My grandmother died when I was six. All of her jewelry was parceled out among the female members of the family, my aunts, and my mother. Mum being the only daughter may have received slightly more, I don’t really know. I do remember she came home one day with a bag full of old fashioned looking rings, earrings, bracelets, and necklaces. Most of it was handed down from her grandmother but none were of any special value. On special occasions, or when she was fed up with my pestering, these treasures were hauled out for me to look at.

Mum was a modern woman. She liked teak furniture and clean lines. At the time, her own few bits of jewelry were mid-century style, angular and stark. She would never wear any of that old stuff. I, on the other hand, loved it!

Fast forward to the days when signet rings became the rage at my school. Of course, I had no money to buy one, so I pleaded and pleaded and was finally allowed to wear a ring that looked like a signet ring to me. It fit perfectly on my pinky finger and the prerequisite gold setting, in the center of which was an oval of what might have been well-worn glass, with the vaguest hint of something underneath. Inside, the ring was engraved with a name and a date that had been largely worn off.

Through my studies of the family tree, I knew the name belonged to my great, great grandmother and so I thought this ring was probably hers. I wore it proudly even though it bore no resemblance to the shiny new bloodstone rings that were sported by my school friends.

I wore the ring for some years, not even taking it off to wash my hands for fear I would leave it somewhere. After a while, the colour under the scratched glass area changed from a browny grey to a weird shade of green. Puzzled I showed it to Mum. She had never really examined the ring before and gave a bit of a laugh. “I think that it’s a Victorian mourning ring,” she said. “And the hair inside has gone mouldy.”

Hair? What do you mean hair? That’s when I learnt about memento mori. I had been wearing a lock of my great, great grandmother’s hair on my hand all that time. I’m not particularly squeamish but as a teenager, I didn’t really share my Victorian ancestors’ fondness for carrying their remains on my person. Not too long after that, I was presented with a bloodstone signet ring of my ownm giving me the ideal good excuse to tuck great, great granny and her mouldy hair into the drawer where she languishes still.

 

Image – Clo Carey

 

For those who are interested –

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pgqnjk/victorian-fashionistas-jewelry-human-hair

https://archive.org/details/selfinstructorin00camp/page/n17/mode/2up

Clo Carey – April/20

Blog Challenge Writing Prompt – Write about a piece of jewelry

#SouthShoreScribesNS @www.emilybowers.ca/ https://wordsbywhittall.blogspot.com/ @passionate_perspective @https://www.facebook.com/groups/1470587219691626 #amwriting #writingprompt  #mementomori #hairwork

Holidays, when I was growing up, were often spent wherever my father was on location. We never saw much of him, unless it was raining. Often, there wasn’t enough room for us where he was staying and we would be billeted someplace else, meeting up for meals and occasional soggy walks on beaches. Sometimes, especially when he was working on his own documentaries, the locations would be rural and our accommodations miles apart. My mother, undaunted, would insist on a family holiday in the vicinity. One such place was a cottage on Coney Island.

Dad was working at the time in and around the county town of Sligo in the northwest of Ireland. His assistant, a bouncy young woman named Penny, was stuck with the task of finding digs for the family. We had acquired two cats and still had one dog so a pet-friendly establishment was a must. A cottage was found. School was finished for the summer; animals, kids, and the usual supplies were packed up in the car, and across Ireland we trundled.

Directions to this cottage were on the skimpy side. “It’s over there,” the assistant said, waving a hand at the Atlantic Ocean, “on that island. Pick up the key at the pub.” How to get there was the inevitable question. “Oh, you just wait until the tide is out.” So wait we did and in time the mist cleared somewhat and a sort of causeway appeared, marked by tall cement bollards. “Stay close to them and you’ll be fine. Just follow the road to the pub.”

Ocean FM

With some trepidation, Mum drove out onto the beach and we edged our way across the wet sand, following the markers until we made it to the other side, still following the road. Sure enough, it ended at Ward’s pub, which was also the general store.

