The sunny day disappeared as we walked through the short steep-sided gorge – following in the footsteps of Victorian touristto the Water-Break-its-Neck waterfall, around a mile from the village of New Radnor ( Maesyfed – the Welsh name), in the county of Powys,Wales.
It was a spectacular sight.Yet, beyond the sound of the water it was strangely silent.
The water tumbled through the black slated rocks, a silvery mesmerising flow, to the small stream and creating a fine rainbow mist in the air. Yet there was an eerie and ephemeral feeling to the fallen, bare oak branches laced with lichen and boulders covered in dark green moss and surrounded by curtains of gently swaying ferns.
We made our way back along the narrow path. I thought we would be taking a slow ramble along the walking trails in Warren Wood – so named for the labyrinth of rabbit warrens that kept the locals fed for centuries, now dwarfed by towering beeches, oaks and conifers.
Husband had other ideas. ‘Let’s walk up the road to the top of Warren Wood,’ he said, pointing vaguely to the left as we left the path. ‘We could get some brilliant photographs.‘
‘How far is it?’
‘Not far.’
I’ve been caught out by “Not far”, before. Why do I always believe him?
If only I’d read the Nature reserve signage:
“In the 1800s The Victorian landowners planted trees on the moorland, to provide a landscape of scenic beauty thus creating a forest, part of Radnor Forestwhichwas once a royal hunting ground. In those days it wasn’t an area covered in trees but an unenclosed piece of land, legally set aside for the Norman kings to hunt deer. Today, Radnor Forest is a land of hill farming and moorlands, steep narrow valleys and hills, rising up to the highest point in Radnorshire, Black Mixen at 650 metres.“
Note the words, ‘steep’, hills, and 650 metres. What we didn’t know, was that the wide concrete road in front of us was not only steep but has many twists and turns – and always upwards before it got to 650 metres.
Two and a half hours later, with stops for photographs, we reached the top… I thought. We sat on a convenient rock, drinking from our second bottle of water.
‘We could go on for a bit longer?’ Husband said.,looking around. ‘The road carries on.’
‘The proper road stops here not up there.’ I pointed to the dirt track behind us. Steep dirt track.
I’I bet we could get brilliant photos, though. I’ll go and check.’ Ten minutes later he was back. ‘Come on, it’s a fantastic view.’
We walked in silence. Well, to be honest I had no breath to use up in conversation.
Though the views were wonderful. We could see as far away as Hereford and beyond…..
‘Ready to go back?’ Husband asked.
I didn’t think I could face that road again. ‘We could try going that way?’ I point to a gentle downward sloping track.’It looks like it’s going back to the start.’
‘It doesn’t.’
‘It does.’I insisted.
I should,perhaps have said, before now – I have little sense of direction. We stumbled/slid down walked for over an hour with the wind whistling through the tall conifers that lined the ever-steeper, downward track. I became increasingly aware of a brooding silence, each time I said cheerfully,’It has to lead to somewhere…’ and, ‘We’re going in the right direction…’. Until we weren’t… we rounded a corner- to see the road end in a turning point for the Forestry Commission. A thick forest faced us…Hmm…
Back we went,stopping every fifty paces to catch our breath. To be fair there were only a few recriminations. Although I did hear some mutterings – which I ignored. Later,we worked out that we had walked thirteen miles – seven more than we had planned.
The following day we creaked our way rambled sedately aroundthe fields where we were stayingnear Bettws Cedewain, a place in a sheltered valley on the banks of the river Bechan. around five miles from Newtown. The village grew around the crossing of the river where a church was founded by St Beuno in the sixth century. I read that the name of the village is thought to derive from the Welsh word ‘Betws’ – which means a prayer house or bead house where the number of prayers had been counted on beads by the earliest church-goers in Cedewain.
And then wonderful views overlooking Ramsey Island
Just to prove I was there!!
And look who we saw! (from a great distance)
Seal pups and their mums
So… who was St Justinian?
Justinian was born in Brittany in the 6th century. At some point in his life, he made his way to Wales, where he settled on Ramsey Island.
Justinian soon became close friends with St David, the patron saint of Wales, and visited him often in the monastery where the cathedral now stands.
