No Cross Referrals and the Mountain of Wool – Dad’s Drawers Episode 15

I have realised that it is over a year since my last offering and I’m going to be in trouble if I don’t pick up the pace soon. A couple of years ago the editor of Ambo, our parish magazine, asked me if they could serialise my blog. The magazine comes out on a quarterly basis, and as I was already at blog number 12 by that time I thought, that’s okay, it’s going to be years before they catch up with me. They are now up to blog number 10!  So that gives me just over a year before they catch up with today’s offering. What I should have been doing is writing shorter and more frequent blogs if I wanted to keep any momentum going, but that ship has sailed and in any case, I never have been a woman of few words.  As my school reports frequently noted “Julie is a chatterbox”.

1870’s tile from Architectural Pottery, Poole, Dorset. Designed by William de Morgan for William Morris.  This tile sat in the family kitchen for many a year, unremarked upon, like so many of the bits and pieces that mum and dad collected over the years.  It’s only now, seen in isolation, that I have appreciated the richness of design and the vibrancy of the colours. 

Rest assured that I haven’t been sorting through bits and not telling you; more that the luxury of doing it, if and when fancied, had temporarily disappeared because of more urgent demands on my time and emotions.

More hand-dyed and hand-spun wool

While this may be a more serious start than usual to my blog, I feel that I couldn’t continue my light-hearted saunter through the papers and possessions of the 4ft 11 maverick without any reference to my lovely mum, who was finally released from months of torment on June 28^th.

While the family house is still in our possession, still full of 50 years of accumulations and the memories attached to them, it hasn’t been the home of my mum since October last year. After a fall and a subsequent rapid decline, mum spent her last few months living in a care home, accompanied by a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.

This blog is dedicated to my mum, who it turns out, was no less of a hoarder than my dad. While ‘Mum’s Drawers’ doesn’t quite have the same ring to it of ‘Dad’s Drawers’, you will see that it was a photographic opportunity not to be missed and, that they are no less interesting and just a little more colourful than dad’s.

You can never have enough buttons

Rant interlude; please feel free to skip………………………

While I don’t feel that this is the place to dwell on the jumping of hurdles and the frustrations of navigating through a system that seems to be designed for confusion, I feel that I have to say something here. Considering I should have the requisite skills, having worked in an advice setting for over 15 years, I found sorting out services for my mum as easy as walking through treacle in oversized wellington boots……..while attached to bungee elastic. Every service that I had painstakingly set up in Cambridgeshire to make mum’s life just that little bit easier had to be set up all over again when I moved her, a mere 10 miles across the county border to Essex, to be closer to me.

A knot of needles

“NO CROSS REFERRALS!!!”

That physio that had taken six months to visit mum the first time round – Gone! Another referral needed from a new GP and back to the end of the queue.

That specialist from the memory clinic who had booked a home visit – Gone! Different department now; go back to GP and wait for a new appointment.

The Occupational Therapist who had been so good at securing aids and keeping mum mobile – Gone! “OTs don’t go to people in care homes in Essex; you’ll have to pay for a private one to do a new assessment”. And….. this is a whole new rant just waiting to happen…….. did you know that there is a whole range of services not available to people once they move into a care home despite their needs! “You’re just waiting to die, so why do you need a wheelchair?” Okay, so nobody actually said that to me, but you could hear it in their voices.

More wool

And yet more frustrating conversations…..

“No, North Essex only covers Chelmsford. Saffron Walden is East Essex” (Saffron Walden is actually 25 miles north of Chelmsford)

“Yes, I know you’re in Essex, but you have to go to Cambridgeshire for that service”.

Hand-dyed cotton samples

“I am sorry, we can’t speak to you, we will need to get authorisation from your mother.”

“My mother has dementia, and she doesn’t have capacity.”

“Can she come to the phone?”

“No, she doesn’t live here.”

“Can you get her to write a letter then?”

Hand-dyed wool samples

The worst one……………

“I’m very sorry, but now you have moved your mum from Cambridgeshire to Essex, we will have to start the whole process over again. Yes, I know the consultant from Cambridgeshire works from the same office as the one from Essex, but they can’t just swap notes you know; you’ll have to go back to the GP for a new referral.”

A spectrum of thread

Anyway, back to the story. I had to look at the sorting and clearing process in a whole new light.  It’s one thing clearing through the belongings of a parent who has died, but totally different to do the same for one that was still alive; even though you knew that they would never have any need of those possessions again.

Since dad died I have had a luxury afforded to very few – time. I’ve had time to take stock and time to consider and enjoy each and every object that he left behind.  Far from it being the onerous task that dad always joked it would be, I have enjoyed every minute of the process. The finding, the researching, the photographing and the writing about the finding has been the best bereavement therapy that I could think of and I would thoroughly recommend it.

Yet more wool….

However, the last few months found me trying to do a similar exercise with my mum’s belongings while she was still alive.  Instead of savouring of the objects, sorting through each of her things brought with it acute sadness at every step. With each paint box, sequin, knitting needle and ball of wool, came regret and a reminder of yet another faculty lost. It also forced me to acknowledge that she no longer had the skills to use these things anymore and that was hard.  Very hard.

 Hand-dyed silk, ready for spinning

Now, I never viewed my mum as a hoarder like my dad, but she did have a lot of stuff.   Mum and I used to laugh at the things I found sorting through dad’s stuff and she often said she had no idea how he acquired so much stuff and moved it with them from house to house, without her noticing.

Well mum, pot, kettle and black come to mind now.

Jacob fleece ready for spinning

My mum was a woman of many talents who had tools for all of the many trades that she dabbled in. Over the years she accumulated materials and tools to, amongst other things, make leather gloves, bags and belts, dye wool, paint, upholster and spin.

Don’t we all pick up just a couple more pairs of scissors every time we visit Ikea?  Mum did. Well you never can have enough can you? 

Just an aside here – I wanted to mention this at mum’s funeral, but there just wasn’t enough time. Mum kept this very quiet, but she was at one time an unlikely British Champion. In 1990 the spinning group that she was part of won the British championship and held the British record for the fastest ‘fleece to jumper’. I went to watch the team compete once and was stunned by what I saw.  You would imagine that spinning is quite a sedate activity with time to chat and catch up with friends while steadily spinning the latest acquired fleece. However, what I saw was a group of highly competitive women poised at their wheels. Seconds after the starting gun went off all I could see was a flurry of arms and fleeces as the women from the competing teams all dived in to retrieve their instructions and their fleeces. After a few minutes there was a gradual change from apparent chaos – literally fur flying – into a fine-tuned and well-practised production line. Team members had already been selected for their particular roles depending on their strengths and weaknesses. Those combing the wool would pass it on to the fastest spinners, who would feed it straight on to the needles of the fastest knitters. After they finished there would be the usual post-mortem where they would complain about the quality of the fleece and comment on the complications in the jumper pattern, after which time they would congratulate themselves on their win – and they always did win! Their record of 2 hours, 46 minutes and 12 seconds remained unbeaten for quite a few years.

I feel like I should create one of those ‘I Spy’ books every time I take photos of a messy drawer.

I spy…… one ruler, daring thread, two buttons, some glue……………..

……………..one medal, one bar of soap, some silver thread……………

….Two safety pins, two machine needles, one hole maker……………

Anyway, to continue, mum could knit by hand, knit with machine, crochet, smock, paint, felt wool, weave, make the most elaborate patchwork quilts, bind books, make paper and paint silk. The list could go on for much longer, but I’m sure you have got the message so I won’t bore you. She also passed on many of those skills that she had acquired to others. Suffice to say that it slowly dawned on me that my mum had just as much stuff to clear through as my dad.

Bell and Howell projector lenses

As I said, sorting through mum’s bits was really difficult; not just because there was then (now no longer) a time limit on the whole process – the house needed to be sold to pay the care home fees – but also because my complacency over the last few years had meant that I hadn’t really made a great dent in dad’s stuff and now had even more to do. I found that I couldn’t throw any of my mum’s things away because at that time she was still alive so it all still belonged to her and not me. Even though I knew she could no longer make use of the things or make decisions about what to keep and what not to, it just didn’t feel right to be deciding for her.

Even more wool……..

The only solution to this was to throw away nothing, and with this in mind I slowly started to transport everything over to my house.  None of the family have noticed yet so I think I got away with it. (For some reason that has just brought to mind John Cleese in the Fawlty Towers sketch: “Don’t mention the war; I did once, but I think I got away with it”.)

So, now added to the tools, books, bottles etc. of dad’s are now copious (and I mean mountains of the stuff) amounts of wool, knitting needles, paints and craft materials and tools all safely stored (secreted) around the house.

Gauge dials

Now that mum has gone the sorting is slightly easier; though it’s still too raw (she only died just over a month ago) to be cavalier with her stuff. At least now I am able to take a more long-term view knowing she is now definitely not going to need it anymore. Though I did pop a pair of knitting needles and some wool into the coffin with her just in case……..

‘Hand’ or ‘Drop’ spindles

So, talking a bit about my mum for a change gives me a chance to focus on happier times and tell you where it all began and how these two hoarders (yes mum you were one too) found each other.

It was my mum’s brother John who was responsible for that first meeting in 1956. Dad met John when he had answered an advert that John had displayed inviting people ‘interested in dabbling in prose and poetry’ to come along to a group he had recently started. The meetings took place in the home of Stella Gibbons (she of Cold Comfort Farm fame) the mother of John’s wife-to-be.

One of the many paint sets 

In dad’s own words from his book (Gravity Is Getting Me Down):

“Sometime in that year, John sent a note inviting me to his party. ‘It would’, it said, ‘start roughly around eight o’clock and end even more roughly’.

Come and meet my sister said John refilling my glass.  I had been nursing my first drink. Looking around, while everyone else was imbibing alcoholic potion she was sipping fizzy lemonade. She sat quietly by herself and struck me as having, in addition to her good looks, an inner beauty and happiness quite different from the others.  I had looked in her direction several times but she had shown no interest. Twelve months later we were married.”

 

The original invitation to the party where mum and dad met

What he didn’t say in his book was that he had asked mum to marry him only a few weeks after that first meeting and, being the sensible woman that she was, she told him it was far too soon, she finally relented on March 23rd 1957, exactly 52 weeks from that first meeting. Apparently during the courtship dad was the perfect gentleman, always accompanying mum back home to Barking underground station. However, he was never able to go above ground with her as he had only purchased a platform ticket. While he could travel under London to his heart’s content, he could only come back above ground at the place where the platform ticket had been purchased. Later in the courtship he would take mum home on his motorbike on which they were frequently stopped by the police because mum’s disability (see later) meant that she could only ride side-saddle.

Nope.  No idea.

Another extract from dad’s book reveals what type of woman my mother was:

“I was annoyed because my meal wasn’t ready as I could have expected coming home from a hard day’s work.  Jean, my wife of six months, had turned out to be a rebellious creature and was in no way prepared to accept me as the master of the household. Her creed was equality of the sexes, would you believe.”

I can remember my dad saying that it was a bit of shock to him that mum wasn’t prepared to wait on him hand and foot as his adoring Jewish mother had done. Though, he must have got used to it as the marriage was a long and happy one lasting 54 years.

 

That really set the scene for a fairly unconventional family life with a dad that cooked more than a mum, a mum who drove more than a dad (albeit quite slowly), a dad that was home more than a mum (teaching did have its perks) and a fairly equal division of household chores. Unremarkable to us now, but in 1957 definitely not the norm.

Well who wouldn’t look glum wearing that two-piece?

Though not sure what he’s got to smile about; it’s not a cool look, even with the pipe………………. or moth-proofed wool.  

But of course you can wear a brown cardigan if you are a book-type of person.

Mum was a remarkable woman, constantly seeking to ‘better’ herself through learning.  She was one of the first to sign up for the Open University when it came into being in the early 70s, collecting her degree some 7 years later (and those were the days before internet and video recorders, so mum would be up either until 1am or rise at 7am to watch the televised lectures). I am sure she did do some housework as the house was generally clean and tidy, but in her opinion life was too short to dust or clean or cook, especially when there was so many more interesting things you could be doing.

She was just as much of a rebel as my dad in her own way and if somebody told her she couldn’t do something it would make her all the more determined to prove them wrong. She re-learned to walk when doctors told her she never would, after contracting Osteomyletis and spending a year in hospital when she was 6. She overcame a lifetime disability by pretty much ignoring it and not letting it get in the way of living a full life; so much so that, just like I never noticed my dad had an Austrian accent (blatantly obvious to everyone else), I never really noticed mum had a disability while I was growing up as she seemed to do everything my friends’ mums could and more. It was pretty obvious though, when she had what we called her ‘Put-Put’, which was a disability vehicle better known (and now I think about it quite tactlessly) as an Invacar. You couldn’t miss them; they were provided by the Ministry of Health and were all the same light blue colour. Basically, somebody had put an extra wheel on a motorbike and encased the whole thing in fibreglass.  They were designed for one, but there was a little space for a shopping just by the driver. Mum would often, against the rules of the sign inside which said, “No Passengers”, collect my brother Peter from school, and make him crouch down all the way home in case somebody spotted them. The Ministry of Health also provided a little garage, but said ‘Put-Put’ never did see the inside of it as dad, grabbing the opportunity, quickly moved his casting equipment into it and set up a little home foundry.

When Alzheimer’s started to take its hold, mum starting exhibiting very similar personality traits to dad.  We visited her in hospital just before Christmas, and on two occasions she had pulled out the drip and cut off her name tag, hiding everything in her knitting bag so they wouldn’t know who she was. Had she been mobile I’m guessing she would have done a runner just like dad did.