Our cottage, it turned out, was right next door. Mum was greatly perturbed. Wouldn’t it be very noisy, with drunken revelry and general mayhem outside every night? Well, the Irish may have drunken revelry down to an art form but Coney Island in those days had very few permanent citizens and the summer visitors would only swell the population by a couple of dozen, most of whom kept to themselves and valued the peace and quiet. The joint only jumped at the weekends and then only to the extent of an occasional fiddle player and a few pints of the Dark.

Go Strandhill

Weather permitting, we spent our days walking to Carty’s Strand, exploring the Napoleonic fort, making wishes in St. Patrick’s wishing chair. The weather often didn’t permit and endless games of Monopoly and Careers got underway. The island had no telephone service and no electricity and so by nights we read by the soft hiss and glow of gas lights and paraffin lamps.

Continue reading “The One That Got Away” →

Service of one kind or another loomed large in my family history. The public face was the service to one’s country; the private, those who served our every need. Most generations on the maternal side boasted a military major or a general in its ranks. There was even a family regiment that fought with Napoleon and was involved in such minor altercations as the American civil war.  In more recent times a great uncle fell near Ypres and most of the next generation served in, and somehow survived, WW ll. The paternal side took quite the opposite tack. A theatrical family, they were registered conchies but also served by entertaining the troops with ENSA for the duration.

family archives

It was on the domestic front that common service ground was found. Both my parents grew up with servants. My mother’s family had, at various times, a nanny, a maid, and a cook. In the winter months, a man came to stoke the furnace twice a day. Groceries were ordered by phone and delivered to the door. A gardener kept the grounds of the Toronto Victorian house in immaculate condition, while Granny did ladylike things with pruners and floral arrangements. Doubtless, there were others who took on the rest of the onerous household tasks but my mother never spoke of them.

My father’s family had a maid and a cook. His mother was a canny Yorkshire woman whose parents had also been in service. An imperious woman, she ruled her household with an iron hand; shopping for her groceries every day by heading off to the market in the early hours, where she doubtless put the fear of God into the vendors.

All this changed when my parents got married. It was wartime in Ireland, and there was no spare cash for servants. Great was the consternation when it was discovered that my mother, who had taken Home Economics at school, had no survival skills beyond creating the fanciest confections out of impossible to find ingredients, or laying formal place settings for forty guests. Many a pot was either burnt or hurled across the kitchen in frustration, a situation that continued through much of my childhood. My father was no help. While he was quite talented and very particular over the preparation of tea and coffee, he had no idea at all how to cook. Even a boiling an egg remained a mystery until middle age.

Domestic wifely goddess, much touted in the fifties and sixties, was one part that my mother, a ‘resting’ actress, had no interest in playing. Housekeeping was haphazard at best and we lived in constant, barely contained chaos.

Indian Link

Continue reading “By Whom We Are Served” →

My parents bought their first car the year that I was born. I don’t know what make it was. I do know that it was black and had running boards and those pop out turn signals. Neither of them could drive and it sat in our driveway in England for two years until we moved to Canada and it was left behind.

Once ensconced in Toronto, it became clear that a car was a necessity. Mum was not keen on shopping-by-transit with two small kids, and Dad needed wheels to get to locations where he worked as a cameraman. They bought a two-tone turquoise boat of a Chevy. It too sat in the driveway. They still couldn’t drive. They didn’t take lessons, but drove relative’s cars around for a bit and then took the test. Mum failed it four times, scoring an absolute fail first time out by reversing the car into a snowbank from which even the examiner couldn’t extricate it. Dad, with great glee, only failed twice.

When the required pieces of paper were finally obtained, road trips became a thing. As Dad was often away, these were usually undertaken by the three of us. We never travelled light and the Chevy’s cavernous interior was loaded to capacity. Our two Westies took possession of the back window ledge. My brother and I, plus two enormous teddy bears, pillows and every other possible method of entertainment occupied the back seat, with Mum and the picnic basket in the front. Most of our trips were made to wherever Dad was currently filming and those usually involved camping.