He was less impressed however by the lax behaviour of some of the monks and decided to isolate himself on Ramsey island. According to legend, he took an axe and chopped up the land bridge that linked the island and the mainland. As he worked, the axe became blunter and the lumps of rock remaining became larger and larger. They are still visible today in Ramsey Sound, where the waters foam over them at high tide. Followers joined him on the island but his actions didn’t go down well with everyone though. They soon turned them against him and they beheaded him!
To the astonishment of his killers,he picked up his head and walked across the sea to the mainland, and where he set his head down, another spring of water issued forth. This is the one enclosed today by a stone canopy.
A spring of water gushed up from the ground where his head first fell and this became the famous healing well.
Justinian was buried where the chapel now stands. Within its walls are some stone footings, which may mark his original gravesite. His body was removed to the cathedral, probably at some time before the end of the 15th century.
During the early medieval period, two chapels were built on Ramsey. One was dedicated to St Tyfanog; the other to St Justinian. There is no trace of either building today, though their sites are known.
In this feature, we ask our Crime Cymru authors to name six things that influenced their life and shaped them as a writer. This week, Wales Book of the Year Award shortlisted author Judith Barrow writes an extraordinarily powerfuland moving account of a harrowing childhood experience.
Six of One
One book:
As a young child I remember reading The Tree That Sat Down. I had to search for this online, my copy has long gone. Basically, it was about an enchanted forest where Judy (guess why I liked the book!) helps her granny run The Shop Under the Willow Tree. They sell all sorts of lovely things, such as boxes of wonderful dreams fastened with green ribbon. But then Sam and the charming Miss Smith, who is a witch in disguise, open a rival business. I think what struck me then, something I mulled over for quite a while…
1914. Everything changes for Jessie on a day trip to Blackpool. She realises her feelings for Arthur are far more than friendship. And just as they are travelling home, war is declared.
Arthur lies about his age to join his Pals’ Regiment. Jessie’s widowed mother is so frightened, she agrees to marry Amos Morgan. Only Jessie can see how vicious he is. When he turns on her, Arthur’s mother is the only person to help her, the two women drawn together by Jessie’s deepest secret.
Facing a desperate choice between love and safety, will Jessie trust the right people? Can she learn to trust herself?
I love a historical drama and this one has transported me to the 1900’s. This is a book which has allowed me to meet Jessie and Arthur. This is an interesting novel which has completely absorbed me into the pages.
Women of Britain say GO [image credit: E J Kealey (artist) Parliamentary Recruiting Committee – Te Papa Tongarewa (The Museum of New Zealand)]
“There used to be tea rooms on almost every street in England.” An older friend was reminiscing about her youth and her parents’ generation. “Women needed something to do, and they knew how to bake, and to make proper tea.”
With bureaucratic cruelty, the post-war census labelled them “Surplus Women”. After almost ten percent of British men under the age of 45 died in World War I—the Great War—Britain was left with two million more women than men. In my friend’s family, none of the women of the previous generation had husbands or sweethearts who survived the war. One of her aunts said that when they sent their husbands, sweethearts, brothers, and cousins off to fight, so few returned that girls were told only one in ten…
This has been a tough year, but now that Christmas is nearly upon us, our brilliantly talented Crime Cymru authors have decided to bring us all some seasonal cheer with stories of murder, mayhem and the office party. In today’s story, Judith Barrow reveals the full and chilling horror of the office Christmas celebrations from hell.
THE WRONG ANGLE by Judith Barrow
‘There, that’s better?’ Anne Morgan steps back to admire the office, festooned in Christmas decorations. She touches the red and green balloons tied to the stapler on her desk and smiles as they bob around. Picking up the glass musical globe, she winds the key before placing it, first at one side of the phone, then the other. In the end she arranges it just a centimetre or two in front, next to her pen tray.
Humming let it snow, let it snow, let it snow, Anne smears…
The First World War ended with the deaths of a generation of young men. But the devastation of the conflict didn’t end with that last blast of a howitzer. Thousands of soldiers went home still re-living their horrific experiences of the battlefields for many years. Their lives were damaged by shell shock, a condition many had suffered from during their military service. And, throughout Britain, doctors were baffled by this unknown illness. Soldiers were returning from the trenches paralysed, blind, deaf. Some were unable to speak. Many had bouts of dizziness, hysteria, anxiety, Families reported that their returned husbands, sons, brothers, were often unable to sleep. And, if they did, had horrendous nightmares that resulted in depression, refusal to eat, erratic behaviour. Many so-called lunatic asylums and private mental institutions were assigned as hospitals for mental diseases and war neurosis.