Mum was a member of a drama group before she was married and was a great fan of theatre, Danny Kaye being her favourite actor. She told stories of queuing at stage doors to collect autographs. Above are a couple of pages from her autograph book which contains some big names from stage and screen in the 50s: Vivien Leigh; Laurence Olivier; Jack Warner; Johnnie Ray; Norman Wisdom; Janet Leigh and Wilfred Pickles.

Just as I was going through the autograph book to check through the names (many of which I could not read or recognise) I found this letter in a little pocket behind Sam Wanamaker’s autograph.

Mum, like dad, never gave feint praise, and if asked (but only if asked – she would never interfere) she would give you her honest opinion though always with tact. However, in recent years tact was noticeably absent from her comments.

We were walking behind a rather amply-built nurse on our way to one of mum’s hospital appointments: (quite loudly) “You would have thought that with all these long corridors to walk that she wouldn’t be so fat.”

And to me whilst we were sitting enjoying a cup of tea together: “I never noticed that you had that flat bit on your face.”

This is a doodling of dad’s that I found amongst his papers. The shape and colours proved perfect for the cover of my daughter Hollie’s first EP which I unashamedly promote here: The Walls I Built

During those last awful months in the dementia wing of the care home there was at least one occasion to laugh (if you didn’t, you cried). One of the residents kept asking when her mum and dad would be there; as is the way with this cruel disease, it was an oft -repeated mantra and in an effort to calm her the staff would say over and over again: “Don’t worry, they will soon be here.”  After this repetition had gone on for about fifteen minutes; mum getting fed up of it said, in an unusually (for her) loud voice: “No they won’t; they’re dead!”

This is what lies beneath those gauge dials pictured earlier

Well, I can see from the word count that I have failed dismally in my efforts to write a shorter blog. Once a chatterbox, always a chatterbox I suppose.   Rather than go back and cut bits out, I will leave it to you to decide which bits to skip and which to read. (I realise as I write this that it is a bit late in the day to give you that option as, if you have got to all the way to here without skipping, you might just as well now brave it right to the very end.)

Finally (I bet you thought we would never get there), in an effort to end on a more humorous note, I leave you with this………(apologies to those of you who have already heard it).

For a cookery lesson once I was given a list of ingredients to make corned beef hash. This would be cooked in the lesson and then taken home for the family tea.  When mum saw that ‘Smash’ (that of the “then-they-smash-them-all-to-bits” aliens) was on the list of ingredients instead of real potato she was having none of it. “We are not eating that rubbish” she said, “You can make some mashed potato at home and take that to school instead”.  So, it was with great embarrassment the next day that I carried in my bowl of mash and had to tell the teacher that my mum wouldn’t let me bring in Smash.  Many years later I was reminded of this incident when on my way home, after collecting my daughter from an overnight stay with mum and dad, she said: “We had ‘Smash’ for tea last night, but Nan told me not to tell you”.

I couldn’t really dedicate a blog to my mum without at least one picture of her, so here is my offering. Taken by dad around 1960 (I’m guessing that because it is my cardigan on her head) with his usual sense of humour.

As always I include the latest Christmas Card creation in the closet blog to the Christmas gone.  I realise that we are now closer to next Christmas than last, but hey-ho, I know at least one person who is already counting down the days.

The Heirloom Whistle and The Turquoise Thread of Nightmares – Dad’s Drawers Episode 14

Most people have a box or album of photographs somewhere and that is likely to be the first port of call for most people wanting to rekindle a memory. What I have now realised is that photographs really only play a small part in that rekindling. Going through my dad’s stuff has been a good illustration of how memories can be found in the strangest of places and it has given me a whole new perspective on what makes a memory and also of which things do and don’t hold sentimental value.

There have been a number of my dad’s things that I am very fond of (most of which I have kept) and quite a lot that I am not fond of (most of which I have also kept). However, those that I am fond of are more usually those that were around the house whilst I was growing up and they remind me as much of my childhood as they do of my dad.

This is one of those objects that was always around when I was growing up.  Some years ago dad gave it to me.  I have no idea where it originated, nor have I ever seen anything like it anywhere else.  It is most likely to be one of those ‘Fonthill-Road-Junkshop-Finds’. 

 

There were no family heirlooms to speak of in the Plisner household; my dad having left Austria in somewhat of a hurry and my mum coming from a working class, asset-poor family whose ancestors were paupers…. And, there were oh so many paupers. While doing family ancestry research I have come across numerous instances of the family pauper status in census documents. Paupers, more paupers and yet more paupers. Paupers, paupers, paupers, paupers, paupers…I feel a Monty Python song coming on…..  I was absolutely delighted to find one ancestor listed as ‘owner of a mangle’- it being a pleasant break from pauper-dom.

Anyway, I digress; you get the message – no heirlooms. (Well there is the whistle. Can a whistle be an heirloom? I’ll come on to that later).

The absence of heirlooms doesn’t mean that there have been no things of value.  As anyone who is following this story will know, two carrier-bags of lathe catalogues and pair of binoculars, not to mention the ugly fat nude, all proved to be wise hoarding on my dad’s part.  And, I’m sure that there are still a few quid to be had from some of the things that, having been surreptitiously transported from my dad’s house while nobody was looking, are now resident in my own garage.

And, there are also all these interesting documents……..

 

A note showing my grandmother’s liberation from Gurs Internment camp. 

Communications via the Red Cross between my grandmother and her daughter Felice in 1943.  My aunt had managed to get to the UK before war had started and lived in Manchester.

 

But, monetary value bears little resemblance to sentimental value and what I have found is that it is the little scraps of paper that I keep finding that touch me in a way that ‘things’, valuable or otherwise, do not.  Often utilised as book marks, I regularly find shopping lists when I flick open one of dad’s books, and it could only be one of my dad’s lists: figs; Greek yoghurt; prawns; croissants; tahini; German wafers; olives; WD40.  Occasionally, there will also be a doodle, or a scribble with a play on the English language, and then there are those notes that we had to write to communicate when he had mislaid his hearing aids (a frequent occurrence in the later years).

An illustration of communications in that last year when the hearing aids were constantly being misplaced. Problems with the broadband connection; the result of dad clicking on porn pop-ups on his laptop (and my subsequent reparations to clear the visions from his desktop) and his eating of the salmon that mum had saved for her tea!

 

On a similar theme; I have discovered that memories can also be found in the mundane….. A couple of months ago I decided to tidy, what I optimistically call, my ‘Mending Box’.  I say optimistically because in reality nothing much gets mended in this household; those saved buttons can never be found when needed, there is never the right colour thread and those cut off bits of hem I always saved (in a short family there is always several inches to cut off the bottom of a pair of trousers) have never been put to any use.

However, as a box of memories my mending box is a treasure trove.

A set of letters for a Taylor Hobson engraving machine that still sits in dads’ workshop (it being too heavy for me to bring over here).

 

As I sorted through the inter-knotted cotton reels, the weirdest collection of colours you might find, each colour brought with it a fond memory (except the turquoise; explanation to come).  There was that particular shade of brown which could only have been used to sew badges onto an 8-year-old girl’s brownie uniform; the scout-shirt green for all those loose buttons and frequent repairs (always required after those overnight hikes); the springtime yellow used for the home-made curtains in that first house from over 30 years ago (when I say home-made I mean home-made by my mum. I just wanted to be clear – I don’t excel at sewing). Then there is THAT bright turquoise.  The thread purchased to hem that ball gown; Hollie’s, not mine.  (I don’t do dresses). The colour still gives me nightmares.

To explain.  When we bought the dress, the shop offered a hemming service for £25.00.

“That’s very expensive” I said.

“How hard can it be?”

“It’s only a hem. I can do a hem”.

One hem, maybe……………

 

One of my favourite finds.  A silver snuff-box (the top part of the body opens).  This had been around the house for years and it was the one thing I was actively looking for when I started the clearing process.  I think the eyes are small opals. 

 

When we got the dress home it revealed several under-layers; to be precise, four slippery, silky under-layers.  After a considerable time of visual assessment I abandoned the idea of sellotape (it probably wouldn’t look very good), glue (unlikely to stick), and staples (too sharp) and set to work on the miles of taffeta and satin.  It took me about two weeks to finish, required expert advice from a very able neighbour (and that was just to get the pins in) and was accompanied at frequent intervals by a selection of expletives.  What resulted were some very crooked layers, which had an almost-intended scalloped look.  However, I needn’t have worried too much on the quality of my workmanship, as on the one and only wearing of said dress, Hollie put the heel of her shoe through all layers, adding a rather attractive black hole.

 

Another unknown object.  It is about the size of a side plate, it looks and feels like brass. Smooth on the back apart from a circular groove in the same position as the outer circle on the front.  No screw thread in the holes, so I am not sure how it would have been fixed to anything.  If there are any experts out there on Asian script would love to have a translation of the text.

 

Anyway, to continue with the Mending Box of Memories….

There is a tin of name tapes for each of my children (who haven’t been children for quite a while) that I cannot bear to throw away.  But what do you do with them? They can’t be expected to wear sewn-in name tapes aged 20 and 26; even though it would be most practical, as maturity in years does not seem to equate with a better sense of keeping track of one’s clothing.

 

The two items above relate to dad’s passage from Spain to Palestine in 1944 on the Portuguese ship Nyassa. This passage was funded by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which during the war became a clandestine organisation to help Jewish refugees in transit. The name Alfred Bresnor was the name that dad had used during the war. His mother and he regularly corresponded under pseudonyms to avoid detection. Note that he also listed himself as British.

 

Alongside the children’s name tapes are also some that bear my dad’s name.  No fond memories of those at all, indeed some painful ones.  As if it wasn’t bad enough that we had to admit defeat when dad went into the care home, I found having to label his clothes like a child one of the most degrading things we had to do, which added insult to the already-sustained injury.  It didn’t stop him choosing to wear that soft cashmere cardigan that had the name ‘Vera’ carefully sewn into the collar, or those ‘much-cosier-than-his’ sheepskin slippers of Ralph’s, but I supposed it helped the staff sort out the laundry.  All these redundant name tapes now sit in another memory; an old tobacco tin, that was once home to the Old Holborn tobacco that my granddad used to smoke. (I can smell that sweet aroma of his roll-ups as I write this).

Ironically, given that dad was refused British Citizenship on a number of occasions (even after marrying a British National and having a child), he was issued with a British Passport while he was working for the Government of Palestine.

 

There are also numerous spare buttons from treasured clothing long gone. Buttons from my late nan’s button tin. Buttons that I have cut from clothing before throwing away ‘just in case’ and who can throw buttons away anyway?  There are two needle cases; one made of felt that my late mother-in-law bought me at a Christmas bazaar and another denim version that my daughter made in one of her textile lessons at school (glad to see those school fees didn’t go completely to waste).

School Report from Manchester Jews’ School which dad attended aged 10/11. The family re-located from Vienna to Manchester where my grandfather ran a grocer’s shop at 127 Elizabeth Street.

 

Then there is the black indelible marker, a key part of any sewing box.  Useful for colouring a child’s leg when there is a hole in tights/trousers, for changing a brown pair of shorts into black (admittedly that did take a lot of time, but it saved me buying a new pair and was fine until it rained. Indelible my ****) and for filling in those white bleach spots on clothing which always seemed to appear from nowhere.

 

As with any collection of bits there are also numerous items that have no ‘memory value’. I have no idea what the kilt pin is doing in my box. I’m not sure if I am ever going to have any use for a chocolate-brown, 10-inch zip or a 4-inch orange one. There are 6 measuring tapes all from Christmas crackers when I hardly have use for one.  There is a box of twist pins – what are they even for and how did they come to be in my box?

Any ideas?

….and I’m not sure I will ever have use for those 15 hotel ‘freebie’ sewing kits of varying quality, that I have accumulated from hotels of equally varying quality. (And, I know that still won’t stop me from bringing another home from the next hotel I stay in – it must be that inherited magpie trait).

I can’t remember if I have mentioned the ‘Plisner Whistle’ in my blog before.  I’m of the age where the memory section of the brain is now reaching full capacity.  For anything to stick, something else has to be ditched.  There being no apparent filtering mechanism; seemingly useless information remains (I can faultlessly recite lyrics to most 1970’s pop songs), while more useful information, like where I put down my glasses five minutes ago, makes one attempt to squeeze into that already-overflowing container before fluttering off into the atmosphere.

As I have been writing this blog for a few years now and do them so infrequently, I’ve lost track of what I have and haven’t written about and while scanning through the blog I can easily see which photos have already been posted, but as I have a natural aversion to re-reading words that I have written, it would be too painful for me to go back and check everything I have written about.

That was a long-winded way of apologising in advance for any repetition on my part.

So, repetition or not, back to the whistle.

 

Provisional ID papers from the early days in France.  Dad would have been 19.  His nationality listed as ‘Ex-Austrian’.

 

The Plisner family, being short-changed when the inches were being handed out, has had to come up with several ways to meet the challenges of reduced height.  For example, I used to carry a pack-of-four beer cans with me to music concerts; as well as being very convenient refreshment-wise, these would serve as a step to elevate me to normal height so I could see the band.  We have also been known to sneak a booster cushion or two from the pile in cinemas and theatres.

However, ever since I can remember, dad had a signature ‘calling’ whistle “Fwio, fwio, fwiooooo”. (As I write this I am whistling away to myself to see if a whistle can indeed be described accurately in text – the jury is still out, but I’m not optimistic). The whistle was mainly used in large stores when, not tall enough to see each other over the display shelves, it would help the Plisner family locate each other.  If the whistle was getting louder, you knew you were getting closer.  This was transferable to large events where we would usually be swamped by tall people (normal sized people, but tall to us) and for beckoning in long gardens.

