for me since my teenage years. But somehow it's deep within me. The dark months of deepest winter don't affect me emotionally in the same way this time of year can. My summer holidays in those boarding school years weren't conventional. I travelled to the far east to join my parents and came back to England via my home town of Manchester, staying with friends and relatives for short periods of time. It was an intense experience. The far east wasn't my home, and I no longer had a home in this country. Yet homesickness was overwhelming and that mix of anxiety, longing and nostalgia can still overwhelm me when I least expect it. I have talked to other boarding school survivors over the years and I think for many of us, this is a difficult time of year. It's a time of separation and loss, of a sense of abandonment, the precious last few days of freedom. With my own children it was a time for buying shoes and stationery, school uniforms and dinner money. Back to the routine of school days,but with home to return to each evening. There's a Welsh word for it, hiraeth, with no direct English translation. It's defined as homesickness tinged with grief or sadness over the lost and departed. I can't help feeling it's a word that would be useful for many people in the world today.

Arbor Low: A sense of place revisited

Sense of Place Arbor Low Artist Keith How and photographer Billy Bye held an exhibition of their work at Upper Oldhams Farm, Arbor Low this weekend. I wrote some words.

Mysterious and awe inspiring for thousands of years, folklorists, antiquarians and archaeologists have their own theories about its historical and cultural significance. Whatever might be their truths, those ditches were dug, those stones were shifted for a purpose. Nearby Gib Hill has its own story, dating back to the Bronze Age. Roman soldiers gazed in wonder as they marched past on their way North. What did they make of it? Did they recognise something and compare it to Stonehenge and Avebury, or the Bull Ring, its sister henge in Derbyshire? Before the stones were laid, before the cove was created, before this plateau of Middleton Moor found its level above the sea, tropical lagoons covered this landscape, sea creatures lived and died, their skeletons forming the beds that became the limestone rocks, now fissured and worn, with their own rock pools of rainwater. Bones and stones. A human skeleton was buried in the cove, the group of rocks in the middle of the circle. Another was cremated, ashes buried in the kist at Gib Hill. Look around and notice the lie of the land, the shapes of the henge echoed by the far horizons of the surrounding hills. Look above to the heavens. Enter the spirit of the skylark and see the shapes from the air. It could be a clock face, it might be a heart, it’s an oval, an egg. Timeless and eternal, in the present it’s a focus for awe and love, pagan spirituality and nature worship. It’s a portal and a place to connect with people who share a common purpose and a shared love for the environment and wild places, who care about the spiritual and natural environment, who need a sense of belonging in their local landscape and the cosmos. This place has had its champions and custodians over the centuries. There is a welcome to enter in from those who live here. They understand its importance. Solstice celebrations at the turnings of the year bring visitors. Ice sculptures are created from blades of grass in December, paths are hidden in the mist. In June the sound of drums accompanies the skylarks’ song and the planes flying overhead. Throughout the year, in any season, there are those who find their way here with a bunch of wildflowers, a crystal, a drawing, an offering left in a cleft of the stones. It’s a place of pilgrimage and a place of deep connection.

1966 and all that

So it's 50 years since England won the World Cup. This morning the presenter of Radio 4's Thought For the Day harked back to 1966. He described it as post-war, with bomb sites undeveloped among the city and suburban streets. I remember it well. Manchester's Arndale hadn't yet been built. The city centre was Dickensian. There was a bomb site where my sister and I played near our house. Close by was an area of devastation known as Swinton Fields. We rode our bikes there, up and over embankments for long demolished railway tracks. On July 30th 1966 my sister and I were staying with my godmother, my aunt in the Isle of Man. School summer holidays, we were aged 11 and 12. Normally we would have been down on the stony beach at Port Jack, skimming stones, climbing rocks and making use of the disguised sewage pipe to walk out into the waves, past the cave in the cliff. But for some reason, though we weren't football fans, we stayed in, watching the game on her small black and white television. My aunt's flat was on Royal Terrace.The first floor living room had a bay window overlooking Douglas Bay from Onchan Head. While she lived there, I've seen the Red Arrows fly so close over the headland and past that window that you could imagine you saw the colour of the pilot's eyes. It was a sunny afternoon. We watched with concentration and fascination, calling my aunt in to join us for the last fifteen minutes. It was impossible not to get caught up in the excitement of the result, and in my mind's eye I see it in glorious colour.