Many men felt shame; often they were unable to return to military duty and on their return home, they were viewed as being emotionally weak or cowards. Bewildered by the changes seen in shell shocked soldiers, people had little sympathy; there was little understanding for them. Even worse, many families felt only the disgrace and humiliation that one of their own had been charged with desertion and executed by a firing squad of their fellow soldiers. It would be many decades before they would be given posthumous pardons.
Image courtesy of BBC.co.uk Inside Out Extra
In the first years of the war, shell shock was assumed to be a physical injury to the nervous system, a result of soldiers facing heavy bombardment from exploding shells. Victims were at the mercy of the armed forces’ medical officers. Determined to ‘cure’ the soldier, the treatments given by them were cruel and humiliating: extreme physical instruction, shaming and severe discipline in front of their fellow soldiers, solitary confinement, electric shock treatment.
By the second year of the war almost half of the casualties in fighting regions were victims of the condition and military hospitals were unable to cope; the unexpected numbers of soldiers suffering from the condition meant that there was a drastic shortage of beds. And medical staff discovered that many men suffered the symptoms of shell shock without having even been in the front lines. More so, it was noticed that many officers, desperate to hide their emotions and to set an example for their men, became psychotic, suffering from some of the worst symptoms of shell shock..
But it wasn’t until 1917 that the condition of shell shock was identified by a Medical Officer called Charles Myers as combat stress, today also known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
So, the thousands of soldiers who went home still re-living their horrific experiences of the battlefields had a name for the condition they were living with. Many had lost their ability to walk or, speak. Some regressed to a baby-like state. It seemed there was no expectation of recovery.
But then one man, an army major and general physician, Arthur Hurst, despite much cynicism and opposition established a hospital at Seale Hayne, Newton Abbott, Devon. (now part of Plymouth University). The men who arrived there, ostensibly destroyed by their horrendous experiences of war were given hope.
Image courtesy of the Daily Mail
Hurst’s innovative method had never been witnessed before. Psychiatrists who, after the disorder was identified towards the end of the war, were adamant that a process of mental rehabilitation was needed; that the shell-shocked soldier was trying to cope with harrowing experiences by repressing any memories. They thought that the symptoms revealed involuntary detachment from events lived through and the man could only be cured by the traditional method of reviving memories, a process that could require a number of psychiatric therapy sessions.
Image courtesy of BBC.co.uk Inside Out Extra
As a general physician, Arthur Hurst believed that there was a simpler treatment; that humane understanding and sympathetic persuasion was the way to into the ex-soldiers’ awareness of the new life now around them. He thought that during a terrifying bombardment, a soldier might experience tremor, be unable to move or speak. So, sometimes, the power of suggestion could cause the symptoms to survive once that intense reaction had passed. The cure, as far as he was concerned was the re-education of the mind and his methods were what was needed to resolve the lingering symptoms of the trauma endured.
He used hypnosis and patience, giving them work to do on the land around Seale Hayne; a revolutionary occupational therapy. The tranquillity of the Devon countryside, the encouragement given to the men was thought to be a place where the men could get over their hysteria. They were urged to use inventive and resourceful ways to work.
Image courtesy of BBC.co.uk Inside Out Extra
Then, In a ground-breaking move, he ordered the reconstruction of the battlefields of Flanders on Dartmoor even encouraged his patients to shoot. to help the men relive and come to terms with their experiences.
Hurst also believed it important for the men to express themselves creatively and persuaded some to write and publish a magazine with a gossip column called Ward Whispers.
Image courtesy of BBC.co.uk Inside Out Extra
He made the only film in existence about how shell shock victims were treated in Britain. This gives an insight into his treatments. Though upsetting initially to watch, they also reveal the dramatic recovery Arthur Hurst’s methods produced. It was indeed pioneering and gives a mark of respect to the men who survived the terrors of the First World War. Arthur Hurst proved his methods were truly effective but I have been unable to find any studies of what happened to any of the men who had therapy at Seale Hayne.However I did find thisfascinating programme on Radio Four’s Homefront: https://bbc.in/36SmD1J.