The whistle was used by dad throughout his life and has for many years now been used by myself and my family in similar circumstances.  Though not being very good at whistling my version is more of a “Shfwio, shfwio shfwioooo” and Hollie when she was small just used to shout “Terwoot, terwoot, terwooooo” at the top of her voice which served much the same purpose.

So, if a whistle can be an heirloom, that one’s mine.

Just an aside, while we are on the subject. My better half often uses ‘The Whistle’ to beckon me from the end of the garden; I usually amble back to find a welcoming cup of tea or coffee.  Imagine my disappointment on the occasion when I responded to the whistle to hear these words: “I thought you might like to know the royal baby has been born and it’s a girl”.  To this day I do not know what possessed him to relay this information to me, neither he nor I having any interest whatsoever in the Royal Family; but to add salt to the wound (the wasted walk from the end of the garden) there was a marked absence of any liquid refreshment to accompany this redundant message.  In my mind, a clear case of whistle abuse!

I always wondered how relatives tracked each other down after the war.  Some searches brought good news…………

………….and others not so good

 

 

I leave you with this little story that just goes to show that you can’t guess which things have that ‘sentimental’ ability to make you smile or shed a tear.

A few weeks ago I was helping my mum clear out some cupboards and brought home (amongst other things) an old cheap Casio watch of my dad’s. For a week or two it sat in a box with other random items en route to the charity shop. Initially when I heard an alarm go off I thought it was my washing machine (it making a similar noise when it finishes its cycle).  It took me a while to establish that it was the alarm on the Casio watch, set to go off each day at the same time.  I am not sure what dad needed to be reminded of at 11.39 am (12.39 during the summer) every morning, but now every time I hear it I am reminded of him ……and I smile.

Needless to say, the watch didn’t make it to the charity shop.

The 2016 ‘Dad’s Drawers’ Christmas Card

 

 

 

 

Dad’s Drawers Part 13: Adjustable Friction Couplings and Bobbly Jumpers

Dressing for the occasion was not something we did much of in the Plisner household.  If I tried I could probably count the number of times dad wore a tie; and even then it wasn’t your usual tie.  In fact, I don’t think I ever saw my dad wear, what most people would think of as, a normal tie.  And, although I can see from old photos that he did wear one for his own wedding, I can only ever remember him owning the one tie throughout my childhood.  It was a rather flowery strip that looked like it belonged to a 1960’s curtain – which is no surprise as it was indeed made, by my very able mum, from something that had seen better days behind a pane of glass accompanied by the obligatory net.  The fact that it came out from time to time in later decades meant that anytime that dad did wear it, it always shouted out “If you are going to force me to conform, then this is what you get.”

I still have the tie somewhere, but my filing/storage system (okay, I’ll admit that boxes on top of files, on top of boxes doesn’t really count as a system) has some limitations and, as I write this I can’t quite remember where I put it.  I’ve searched in the box marked ‘Dad’s Sundry Bits’, the file marked ‘Misc.’, the file marked ‘Misc Undated’, the one marked ‘Untitled’, the one marked ‘Sundry’, another file marked ‘misc.’ (though as you will observe this one has a lower case ‘m’ to differentiate from the other of the same name), and lastly the one marked ‘Doodlings’. I recognise that a tie would never be put in a file marked ‘Doodlings’ but I am the first to admit that my filing system leaves much to be desired and there is of course always a high possibility of ‘user-error’, and that it has been mis-filed.

From seven stone weakling……

Mis-filed or not, it is nowhere to be found; so in between the (many) minor re-writes, and the lining up of photographs (they never seem to make it quite to the centre of the page) I will continue my search and, if I find it by the time I am ready to post this blog you will see a photo of it below – if not who knows what will be below this piece of writing!  (Exits stage left to search files and boxes marked: ‘Prisoner of War Camps’; ‘1949 – 1959’; ‘Undated’; ‘Dad’s Bits’; ‘Other’; ‘Random Jottings’; and ‘Stuff’.  Well you never know…………………

So, no tie I’m afraid – instead I give you this teapot 

At school, being a metalwork teacher, dad could get away with being tie-less most of the time as whatever he wore was always covered by a grey lab coat.  I can’t remember him ever owning a suit, let alone wearing one.  There was an occasional jacket, though usually that would be suede or leather and would be made for him by my mum (who could turn her hand to just about anything).  Give her a piece of fabric, a photograph of what you wanted, and she could make it for you.

Dad only really had three forms of dress: the workshop lab coat (which always had that evocative smell of metal filings and grease); going-out-to-tea/parent’s evening attire (leather or suede jacket, M&S polo neck shirt, and corduroy trousers); and pyjamas and/or bathrobe, which went on pretty much as soon as he got home from work (as a teacher this would often be 4.00pm) or a bit later if he had gone out to his workshop for a couple of hours.  There would be a variation of any of the above when he worked in the garden, though usually topless and always accompanied by Wellington boots.  I’m sure I have already mentioned that dad would frequently be in his pyjamas and bathrobe when he collected me from parties or discos.  For me it was choice between dad at midnight in his bathrobe or mum at 10.30 (in perfectly respectable clothing).  The bathrobe won every time!

In his later years, shoes were ditched in favour of slippers or snow boots.  Which was fine for most of the time, but I do remember suggesting to him that they may not be the most appropriate footwear for the funeral we were about to attend.

Not sure where this lead cherub came from

A chat with a friend a couple of weeks ago reminded me of an incident of not being dressed for the occasion myself.  I must have been about 9 or 10 at the time. One wet December Saturday afternoon mum decided to take a friend and me to the cinema.  Sadly, having driven all the way into Cambridge, we found that the film was sold out. Not to be put off we wandered over to the Cambridge Arts Theatre, a short walk from the Victoria Cinema on the market square (now Marks and Spencer’s).  Luckily, we were able to get tickets for the Pantomime of the season; I can’t remember for sure, but I think it was Cinderella starring Cyril Fletcher, in his customary Panto drag, as an ugly sister.

Now, remember we were dressed for the cinema, not the theatre.  I can’t say I noticed as we went into the theatre that we were dressed inappropriately in any way, but even if I had it I wouldn’t have been bothered, after all we were going to be sitting in the dark for a couple of hours, so what did it matter?  That everyone else had dressed up for the theatre only really dawned on me when I volunteered to go up on stage, alongside Cyril Fletcher, to take part in a group rendition of “Do-a –Deer”.  Each child had to do one of the lines of the song and, while “Do”,” Re”, “Me”, “Fa”,” La” and “Ti”, came from girls, hair adorned with ribbons and pretty dresses, “So, a needle pulling thread”, was delivered by a smiling child with knotted hair, muddy wellies and a comfy bobbly jumper.. …….

Needless to say, my dress sense hasn’t improved much since.  Apart from school uniform requirements (more on that later) and my wedding day, I have hardly worn a dress or anything so feminine as ribbons in my hair and, I have been known to decline invitations that require me to do so.  Well you can’t climb a tree, operate a chainsaw, build a bonfire or mend a shower in a dress, can you?  Though, as I am sure I have mentioned before I have been forbidden to operate a chainsaw, because it’s “tooooo daaangerous”, I am on a warning for bonfires ever since I set the tree alight in the garden, and my attempt to mend the shower, that ended up with a horizontal jet of water and the emergency plumber being called out, didn’t work out too well either.   I am still allowed to climb trees though……..(when nobody is looking).

So, dressing for the occasion has never been my thing either.  But I did eventually learn that sometimes you have to dress out of your comfort zone to achieve things (whether you like it or not). Having trained as a youth worker, my usual attire for both work and leisure would be pretty much the same day in and day out: jeans, t-shirt and trainers, cowboy or trilby hat for going out, and occasionally sunshine-yellow dungarees.  However, my first job was with the YMCA, an organisation which was at that time dominated by old men in dark suits and ties, (they were probably only in their 40’s, and 50’s which, now I am there is of course not very old at all, but I was only 23 at the time).

I found it incredibly frustrating that as a young female ‘General Secretary’, (that was the title of all those who ran YMCA’s in those days), nobody appeared to be listening to my views or taking me seriously.  After a particularly difficult meeting one of my colleagues, much later in years than I, took me aside and suggested that instead of my usual jeans and t-shirts (along with those witticisms across the front that we enjoyed in the early 80’s), that I might make more of an impression if I were to play the suits at their own game by wearing one myself.  My knee-jerk reaction was “Why should I?  They should recognise my skills however they are dressed”. But I did have a great respect for the gentleman in question, who persuaded me that dress was just another tool to get the job done; and he was of course absolutely right.

Another unknown item. All guesses gratefully received. It is clearly a press of some type, but the bit that presses down is about 2 1/2 inches in diameter, so would only press something small.

On those slogan T-shirts….  I was once introduced by the matron of a school I was working in (who really didn’t approve of me or anything I did) as “Julie, whose bosoms always have something to say” (I think it was when I tried to start a trade union that she went off me).  My favourite slogan of the time was my ‘Idontgoto University’, which I had emblazoned across my sweatshirt.  Growing up in a university town I deeply resented that, having left school after O’ levels, the taxes that were now being deducted from my feeble wages (at the extortionate 1976 rate of 35%) were contributing to this privileged section of society who seemed to spend most of their lives in the pub.  (The fact that I eventually married one of them just goes to show what a forgiving person I am).  And, as if to prove what we all know; that intelligence does not necessarily equate to common sense (in fact it is very often nowhere to be seen), I was once asked by a Cambridge student if ‘Idontgoto’ was a University in America.

Dad would cast all sorts of things in brass and aluminium.

Just a quick aside on school uniform – which I hated.   My school was the first of a certain breed, and a trial move towards the comprehensive system of education.  I passed my 11 plus, but instead of opting for the Girls Grammar or the assisted place, apparently deciding (at the age of 11) that the single-sex schools were not for me, I chose the comprehensive experiment, that being the only co-ed option in my area.  My school of choice was Impington Village College , famous for its building having been designed by revered architect Walter Gropius  – A fact that is strangely still ingrained in my mind some 40-odd years later; (if only more useful facts would lodge there as readily).

Anyway, back to the uniform; in order to have a more progressive approach the school had a bit of a mish-mash between traditional and modern.  You could wear any navy skirt, white shirt and navy jumper; but there was still a blazer with latin-embroidered logo though I only remember having to wear that in first year (we called our years what they were in those days – none of this ‘year seven’ rubbish). The tie was an unappetising shade of green with white stripes, and the whole thing was topped off by a beret for the girls and a cap for the boys.  The berets and caps were ditched in the first week and for the remainder of my years there, it was a constant challenge to see just what you could get away with.

 Buck and Hickman 1956 Catalogue of Tools

I don’t remember consciously choosing to flout the system, but there was a constant complaint at parent’s evenings that I didn’t follow the school uniform rules.  My mum’s response to the school was always: “Julie leaves home in the morning dressed in uniform, how she arrives is your problem”.

Weirdly, I don’t ever remember getting reprimanded for it.

Doing cartwheels in the Environmental Studies lesson – Yes; Talking in the Dressmaking class – Yes; Passing messages along the back row in History – Yes; Talking in Science – Yes; Locking a teacher in a cupboard in Geography – Yes (only a student teacher so it doesn’t really count); Talking in Maths – Yes; Letting off a fire extinguisher in the form-room – Yes (though that was a joint form effort); Talking in English – Yes; Climbing out of a window in Geography – Yes (same student teacher); Talking in Biology – Yes; Running in a ‘walking’ area – Yes.

Not wearing the appropriate school uniform – Never.

And, nor was I ever told off for having ‘holiday hair’, as my daughter once was, or hair that ‘contravened health and safety rules’ as my 8-year-old nephew was recently; but then it’s a different world these days.

NB. My friend Splodge and I were constantly getting into trouble for talking so much and we were frequently split up in lessons.  We did however still manage to communicate with each other though, and at frequent intervals would exclaim: “Oh dear I’ve dropped my ruler/slide rule/test tube/rubber/pins” so we could pass notes to each other under the desks. What I don’t really understand is why it was always referred to as ‘chattering’ in my school report, as if it what we were talking about wasn’t important.  My response now would be that there would have been less to talk about had lessons been just a bit more interesting.

I have several of these eagle heads – another unfinished casting project

Still on the clothing and school theme; one of our campaign successes at school was for girls to be allowed to wear trousers.  Many of us had quite long journeys into school which involved waiting at a cold bus stop, sitting on a cold bus into Cambridge and then waiting at another cold bus stop for the next cold bus, with a short cold walk at the end.  I had my share of those woolly tights (remember those with the baggy crotches that would be level with your knees by lunch time), and thought it was grossly unfair that the boys could wear trousers when the girls couldn’t.  On a roll from our first success in getting the school to change from that hard, non-absorbent toilet paper to soft toilet paper, we thought what the hell – let’s go for trousers next.  I would like to say that we wore the school down with our frequent requests and lobbying, but like so many things in life it was an ill wind that finally brought us success.  During the miner’s strike in ’72  and the subsequent 3 day week, the temperatures at school plummeted so low that we were actually encouraged to wear trousers – and once the genie was out of the bottle as they say…………….

Of course these days the school would shut in those circumstances because of the low temperature failing to meet Health and Safety Standards, but we were hard then – when we lived in t’shoebox in middle of t’road (Monty Python ‘Four Yorkshiremen’).  As I recall we were only ever sent home on two occasions: once during a blizzard (mad really because they arranged a bus to take us all back to Cambridge, where we were stranded for hours because all the timetabled buses had been cancelled); the other occasion was due to a bomb scare which turned out to be a hoax by a boy in fifth form who wanted to avoid double geography because he hadn’t done his homework.