A sense of place

It's only a couple of weeks since I spent a day thinking about the notion of a sense of place, thanks to the Humanities in Public initiative at Manchester Met and one of their events, held near Hope. I was full of inspiration to write about places I know and love, mostly in this country. Today I feel like a stranger in a strange land. Ironically the success of the Leave vote in the EU referendum has made me feel like I'm living in a foreign country. I'm struggling to recognise it. I was shocked that Sheffield, my new home, known as a City of Sanctuary, voted Leave. As a region South Yorkshire benefitted from EU funding when no-one else wanted to know. Memories are short it seems. I couldn't continue listening to the Radio 4 special from here this morning. I don't know anyone round here who thought we should leave, but I may be making assumptions. I'm very aware I have misread the attitudes of some friends and family members over the last few weeks. It's been even more difficult to second guess colleagues , though I have been comforted by support at work in the last couple of days. The shock of the result of the vote was much greater than I had anticipated yesterday. It seems many others felt the same, sick, despairing and full of dread for the future. I've grown up through the Cold War years, with the threat of nuclear war, through the Thatcher and Reagan era, the Falklands War, the first Gulf War, the Troubles, the disappointment of the Blair years and a second Gulf War, recessions and three day weeks, fuel crises, racism and right wing threats. I've nailed my colours to the mast and been actively involved in alternative approaches to the economy, the spiritual life, education and good health. I'm stoical and I'm a survivor. I know I'm not alone. These are unpredictable times. What is predictable are the broken promises to the Leavers and a damaged economy for all. At the moment the news seems dominated by Eton rivals and particularly vicious party politics. After the shock and numbness of the last couple of days, it's time to take stock and refuse to feel helpless. There's never been a greater need for hope.

Paul Graney's archives

On Tuesday evening I went to a talk at Central Library in Manchester about Paul Graney. Organised by Archives+ as part of the Manchester Histories Festival, it was free and only an hour long. David Govier and Fiona Cosson had done a great job distilling a life time of recording, witnessing and collecting into an introduction to Paul Graney's achievements. There were people in the audience who knew him and appreciated his role in collecting social history, folklore and folk music, including Barry Seddon, who has done so much work with his archive and Mike Harding, who was thrilled to see photos of the first Middleton Pace Egg play revival from 1967, featuring him in the role of The Doctor (no, not that one). The extracts from interviews and recordings were great to hear. The taped letters from around the world and the live performance of a collected traditional song about mill girls added to the experience. A lot was packed into that hour, which was over far too quickly. I love listening to this kind of witnessing - oral history interviews, music recordings, interesting radio programmes. As each piece was played, I could relate to it, recognising some connection with my own life and work, even though I never met Paul. My own beginnings in folklore studies took place on the other side of the Pennines in West Yorkshire, and my involvement in social and oral history didn't happen until after Paul's death in 1982. The tape letters, sent between contacts world wide, reminded me of the reel to reel recordings my sisters and I made for my dad when he was working in Nigeria. Nowadays those people would be using social media and the internet to share news and opinions. Listening to forthright opinions on the new fashion for mini skirts took me back to my early teens. I wonder what that woman would think if she knew they still haven't gone out of fashion. Mention of Kennedy's assassination from an American correspondent took me back to the Friday tea time when my sister and I heard the news, waiting for our favourite programme on TV (Bonanza). My mum was doing the ironing in the kitchen. She burst into tears when we told her and I didn't understand why for many years. Ironically I spend some of my time at work talking to visitors about JFK and his visit to his sister's grave in July 1963. I also occasionally talk about Diana Moseley at work, and it was fascinating to hear Paul Graney's first hand account of clashes with Oswald Moseley's Blackshirts. The song highlighting the mill owners' opposition to the Ten Hours Act was wonderful, sung live - 'on the backs of the Lancashire lasses'. Having recently worked at an industrial mill museum in Derbyshire, with its links with Arkwright and Lancashire cotton, it was very poignant. It was terrifying to hear Paul talk about his own initiation experience in the mills of Burnley. A dark cellar, loom grease, cotton lint, a bag over his head and his trousers round his ankles while a group of mill women did their version of tarring and feathering.I'd heard similar stories from the conversations I've had with former workers at The English Sewing Cotton Companies' mill in Belper. There the initiations took place on the works buses home and involved losing trousers. He also had plenty to say about libraries and librarians. When living as a tramp he had looked to libraries as a place of warmth and shelter, and harboured a lifelong resentment towards those officious female librarians who had shown him the door. In the early seventies there was a gentleman of the road who walked to Salford Central Library daily, resting and reading the paper in the reference section. A charming man. Many years later, a similar gentleman spent his days in another small branch library where I worked, accepted and welcomed by the staff if not always by the users of the library. I know Archives+ are looking for ways this particular collection can inspire and create responses. It's an amazing resource available for sharing and a great legacy for the man and his dedicated friends who have made that possible.