I have two books set against the background of WW1
A Hundred Tiny Threads – the prequel to the Haworth trilogy
It’s 1911 and Winifred Duffy is a determined young woman eager for new experiences, for a life beyond the grocer’s shop counter ruled over by her domineering mother. The scars of Bill Howarth’s troubled childhood linger. The only light in his life comes from a chance encounter with Winifred, the girl he determines to make his wife. Meeting her friend Honora’s silver-tongued brother turns Winifred’s heart upside down. But Honora and Conal disappear, after a suffrage rally turns into a riot, and abandoned Winifred has nowhere to turn but home. The Great War intervenes, sending Bill abroad to be hardened in a furnace of carnage and loss. When he returns his dream is still of Winifred and the life they might have had… Back in Lancashire, worn down by work and the barbed comments of narrow-minded townsfolk, Winifred faces difficult choices in love and life.
The Heart Stone
1914. Everything changes for Jessie on a day trip to Blackpool. She realises her feelings for Arthur are far more than friendship. And just as they are travelling home, war is declared.
Arthur lies about his age to join his Pals’ Regiment. Jessie’s widowed mother is so frightened, she agrees to marry Amos Morgan. Only Jessie can see how vicious he is. When he turns on her, Arthur’s mother is the only person to help her, the two women drawn together by Jessie’s deepest secret.
Facing a desperate choice between love and safety, will Jessie trust the right people? Can she learn to trust herself?
How much detail do you give in describing a character’s appearance? Do you convey with precision the shape of their nose, their eyes, their lips, their hair, the quality of their skin, the size of their waist, or do you leave it vague? I have read and enjoyed cinematic book in which every detail is described so precisely that all readers would conjure up an identical image of each character. Personally, though, I lean towards keeping it very very vague.
I am inspired in this by various sources. Firstly, my Latin teacher at school who was much like Mary Beard in her enthusiasm for the subject. She thought Latin should be a spoken language and wanted us to read Virgil’s Aeneid as an exciting novel. Unfortunately, she left to have a baby and was replaced by a hapless peripatetic teacher with the result that the whole class failed their Latin…
Well, best laid plans and all that! For one reason and another we were unable to walk around the Bosherston Lily Ponds, as I had planned and mentioned in January. http://bit.ly/39PXzZ8. So here’s what we did instead… We joined a group of walkers, led by Sam, a Pembrokeshire Coast National Park representative. We walked through the oak woodlands at Little Milford; now, thanks to the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, going back to its natural state after much commercial devastation in the last century; a refuge for wildlife.
Due to Lock-down it was the last walk with Sam and the group we took part in.
But, then we were asked by Sam to take part in a walking project across West Wales in partnership with the National Exercise Referral Scheme- setting a challenge of virtually walking the world. So we joined in with thisfor West Wales and… drum-roll, here…WE WALKED AROUND THE WORLD and some more. In fact a lot more.In total, 560 exercise referral clients, local walking groups members and staff members, from 13 counties in Wales walked an incredible 38,000 miles.
Remembering that last walk with Sam…
A Sign of Spring on its way; a lovely spread of snowdrops
The Cleddau waterway is seen through the ancient woodland.
We followed the network of footpath’s network through oak, hazel, birch and holly trees.
Yes, that’s how muddy it was. No wonder one of the walkers called Sam, “mud-seeking”. She only laughed as we splodged our way through.
The tide was well out; the salt marsh, tidal creeks and mudflats glistened in the brightness of the white sky.
We saw the remains of lime kilns and former coal workings, slowly giving way to nature.
A gushing stream, swollen from all the recent rain, making its way down to the Cleddau.Just as we arrived back at the mini-bus, it began to rain.First time in weeks Husband and I had stayed dry on a walk.
The article below is taken from Go for a Woodland Walk in Little Milford: http://bit.ly/2wErHIM:
The story behind Little Milford?
