If I knew then...

This is a photo of a pile of stuff ready to be packed up and taken to the new flat where my youngest son and his girlfriend are going to live. On top of the pile is a dhurrie, one of two given to me as wedding present over forty years ago. They had asked if they could take them to the new flat, and I had got them ready to go. Thinking back to that June day in 1974, I realised that I was even younger than they are now. The marriage didn't last, but I have never regretted it. I had a home and stability after the unsettled years of boarding school , with parents on the other side of the world. I got through university with a degree and bought my first house in those early married days. I have watched the process of the flat search in Bakewell, not known for its cheap and cheerful property prices and with a general reluctance on the part of landlords and estate agents to let to young people. Finally they have found one, a great attic space in an old Georgian building. My sensible inner voice thinks that they would be better off continuing to live with me. If they paid me a proper rent and bills, my own financial anxieties would be lifted too. But it's important that they have their own place, learn their own lessons and enjoy their independence. Walking down the steep hill between my house and the town centre I watched a young child running faster and faster, as his mother called 'Be careful! You might fall!' It brought home to me how we give our children negative messages out of fear and hard experience. If I had been warned off my early marriage, I wouldn't have taken that risk. There are many other points in my life where an apparently foolish risk taking took me somewhere I didn't expect to be. Even last year's leap in the dark to become an archive trainee wasn't a sensible move. After all, I had a permanent full time job at the time. I haven't got one now. So taking a chance or two in life is an essential part of growing up and enjoying the process. If I had known then, what I know now, then I would never have had the chance to learn what I now know!

Manx for the memories

This series of photos were taken in the Isle of Man on a recent visit. I have been going there on holiday to visit family and friends for most of my life. As a place and a landscape it is part of my soul. It's been a Viking raiding post, an internment camp in both world wars and a popular twentieth century tourist destination. The boarding houses made way for the financial institutions and parts of the island are now showing the effects of the recession years. As a child I met Manx friends of my aunts who understood and shared their sense of their own past and folklore, inspiring me to explore those subjects in my own life. I have taken my children on holiday to the island . My godmother still lives there. I've been to the TT and the Manx Grand Prix. I have seen the fairies at Fairy Bridge. I've heard the story of the Black Dog of Peel Castle, the Moddy Dhoo. I've climbed the battlements of Castle Rushen and sung 'Ellan Vannin' in the Glue Pot in Castletown.I've watched the seals in Peel Harbour,collected delicately coloured snail shells from Niarbyl Bay and been amazed by the Manx crosses in Maughold churchyard.I've been to Tynwald and seen the oldest parliament at work.As a child I met Gerald Gardner, king of the witches,at Witches Mill. I have favourite rocks and and views. These photos hold the ghosts of past visits, holiday memories, loved ones. The island' fortunes ebb and flow. The three legs of man land on their feet, whichever way you throw them.

Fire and Rain

Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone. Early one morning, nearly ten years ago now, I got a phone call from my friend Joyce's sister, letting me know that she had passed away. There was relief in the shock and sadness.She had been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour about eighteen months before. She was told to go out and do all the things she wanted to do before the symptoms caught up with her. She cashed in her pension and took a lump sum on her life insurance.She went to Venice for the last time. She made the most of life whist she could, until she became confined to bed at home and in a hospice. She was a remarkable and interesting woman and a great friend to me and my children. We met through an alternative health course I was teaching as an evening class. We bonded over many shared interests, and had some excellent adventures. It was through Joyce that I appeared on the Antiques Roadshow with my arts and crafts fire screen.Her mother had been an early star, with her Wheeldon exhibition tea pot,later sold to buy her council house in Liverpool. What a story! So we were treated as VIPs whenever we went to see it recorded. I still see us in the crowd if they show some repeats. One of our shared interests was the music of James Taylor. This was at a stage in my life, when as a single parent on a limited income, I was unable to go to live music concerts. Babysitters, transport, tickets, logistics - it was all too complicated.We discovered that James Taylor was appearing at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. It was sold out, but the box office suggested we phone on the day for late seats. We did, and we got two. Her husband came to babysit, we jumped in the car and raced over to Manchester for an unforgettable night. Over the next couple of years, we saw James Taylor twice more. I knew she had planned her funeral, a humanist service. I knew there would be a James Taylor song, and I expected to hear You've Got a Friend, the soundtrack to our friendship. I was caught up in the lyrics of Fire and Rain, 'I always though I'd see you again'. She had chosen 'Shower the people you love with love' and I try to live up to it. One of the sad things is that she has never appeared in my dreams, as far as I know, I never have seen her again, unless you count those occasional and accidental glimpses on an old Antiques Roadshow. The reason I am writing this is that I have just booked to see James Taylor in Manchester next month.Friends gave me a ticket voucher for my big birthday, and it has covered the cost of one ticket. Too expensive to invite anyone to come with me, so I am going on my own. Except I won't be alone. I know it will bring back so many memories. Joyce and I should have celebrated these big birthdays together. This is one way of doing it.