Anyone for a bearing?

Anyway, I realise that I have digressed greatly from the usual topic of my dad, and the clearing of his stuff.  I have to admit that the net result of the past few months is that there has been more ‘incoming’ than ‘outgoing’ and, as well as adding to dad’s various collections with the odd thing here or there, I have discovered a new interest in the correspondence of complete strangers.  It all started when my son brought home a bag of letters that had been found in a cupboard of a house he had been renting as a student. The landlord wasn’t interested in them, so the idea was that he try to trace a relative of the late owner of the letters and pass them on.

Of course, hidden amongst the many guitars, they didn’t move from said son’s room for some considerable time and in the end I offered my services in trying to trace the family.  It was a fascinating trail which had my friend Heidi and myself captivated for some time with, what turned out to be, quite an easy family name to trace. The Gledhill Family had designed and manufactured the clocking in and clocking out machines used in many factories and it appears that they went out of business because the machines were so reliable that they never needed replacing. The letters cover a 40-year period and mark affairs, mental breakdowns: “Don’t let anyone see you post the letter to mother at the asylum”, as well as documenting royal visits, elections and the blitz.  As we have yet to find any surviving relatives, so the letters will eventually be dispatched to the local history archives in Halifax which is where the family were based.

My latest acquisition is a collection of letters, covering a 30-year period from the early 1900’s, from several people to one woman, Mary Croome.  I give you one line which easily illustrates the appeal:

 “When I saw you that evening at the station Mary, you saw how it occupied my mind to see you in a coat I didn’t like; I think it was the bitterest moment of my life.”

or

“Father has just come in from the club, he has heard of your gambling debts and is in a fearful rage. He declares that unless you pay off every penny and promise never to touch the cards again, the engagement must be at end between us”

This particular batch of letters, are not only entertaining, but the writers include Alfred Palmer an RA artist and Alfred Sangster, (who appears to have both an artist and an actor) and a few of letters even include sketches of paintings – but maybe more of that in another blog.

But anyway, back to dad’s stuff.  What can I tell you about the fascinating world of rough jaw vices, chucks, collets and feed fingers, injection nozzles and gear hobbing machines?  Not much as it happens, but it was the language of the world I inhabited, albeit briefly, earlier in the year.   Who knew that you could hob your smallest pinions, have adjustable friction couplings and that there were 28 styles of solving your hollow milling problems?   I didn’t even realise I had hollow milling problems – though that would explain a few things!

I had cause earlier in the year to take stock of the boxes (and boxes) of stuff that I have slowly transferred from Dad’s house to my own and decided that enough was enough – I needed to make some space for other things.  I can hear you all gasp with surprise – but worry not, I didn’t throw anything away.

I assume these are clock keys – each of them is under an inch in length

I’d had some brochures, manuals and books all relating to engineering machinery that had been sitting on a table since their transfer from dad’s study to my workroom.  All that time ago, when I had first started the clearing process, I had emailed a trader to see if they were interested in them.  The response was that I would need to photograph and document each one individually.  I took one look at the two-carrier bags worth and decided to file that job for later (much, much later) and they remained in my room untouched.  I was close to tipping the whole lot in the recycling bin, but just thought I would try a couple on eBay to see if there was any interest.

Oh Boy, was I surprised at the bidding frenzy that followed. Who knew that a 10-page, lathe sales brochure would have 20 people bidding on it and that it would fetch £50 (and I had two more of them in my box)!

The next few months went by in a haze of listings, and with several rolls of parcel tape, lots of cardboard and many trips to the Post Office, my dad’s treasure was dispatched all over the world.  At some point in the process I started getting messages from people asking for brochures on particular makes of machines.  I had one bidder ask me if I could put him in touch with a competing bidder (after the sale) as they obviously collected the same type of thing and he had never met a fellow collector before, another who told me that he had purchased a particular brochure because he had designed part of the machine during his apprenticeship.

Here are just some of the comments:

“Thank you very much for the extra leaflets enclosed with the Elliot shaper Manual, do you have any info on a Rapidor Major hacksaw machine in your collection?”

(Might I just point out the reference to ‘collection’ in that sentence above – not junk, not rubbish, but ‘collection’.)

“They were in production for a short time until the Luftwaffe flattened Coventry in 1940”

“It probably will not be until tomorrow because it is almost midnight in
Australia and it is bedtime”

“Thanks for all this hassle; this is going to make my dad happy again :)”

“Rest assured they have gone to a good home as I have one of these lathes myself”

I discovered such passion, that very early on I started sending scans of the brochures to all the losers in the bidding wars and if somebody had bid successfully on an item, I would add any extra bits that I had on the same machine to the envelope for them.  For me the exercise was not about making any money, but more about distributing the treasure. I know that dad would have been delighted that, yet again, he had been justified in keeping it all.

(Most of the literature I sent was nothing more than a photograph of a machine with the specs listed, but there were a few with some artistic merit (see the ‘Taylor’ literature above) and some with clearly going for the cheap laughs – I really can’t believe this was not intentional.)

So anyway, that is two carrier bags less I have in my room now.

Death by Dementia and Teeth (Dad’s Drawers Part 12)

My Dad died when he was 91, but lived until he was 92.

Nobody would describe those last few months as life.

On his 90^th birthday, with family gathered around, dad joked that he would have looked after himself better, had he known he was going live so long.  In truth he was in very good nick for a man of that age; especially one who had worked with noisy machinery, amidst dust and grease and spent whole summers, unadorned by sun creams, working in the fields.

……………..and he still had a full head of hair.

Even at 90 he was still active, and would go up ladders, dig the garden, horse around with the grandchildren, use the computer and potter around in his workshop.  He was an avid reader and would always have a book open at the table; spine wrecked by the bulldog clip he was using as his book mark.  (Anyone who knows my other half will know the pain it caused him to see a book treated in such a fashion – especially if it was one of his own that he had reluctantly lent to dad).

Just to deviate for a moment. I couldn’t remember what type of clip dad had used as his book mark so just Googled ‘bulldog clip’ to check I had the right name; unfortunately, I missed off the letter ‘c’ from the word clip.  Do you know how disturbing it is to accidentally view close-up pictures of bulldog lips? DON’T BE TEMPTED TO LOOK; THE IMAGE WILL BE BURNT INTO YOUR BRAIN FOREVER!

Camera Lens marked :’No.3846 ‘Brevet d’invention s.g.d.g. Derogy, Opt Paris’

Camera Lens marked: ‘E. Suter Basle No.2432, Landscape Lens No 4.

The only real sign of Dad’s growing years was his poor hearing.  Those years of working as an engineer in noisy environments had taken their toll and, while he was capable of having a ‘normal’ (if you could ever call conversations with my dad normal) one-to-one conversation, he found it difficult to take part in group discussion and eventually just stopped trying because it was too difficult.

The hearing issue did lead to some hilarious moments though.  Mum would arrive home and dad would say: “Somebody rang while you were out”. “Who was it?” mum would reply. “I couldn’t hear” he would respond.   He could hear the phone ring, but not the voice on the other end.  So instead of leaving it he would pick the phone up with the greeting: “Jean’s out”…..”Pardon?”…… “I can’t hear you”…”Who is it?…… “You’ll have to ring when Jean gets back”.

I once had an hilarious ‘conversation’ with him over Skype where he couldn’t hear what I was saying and I ended up holding written signs up to my web-cam with dad replying via written signs even though I could hear him perfectly well!  Those are the moments you wish you had somehow recorded.

But I deviate.  Dad died on the 28^th December 2011 at the age of 92, but, as I said before, by then most of him had left on an earlier train.

A serious virus kick-started a sharp decline in dad’s last year and although he did regain his health he misplaced his will to live (and his hearing aids on numerous occasions)

Sometime during the summer of 2011, I visited while mum was out and I went to keep dad company beside a bonfire that he had built in the garden.  He told me that he had been reflecting on the balance book of life and decided that there was a large deficit; there being in his mind, more debt than credit.  Reminding him about the lives he had changed, the children and grandchildren he had influenced and had raised, did nothing to change his mind. The subsequent conversation went something like this:

Dad: “I’ve had enough now and I don’t see any point in hanging around any longer.  I’ve been doing a search on the internet on legal ways to end it, but I can’t find anything.  Can you look for me?”

Me: Stunned silence.

I can’t remember my exact response because at the time I was so upset that I had to leave him by the bonfire in search of some tissues while my son Ben went out to the bonfire to remonstrate with him for upsetting me. The subject never came up again, but so, so many times during those months of misery where he slowly lost his mind and his dignity I really wished that I had listened and considered both his position and choice.  He knew his mind was failing him, and at that moment could not have been clearer about what he was saying or what he wanted.

Dad had acted quite strangely for most of his life, so it was quite difficult to tell when the really strange behaviour started.  I know mum was concerned well before any of the rest of us noticed anything, but it came to a head one day when he walked out of the front door taking with him all the keys and proceeded to route march along the mile-long country road towards the next village.  Mum couldn’t follow because he took the car keys  and she wasn’t as nimble as him (and boy was he nimble when he wanted to be).  In a scene reminiscent of the human chain in the ‘Golden Goose’[i] it took the local GP, 2 ambulance crew and the police to finally get all 4 ft 11 of him into an ambulance and off to the local hospital.

…and that’s when the nightmare really started.

Dad ended up staying in hospital for about six weeks.  He would alternate between being perfectly lucid on one day and inhabiting an entirely different universe on another. While there he managed to rip a fire extinguisher (almost as big as him) from the wall and throw it towards nursing staff who he thought were trying to lock him away. He fended off two male student nurses with a tea tray when they tried to apprehend him after spotting him sneaking out of the ward. On one visit he told me he had checked how far the window opened so that he could jump out (he tested out the drop by throwing his hearing aids out in advance). One day he told me I was the best daughter in the world, and the next day I was the worst for leaving him in hospital.  Another occasion he ticked me off for interrupting him as he said he was addressing a very large audience and would now have to start all over again. He asked me what I thought of a business idea he had of starting a fast-food paella (it was always his speciality meal) cafe in Saffron Walden using my two sons as chefs (they were both at University studying physics at the time).

When I walked into that ward each day I never knew whether or not I was going to get ‘lucid dad’, with whom I could have a ‘normal’ conversation (when hearing aids were retrieved from 7 floors below), ‘sleepy dad’ who would say hello, then turn over and sleep the whole time I was there); or ‘grumpy dad’ who wanted to be out of hospital as soon as possible and couldn’t understand why we had left him there to rot. Oddly, on a day that followed one where he had been delusional, he would be able to discuss the delusion in detail and recognise it as such. If he had been horrible to me one day, he would always apologise the next. Occasionally, if he had experienced a mini stroke he would slur his words for a while and always know he was doing so, he used to say that speaking was like ‘dragging through barbed wire’. He was also convinced that his anvil and physics books had been stolen from home and would frequently ask me to check they were still there.

My daily arrival at the hospital would always start with a hunt for the hearing aids, without which no conversation was possible. As well as them being thrown out of the window, another pair was sent to the laundry with the sheets (never to be seen again) and occasionally they would be found in the ears of a neighbouring patient. The usual spot to find them though, would be under the pillow or somewhere in that vicinity, rolled up in a piece of tissue.

I think this may be part of a set of scales

Anyone who has been a regular visitor to somebody who has been in hospital for a long period will know that real time stops when you go through those hospital doors. You enter an alternative universe punctuated by weird meal times (lunch at 11.30? really?), linen changes, temperature and blood pressure checks and, if you are very lucky, an occasional visit from a doctor. Unless you are really on the ball you never find your car in the car park because, without fail, you head for the spot where you had parked the day before and you consider taking out a second mortgage to cover the hospital car parking charges. You get to know the hospital staff far too intimately than you would wish and conversely become a part-time resident in your own home where the remainder of the family greet you like a long-lost relative.  You will use your dad’s +5 glasses instead of your own +1’s (which you have left in the car) and you will use them to read his charts, any neighbouring patients charts, directions for waste disposal, instructions on operating a drip; all because you are so bored and it has been such a long wait for him to come out from the scanning room, and the book that you bought with you especially for these occasions is sitting with your glasses in the car.  After six weeks of eating fast-food from hospital eateries you are likely to become a patient yourself and, due to time constraints, food at home is usually accompanied by “pop, pop, pop, ping” (knife in cellophane followed by microwave ding).

Small weight about the size of a 5p piece

Measuring device for nails? Other suggestions welcome

Another weight

           

Vascular Dementia, I have learned, does not follow any particular pattern.  There were clearly some characteristics that indicated that dad had the disease, but he didn’t quite fit into the box (when did he ever?) and the specialist was never really convinced that it was a correct diagnosis – he did suggest that the delirious episodes could have been brought on by a succession of various infections, being on steroids for too long or the series of mini-strokes that dad was experiencing.  Nevertheless, it was apparent to all of us who spent time with dad during those last two months that a large part of the person we knew and loved had gone.

Losing somebody to dementia is like having them bob around on a boat that never quite reaches shore.  Occasionally, they will get so close that you can touch them, communicate with them and think that maybe, just maybe they will make it to the shore safely, but just as you hold your hand out to help them step out of the boat, a big wave comes along and off they bob again into the distance.

We resisted the idea of a care home until it was absolutely clear that there was no way any of us could provide Dad with the 24-hour care and safety he needed (we tried bringing him home, but it proved a disaster for both him and us).  Thus began the horrendous search for something suitable.  Dad had some savings so would be a self-funder; as such social services would do nothing to help; we were given and list of homes and basically told to get on with it (and quickly as they had now decided that dad was a bed-blocker).  Already extremely distressed, my mum and I had to trawl around some of the most depressing places I have ever stepped into.