The woodland itself is believed to date back to at least the 11th century, with locals throughout the ages making the most of the deciduous trees. The Normans took timber and firewood, and oak was routinely coppiced here until the 1920s.Coal played an active part in the area too. In its heyday, the bordering village of Hook had a number of small pits extracting anthracite – the last closed in 1959.Little Milford became a commercial site during this period, with large swathes of the woodland felled and replanted with conifers.The land and several dwellings were then gifted to the National Trust in 1975 by Mr Harcourt Roberts, the descendant of the estate-owning family who experimented with profitable forestry.We’ve been managing the conifers and caring for the woodland ever since. In 2012 we harvested most of the conifers and replanted the cleared areas with a mix of broadleaved trees.Little Milford Farmhouse and Little Milford Lodge are now cared for as National Trust holiday cottages and provide a tranquil holiday retreat in a beautiful estuary and woodland setting.
Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority also run a Walkability Project::http://bit.ly/2Pgdb0q The Walkability Project helps people of all abilities who live in Pembrokeshire to enjoy the spectacular countryside and coast around them.
I have a new website where I ramble on about anything, including other authors’ reviews: https://judithbarrowblog.com/
And I have a website where I normally post my views on books and connect with other authors.Writings and Reviewings: https://judithbarrow.blogspot.com/ Please feel free to visit anytime.
My latest book, The Memory, was released on March 19, 2020
And, to my shame, I’d completely missed this, and now can’t resist adding this wonderful review from the Culture section of… NATION●CYMRU:@NationCymru:A news service by the people of Wales, for the people of Wales
Review: The Memory has a tightly wrought and finely controlled plot by Jon Gower: https://bit.ly/2Yiagc9
After a sprawling, four-volume Howarth family saga set in Lancashire and Ireland this latest novel by Pembrokeshire writer Judith Barrow has a much tighter focus, being essentially the life of one woman, Irene. She is a woman tested to the very limits and beyond as she weaves her way past breaking point after breaking point.
Her exceedingly well-loved sister Rose dies in very suspicious circumstances and the finger of blame for her demise points firmly at Irene’s mother Lil, an increasingly needy, fully-paid-up-member-of-the-awkward-squad. But life has a habit of conspiring against Irene and she finds herself having to care for mother.
Which means Irene’s builder husband Sam can’t live in the same house, especially when his estranged mother – who abandoned him many moons ago – moves in too, in the meanest twist of fate. As with any tragedy the ratchet turns and turns on Irene, intensifying the pain of her caring, carer existence. Every hour is a test. She spends her days tending to her mother even though she has ample reason to hate her. She watches her mother in bed, wondering if a photograph of a family trip to Morecambe she is looking at has triggered memories of the occasion:
“Or is she seeing something else? A memory? That memory? I’m hoping that of all the recollections that linger, if any do linger in that blankness that has been her mind for so long, it’s that one. The one that makes hate battle with pity and reluctant love. If nothing else, I hope she remembers that.”
Irene, meanwhile, is sustained by very different memories and spectral glimpses of her dead sister Rose, an affectionate young girl with Downs’ Syndrome who seems to haunt the family home even thirty years after her mysterious death, thus making it impossible for Irene to leave. Irene does manage to break free for a brief while for after a long wait, a council house for her and Sam rewards them with a new home brim-full of hope and an intention to start a family.
Redemptive
But in a life crammed to the gills with disappointment, the young couple find they are infertile and despite the advances of HRT their local GP won’t prescribe such expensive fertility treatment. Irene’s life seems like a thick Littlewoods catalogue of such thwartings.
Irene’s life is told in a series of flashbacks to the 60s and early 70s, with a soundtrack of Billy J. Kramer and Rod Stewart in a time of romantic meals washed down with Mateus Rosé wine and people tottering around on platform soles. This wash of memories is interspersed by brief, highly intense glimpses of Irene’s present life of sufferance over the span of twenty-five hours when the heating fails and she is forced to clean her incontinent mother by joining her in a cold shower.
Hour by hour we feel the wearing, wearying, spirit-breaking nature of the daily grind. Fortuitously, Judith Barrow has put us very much on Irene’s side, batting for her, and it comes as enormous relief when life finally picks up for her and this turns into an ultimately redemptive novel.
The cover blurb suggests this is a book about a ‘Mother and daughter tied together by shame and secrecy; love and hate’ and it’s all that and more and I won’t spoil the tightly wrought and finely controlled plot by revealing the biggest secret of all but will say the reveal is very deftly handled.