Wise moves

Many years ago, when I was part of the Bakewell Arts Festival, I had a dream to book John Cooper Clarke as part of the fun. He wasn't in a good place back then, and I was wisely warned off pursuing it by someone who knew the score. To my amazement he was booked in at Bakewell Town Hall as part of his tour with Mike Garry on Wednesday night. You give up on Bakewell and move to Sheffield and look what happens! I went back to Bakewell to see him and a great night was had by all. I was trying to remember when, where and how often I had seen him back in the late seventies. Alan Wise must have been his manager through some of that time. I was reminiscing about all the support slots he did back in the days when I did the door for Alan Wise. By Thursday afternoon I started to hear rumours that Alan had died, rumours that soon became a fact. How sad, so soon after the recent death of his daughter. Over the last few years I've heard people talk about the huge contribution Alan made to the Manchester music scene, unacknowledged for many years for many different reasons, not least because of the complicated approach to life Alan took. I read a great article in praise of him in a Salford paper today, pointing out that while Alan often owed money, we in fact owed him far more. My own friendship with him began in the late seventies when I used to do the door for him at Rafters. I had a day job, but loved the buzz of those nights out. When I met up with him at a Martin Hannett event a couple of years ago, he described me as his best ever door girl. For all I know he said that to all of them, but I'm proud that he thought that and remembered to tell me all those years later. I have a theory about it now I'm older. It never occurred to me to help myself to any of the takings, put my mates on the guest list or skive on the job. I was reliable and loyal. Thanks to those nights working for Alan - and he never owed me money, I was always paid - I saw some great music and comedy and met some fantastic people. It's an era of my life that has its own complications. As a result of something that happened whilst I was working for him, I ended up running away to Morocco and working there for a year. Once I came back, I did meet up with him again, but then the Hacienda opened and my part time door job found a new home. Last time I saw Alan, he asked me to send him a Bakewell pudding. I did. I hope he got it. I suspect he would have preferred a Bakewell tart. There are rumours that he was working on a book, and I know he had written some memoirs. He appears in James Young's book about Nico, 'Songs They never Play on the Radio', as Dr Demetrius. Fact or myth, I know we will not see his like again.

Remnants

This Saturday I will be at the Old House Museum in Bakewell, celebrating a night at the museum and collaborating with a group of talented people known as the IAC, art for art's sake. There will be photos from Jools Sewell and Billy Bye, and art from Debra Stone and Keith How. I'll be taking my yellow typewriter to encourage visitors to type their thoughts and reactions. The theme is REMNANTS and I know there's been some great explorations of this topic, already shared as teasers on Facebook . I'd thought of landscape and geology, extinct volcanoes, healing wells and springs, blue john and crinoid limestone. I thought of writing about these remnants of past ages, past times. However a couple of weeks ago I was handed an old Asda carrier bag full of papers, maps, envelopes full of old typewritten stories and sheets of paper covered with my once neat handwriting dating back to the 70s and 80s. In spite of my efforts to clear all the cupboards in my house before I sold it, I had overlooked this bag, found at the back of a cupboard. Remnants of my own life. I'll be displaying and talking about them on Saturday night. Most of it relates to local history and folklore, so it will be perfect for a night at the museum. Some of it relates to past work teaching English, something I am hoping to revisit in the next few months.