I’m no stranger to the care home.  My first job on leaving school was working in an old people’s home and there were things then that the 17-year-old me would rather not have seen (which, several years later, resulted in the matron being sent to prison).  It was depressing to see there had been little change in the last 40 years and that the ‘chairs-in-a-circle-staring-into-space-no-stimulation’ model was still in use.  That ‘didn’t quite-make-it-in-time’ aroma still welcomed you as you stepped through the door (you all know what I mean), and the requisite television was still playing on a loop to nobody in particular.  They might just as well have had a sign on the door saying: ’If you are lucky enough to have any of your mind left, please check it in at the door as you will have no use for it here’.

On one of dad’s good days I had a conversation with him about the home we had decided on and he appeared to have a good grasp of the situation; we were all still trying to kid ourselves that this was just a temporary measure until he ‘got better’ and he took the news quite well.  However, he was horrified when he heard how much it was going to cost and, ever the haggler, asked to me negotiate a reduced price if he agreed to do some jobs around the place..

In the end we settled on the least-worst option.

Planes

The day dad went into the care home was the day I grieved his loss.  Even with the unfounded hope that he would eventually go home, we all knew there would only be one way out now.

Dad would often be out in the garden when I visited at the family home and the one thought that kept going through my mind over and over again, was that I would never see him smiling and walking towards me from some part of the wilderness that was his back garden.

The next two months followed a similar pattern to when he was in the hospital, but now in addition there were late night calls from the care home because they couldn’t cope with the disruption he was causing; they claimed to have specialist dementia unit but up until then they had only had to cope with quiet little old ladies who raised their voices once in a while.  Dad was anything but quiet, he spent much of the day sleeping, and most of the night creating havoc.  He slept in other people’s rooms, wore other people’s clothes, (on one occasion a rather nice cashmere cardigan with the name ‘Vera’ sewn into the collar), emptied cupboards, turned furniture upside-down, charmed most of the staff and generally made sure everyone felt his presence.  Oh, and frequently lost his hearing aids!

Pencil Lead Holder

You had to see the funny side of things or you would have cried.   On one occasion I found myself sitting in a room where the mental health registrar had an out-and-out blazing row with the deputy of the care home over how they were managing my dad.  The care home deputy requesting a prescription of stronger sedatives and the consultant refusing with the words “If you can’t deal with these problems you should question whether or not you should call yourself a dementia unit. They couldn’t deal with dad then they couldn’t really call themselves a specialist dementia.  They had completely forgotten I was in the room and were going at it hammer and tongs.  Another time, when my daughter and I were sitting with dad sharing some cake we had taken, another resident sidled along, whipped the cake from the plate and stuffed it into her mouth with expert speed as she walked by, smiling sweetly at us with squirrel like cheeks.

Anyway, that was before the teeth (mercifully) put an end to it all.

Driftwood

Just before the Golden Goose incident, dad had decided that he wanted to get some false teeth.  He had been lucky enough to keep his own teeth well into his late years but as one after the other of them had broken off he had found it increasingly difficult to eat some of the foods he loved, and he eventually asked me to take him to the dentist.  What he actually wanted was implants but when he saw the price he decided on false ones.

The treatment and the process of getting the new teeth spanned a few months he had already been in the home about a month when the new teeth were ready.

There I was, sitting quietly in the corner of the room at the dentist; ready to assist on the communication front should I be needed.  The teeth were put in and what followed was reminiscent of a badly dubbed film.  Dad started to talk and, as he did so the teeth began to take on a life of their own; moving completely out of sync with the words that were being spoken.  As if that wasn’t comical enough, and you will have to be over 45 to know what I am talking about, all I could think of as the giggle was forming within, was that buck-toothed vicar from the ‘Dick Emery Show’[ii].

The first giggle escaped without fanfare, but the torrent that followed could not be ignored.   Everyone knows that once an inappropriate giggle has been formed there is no way to suppress it (ably described in the Giggle Loop from the BBC series Coupling[iii]), indeed the act of stifling the giggle creates fertile breeding conditions making it impossible for the torrent to be contained.  While I was in some pain through laughing so much, with tears streaming down my cheeks all action in the room had stopped with Dad, the dentist and the nurse looking at me wondering what was so funny.

Anyway, back to those murdering teeth……

Furnished with his new choppers I took dad back to the care home and passed on the instructions that the teeth should come out at regular intervals to give the gums a chance to get used to their new inhabitants and not get too sore.  These instructions were not, or could not be, followed and in the event the teeth were not removed for several days, causing an infection.  This led to a fall (unnoticed by the home staff) resulting in a broken pubis and collar bone and a few days back with those familiar hospital faces.

Brass Doorknob

What followed was farce-like and would have actually been funny had it not been so traumatic.  Back in the care home (way too soon in my opinion) dad kept falling out of bed.  He would try to get up, forgetting he had broken bones, then fall.  However, the care home refused to put any bars on his bed because of ‘Health and Safety’ issues.  This resulted in three falls from bed and three hospital stays (and three phone calls to me in the middle of the night) in the space of about a week.

By the third time he was taken into hospital he was in a poor state; in pain from each of his falls and drifting in and out of consciousness. He wasn’t really communicating, and any words that were spoken had reverted to his native Austrian tongue.

What he did next showed that despite what could be seen on the surface, some part of that strong personality remained and that he now was calling time.

In one final act of defiance he tightly closed his lips; refusing drugs, food and water, and what remained of the man went to be reunited with his dignity and the eccentricities and idiosyncrasies that were my dad.

Fred Plisner had left the building.

[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Goose

[ii] http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/dickemeryshow

[iii] http://www.snotr.com/video/6244/The_Giggle_Loop

Dad’s Drawers Part 11: The Increasing Hoards and the Fairy of Hackney Marshes

I know it’s been a long time since the last blog. My only excuse is my lazy disposition and my general dislike of the ‘not-putting-off-tomorrow-what-you-can-do-today’ lie. Quite frequently I have found that the upside to putting things off until tomorrow means that you don’t have to do them at all; either because the job no longer needs doing (i.e. the guests have been and gone and they didn’t notice the layers of dust anyway) or because somebody else has got so fed up that they have done the job themselves. It’s worked for me on numerous occasions. One time I should have filled up the car with petrol on the eve of the budget; I imagine I had quite a smug look on my face when I filled up the following day, on the one rare occasion when the petrol duty had actually gone down.

…………and really what is the point of hoovering and dusting today – you might just as well wait for tomorrow’s dust and do it all at the same time.

For those interested I have a few other similar time-saving tips:

• Don’t waste time standing with a hose in the garden; this is England – it’s going to rain.
• If you leave them long enough the cobwebs will fall down under the weight of the dust.
• When doing the ironing for the first time (after you get married), do such a poor job that you are never allowed near the iron again. This also works with loading the dishwasher. Though, despite valiant attempts (even activating the smoke alarm on many occasions) I have never managed to lose my cooking privileges!
• Bypass the middle man and throw that tub of Greek yoghurt straight in the bin – you know you are only going to take out one spoonful at the start of your healthy eating kick leaving the remainder to fester at the back of the fridge for months.
• Don’t even bother with pears unless you are able to keep a watchful eye and catch them in two-minute window when they change from being too hard to too soft.
• It’s a waste of time folding up your children’s clothes – a week later you will find them crumpled on the floor or, and this has happened to me, back in the dirty laundry basket having never been worn.
• There’s absolutely no point in writing a shopping list; you know you are going to forget to take it with you.

Lastly, and this may only apply to me:

• Don’t waste your time relating your amusing family stories to your children.  Without fail they will share a knowing look and say, “Oh no, not the one about the wet- suit again!”

I’ve actually had much of this blog drafted for a few weeks now and had I posted it last week as I planned to, the first paragraph would have read:

“The good news is that the ‘Naked Fat Lady’ has sung her song and she is no longer destined to spend her remaining days with her face turned to the wall – not in my house anyway!”

Instead it goes like this:

Yes, she successfully went under the hammer (actually that might have improved a few of her features) and yes, I had every reason to believe that the proceeds would be wending it’s way into my bank account; a temporary stop on its way to our chosen charity.  Until, that is, the email from Christie’s a few days ago: “Please be advised that we are still waiting for payment from the buyer but are actively chasing them”. Now while I am not at all surprised that any buyer may have had second thoughts; after all, one leg is definitely shorter than the other and there is the issue of the uneven knees – but really, can I not get rid of this woman?

Anyone who has no idea what I am talking about will need to go back to the blog entitled ‘The Fat Nude and the Sea of Bubble Wrap’ and all will become clear!

A interesting jumble sale find.

At one of his favourite dumps, dad found a whole box of items from the Shepreth East Anglian Cement Company which closed in the 1930’s. there were a number of land deed documents and sales particulars amongst the ‘finds’, that I have since distributed to the relevant village’s historical societies.

So, the ‘finds’ still come, though fewer and farther between these days – mainly because of the snail’s pace I have adopted in the clearing process and all the little nooks and crannies already explored. Subconsciously, I guess it’s because I don’t want the process to finish. Then I will no longer have an excuse to disappear into the workshop and take in that smell of my childhood, nor savour the memories of hours spent watching and chatting to dad while he worked on his various projects.

Compass

The most recent ‘find’ took me back right to the start with the manky cutlery. In that same hiding space under the stairs, where I had felt sure there would be a stash of money, there was this box pushed so far back that I didn’t see it the first time around.

The Recent Hoard

The as-yet unidentified object

Markings: DRGMA indicate a German patent (Deutsche Reich Gebraumeister) and WMFM  I think relates to the manufacturer.

As you can see, the contents of the box are assorted bits of tat. It is a stretch for even me to call this treasure, even if most of it is silver! We have a fork handle, a fork end (obviously they do not match), a silver child’s bracelet monogrammed ‘B’, a single cuff-link monogrammed ‘L.H.’ a broken brooch with a Star of David. There was also the object, pictured just above, that we have yet to identify; though suggestions from my learned friends include portable tea strainer, icing sugar duster, and Fuller’s Earth sprinkler.  Any more suggestions would be most welcome. Again, you have to ask yourself the question ‘Why hide something with so little value?  It’s unlikely there was any sentimental value as despite being such a hoarder Dad had no emotional attachment to individual objects.

Work of art or not?

I came across something the other day that jogged another ‘nonconformist dad’ memory.  Some of you my age or older may remember ‘The Little Red School-Book’[i].  It caused controversy in this country even before it was published and after a successful prosecution under the ‘Obscene Publications Act’ it was withdrawn from sale – but not before Dad had managed to get his hands on a few copies; one of which he gave to me.

Little Red Schoolbook, written by Soren Hansen & Jesper Jensen.

The book had been written by two Danish school teachers and it encouraged young people to question societal norms and authority; giving some helpful hints on how do so. It included chapters on sex, drugs and alcohol as well as a large section on teachers and school.  The fact that it contained a paragraph on ‘What to do if a teacher hits you brutally’ shows that at least some things have changed for the better in the last 40 years.

The general thesis of the book, that children’s natural curiosity and eagerness to learn were in danger of being stifled by dreary and authoritarian teaching methods, was one that despite him being part of the education system dad totally identified with.

Dad had transferred from engineering to teaching when London County Council was actively recruiting metalwork teachers from industry. The shift from engineer to teacher moved him from blue collar to white collar status in overnight. Something he was never particularly comfortable with (especially as he hated wearing a tie).   However, the perks of short hours, long holidays and a reasonable wage were too attractive to resist, and he stayed the course until he managed to wangle early retirement after an argument with the lathe and his middle left hand finger.

As a teacher of a practical subject, dad seemed to attract the school ‘write-off’s’.  He was often persuaded by the boys to find them jobs in the workshop so that they had a valid excuse not to go to double maths. This didn’t help dad much in the staff room popularity stakes, but it did create a safe haven for the boys who would probably have skived double maths anyway and got up to no good somewhere else.  An oddity already due to his Austrian accent, short stature, equally short temper and a shout that way exceeded his size (and boy could he shout), dad was seen as something of an anomaly in all the schools where he taught. Eschewing the staff room whenever possible, he preferred to potter around his workshop surrounded by pupils who had found a worth there not on offer elsewhere in the school.

I found this in one of the (many) drawers of assorted bits. For some reason I had thought it was some sort of ‘blakey’. You remember those things you used to put on the soles of your shoes to stop the leather wearing out? However, I recently had a cause to search for military dog tags and saw a picture of something similar. Originally this would have had another half circle, attached at a few points, with matching details. When a soldier was injured or killed they would break one half off to use for administration leaving the other half with the soldier.  I have done a quick search with the details on the tag, but as yet haven’t come up with anything.

Anyway, back to the book:

It was amusing flicking through it again.  It was the sexually explicit content that attracted all of us young people to it at the time; as with all such books that got passed along the back row of the classroom, a well-thumbed copy would without fail fall open at the ‘rude’ pages. It was these that warranted the prosecution; though there is nothing that you wouldn’t be able to read these days in a magazine available on your local supermarket shelf (bottom shelf, not top).

For your entertainment I bring you these ‘Little Red School-Book’ gems of wisdom:

On police stop and search powers:

“Some policemen use this as an excuse to harass any young people who have long hair or look like hippies”

On homosexuals:

“The time will come when homosexual marriages are recognised”. (I bet the authors didn’t think it would take another 45 years)

On school, classrooms and staff meetings:

“Many staff meetings are not real discussion. The head master tells the teacher what he wants them to do.  The teachers who are after promotion say how much they agree.”