The writing throughout The Memory is clear, uncluttered and unadorned and it’s interesting to see how Barrow manages to flesh out Irene’s life without slathering on the psychology but rather by sticking to the story.
You put the book down having got to know a woman who melds steel with sensitivity and find yourself wishing her well, as a better future unrolls deservedly before her and the long, long suffering is finally over.
The Memory by Judith Barrow is published by Honno and can be bought here.
It’s four years since Mum died. My sister arranged the funeral for eleven o’clock today. This is a post I wrote shortly afterwards. The relationship between Mum and me, and the one between her and my sister, proved so very different. There’s nothing wrong in that, but at no time was it more obvious than on that day…
I wrote…
I haven’t been online much over the last few months; my mother had been on end of life care for over a year and she passed away peacefully three weeks ago. It’s been a difficult time, both for her and for all the family. There have been many occasions when I’ve wished her at peace. Now she is.
I didn’t intend to write anything publicly about this. But something happened after she died that made me think and to remember a piece I wrote some years ago on motherhood, for an anthology.
I gave it the title I Am Three Mothers because, after much thought on what to write, I realised that although generally the same (and hopefully fair) in all the practical things and the everyday stuff of sharing attention, giving time, listening to each, I was actually a different mum to each of my three children when they were young. My approach to each child differed because they were all such diverse personalities.
With our eldest daughter I was more careful how I said things, knew I needed to give her time to tell me anything she was worried about (even though my instinct was to jump right in there…hmm…still is) She tended to try to sort things out for herself and would only come to me as a last resort. She was strong-willed, disliked authority and was loyal to both us as a family and her friends. This last, at times, tended to land her into trouble in school. She had (still has, a wonderful sense of humour – one, I like to believe, is inherited from my mother)
With our son I had a more laid-back relationship. He loved sport and, as long as we got him to his football practice and games on time, didn’t complain much. More open about anything that worried him, nevertheless there were still times we needed to sit with him and wait for him to talk.
With our youngest daughter, his twin, it was a different matter. She put herself under so much pressure in everything she did, striving all the time for perfection that, sometimes, we had to say, ‘stop…enough… relax’. An anxious child, she needed a lot of reassurance and was very shy. She too loved sport and, for someone so quiet, was very competitive.At school she absorbed education like a sponge and loved to write stories. The family sense of humour, sometimes a little dark, burned brightly in her.
I’m glad to say that, whatever mistakes I made as a mother, they all three turned into great adults. We’re very proud of them. And it’s such fun watching them deal with parenthood!
Bear with me; I’m rambling on, I know. But this is leading somewhere…
Last week I was at my mother’s funeral. I say at because I felt it was a funeral I was a spectator to, not part of.
During the service I realised something strange. Being the eldest, and living nearer to Mum than me, my sister had insisted on organising the whole thing. It was a Humanist service which was fine; my mother had no beliefs.
But what was odd, was that what my sister had written about Mum was totally unlike the mum I knew.
And I wonder if that is something all siblings share; a different view of the characters of their parents.
The mother my sister saw was a woman who liked poetry. So there were three poems in the service. I’ve never once seen my mother read poetry although she did like to misquote two lines from ‘ What is this life if, full of care…’
The mum I knew read and enjoyed what she herself called ‘trashy books.’ They weren’t, but she did love a romance and the odd ‘Northern-themed’ novels. (I’m always glad she was able to enjoy the first book of my trilogy – dementia had claimed her by the time the next two were published. She still managed a smiling grumble, though,telling me it had taken me ‘long enough to get a book out there’) And she loved reading anything about the history of Yorkshire and Lancashire. Oh, and recipe books… she had dozens of recipe books and could pour over them for hours. I often challenged her to make something from them. She never did… it was a shared joke.
Mum had a beautiful singing voice in her younger days. She and my father would sing duets together. Anybody remember Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson? My parents knew all their songs. And so did my sister and I… I thought. The songs and singers chosen were not ones I remembered. And Mum loved brass bands! She’d have loved to have gone out to a rousing piece from a brass band. preferably the local band. She loved everything about the area and the house she’d live in for almost sixty years
Which brings me to the main gist of the service. No mention of Mum’s love of nature, of gardening, of walking.Nothing about Mum’s sense of humour; often rude, always hilarious. Telling a tale she had no compunction about swearing if it fitted the story. And her ability to mimic, together with her timing, was impeccable. She was smart, walking as upright in her later years as she had when in the ATS as a young woman, during the Second World War. She worked hard all her life; as a winder in a cotton mill, later as a carer, sometimes as a cleaner. Throughout the talk there was no inkling of the proud Northern woman willing to turn her hand to any job as long as it paid. No mention of her as a loyal wife, even in difficult times.