Arabian Nights

I have already mentioned the way in which books re-present themselves on the shelves when you move house. I keep rediscovering old favourites and I feel justified in hanging on to the books I brought with me, even though it seemed too many at the time. (I know, you can never have too many books!) In the last week I have read Tahir Shah's books about Casablanca again. 'The Caliph's House' is his story of buying a house in Casablanca and the process of making it his family home. It's in a part of Casablanca I can picture, even though he's writing nearly 30 years later. He describes a small rocky island at one end of the beach, accessible by wading across at high tide. It's covered in low white washed buildings. I walked across to it in the first week I spent in Casa, realising that I was out of place and in uncharted territory, but fascinated nevertheless. Apparently the sorceresses live there. You can see film of it on Tahir Shah's youtube posts. He also takes you round his amazing home and shares some of the wonderful French architecture in the centre of the city. I know parts of it must have changed beyond recognition, but there's plenty in the books and the films that is familiar. It seems that living in Morocco, and especially French influenced Morocco, is still the fascinating and disorientating experience I had. It really is like living in four or five centuries simultaneously. High fashion and donkey carts, djinns and nightclubs, art deco architecture and shanty towns. Tahir Shah is the son of Idries Shah, whose collections of Sufi stories were favourite reading when I first discovered them in my twenties. Tahir went looking for his own story, the story in his heart, which led him on a quest for traditional storytellers in Morocco. Once I'd read 'In Arabian Nights' again, I spotted another book about storytelling in Morocco, 'The Last Storyteller' by Richard Hamilton, a BBC correspondent in Marrakesh. Then as often happens, synchronicity struck. As I finished this intense bout of reading, Radio 4 broadcast Moroccan stories each weeknight at 7.45pm. They can be found if you search Open Art on the website. Ben Rivers, an artist, was commissioned to work with Artangel to produce a body of work based on Morocco and storytelling traditions. He's been working on it since 2013. There's a film, The Sky Trembles And The Earth is Afraid And The Eyes Are Not Brothers, and a multimedia installation at BBC Television Centre. There are also these five audio pieces for Radio 4. He uses Mohammed Mrabet's stories, read by Youssef Kerkour. Mrabet was Paul Bowles' muse. Bowles transcribed and translated his stories, publishing them as collections, Harmless Poisons Blameless Sins and M'Hashish. There's a mosaic of Moroccan sounds to accompany the readings. It's evocative and magical to listen to them. They transport you on a magic carpet ride. I'd been so disappointed when the trip I had planned to make to Morocco in April didn't go ahead. This has been a consolation prize.