Mum would begin the preparations a week in advance, with lists that were frequently lost and re-written and intense supply shopping. Then the packing ensued. Our huge Inuit tent, complete with center poles, guy ropes, and tent pegs would go into the car first taking the three of us some manoeuvering to load. Next went the camp cots with their metal frames, the camp stove, the lanterns, the deck chairs, and folding table. In went the dry goods, cases full of clothes for all weathers and enough bedding to keep us toasty for months to come. Finally, on the day of departure, the icebox, filled with perishables and a block of ice in a metal container; and the wicker picnic basket were loaded in. A procession would exit the house. My brother and I would settle bears, dolls, pillows, stuffies, colouring books, storybooks, snacks, crayons, blankets and the dogs in the back seat. My mother would rush back and forth with forgotten flashlights and first aid kits; rain boots and fishing rods; triple checking all the windows and doors in the house before we were finally cleared for take-off. Only then would the adventure begin.

One such adventure began with a phone call from my father. He was filming somewhere in the wilds of Algonquin Park, Ontario and had borrowed a Heinkel Bubble car in order to get around. The problem was the getting around, because he wasn’t. Bubble cars are minute and three-wheeled. They are in no way an off-road vehicle. This one had the added foible of conking out every time it stopped. The Chevy was needed urgently. My mother was to drive up, make the switch and return with the Bubble. A panic-stricken pack of the camping gear ensued and early the next day our menagerie headed in a northerly direction out of the city. The journey up was smooth sailing; no doubt our overnight camp was equally uneventful. The trip back down the next day was anything but.

Continue reading “The Bubble Car” →

Funny how memories can be triggered by a scent or even a taste. In my case, a box of Harvest Crunch cereal. Every time I eat it I am transported back to the time my brother and I made the trip across Canada by train. Yes, those were the days when the train went the width of the continent; the early days of Via Rail. We were living in England, my brother just graduated from art school and wondering what future to pursue; me jobless and searching for life. A family trip to Canada to visit relatives and memories was proposed and we jumped at it.

Our early childhood was spent in Toronto. We had seen snippets of Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia but never explored the sheer scale of the country. There was no doubt in our minds, the only way to do it was by train. With next to no money in our pockets, we bought 21 day passes for Daynighter accommodation in Montreal and, to save money, also purchased some non-perishable food to stave off starvation along the way. One of those items was, of course, a box of Harvest Crunch cereal.

Those were the days when meals on charter airlines were served in little plastic containers with plastic cups and cutlery. Knowing that we would be travelling, we stuck them into the carry-on (carry-off) luggage and so were well equipped for frugal picnics on our train trip. Every morning we went to the snack bar and bought a carton of milk. Every morning we poured milk and Harvest Crunch into the little bowls that we had purloined from our flight, and ate it with our filched plastic spoons.

We met some real characters on the trip across this great land; the gracious English woman who was returning to her home in BC. The disturbed mother who took her kids into the washroom and gave them a belting, although they behaved impeccably. The party types who passed a bottle and got off at every stop to smoke; people who stayed on and read for the entire trip, or those who departed in the middle of the night. We saw some extraordinary sights. A chair and table set up for train watching somewhere in the middle of Ontario’s endless rocks and lakes and trees. The striations of colour in the landscape. The dusty, heat-baked windswept corners of Winnipeg where we were allowed an hour to stroll. The swathes of prairies undulating wheat as far as the eye could see. The mind-boggling Rockies, passage through which held us spellbound for the entire day in the observation car. Vancouver, so overwhelming a city that, after a day on the island, sent us scuttling for the safety of the train and the return journey. It was the last time my brother and I spent any extended time in each other’s company without family and hangers-on and oceans between us. It all comes back clear as day when I dig in my spoon and savour the first bite of that Harvest Crunch cereal.