Thinking about it on the way home I realised that my sister had seen none of what I’d known and I knew nothing of what she’d seen in Mum. And then I thought, perhaps as we were such dissimilar daughters to her, Mum became a different mother to each of us? Hence the completely opposite funeral to the one I would have arranged for her.
Is that the answer? A funeral is a public service. Are they all edited, eased into the acceptable, the correct way to be presented for public consumption? Because it reflects on those left behind? I don’t know.
Perhaps, unless we’ve had the foresight to set out the plan for our own funerals, this will always be the case.
So I’d like it on record that, at my funeral, I’d like Unforgettable by Nat King Cole (modest as always!), a reading of Jenny Joseph’s When I Am Old (yes, I do know it’s been performed to death but won’t that be appropriate?). I’d like anybody who wants to say anything…yes anything…about me to be able to…as long as it’s true, of course! And then I’d like the curtains closed on me to Swan Lake’s Dance of the Little Swans. (Because this was the first record bought for me by my favourite aunt when I was ten. And because, although as a child I dreamt of being a ballet dancer, the actual size and shape of me has since prevented it.)
Thank you for reading this. I do hope I haven’t offended (or, even worse, bored) anyone. I was tempted to put this under the category ‘Fantasy’ but thought better of it!
It’s 1969 and Mary Schormann is living quietly in Wales with her ex-POW husband, Peter, and her teenage twins, Richard and Victoria. Her niece, Linda Booth, is a nurse – following in Mary’s footsteps – and works in the maternity ward of her local hospital in Lancashire. At the end of a long night shift, a bullying new father visits the maternity ward and brings back Linda’s darkest nightmares, her terror of being locked in. Who is this man, and why does he scare her so? There are secrets dating back to the war that still haunt the family, and finding out what lies at their root might be the only way Linda can escape their murderous consequences.
I’d recommend reading Living in the Shadows by Judith Barrows. This particular novel is the third in the series, published by Honno Press: ‘Honno is an independent co-operative press run by women and…
I am so proud that we have finally forged a friendship after a life-time of avoiding each other. Of course, I knew of your existence when I was a little girl. but you were always in the distance, hanging around with Outgoing, Popular and Fearless, whilst I played in the shadows with Shy, Timid and Awkward. Actually these three were to remain loyal companions for many, many years.
During my school years, you were still just a little out of reach, and I coasted along with my usual crowd, and joined up with Average, and Unremarkable. I always wanted to get to know you, but you became more elusive when I got caught smoking, and ended up in the Deputy Head’s office. She rather firmly introduced me to Failure, Shame and Embarrassment. That was it for the rest of my school days, I knew my place, amongst these…
This is My Mum.. She’s the one on the left. Next to her (the dark-haired toddler, is her sister Olive, who lived with us for many years) …
This is My Mum, a photograph taken in her early teens …
This is My Mum – The girl on the left …
This is My Mum, elegantly posed in her late teens…
This is My Mum in her Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) uniform during the war…
This is My Mum – on her wedding Day to Dad. Sitting in a car in a photographer’s studio with a pretend background …
This is My Mum – with my sister and me – I’m the grumpy-looking blond one…
This is My Mum in her forties outside the house she lived in until 2014 …
This is My Mum in her sixties, enjoying the sun in the garden …
This is My Mum -aged eighty, at our son’s wedding …
This is My Mum …
This is My Mum …
I will give her some dignity so I won’t show her as she is now; a small frail figure huddled under the bedclothes. She sleeps most of the time, only speaks the odd disconnected word, she’s doubly incontinent and can’t feed herself,
My Mum would not have wanted to live like this. I do not want her to have to to live like this. I wouldn’t want to live like this What I should say is … ‘exist like this.’
You’ve seen the photographs of my mum as she was. That’s how I want to remember her. In a similar way, that’s how I want my children to remember me.