“Comfortable chairs are rare”

“Only the teacher has his own cupboard and drawer”

And my all-time favourite:

“Never muck about unless you’re absolutely certain that the teacher is an incurable bore”.

(All my teachers must have been really boring).

Not sure how dad acquired this, but it would have appealed to his sense of humour to have this on display. It now resides on my wall.

Dad arrived at Victoria Station on a blustery January day in 1955: “I went straight to the tobacconist and bought the current copy of the New Statesman and Nation, and a bag of mints. The London air was rendering me reckless”. Just over two years later he and mum were married and looking for somewhere to live.

Dad being an out-of-work immigrant engineer, whose training had been interrupted by Hitler and mum a secretary at ‘May and Baker’, who had lived her whole life in a council house; they weren’t the most likely candidates to be home owners. A combination of both good and bad luck meant that by the time I was born they were the owners (along with Mortgage Company) of 67 Tollington Park[ii], a house with three stories, a basement one bathroom and its own sitting tenants.  The bad luck was dad having a broken leg after being was knocked over by a learner driver in a Black Humber.  The good luck was that the out of court settlement of £250 was enough to put down as a deposit on what was my first home.  Apart from the flat they lived in there were three others they would have to rent out, one with a sitting tenant. Not only were they now on the housing ladder, but also landlords with all that that involved.  Oh, and the mortgage cost £5 a month.

For years after, whenever we drove past that accident spot on Hackney Marshes I was always encouraged to ‘wave at the fairy’ who had given them such a good start in their married life.

‘Found’ note from the Tollington Park era

Mum and dad didn’t really know what to expect taking on a rental property with sitting tenants, one of whom was still living in the house when mum and dad sold it six years later. Mrs Littlemore (who was well into in her 70’s), lived on the top floor with her 60- year-old-toy boy and got jealous every time another woman spoke to him.  The basement had a variety of interesting tenants. There was the window cleaner that refused climb the stairs and leave the house in the usual way through the front door; instead he climbed in and out of his flat through the basement window. There was Mr Pilli, whose curry aromas were welcomed by dad because he was often invited in to sample, but abhorred by my mum as the smell constantly wafted up from his basement room to our ground floor, and whom I blame to this day for putting me off curries for so long (having encouraged me to taste a very hot curry at such a young age).  Then there was the lady of the night; mum and dad didn’t realise that there was a small business going on literally under their feet until they had a knock on the door from a client demanding his money back, followed by a visit from the local constabulary!

Mum and I have discussed this, and we think that it was at this point that dad became a collector of all things interesting.  The Fonthill Road was nearby and full of junks shops.  This was the late fifties/early sixties when new was embraced and old was junked.  Shop after shop was full of discarded belongings available for just a few pennies (old pennies at that) and as this was probably the first time in his life that dad had any space of his own. Here was an opportunity not to be missed!

Yes kids, this is what we used to use to add up with (after slide rules that is)!

I was five  when we left that house and some of my earliest memories are of that first floor flat with two rooms and a kitchen: the arrival of our first television set (that I used to illicitly watch when I should have been sleeping – hanging out from my bed so I could see the reflection of the screen in the in the glass door that divided living room and bedroom); the broken piano in the hallway with which I used to deafen the tenants – the keys barely at my thee year old eye level, I used to jump up and down and bang on the keys; the pigeon that came down the chimney and landed in the hearth amidst a cloud of black soot; the day I dressed myself for nursery and spent the whole day with no knickers on (this one is scored in my memory as these were the days when I used to wear dresses and it was a windy day); the hollyhocks in the back garden; the irises in the front; swinging on the front gate waiting for mum to come back from the hospital with my baby brother….  I could go on, but you might nod off.

That’s me swinging on the gate waiting for dad to come home from work.

So, I have a small confession to make – and please don’t tell on me. In addition to bringing my dad’s ‘treasure’ back to my house I have also started adding to it. (Well that is what collectors do, isn’t it?) Amongst dad’s bits I found a lovely Chinese mother of pearl gaming counter, which I thought so beautiful and delicate (and lonely) that after a short foray on the internet I discovered that they they came in all shapes and sizes and that more could be purchased quite easily[iii]. In fact, they were screaming ‘Buy Me’ in the same way as Alice’s potion beckoned her to drink, and before I knew it that little parcel had arrived on my doormat.

I also appear to have acquired, quite by accident, several boxes of old theatre programmes dating from the early 1950’s, and these cotton reels which I found at a car boot sale and just screamed “Good Photo Opportunity” as I walked by.

Anyway, I leave you with this gem I found on another blog about hoarding. (Sadly, I can’t credit the writer as I can’t remember where I saw it).

“You are a collector, not a hoarder if you dust once in a while”.

Despite my protestations earlier, as I have actually dusted once or twice in the last couple of years I claim myself to be a collector, (I am still the owner of an artwork after all).

[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Red_Schoolbook

[ii]Via the wonders of modern technology you can see the house here; it’s the one with the blue door. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.566814,-0.113611,3a,79.4y,317.53h,91.8t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1so_ZYG6Fo8_mRDAKQSFJncw!2e0

[iii] http://www.chezbill.com/index.php?section=references&catID=7&prodID=229

Not really sure what these are.

They have three sides of design and a bar on the fourth side, presumably to hold them in place.

I believe that this comes from a Charles Portway cast iron ‘Tortoise’ stove

Knockers!

I’ve had this picture lying around now since I cleared dad’s first room. The familiarity had been annoying me for some time.One day I just looked at and realised it was of the poet, Rupert Brooke and further research revealed that it is a copy of one the famous Schnell poses that I believe now hang in the National Portrait Gallery. This photo is 14 1/2 x 11 inches and It has the following pencil markings on the back: “Barker, Red Lion” and “BL 8502/ copy make neg”.

Dad’s Drawers Part 10: The Stepped Wallpaper and the Bees on Barrington Hill

Okay, so I know it’s been a while since my last blog. I think my head is becoming as cluttered as my garage and there is too much to do, too little time and no sense of order at all.

The good news is that I have found a home for the lathe, the bad news is that my garage has now been condemned as a death trap (by you know who). If I was being totally honest I would have to agree that something needs to be done and my new year’s resolution is to clear a pathway through to the light switch (baby steps).

As if to prove how long this has taken me to get going on this blog I started writing it just after bonfire night, prompted by the great Round Table firework display on Saffron Walden Common. It reminded me of a couple of bonfire nights growing up. The first is one of my earliest memories.

Until I was 5 we lived in Finsbury Park, North London, in a first floor flat of a house that mum and dad had bought when they were first married. I can remember quite vividly (aged somewhere between 2 and 3) dad lifting me from my bed one night, wrapping me up in a blanket and taking me outside to see the fireworks from the top of the steps at the back of the house.  My guess is that they were nothing compared to the displays of today, but those were the days when people had their own bonfires and fireworks parties so there were fireworks shooting off all over the place and from our steps we had a magnificent view.

As it has already been established, our family did not do ‘normal’.  Though much like the Christmas rituals that I described in my last blog, there was always some effort made to join the nation in the celebration of certain events, even if we did do something different to mark the occasion.  While all our neighbours were having back garden fireworks displays, we did something else. Whether it was through lack of money, or the implicit understanding that ‘Plisners don’t go with the flow’, I don’t know.  We occasionally had sparklers on bonfire night but never fireworks. However, one evening when I was nine or ten, dad arrived home with some un-marked boxes.  He built a bonfire and proceeded to sprinkle on it an assortment of filings that he had collected from the various metal-working machines at school, creating our own unique firework display. Peter and I looked on as the various copper, iron and aluminium filings danced and crackled in the flames giving a very first (unbeknown to us) chemistry lesson when dad helped us identify the colours produced by the different metal filings.

Bonfires were in fact a large part of our childhood. These were the times before global warming when local farmers created fake sunsets when the wheat stubble in the fields was set aglow following harvest.  Dad regularly had a bonfire going in the garden and Peter and I would spend hours poking sticks into the flames and generally playing with fire – oh those days before health and safety.  Being fortunate to have a big garden, we never had any complaints from neighbours and ours was the only washing that ever came off of the line smoke-flavoured.

There was one occasion, however that could have made the local headlines. Dad decided, instead of trying to mow his way through an acre of a foot-high dry grass or labour for hours with his scythe, that it would be quicker to use the farmer’s method and set the grass alight.   It was the theme of our childhood that while much preparation went into the planning of something the end result was not often as planned.  Setting fire to the dried grass was indeed a very quick way to remove it, but as the fire sped towards the house there was a very real danger that it too would be removed and the fire brigade had to be called when it was apparent that the single garden hose that had been on standby for such an eventuality would not be sufficient to stem the roar of the approaching flames.

Fortunately for us, and the neighbours, the flames died down of their own accord and the fire brigade had nothing to deal with when they arrived.

Being so comfortable around bonfires did lead me to be quite blasé about them and not so long ago I had a similar incident here in the corner of my garden. After having a particularly wild and successful bonfire (there is nothing quite like that satisfaction you get after burning through a years’ worth of dead branches and reclaiming that space in the garden) I put out the fire and went inside to change. A couple of hours later my other half, who was about to go on the running machine, pointed out that there was a tree on fire in the garden. He then continued on with his exercise while my daughter, son and I rushed outside and created a human chain to pass buckets of water from the end of the hose (that was about 5 metres shorter than needed) to the burning tree. An hour later we returned to the house, muddy, cold and soaked to the skin, to be greeted by a “Have you put it out then?  from my other half who, having completed his exercise, was now sitting warm and dry on the sofa.

Needless to say I have now purchased a longer hose.

Both these sets of buttons look to be hand painted; the ones on the right are china and those on the left some sort of clay or plaster-of-Paris. They have clips rather than holes to attach them to the garment

As I have already mentioned dad could turn his hand to most things and before embarking on something new there would often be much planning and preparation involved. This would apply to jobs large and small.  However, despite the preparation things didn’t always go to plan.

I have already written about the bees that Dad kept in the back garden. (They can’t have been the most productive of bees, because I can’t ever remember eating any honey that they produced.)  However, anyone who has kept bees will know that it is the local bee-keeper who is called upon when a swarm of bees is spotted. During his bee-keeping period dad was called out on frequent occasions to collect these swarms. The phone call would come, and dad would drive off with his beekeeping paraphernalia that was kept permanently in the back of the car: stick; basket; blanket and, hardly ever used but taken nonetheless: a head-veil and gloves. He would return with the bees buzzing around in the back of the Austin 1300 estate and place them by the side of an empty hive which they would eventually move into and start a new colony. 

Dad collecting a swarm from a chimney stack.  Note he is standing on several palates balanced atop of the cherry picker!

The swarms were usually found hanging beard-like from a tree or hedge, but occasionally they would be in more difficult areas like on a roof or chimney stack, and dad would usually just knock the swarm into a basket with his stick, cover them with the blanket and put them on the back seat of the car before driving home.

Dad often struck unusual poses in the garden!

Before I relate the tale of the ‘Bees on Barrington Hill’ I need to put it into context so apologies if you are already well versed in the habits of the humble honey bee. Bees swarm when a colony gets too large and a new queen is created.  When that happens, the old queen leaves the nest with her drones to find somewhere new.  Swarming bees are usually quite docile because, in preparation for the journey ahead, they gorge themselves with honey and because their bellies are so full it is hard for them to use their sting.  As a consequence, it is usually easy to collect them safely and encourage them into a new hive. However, if you try to collect them when they have been swarming for a few days and their bellies are empty it can prove a bit more difficult.

One day, while I was at a friend’s house in the next village, waiting for my guitar lesson, somebody spotted a swarm in the hedge at the top of the hill (the house was at the bottom) and dad was duly called. When he arrived with the usual kit we all stood (well clear) at the bottom of the hill while dad walked up with his stick and basket with a confident (done-this-many-times-before) air about him.  It quickly became apparent that these bees were not as accommodating as usual when we observed, from the bottom of the hill, dad zigzagging across the road at the top being followed, in a cartoon-like chase, by an angry cloud of bees – still to this day one of the most comical scenes I have ever witnessed.

After coming back down the hill to collect his gloves and the head protector that he normally eschewed, he managed eventually to persuade the swarm into his basket.  Taking them home in the car was a challenge and I can remember the back of the car ‘alive’ with angry, hungry bees.  They never did settle or take advantage of the new home that had been ready primed with honey and after circling the empty hive for several days they eventually buzzed off to annoy someone else.

All you need for your frothy bedtime Horlicks!

Anyway, back to Dad’s meticulous preparations. He spent over a year doing up an old Volkswagen van in preparation for a road trip to Europe with Peter, where they planned to retrace dad’s escape from Austria, through France and Spain. Everything they could need for their journey was installed or packed into this in this bed-sit on wheels. Maps were scrutinised, ferries booked, old friends who they might see along the way were contacted – in fact no stone was left unturned in preparation for the big trip – that is apart from one small detail. After the big send-off, and at about 30 miles into their journey, they ran out of petrol had to call out the AA for assistance!

Another instance of advance planning, without quite getting everything right, was the wall-papering incident.

Mum was away on a course for a couple of days and dad thought it would be a nice surprise to get the front room wall-papered while she was away, enlisting me as his assistant. Mum had already bought the wallpaper and was planning to put it up herself at some stage and while dad could turn his hand to almost anything, she was the wall-papering expert of the family. Everything was collected together ready for the job and dad, not having done wall-papering for a while, decided it would be a good idea to measure out and cut all the lengths first, before attaching them to the wall. Then there would be only the pasting and sticking up to do.  I had helped mum in the past and her approach had always one piece at a time and once she saw how the first piece went up she would adjust the second accordingly, then the third and so on and so on.