Quaker^® Harvest Crunch^®

Clo Carey Feb/20

Blog challenge #SouthShoreScribesNS @www.emilybowers.ca/ https://wordsbywhittall.blogspot.com/ @passionate_perspective @https://www.facebook.com/groups/1470587219691626                                          #amwriting #writingprompt #HarvestCrunch #Quaker #taste #cereal

#write28days Feb5

I had one of those flashes of memory, long forgotten, that pop to the surface, clamouring for investigation, after pondering our current writers’ group word prompt “outline”.  It began with the mundane. What do I know of outlines apart from outlining a story, which I rarely do; my own, ever-expanding outline, which I try to ignore; the outlines of a pattern for a hooked mat, which I rarely attempt these days.

This particular memory is of an event that occurred around 1989-90. Sometime during that year, I participated in a spot of civil disobedience. This was a rare event for me. I was too young for the anti-Vietnam war demos and in the wrong place for Red Lion Square its ilk. I get claustrophobic in crowds because I’m short. That’s my excuse, anyway. On this occasion, however, I felt strongly enough that I got out there and did something. This was in Toronto; let’s face it, not a city known for much civil unrest. I must have seen the call to action in one of the free newspapers that were handed out on the street corner near where I worked; the intersection of Yonge and Bloor; center of the universe. We were encouraged to bring others and I recruited my parents and my husband. We foregathered late that Sunday evening in the basement of a local church.

It was, for the most part, a young crowd. Aromas of patchouli and weed hung heavy in the air. We were given long strips of parcel paper which we placed on the floor and then lay down on top of.  One or other of us drew around our entire outline and we each followed up by cutting out our one-dimensional selves. After that, we were given a map, a bucket of whitewash and a large brush. Our area, I seem to remember, was around the Queen, College, Bathurst area. Others of the group spread out across the city center.

We walked for miles, stopping every few meters to lay down our body pattern and paint our outlines, crime scene style, all over deserted Toronto city streets. This wasn’t a crime scene, although the police did know about it; keeping an indulgent, if distant eye on proceedings. No, this was an anti-nuclear, anti-weapons-of-mass-destruction demonstration and our silhouettes represented what would be left behind if Toronto was hit.

The group outlined thousands of images that night but despite our massed efforts, they represented only a fraction of Toronto’s millions. To cap off our night of protest, we painted our final silhouettes just outside the door where we worked. They greeted us as they greeted millions of others when we headed in to work on Monday morning. It was a sobering sight.

Clo Carey Feb/20

http://clipart-library.com/murder-outline-cliparts.html

South Shore Scribes one-word prompt: “Outline” blog challenge #SouthShoreScribesNS @www.emilybowers.ca/ https://wordsbywhittall.blogspot.com/ @passionate_perspective @https://www.facebook.com/groups/1470587219691626 #amwriting #onewordprompt #OneWord

#write28days Feb1

 

* I’m attempting the Write 28 Days blog challenge in an effort to jump-start my blogging efforts. Blogs will be split between Teetering on the Edge and dottieodearyconversations.wordpress.com – have to let her have her say occasionally, otherwise she’ll get stroppy.

 

 

 

Way back in my teen years, I auditioned for and was invited to join a 50 voice adult choir. We did the rounds of nursing homes and hospitals, as well as competing in the occasional choral competition. The repertoire was quite varied and ranged between medleys of folk songs to full-on productions of The Creation and Brahms Requiem; bits of which were often edited by our director, a fearsome musical martinet, who felt our vocal talents weren’t quite up to certain scores. She was probably right. With ages ranging from 17 – 70 and not a professional among us, we relied on enthusiasm to carry us through and as such were very popular with our various audiences.

One particular favourite was our annual Christmas performance of the Messiah which, as some will know was first performed at Easter in my home town of Dublin. The choir knew it quite well and as a result, rehearsals were scanty which meant lots of extra work for us newcomers who were unfamiliar with singing it. For me it was even harder, for despite having taken theory classes and studied piano and a year of violin, I couldn’t really read music and was extremely shy and nervous about performing in public. Recognizing I had a problem, I knuckled down, cranked up the record player and learnt the entire work by ear.