I think I’ve had the wrong idea about blogging. When I first started writing a blog it was to introduce myself to others and to get to know other writers/ authors/poets/artists. Oh and to find different genres of books.
But I’ve been lucky; I’ve made some online friends along the way who, I hope, would be the kind of friend I’d like to have in ‘real’ life. Some, especially, have been so supportive.
But lately I’ve noticed two things. There have been posts asking for more followers (one in particular was asking to raise the numbers because it was her/his birthday). And the others have been blogs to celebrate that a certain number of followers has been achieved.
Chasing numbers.
Now don’t get me wrong; if that’s what’s important to these bloggers, that’s fine, it’s no business of mine. And there has to be a reason for ‘upping the ante’ to get to a certain number of followers. For instance, perhaps, for authors, it’s about finding new readers, or, for certain causes, it’s to highlight that charity/society/ organisation.
I read it again. I mulled over this for a while. I looked back at some of my own posts. I saw who’d commented and/or shared. I thought about it. I left the thought to simmer.
Wise advice in both posts.
And it’s occurred to me that I jumped on the band wagon – so to speak – and I’ve dutifully followed everyone who, I’ve been informed, follows me.
But I have a problem (well, actually I have lots of problems – thought I’d add that bit before I heard a wave of snorts of derision; ‘a problem, Judith?’ ‘Just the one problem?’) My problem is I have two sites I blog from, purely by choice. It’s been a deliberate choice. I use my other site: http://www.judithbarrow.co.uk/ initially for my personal posts, the ones I actually write myself: about my life and the things that have happened to me, my own interviews with authors, my reviews of the books I read for Rosie Amber’s Review Team; https://rosieamber.wordpress.com/ . On this site: https://judithbarrowblog.com/ I copy the blogs from the first site but mainly I use BarrowBlogs to mention/promote other authors, other bloggers’ interviews with authors, other peoples’ thoughts on all sorts of subjects.
So what to do? I don’t want to be like the blogger who wrote a post saying that she had so many followers she’d stopped reading anything they wrote and just ‘liked’ the posts. I try to read everything I’m sent. And yes, I know that’s probably daft and very few do that. But I do!
I’ve made a decision! I’ve decided it’s quality not quantity. Besides I’ve noticed that the same bloggers who do like my contributions to the blogging world, also share other types of posts I’m interested in; what I would choose to like, share and comment on. I won’t name them; it wouldn’t be fair. But they do know who they are.
So, I’m thinking, why not just follow and share their posts?
To sum up, I’m taking Hugh’s advice and have trawled through the bloggers I’ve been following for ages and who he calls ‘Ghost Followers’. I’ll carry on much the same when it comes to commenting and sharing stuff I’ve enjoyed reading – but I’ll keep an eye out and delete those who ‘pretend’ to follow but don’t. Please don’t think of that as a threat, it’s not; it’s what I intend to do for ‘self – care’.
I read this today http://yadadarcyyada.com/2015/08/27/message-in-a-bottle/ and I know that the way I blog isn’t perfect (or even close to it) And it’s up to anyone to decide whether I’m interesting or boring and to follow or not
But the bottom line is I can’t carry on supporting those who I never see hide or hair of.
I’ll always try to acknowledge anybody who takes the trouble to let me know they’ve seen any of my personal posts; it’s only courteous and I enjoy the banter. I do like meeting and chatting to people but … I need to stay connected with my ‘friendly’ bloggers
And, like you all, I have a life away from here. And a book to write
![Women of Britain say GO [image credit: E J Kealey (artist) Parliamentary Recruiting Committee (copyright owner/commissioner) Hill, Siffken & Co. (L.P.A. Ltd.) (Publisher) Adam Cuerden (Restoration) - Te Papa Tongarewa (The Museum of New Zealand)] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_hall#/media/File:Women_of_Britain_Say_-_%22Go%22_-_World_War_I_British_poster_by_the_Parliamentary_Recruiting_Committee,_art_by_E_J_Kealey_(Restoration).jpg](https://judithbarrowblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/women_of_britain_say_-_-go-_-_world_war_i_british_poster_by_the_parliamentary_recruiting_committee_art_by_e_j_kealey_restoration.jpg)
Goodreads Synopsis:
Judith Barrow 