Home thoughts on abroad

I listen to the Today programme on Radio 4 for an hour or so whilst I am getting up in the morning. I catch about ten minutes of Woman's Hour on my drive to work. Most days I can absorb the opinions and information, but this week I am moved to write something, more for myself than anyone out there who reads this. I know I may reveal a political naivety or an idealistic rather than pragmatic approach here too. I'll start with Woman's Hour. I can't be the only listener who finds it patronising. Maybe it's my age. I don't consider myself old, I think of myself as mature and experienced. I know that my generation were movers and shakers back in the 60s and 70s. I still have plans and dreams, and some of them get transformed into reality. I would prefer to plan to live in a commune than sheltered housing for the over 50s. I'm happy to share meals with people of all ages, but I don't want to be described as a grandmother ( and I am not! ) simply on the basis of my age and my ability to cook. Because of changes in pension entitlement, I have to continue working and applying for jobs for the next 5 years, in competition with younger people. I don't envy them. At least I am doing it from a position of experience and employment. It is a potentially soul destroying process. Especially when you hear about the random ways HR departments whittle down the volume of applications. I know I can switch off the radio if I don't like what I hear, but I am intrigued to follow how women's issues are being dealt with on what considers itself a serious radio programme. The Today programme has been particularly interesting this week. The sad news about Robin Williams gave Adrian Strain the chance to share his thoughts on his son's suicide and his work as a Samaritan. His comments on his conversation with the policeman attending his son's death will stay with me for ever. As a Samaritan, 90% of his suicidal callers are women.The policeman revealed that 90% of the suicides they attend are young men. Women talk, men take violent action against themselves. Heart breaking.I have lost friends to suicide over the decades, like many other people. Could you have done more? Would a chance intervention have changed the course of their lives? Adrian Strain suggested a very practical intervention for young men presenting with stress at their doctor's surgery. Of course a sick note presupposes you have work to be absent from. And that's another factor. Finally Gaza, Iraq and Russia. Listening to Paddy Ashdown on Radio 4 this morning made me realise that WW1 and even th Great Game are still creating ripples through present day politics. The Sykes Picot agreement and the containment of Russia's power before the Revolution. He described it as a convulsion. An interesting image. If an airlift of refugees from a mountain in Iraq can be planned by international powers, then why can't women, children and the vulnerable be taken out of danger in Gaza? I remember breaking up arguments between Iraqui, Kurdish and Iranian students on a regular basis at a language school in Manchester in 1981. They tried to explain, and I could only relate it to Northern Ireland at the time. And my other naive question, as Paddy Ashdown talked about the type of interventions he thought would help, is where is Tony Blair in all this? Is he on holiday? I thought this was his role as envoy in the Middle East. And each time I hear a broadcaster say Sunny and Shia, it sounds like a tragic joke waiting to happen.

Rites of Passage

My daughter and her lovely boyfriend got engaged a few weeks ago, much to everyone's great joy. The proposal took place on the oldest working wooden roller coaster, in Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen. I like the symbolism. The roller coaster of life. There has been a flurry of decisions and arrangements as a date and venue are set for this time next year.On Thursday morning we went to look at wedding dresses at a proper specialist wedding dress shop, a new experience for both of us. She looked gorgeous in all the ones she had chosen to try on. When I got married the first time, we had a traditional wedding. My parents seemed to organise it and they certainly paid for it. I remember meeting the vicar,and going for lunch at the hotel we later booked for the reception. My bridesmaid and I went to choose a boutique bought long dress for her to wear. My husband to be had a white suit made, at a bespoke tailors. A clothing designer friend made my dress for me. I can recall going to buy the fabric, blues and creams, floral and floaty with ribbons and flowers and butterflies in lace. I wish I had kept it. I hand wrote the invitations, using cards with an image of Breughel's wedding feast. None of it was stressful. I was doing my first year exams at University a few weeks before the date. The style of the wedding was traditional, but the friends who came were a troupe of beautiful hippies. Velvet jackets,long curly cavalier hair styles for the men, ethnic dresses,flowing locks,loon pants and embroidered mirrored t-shirts. I need to look for the photos. A bright sunshiny day. My second wedding was simple and a secret, with two good friends as witnesses. It took place in a registry office, and we only announced it after the event. I wore a white cotton dress from Warehouse, where I was working at the time. There are only two photos. So once a bridesmaid, twice a bride and here I am as the mother of the bride. It's forty years since my first marriage. Things have changed in the wedding world, and it's going to be an exciting and interesting time. No doubt I will write about some of it here.