November turned to December and along came our dress rehearsal in the performance venue, a local church. Our director had enough pull to attract some pretty big name Irish soloists and the pressure was on us to come up to their professional standard. Gone was the rehearsal piano, replaced by the church organ and, wonder of wonders, a trumpet soloist. We took our places and much to my discomfort, I found myself in the front row; the first alto next to the sopranos, and right under the director’s eagle eye. Somehow we got through, me doing my darnedest not to wander into soprano mode while singing the bits I wasn’t too sure of as quietly as possible. Luckily the full-throated gusto of the others hid my many musical deficiencies.

Finally, we were pronounced as ready as we’d ever be. The following night we all assembled, the men in evening dress, the ladies in freshly ironed turquoise blouses and floor-length black skirts, which in my case was homemade. We were greeted with enthusiastic applause as we filed in and the resplendently dressed soloists took their places. The church was packed to the rafters with smiling faces.

The performance went very well, despite inevitable nerves and the alto soloist suffering from a head cold. The sopranos hit the high notes, the audience rose en masse for the Hallelujah chorus, the trumpet sounded and I somehow managed to keep my place in the score. We hit the Amen chorus at a galloping pace and the relief of seeing the end in sight was palpable. For the most part, we got the ahs and the men in the right spots, with the soloists all joining in.

For some reason, the director liked to pull out the rest between the penultimate and the final amen, perhaps testing our nerve, perhaps waiting for complete silence before blasting the audience one final time. That final amen never happened, however, for into the golden silence a voice in the balcony said “What bus are you getting home, Doris?” and we all collapsed into laughter.

It’s been some years now since I’ve sung in a choir although I’ve participated in some wonderful sing-along Messiah’s through the years. Come the Christmas season, however, I still love digging out my score, cranking up the volume and belting out every part of that fabulous work.

 

 

Trostan Singers photo credit: RTE.ie

YouTube Choir Parts Amen Chorus Alto part as it should be sung.

South Shore Scribes memoir prompt: Christmas Story blog challenge “Christmas” #SouthShoreScribesNS @www.emilybowers.ca/ https://wordsbywhittall.blogspot.com/ @https://www.facebook.com/groups/1470587219691626 #Christmas #TheMessiah #Christmaschoral #amwriting #onewordprompt #OneWord

Much noise has been made of the auspiciouness of the 13th full moon falling on Friday, 13th. Here in Nova Scotia, we got our helping of auspiciousness six days early with the arrival of Hurricane Dorian. For me personally, this date is always auspicious but on this occasion, particularly so. My dad died 25 years ago and he led a highly auspicious life.

 

It began when he came back from the dead. One of a set of twins, the product of a  complicated delivery, he was pronounced dead on arrival and stuck in a corner while his slightly older brother got all the attention. An uncharachteristic wail convinced those present that he was very much alive, opinionated and bound for great things.

True to form, Dad notched up a number of firsts. He was the first of his brothers to eschew acting and embrace cinematography. He flew on the first Comet jet to India, and was part of the crew to film the first ascent of Everest. He put Irish documentary films on the map, pioneered documentaries with natural sound as commentary, and gave natural scenes their place in second unit direction. Continue reading “Patrick Carey” →

Remember those days back in elementary before inclusivity, zero tolerance and political correctness? Yes, those days. The February days when the classroom craft for Valentine’s week was to make yourself a “mailbox” into which your many affectionate classmates would post their lovingly inscribed Valentine cards. You gave cards to the kids you liked; the kids you admired; the cool kids with their curly blond hair and their crinolines; their confidence and their patent leather shoes. You did not tend to give them to the shy kids with straight brown hair and crooked teeth; the kids with a little extra poundage; the kids dressed by strict mothers in scratchy navy tunics and sensible shoes. No prizes for guessing which category I fell into. The teachers, fearing meltdowns insisted that the boxes should not be opened in class and while many were delved into on the playground after the final bell had rung, I always kept mine until I got home, hoping against hope that a few more kids had taken pity on me and added me to their list. Alas it was rarely the case. The seeds for future Valentine failures were sewn, watered by tears on Valentine’s Night. Continue reading “Oh Crap it’s Valentine’s Day” →