Body image

Since moving to Sheffield I have met up with a lovely group of young talented musicians, mostly thanks to friendships forged with my youngest son when he moved here. One of them, the lovely and very talented Fran, has set up a Facebook group, inspired by Movember and Dry January, called MAY, I Love My Body. She has invited friends to share and contribute positive messages and thoughts about self image and body awareness. She started sharing with a wonderful song by India Arie. 'Sometimes I shave my legs, sometimes I don't'. What a great line. The song continues to be such a positive and uplifting message about being yourself, not always easy in any circumstances, but especially tricky in the music business. I thought I'd enjoy the posts over the month of May, but wasn't sure about contributing. At the age of 62, I have seen fashions come and go. Not just fashions in clothes and dress, but fashions in looks, body shape, hair type, facial features - you name it. I thought I had reached a point where I truly believe that anything goes, that there are many ways to express yourself, to look good and that as an individual you can take confidence from that. Comparisons don't work. The phrase 'Comparisons are odious' was first recorded in use in the 15th century. Van Morrison wrote the line 'All the girls walk by dressed up for each other' in his song 'Wild Night'. Of course it isn't only girls who judge themselves against their contemporaries. I find the vogue for plastic surgery horrifying, as much because of my fear of needles, stitches and hospitals. I watched the TV adaptation of Fay Weldon's Life and Loves of a She Devil and it had a lasting effect. I also grew up in the sixties when an apparently effortless natural look was chic. Think Jean Shrimpton and Julie Christie. So Fran got me thinking. I've been lucky. My weight doesn't change much. I feel healthy and eat well. It's easy for me to find fashionable clothes and small sizes often end up in charity shops too. My hair grows and I have never had to colour it. It's turning silver rather than gold, but it's an easy look to maintain. My teeth are my own. My toe nails aren't so good but a bit of polish sorts that in the summer. However I am aware that it could have gone another way. Boarding school created some strange eating habits. I hated the school food, especially as I disliked meat. I lived on cereal, cakes and biscuits. There was a tuck shop and we could buy extras, so I think most of my friends could eat a whole cake or a whole packet of biscuits at a sitting. In the late 60s I had never heard of anorexia or bulimia but that didn't mean it didn't exist. Looking back on schooldays I can identify friends who suffered from one or the other - or both. I was Twiggy style and could eat as much sweet stuff as I wanted. I probably weighed about 7 stone. But I do remember a skinnier friend's brother describing me as 'stocky'.Luckily I didn't take it too seriously, though the fact that I remember it all these years later means it struck home. His sylph like sister did go on to be a photographic model in those stick thin days. Noone ever told me I was nice looking or pretty or anything like that through my teens. My parents were on the other side of the world and I don't think it occurred to them that my sisters and I might need a bit of encouragement. As I get older I also realise that my mother had (and still has!) her own issues around ageing, weight and image. Some of my friends were encouraging and kind but I never really got it about looks. Being brought up by nuns didn't help either. Vanity was considered a sin. So I find myself at an age when I can accept who I am and what I look like without any worries . I sometimes look at photos of myself when I was younger and regret that I didn't know what I had back then. It would have been nice to have been proud occasionally! So to those of you reading this as part of MAY, I Love My Body, just do it.

Carfree

After nearly 25 years of essential car ownership I have just made the leap to become carless!I didn't learn to drive until I was thirty and then had access to the family car once I did. I have an ambivalent attitude to driving, especially having waited so long to learn. It's complicated and I do trace it back to my own mother's lack of navigation skills when she had to learn to drive because my father was working abroad.I was designated navigator and at the age of nine it was sometimes traumatic.I like public transport and the chance meetings and interactions that result in bus and train journeys. I'm not a car person, though I do regret that I no longer have the VW Karmann Ghia my former husband and I owned back in the 70s. In the last few months I have found myself unintentionally jobless and homeless, fortunately not for long. That wasn't part of the moving back to the city plan. But thinking about managing without a car was and yesterday I took the plunge. It was tempting to keep it for emergencies,or to trade it in for another secondhand car, but the truth is I wasn't using it and didn't need it. I get free bus travel to work, I live near to the shops I need and it's a short walk and an even shorter bus journey into town. I get trains if I'm going any distance. I am finally well connected. I realised when I worked in Manchester that people were managing work and bringing up a family without a car. A social life was possible and entertainment was accessible without one. In Bakewell a car was necessary for access to work, to shops and to enable my children to have friendships and interests. I could get to concerts and gigs in Sheffield or Buxton by bus, but I couldn't get home. The nearest railway station was a car journey away, with bus links to it cut in the last few years. I remember signing up for the doctor's surgery in Eyam when I first moved to Bakewell. They were happy to supervise the home birth of my youngest. Only a few miles from Bakewell, I assumed there'd be a local bus service for my appointments when I didn't have the car. Once a fortnight on a Monday! That's one bus there and one back. I don't think even that exists any more. Community transport initiatives took up some of the slack for special groups, but not for the general public. Time of course was a factor. The school and playgroup runs before and after work, the dashing about to manage it all. So now when my time is more my own, I can factor in the choice of walk or bus journey, or even a taxi. It's an experiment. I don't expect to be carless for ever, but I do want to be convinced I need one before I go looking. I am also in the fortunate position of being able to borrow one occasionally if I need to. I'm told there's a car club in Sheffield and I'd like to find out more about that too. But for now I'm car free and carefree. Bye little Smart Car. It's been fun!