No, I don’t know what this is either. I would welcome any suggestions

So, with the strips for the whole room cut and ready to be pasted we set on with putting the first piece on the wall. I observed with horror that there was a ½ gap at the top and that meant that every piece had been cut ½ inch too short. Not only that, but dad hadn’t factored in the pattern which needed to be lined up, so as well as the length problem, we also lost a further half an inch matching up the design as we went along. By the time we go to the corner of the room we were 2 inches from the ceiling and had a stepped effect along the top of the wall.  Not to be put off, the whole room was completed with dad saying: “Nobody will notice once it has been up a few days”.  In any case it was well above eye level for this sub-five-foot family. When mum came back she was surprisingly calm about the mess we had made of the job and promptly went out and bought a small border which covered the poor workmanship, and nobody was the wiser!

Just to end with; in my last blog I said that I didn’t think there would be any more surprise finds, so I am pleased to report one more surprise. I noticed that a poster in one of dad’s make-shift frames looked rather thick and on unclamping the frame, and looking behind the Kandinsky poster that was displayed, I found six copies of the poster photographed below. With the assistance of Google, I established that they are stone-signed lithographs of Picasso’s Cote D’Azur – though not as far as I can tell of any great value (though I have been told they might fetch around £100 each).  How long they had been there and why dad had six, hidden behind another picture, I will never know.

As I mentioned earlier this blog was started some weeks ago and the intention was for the photograph at the top of the blog to be this seasonal Christmas pudding creation. The season having now passed, but not wishing to waste the effort (though it was used on my Christmas cards) I am posting it here at the end of this blog instead.

Many people have been fascinated with my ‘Dad’s Drawers Collages, so I thought that I would show you a bit of background to the creative process.  Laying out the design is the easy part and as you can see from the picture below I start off with my ‘palate’ of drawers.
  

Once the design is laid out the tricky bit starts where I have to strap the tripod to the top of the step-ladder to get high enough to fit the design into the frame of the shot.  It’s a bit of a Heath Robinson contraption with the tripod strapped to the top of the ladder and the camera case acting as ballast the other end.  The camera then gets attached to the tripod and “Hey Presto” (after much clambering up and down) we have our shot. Much to the annoyance of the rest of the family, it then takes a couple of weeks to return all the individual bits and pieces back to their rightful drawers, rendering our conservatory out of use for some time!

  

To finish with I leave you with an assortment of documents that no-one but my dad would have kept.

Letter to Dad’s sister Felice refusing dad entry into the UK because the ‘Alien’s Department’ didn’t believe he return home.

I really wish I knew who this note was from

I love the fact that, in response to a problem with the car, somebody has taken the time to respond with detailed instructions for adjustments

A hand-penned letter from Scotland Yard

One of many letters received refusing dad naturalisation, despite the fact that he was married to a UK National and had two children born in the UK. He never found out why, (they didn’t have to give you a reason) though he suspected that it may have been because he was once a member of the Communist Party. He gave up  after a few years of trying and remained an Austrian national until the day he died.

 

A note from the union with details of sick pay entitlement

This one has been scanned especially for my friends on the ‘Call the Midwife’ team as polio vaccinations were recently highlighted in one of their episodes. My generation was one of the first to take these vaccinations for granted.

Oh how times have changed – or have they?
A late 50’s/early 60’s flyer from the ‘Union Movement’ which was a far right political party founded by Oswald Mosley.

Apparently ‘Toolmaker’s Improver’ was a posh term for Bench-hand

Dad had a short correspondence with the Hungarian author, Arthur Koestler, whose books he enjoyed and who he contacted when he first arrived in the UK

The Cursing Santa and Tressy with the Knob on her Back

 Blog 9 (or 8 to anyone who has been counting and noticed I missed out number 6)

Collage of some of the ‘found’ objects

The sorting and clearing process has come to a bit of a halt.  I could quote a number of reasons; one of which is that I haven’t yet been able to bring myself to enter the world of scrap metal and, until I do, there are too many buckets of half-sorted metal in the way of reaching the areas that are left.  I have tried clambering on top of the buckets and leaning over the pile of old motors on a precariously perched ladder but have decided that the resulting bruises are not worth it and that there needs to be some firm floor space before I venture to clear any of the higher shelves in the workshop.

Marking Gauges

If I was being totally honest though, the real reason that I have had to stop (for the time being) is that I have transported so much of ‘Dad’s Treasure’ to my house that I can no longer get into my own garage.  Getting in there now entails climbing over several sets of weighing scales, a large box of assorted bones, a big box of valves (used or unused, who can tell), a tray of fossils, piles of books, many boxes of old bottles, a box of old plastic cameras, a pillar drill, a box of volumetric flasks (?? no, I don’t know why either), a box of 1960’s-1970’s colour supplements from Sunday newspapers, an ever-increasing pile of “this-may-be-part-of-something-and-I-don’t-want-to-throw-it-away-in-case-I-find-the-other-part”, and that is just to reach the light switch.  Actually, reaching the cupboards at the back, where most of our tools are stored, now requires an intermediate gymnastic ability (I used to have it, but not anymore) and major rearrangement of said boxes before being able to open the doors to get anything.  Clasping the retrieved item securely, the challenge then is to manoeuvre yourself out of the space you have created, either by moving the boxes back or clambering over them, flicking the light switch off on your way and then negotiating the remainder of the obstacles in the dark.

I am not going to mention any names, but there have been complaints from a certain member of my household!

What this means is that before I bring any more of the treasure here to my house there is going to have to be some further distribution of items.

Those volumetric flasks

Now here’s the thing; a few years ago, I went over to help dad clear some space in his garage.  As fast as I was throwing things into the wheelie bin he was delving in and pulling them out (quite a feat for a 4ft 11ins Octogenarian – have you seen the size of those wheelie bins?).  When I saw that it was causing him pain to see me throw away his things, accumulated over the years, I decided to stop.  Dad laughingly said that I could do what I liked with them once he had gone.  At the time I had been happy to throw things away with gay abandon; now I can’t bring myself to dispose of those very same items.  Who knew I would turn into my dad?

Last Monday was our village fete.  The fete has a bric-a-brac stall which everyone in the village sees as a great opportunity for a clear-out.  This year I too decided that I could shift some of the contents of my garage onto the unsuspecting public and I encouraged my offspring to do the same.  As the fete ended my daughter showed me her purchase from the bric-a-brac stall (an old jewellery box that was, in her words, a bargain at 20p).  Yes, you guessed it, the very same one I had placed on the stall earlier that day (my daughter having rejected it a couple of weeks earlier).   Number 1 son in the meantime purchased something that he himself had thrown out!  Chips off of the old block me thinks.

Who knew there were so many different shaped oil cans?

Anyway, back to the clearing progress (or not).  I have got to the stage where, although there is still a fair bit to be done, I don’t think there are many surprises left.  I have looked in all the nooks and crannies; there don’t appear to be any more bundles of £50 notes, no more sharp knives wrapped in rags and hidden underneath chests of drawers, no more ugly paintings (more on Ugly Fat Nude later), nor binoculars or guns.  But, every now and then I find something that sparks a bit of interest and is worth a few minutes on the internet.  When I say a few minutes, I am talking internet time here as I believe I enter a time warp when I sit in that chair in front of my computer screen.  Judging by the amount of half-made cold cups of tea (tea-bag still floating on top), burnt toast and over-flowing pans I have had over the years (the jam one that overflowed took ages to clean up and resulted in feet sticking to the kitchen floor for several weeks after) I would guess that 5 minutes of computer time roughly equates to I hour in real time.

Back to the story….    Last week while on a foray into the workshop to find a piece of wire (of which there was of course plenty) I came across three old posters rolled-up at the back, of a high shelf.  (Okay, I know I said I wasn’t going to climb any more ladders until the floor was cleared, but I needed that wire).  As you might expect to find after being in a cold and dirty workshop for at least 30 years the posters are dusty, creased and yellowing with mouse-nibbled edges.  The thing that caught my attention was the (not unfamiliar) big red ‘G’ on one poster advertising a well-known dark Irish ale.  That might be worth a few bob I thought!  A short (internet time) search later revealed that two of the posters (pictured below), both from the 50’s, are the work Abram Games [i].  An artist recognised as one of the best of 20th-century graphic designers.  Apparently, his maxim was “Maximum Meaning, Minimum Means”.  I haven’t been able to find out anything about the rather lovely third poster, pictured above, and signed by a Joseph Deibel.

I am sure I have mentioned before that as well the collections of interesting objects, dad kept vast amounts of paperwork, most of which will have no interest to anyone who didn’t know him.  There are some however, that poignantly illustrate familiar points in history.  The documents below are affidavits from relatives, already in the USA, pledging their support of various members of the Plisner family, should the German authorities allow them out and the USA authorities allow them in.  Dad said that following Anschluss[ii] in 1938, everyone spent weeks queuing outside various embassies in Vienna hoping for a visa.  They didn’t really care which country let them in as long as they could get out of Austria (or Germany as it was then).  Having been told by the USA embassy official that the USA quota for Austria had already been filled (with a three-year waiting list) my ever-resourceful 18-year-old dad tried to bypass the usual route; ducking the queue and catching an official off-guard he asked if there was a shortage of geyser-fitters in his country.   Sadly geyser-fitting was not a required profession in the USA and dad was sent to the back of the queue.

Affidavit of Support from a cousin I have not heard of before. It also gives details of my grandfather’s 8 year stay in the USA in 1906 when he started the process of becoming an American citizen.

This is the back of the affidavit and a feeble attempt by Google at a translation: “The court confirmed that the prepared dishes from the transcript of the party coincides with the existing stamped from sheet with Ursch ift”. Hopefully, somebody will be able to give me a more accurate translation, but I presume it is a verification that the document is valid.

Affidavit from Grandfather’s brother

This letter of support was written by grandfather’s brother who had moved to New York in 1938 and who had changed his name from Rubin to Ralph.

 An affidavit of support from another cousin

Every time I start this blog I wonder when I am going to run out of stories about my unusual but wonderful dad, but each time I sit down to write something just comes to me.  I was thinking of Christmas the other day (as you do in the midst of summer – well in our family you do because my 17-year-old daughter has already started the countdown!).

Dad didn’t really do Christmas.  I don’t think it had anything to do with the fact that he was born Jewish; he wasn’t a religious man, it was more to do with a hatred of the whole ‘gift buying for gift buying sake’ thing.  The first Christmas my husband Paul spent at our house, he couldn’t believe his eyes when he looked out of the window on Christmas morning and saw my dad outside digging in the garden.  Dad didn’t see Christmas Day as any different from any other time of the year – just one with a slightly better lunch than usual.

I don’t know whether it was because he was persuaded by my mum, or just didn’t want his children to miss out, but when we were young he made the effort and ‘played along’ with the Father Christmas thing.

SPOILER ALERT: ANY CHILDREN READING SHOULD SKIP THIS SECTION.

Every Christmas Eve the Plisner family had a ‘Reindeer at the Door’ ritual that went like this:

Knock, knock, knock; jingle, jingle, jingle.

Mum would answer the door.

More jingles.

Loud discussion between mum and Santa about how the reindeer were keeping.

Santa would ask mum to hold on to the reins while he delivered the presents and stockings (real stockings mind – not those phony knitted things we have now).

A couple of loud “Ho, Ho, Ho’s” would be heard as Santa trudged up the stairs (all our fireplaces had long since been boarded up and our chimneys for some reason had buckets on top).

A further “Ho, Ho, Ho” as the presents were deposited at the end of the bed.

(The rustling of wrapped presents as I wiggled my toes under the covers is one that I will never forget).

Yet another “Ho, Ho, Ho” as the stairs were descended.

And a there would be a final jingle of bells as Santa went on his way.

The ritual came to a sudden halt one year. I, being the older sibling, was already suspicious that the big man in red was not all he seemed to be; but Peter, being five years my junior, was still in blissful ignorance and excited about the visit of the generous bearded man.

All had gone to plan until the “Ho, Ho, Ho” as Santa walked in the bedroom when, instead of the third “ho” there was a very loud un-Santa-like four letter word as a drawing pin that had been left upturned on the bedroom floor attached itself to his bare foot (Santa was in his usual outfit of bathrobe and no slippers).  There were no further “Ho, Ho, Ho’s” (that night or any night after) as the stairs were descended, nor jingle of bells as Santa went on his way; just more cursing and an emphatic “I’m never doing that again” as Santa left the house, never to return again.

More marking gauges

Actually, given that dad wasn’t bothered about Christmas I have some really fond childhood memories.  Whether due to financial constraints or a wish to stay away from the commercial side of Christmas, I would often awake on Christmas morning to a present had been hand crafted either by my dad or mum, or both.  One year there was a crib for my dolls for which dad had made the frame and mum had sewn the frills and cover.  (Yes, despite my preference for boy’s toys, I did actually have a doll or two).

Talking of dolls I feel the need to mention that I was never allowed to have a Cindy, Tressy[iii] or Barbie and I felt slightly hard-done-by when my friends were making Tressy’s hair grow by with the knob on her back, or planning Barbie’s dates with Ken.  I had always thought that there was some principle involved in this decision of my mum’s; that it was because she didn’t approve of the whole ‘dolls looking like adults’ thing. In later years she admitted to me that it was a purely financial decision as she knew that once I had the doll, I would want the clothes, the car the wardrobe etc. to go with it.

Garden Sculpture

Before I go, I know you are all dying to hear how Ugly Fat Nude fared at the auction.