Eyeless in Gaza

Some weeks bring strange connections. My work as a guide at Chatsworth means that I spend some time talking about Tintoretto's Samson and Delilah to visitors, a 16th century Italian interpretation of the biblical story. A figure hides under a table, watching as a servant combs and cuts Samson's hair, as he lies against Delilah, oblivious in sleep.The hidden figure is waiting for his chance to blind Samson once his strength is destroyed. Some visitors are familiar with the story, others aren't. Last Saturday I went to see Doors Alive, a tribute to the Doors and Jim Morrison, at the Lowry. A review is due to be published on the Penny Black Music website. The show is called Perception, in acknowledgement of Aldous Huxley's book, The Doors of Perception, the source of the band's name. Aldous Huxley also wrote a novel, Eyeless in Gaza. Words and phrases, titles and names, all in a connecting wheel with their own associations. And then there is the news from Gaza each day.

Oh the Sisters of Mercy

Each time I listen to the news there is a new confirmation of the terrible discoveries in Tuam, County Galway. Infant bodies in a mass grave, in a septic tank of all places. Such disrespect on so many levels. Like many people hearing these news stories I am deeply shocked, but as someone who survived convent boarding school for four years, I am not surprised. Recently my sister lent me a book, Childhood Interrupted by Kathleen O'Malley. She and her siblings were taken into care ( a word that must surely have a new meaning nowadays)and brought up in an Industrial School run by the Sisters of Mercy, who also ran the now infamous Magdalene Laundries. I recognised the breed of nun described there. Moral righteousness combined with cruel arrogance. God was on their side. I attended convent schools throughout my education . My primary school and grammar school were run by nuns from the Faithful Companions of Jesus order, who also ran a teacher training college in Manchester. They were religious and strict, but never cruel. In fact it was the older generation of lay teachers who put the fear of god into me at grammar school. When my sisters and I went to boarding school we met a very different type of nun. Our parents were in the Far East, where my father had taken a job as a civil engineer. Airmail letters took two weeks and in my misery there I used to joke that we would be dead and buried before my parents knew anything about it. It's hard to believe how difficult international communication was in the late 60s and early 70s. These nuns had a cruel arrogance I had never met before. Of the two kind ones, one left and the other had a breakdown. Perhaps we were singled out because our parents were so far away. Much of the unpleasantness affected us all though. Some of it was laughable. Confiscated non regulation underwear and tampax. Limited laundry and bath timetables. Hair washing once a week. All punishable if ignored, and of course as growing teenage girls who cared about how we looked and smelt, we did ignore it. Tales of punishments from the junior part of the school, where my younger sister lived. We weren't allowed to visit her. She was 7 when she went there. I was 13 and my other sister was 12. Punishments there included an iron bar across the back of your legs and being made to spend the night in a reputedly haunted room. The milk of human kindness for these lonely small children. We were more rebellious and resilient at the senior school. Sneaking letters out to friends, especially boys, via the day girls. Even to our parents so that they weren't censored by the nuns. They never believed us anyway. They were paying for the privilege of our boarding school education and there were many and varied reasons why we were closeted away there. In the years after I left, looking back on the peculiar education, the attitude of the nuns to us and the wider world, I felt sorry for them. They were dealing with teenage girls living the mid to late 1960s, with all its changing attitudes. It was beyond anything they were familiar with in Ireland and they only had their cruelty to try and control us. As these stories emerge in the press I realise that these nuns, unlike the first nuns I encountered at school,were of the same habit as the Sisters of Mercy. They weren't from that order, they were Presentation Sisters, but their attitudes and expectations were only a whisker away from them. They would have been capable I am sure. There's so much more I could write. Over the years I have alternately felt sympathy for them, utter contempt, benign dislike and occasionally sentimental at the strange bond that is created for those who have endured a convent education. A few years ago I was relieved to discover that there were radical environmental activist nuns in the States. It restored my faith in the potential of a religious life. Needless to say I am no longer a practising catholic, though I still consider myself a cultural one by virtue of my education. They say we make our own hell. When I hear these revelations in the news, I hope that's true.