Love will tear us apart

I have just woken up from a dream which involved me saving Martin Hannett from a heroin overdose. I was successful. The dream had a positive feel to it. This is not as surreal as it might sound. I know what sparked memories of Martin and it's not surprising that in a short week when we have lost Victoria Wood, Prince, Papa Wemba and Billy Paul my thoughts turn to mortality. The memories of Martin were sparked by going to see a play about Joy Division and Manchester, New Dawn Fades. I've written a review which will be shared on Pennyblackmusic's pages soon. But I am aware that I am having a very personal response to the play as the days go by. I had wanted to see the play since I first saw Shay Rowan's fantastic publicity photos posted on Facebook. There's always a risk in seeing people and events you knew portrayed on film, on stage and in books. I have never been disappointed by the depictions of the Factory family. 24 Hour Party People, book and film, Control, Deborah Curtis' Touching From a Distance, Mick Middles and Peter Hook's accounts,Colin Sharp's Who Killed Martin Hannett?,I've followed the retellings over the years as I have gone through the process of recognising my own past and the influence of those formative years. I've written before about not being able to access the memory of where I was when I heard about Ian Curtis' suicide. But I do remember the phone call from a friend when Martin died. What a waste. I couldn't face going to the funeral because it was a year to the day of another close friend's. In those days my children were very young and I didn't get much opportunity to go over to Manchester. To only go to attend funerals was deeply depressing.Tony's illness and death were well publicised. I was out of his loop by then and didn't get one of the Savile designed perspex invitations, though I knew the church, the Hidden Gem, really well. Bizarrely Rob Gretton's death was one I remember most clearly because two personal worlds collided. I was with a group of work colleagues, heading for a team trip to Kew Gardens as we were all part of a government nature conservation organisation. On the tube I saw a full page obituary in a stranger's copy of the Guardian, and couldn't help my surprised reaction. It was a real blast from my past. The newspaper reader was impressed and sympathetic. My colleagues had no idea who or what I was talking about! As the decades have passed,the stories have become myths, the characters have become legends and it's sometimes hard to keep it real. But I did share a house with Martin in my late teens. The room where I found him in the dream, was the room I was familiar with. Heroin wasn't part of the picture in those days. Our friendship survived for a few more years and eventually faded out after a difficult incident which alerted me to his changing drug and alcohol use. New Dawn Fades is both entertaining and intense. There are some fantastic individual performances but the cast work together as a team in the same way a band does.There's such a sense of loss and waste at the end, especially when photos of those who have passed are projected onto a screen as the audience leaves the venue. Victoria Wood's death was announced on the Wednesday, Prince's on the Thursday and I saw the play on the Friday. No wonder I'm dreaming of mortality.

Based on an idea by Tony Warren

On Monday night I took part in a First Draft cabaret evening at the Castle Hotel in Manchester. Back in early March, coincidentally on the day Tony Warren's death was announced, I saw a Facebook post from Archives+. The North West Sound Archive has found a new home with them, moved from its attic eyrie at Clitheroe Castle. It's an amazing resource and the Archives+ team, and my one time mentor, David Govier are exploring ways of making these sound archives come to life as a source of inspiration. A selection were put on Sound Cloud and we were invited to respond, taking an interview or recording as a starting point.It was an inspired and inspiring evening. I was beyond nervous at the beginning but so pleased to have done it. I was taken by the interview with Violet Carson, better known as Ena Sharples. What follows is basically what I wrote and read on Monday night. What I neglected to mention is that my amazing Granpa, Dr Garlick, looked exactly like old Steptoe! The Street: Based on an idea by Tony Warren Listening to Violet Carson’s story of how she took on and developed her role as Ena Sharples in Coronation Street took me back to my childhood. Both my parents came from an area of Salford known as Pendleton. My father’s family were in textiles. My grandfather was on the Cotton Exchange. My mother’s grandfather was head teacher at Langworthy Road school. My mother’s father was a GP based in the heart of the Salford Slums, Hankinson Park, better known as Hanky Park. He was born in 1880 and was practising as a doctor in the early years of the twentieth century. I remember going to his surgery also on Langworthy Road. Percy Garlick was an old grandfather. He had 10 children, 7 girls and 3 boys. I have been told that he sat on the Poor Law Board, and that he introduced mid morning milk to schools in Salford. He delivered Alistair Cooke, who never liked to admit he was a Salford lad, choosing Blackpool as a more refined place of birth. He was ahead of his years, fast tracked through his medical training. He’d worked as a ship’s surgeon. He looked after his patients before the National Health Service, some giving him what they could, and not always cash, to pay for their care. As a child I got used to being stopped in the street by people who saw the family resemblance between me and my sisters and my aunts, who wanted to talk about Dr Garlick. Years later, giving a local history talk in Eccles, a lady told me how as a child she had delivered the weekly sixpence to the house on Broad Street, an early form of health insurance. I tell you this because I need you to realise that my family were in the heart of Salford and Salford was in our hearts. But as the city became synonymous with slums and poverty, I know my mother found it increasingly difficult to admit to her origins. It’s a terrible thing to be a convent educated doctor’s daughter from Salford, especially if you are a bit of a snob. Listening to Violet Carson’s cutglass accent, I’m reminded that we had elocution lessons at school. Woe betide if your roots were identifiable by a Salford accent. To our amazement, even as children, when we were precociously aware of the shame of Salford, my mother became a huge fan of Coronation Street. She watched it from the beginning. We were allowed to stay up on Mondays and Wednesdays to watch it with her. It became our treat too. As the story lines and the characters developed my sister and I were caught up in Lucille Hewitt’s crush on Dennis Tanner and the scandal of her compass and ink tattoo of his name. Lucille’s mother was called Conceptua and one of my friend’s mothers had the same unmistakably catholic name. My father worked for a firm of civil engineers called Leonard Fairclough. My best friend’s father was an extra, appearing regularly in the public bar of the Rovers Return. We wrote plays and did drawings on scrap scripts he brought home. Another neighbour was a cameraman on the programme and his children were the envy of the road because they had been taken to the cinema by the actress who played Irma Ogden, Stan and Hilda’s daughter. My piano teacher was a friend of Violet Carson. I hated the lessons, but loved getting Miss Hayes to tell stories of her childhood and her friends. On retirement my grandparents moved to the rural splendour of Little Hayfield. Pat Phoenix, who played Elsie Tanner, lived there, and I believe Tony Warren wrote episodes in the Lantern Pike pub. Violet Carson played the organ at the Ambassador Cinema on Langworthy Road, whilst Ena Sharples played it in the Gospel Hall. Did you know there was a bible of characters and storylines for scriptwriters who joined the team? So fact and fiction wove in and out of the programme, in the names, the locations, the plots and the people. As I grew older I realised what a ground breaking series it was, in its depiction of essentially working class life at the start of the swinging sixties. It was affectionate and funny, but didn’t avoid difficult storylines. Violet Carson’s role as Ena Sharples combined with Martha Longhurst and Minnie Caudwell harked back to Greek tragedy and Shakespeare. Three witches, three fates, providing a traditional and moral interpretation of the changes in society that everyone could recognise. They may have drunk milk stout but there wasn’t much milk of human kindness in the Rovers’ snug. Old values met new fangled ways in Weatherfield. No wonder it was such a success and has become the longest running TV soap opera. It validated a world that my parents, especially my mother, was very familiar with, even though she may not have felt a part of it. It changed the image of Salford. Salford is now Media City and the Lads Club, the Lowry and the Imperial War Museum. The Coronation Street visitor experience is geographically placed there. At the start of the series it could have been set in any run down area of Manchester or Salford, before sixties redevelopment took hold. It’s a remarkable survival in fiction. John Cooper Clarke, the bard of Salford, made it on to the English exam syllabus. A far cry from my school elocution lessons. My mother continues to watch Coronation Street. Before clever televisions, you wouldn’t dare to phone her in that sacrosanct half hour. The fictional Street has helped her deal with family crises over the years. I started to write this piece on the day that Tony Warren’s death was announced, March 2nd. About thirty years ago a neighbour’s daughter invited me to a party. She had been a script writer on the programme and I was thrilled to meet Tony Warren there. And more recently an old schoolfriend had a small part as a social worker on the programme. The Street continues to connect.

Songs they never play on the radio

Moving house means moving books. I started the process of clearing the shelves and deciding which ones to keep as soon as I thought about putting the house on the market. I knew I couldn't keep them all. I bought boxes and boxes of them to the local specialist charity book shop round the corner from where I am now living. It wasn't difficult to pass them on, mainly because I have kept so many. I asked myself if I would read it again, and if the answer was yes, I kept it. I had a fantasy that I would tidy and categorise my personal library - after all I have worked in libraries and archives. The reality was that books got packed in boxes room by room, but were unpacked randomly when all sense of order was thrown to the winds as I raced against the clock to unpack boxes and get my new home habitable. So the books on the shelves are even more random than they were at the old house. I have multiple copies of some - I Capture the Castle, Great Expectations, Pride and Prejudice, Children of Green Knowe and oddly Mick Middles book on Joy Division and New Order to name a few. I'm still discovering others. Books jump out at me from unfamiliar arrangements in familiar places. Most weeks I have a day of train travel and waiting. I find it hard to concentrate, so I choose a book that I think I can read in a day, an old friend off the shelf, self contained and comforting in its familiarity. A couple of weeks ago someone mentioned James Young's book about Nico, Songs They Never Play On The Radio, saying it should be reissued with a new foreword . I bought my copy at a friend's bookshop in Bakewell many years ago, when it had been remaindered by the publisher. You can see by the price label. I came very close to giving it away to Antony Hegarty some years later, knowing he was a huge Nico fan, as a thank you for putting me on his guest list. I was torn, because I wanted to keep the book, but I knew how much he would appreciate it. Fate intervened literally the day before I saw him, when a single copy turned up on an otherwise empty outdoor display shelf at a cut price bookshop in rural Derbyshire. Spooky. So I kept my copy. I must have read it back in the mid nineties. I may even have read it more than once. It was only when I read it again last week that I realised it was more fact than fiction, and that I was being introduced to a darker side of people known to me. Some were people I'd see out and about at gigs, others I'd worked with, even had my hair cut by. I felt more sensitive and vulnerable to this darker version of Mancunian history and Nico's part in it.I felt shocked and I felt guilty for passing it on to Antony, possibly shattering his illusions about Nico. I realised that while I had admired her over the years, I had never mythologised her, because I'd seen some of the reality of her time in Manchester. Reading a book in a day is an intense experience and this is a great read.

Woman on the Edge

I can't believe how long it's been since I posted on this blog. I was writing work blogs regularly which gave me a false sense of continuity. And it has been a crazy time, with a difficult moving experience. So here I am in Sheffield, living below Brincliffe Edge. I did consider changing the name of my blog, but I loved living near the Nico Ditch, and a piece of my heart is still there. In the months since I last wrote I have been close to the edge, metaphorically and geographically. I wanted less responsibility and some money in the bank. Be careful what you wish for! My house sold but I found myself jobless and homeless, with most of my worldly possessions in storage.In the end it resolved within weeks, but it was very scary. As I downsized from a family home to a two bedroomed flat I sifted, sorted and stored in Granny's attic. I was on first names with the staff at the local tip, and my favourite charity shop told me I'd kept them going through Christmas and the new year! So here I am in Sheffield, old haunts and new experiences after a gap of nearly 23 years. It's all falling into place and I'm working part time, back where I have worked before. I'm planning to get back into writing regularly, I am still doing music reviews and I hope to share something of life in Sheffield as I settle in and start to breathe again.