Well, I bring you good news and bad news.  The good news is that I am still own an art collection of one item – the bad news you will have guessed is that nobody wanted her enough to reach her reserve price (set by Christie’s, not me).  So, the poor woman and her uneven knees will spend another year up against a wall – who knows what her knees will be like in years’ time after all that standing!

The auction itself was an interesting experience; far noisier than I expected and quite amazing how many hundreds of thousands were being bid on some old bit of canvas and paint.  You will be pleased to hear that we were all very well-behaved and managed to suppress the giggles most of the way through – though there was a sticky moment when the painting by Khakhar came up (say it out loud to yourself and you will understand) and son number 2 and I looked at each other and very nearly lost all control.

A spiral of valves

I leave you with these gems from a 1897 book I found on dad’s shelf entitled ‘Enquire Within Upon Everything’.[iv]

Advice to Young Ladies – ‘If you have pretty hands and arms, you may play on the harp if you play well: if they are disposed to be clumsy, work tapestry’

Hints for Wives – ‘A shirt-button being off a collar or wristband has frequently produced the first impatient word of married life’.

Rancid Butter – ‘This may be restored by melting it in a water bath, with some coarsely powdered animal charcoal, which has been thoroughly sifted from dust, and strained through flannel’.

---

[i]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abram_Games

http://www.abramgames.com/l.htm

[ii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anschluss

[iii] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ysGPctrVp4

[iv]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enquire_Within_Upon_Everything

Dad’s Drawers 8: Overarching Metaphors and the Car Park That Was Too Short

Rules and authority were not things that my dad took much notice of.  He had a view that nothing should be accepted without question.  I’m not talking about the type of authority which keeps our country from becoming a lawless state or that is there to protect people’s safety.  More, rules for rules sake or authority that is assumed by those who have had the good fortune of a decent education, title or money.

What makes that person so much more deserving of our respect than the one who serves us our coffee in Starbucks or scans our shopping at the till in Tesco and what is the point of having grass if we can’t walk on it?

Headmasters – why should we take our hands out of our pockets and sit up straight while you are talking to us?  Doctors – why is it acceptable that we have to be punctual for our appointment and you don’t?  Environmental Studies teachers – this one is a bit of a personal gripe – what’s wrong with doing cartwheels during the field-trip lesson?  I can hear what you are saying just as well upside-down.  (I got two sets of ‘school rules’ for that misdemeanour, despite there being not one mention of cartwheels being prohibited).

Often when dad and I were out walking together we would frequently pass a “Keep Out, Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted” sign without pausing to read, let alone obey its instructions.  I can laugh about it now, but I when venturing into these prohibited territories with dad I was always on the lookout for an angry landowner.

“We shouldn’t be here” I would say.

“Why not?” Dad would reply.

“Because the sign says so” I would say.

“What sign? I saw no sign” he would reply with a grin.

Looking back I don’t know why I was so worried, after all we were just walking, no damage, was done …….. apart from the time he took out his wire cutters (that just happened to be in the bag he always carried with him in case he found anything worth picking up) to cut through a barbed wire fence that the conglomerate, who owned the land at the top of the hill, had erected across a public footpath.

What was left of my brother’s car collection. Some of which he had customised in his own red and white livery colours and labelled ‘Plisner Buses’

My fear of being caught disobeying signs may well have stemmed from the time when I was 5 and dad took me on a day out to Battersea Fun Fair.  This was a permanent fun fair which had been installed as part of the Festival of Britain celebrations in 1951[i].  The fun fair closed in the early 70’s after an accident on the Big Dipper that killed five and injured many more when one of the carriages became derailed.

When we arrived, we were disappointed to find the Fun Fair closed. That’s England for you.  It might be a glorious day in the middle of summer, but if it’s a Monday you can bet half of the country’s main attractions will be closed!  On this day, the fact that it was closed did not seem to deter dad.  He had promised to take me on the Tree-Walk and that was what he was going to do, even if we did have to step over the: ‘CLOSED, NO ENTRY, YOU ARE DEFINITELY NOT ALLOWED IN HERE, YES THAT MEANS YOU PLISNER’ sign.

Having climbed over the forbidding sign we were halfway along the Tree-Walk, surveying the silence of the closed park below, when we were caught red-handed and commanded to return to the start (Do not pass Go and do not collect 200 hundred pounds) to be further admonished.  My recollection is that we declined that offer and continued to the end of the Tree-walk, where said irate lady was waiting for us with her ‘how-dare-you’ face which, fortunately for us, had been rendered speechless by her anger.   And that is one of my strongest five-year-old-me memories.

Another ignored sign that led to a memorable incident was the one in the multi-story car-park that said, ‘Height Restriction, 6ft 6ins’.

Dad was taking his 2^nd year form on a day-trip to London and had taken my brother Peter and me along for the ride.  The trip didn’t get off to a particularly good start; dad had driven the minibus, now full of noisy pupils, to collect one of the boys who hadn’t turned up at the school.  He was backing out of the narrow cul-de-sac, having to rely on the boys at the back of the mini-bus for directions.  He had hardly moved inches when the shouts of “you’re going to hit something” started coming in jest.  Unfortunately, but the time that particular statement was actually the correct warning, dad had long stopped listening, choosing instead to rely on his wing mirrors who between them had completely missed the parked Volkswagen Beetle and whose nearside wing was removed quite easily by the minibus bumper.  There was a short delay while the damage to the minibus was inspected and the owner of the VW informed, but about two hours later we were at Hyde Park Corner about to enter the underground car park.  The sign on the barrier said ‘HEIGHT RESTRICTION 6FT 6INS’. “I’m sure it will be fine” said dad, “We are only six foot six and a half. What difference could half an inch make anyway?”  Sure enough, we drove into the car park with no problems, parked the minibus and did the tourist thing in London.

Getting out of the car park, however, was a completely different story.  We had hardly moved a couple of metres, when a scraping sound was heard from the roof of the minibus. A low concrete beam (most likely at exactly 6ft, 6ins) was hindering our exit. “Everybody come to the front” said dad “That will lower the bus a bit and help us through”.  Having got the front of the minibus through, the scraping started again and we were encouraged to move to the back of the bus to get the rest through.  Having cleared the concrete beam we were horrified to see several more at 5 metre intervals all the way along our exit route and spend the next 15 minutes or so running from front to back and back to front to get out of the car park.  A loud cheer went up when we finally go through the barrier and onto the open road.  It was only when we arrived back at the school we discovered the car park barrier, with its 6ft, 6ins label, still attached to the roof-rack of the minibus.  Needless to say, dad was never let loose with the school minibus again!

I spent a good hour clearing through brambles and other junk just to get close enough to get these pictures

 

Back to authority; doing as we are told and not making a fuss about it.  There are some places where, when we enter, we somehow lose our usual confidence to question or complain.  Take hospitals for example.  Why are we so ‘kow-tow-ingly’ grateful when we finally get to see that specialist?  Having been on a waiting list for months, we finally get an appointment.   We arrive on time, even though we know we will be kept waiting.  We sit in those depressing waiting rooms and watch as the clock ticks past our allotted time.  We don’t mind too much because we have this great National Health Service and we should all be grateful (and of course we are).  We sit and observe how well we look/feel compared to all the other poor sick people waiting beside us. On eventually getting to see the specialist/doctor we are dumbstruck in awe of this greater being, listen to the diagnosis and leave the room tripping over our obsequious thank-yous, ready to go on to the next waiting list for any necessary treatment.

Why don’t we ever complain?  We wouldn’t put up with this type of service or treatment in any other walk of life.  Because we are British and that’s what we British do.

According to the Parish Council my dad’s addition to the village sign (referred to in previous blog) definitely broke the rules

WELL NOT MY DAD (well he wasn’t British for starters).  While he was always grateful to somebody for giving him their time, waiting wasn’t one of the things he did very well.

(I’ve been in shops with him when, having waited for assistance for a few minutes with no success, he would gently start knocking things from the display shelves; nothing that would cause any damage, but just enough to make some noise and attract attention).

A few years ago, in his late 80’s he was in hospital after suffering a minor stroke.  At some point he was taken in a wheelchair, by a porter, from his hospital bed to the x-ray department where he was promptly left for some hours (he says hours, but it was probably much less).  When they finally came to call him for his x-ray he was nowhere to be seen, setting off a major search in the hospital for one 4ft 11ins, hard of hearing 87-year-old man, with an Austrian accent and, because of the stroke, a visible lack of symmetry.   It was some time, after a fruitless search, that they discovered him tucked up comfortably in bed; the one place they hadn’t thought to look!  Against all protocol he decided he wasn’t going to wait any longer and had wheeled himself through the labyrinth of corridors, back to the ward and into his bed.

On another occasion, having gone in through A & E with acute back pain and been ‘dumped’ in an inappropriate ward where he was told he wouldn’t be able to have a scan on his back for five days, he promptly called me to come and collect him and discharged himself.  Even with a painful back, he had better things to do than wait in a hospital bed for five days.

In his book dad tells a story about a time when breaking the rules actually worked in his mother’s favour.

In 1938, after the German occupation of Austria, my grandmother Sidone, attempted to cross the border into France with her parents, her sister and her 14-year-old nephew Felix.  They were all caught; their passports were stamped ‘refoulement’ and they were instructed to ‘return to Vienna and never show their faces in France again’.

My Grandmother’s passport with the ‘refoulé’ note and stamp

They got as far as Basle railway station where Felix managed to slip through a hole in the fence into Switzerland and my grandmother, instead of returning to Vienna with the others, made another attempt at the border.  Again, she was caught, but this time they couldn’t send her back because now, with the ‘refoulement’ already in her passport, she had broken the law.  She was sentenced to one-month imprisonment and fined 100 francs for infringing article 8 of the decree of May 1938.  It was also noted that her presence constituted a hazard to public safety (all 4 ft 6 of her).

This is the expulsion notice given to my grandmother, detailing the law she had broken and instructing her to ‘partir sans délai du territoire de France’.

The numerous extensions to her stay in France

After completing her sentence, she was instructed to leave French soil and given a ‘refus de séjour’ (refusal to stay) suspended for three days to enable her to make the journey to the border of her choice.  She promptly made her way to Paris where the suspension of her ‘refus de séjour’ was renewed on numerous occasions – in fact she didn’t leave France until 1945.  Breaking the law had saved her life.  Not so fortunate were her parents and sister who returned to Vienna and in 1942, according to records now available online, were deported to concentration camps (Maly Trostinec[ii], sister; Izbica[iii], father; Treblinka[iv], mother) and were not heard of again.

One of the many garden ‘sculptures’

For those of you have an interest in what’s happening with the Fat Nude (referred to in previous blogs).  She now appears in all her finery (well no finery really, as she is naked and her knees are still uneven), on page 104 of the catalogue for Christie’s auction of “South Asian Modern Contemporary Art”[v].  She mingles with such art treasures as ‘Vehicle for Seven Seas 1’, Bronze casts of two airport luggage trolleys (guide price £70 – 100,000) and ‘Sans titre#13’ a piece of luggage cast in aluminium (guide price £30 – 50,000).  They are part of a collection that are described as ‘overarching metaphors for the hopes and dreams invested in journeys as well as the psychological baggage borne by the immigrant migrant worker’.   I do hope prospective buyers at the auction will appreciate the bargain they would be getting with Fat Nude with her guide price of only £3 – 6,000.  To mark the grandness of the occasion Fat Nude is now more formally known as ‘Untitled Standing Nude’,and is labelled as ‘Property from the collection of Julie Plisner Haines’.  It may be a collection of one, but hey, just for a short time I am going to enjoy the moment.  That is unless she goes unsold and I have to carry her home on the tube, to face a couple more decades against the wall.  Maybe I should take the bubble wrap with me just in case.

Hag Stones

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[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battersea_Park

[ii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maly_Trostenets_extermination_camp

[iii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izbica_Ghetto

[iv] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treblinka_extermination_camp

[v] http://www.christies.com/sales/southasian-modern-contemporary-art-london-june-2013/index.aspx

Dad’s Drawers Part 7: Fat Grawers, Manky Rulers and the Generous Gift of the Oil Spill.

This blog was only ever intended to be a photographic record of my dad’s drawers before the big clear out, but the photos have extended beyond the drawers and the writing way beyond that which I ever intended.

One of the things I have found fascinating about blogging is the ‘stats’ page where you can track how many people have ‘viewed’ or ’visited’ on any given day/week/month and from where in the world they have looked.  I am quite astonished that having intended this as a slightly humorous piece, for friends and family to enjoy, I have had 1500 ‘views’ to date.

The ‘stats’ page also tells you how people have found the site; whether they have been referred by links, (Facebook, Twitter etc.), or whether they have come via a search engine.

I recently discovered that you can actually see what those ‘accidental’ visitors typed into their search engine box when they stumbled across my blog.

…….…… and it was at this point I wished I hadn’t looked quite so closely.  On first glance I found it quite amusing that the searches for ‘manky rulers’ (that one’s for you David (1)), and ‘fat grawers’ had found me, and I suppose I should have guessed that having the word ‘naked’ in the title of one of my blogs may have enticed a few extra viewers.  What I didn’t expect was that the words ‘fat’ and ‘bubble-wrap’ would have added to this.   A small selection of the searches (that must have resulted in much disappointment) follow: ‘naked daddy fat’; ‘bubble-wrap nudes;’ ‘Japanese fat naked dad’; ‘old fatty porn naked daddies in rooms’; ‘bubble nude’; ‘fatty naked at sea-side’ and my all-time favourite: ‘naked fat person in plastic bubble suit’.

It reminds of a search (mentioned in a previous blog) that I did some years ago, when we returned home from holiday to find a dead and festering muntjac deer in the garden.  I innocently tapped into Google “What do you do with a dead deer?”  I can’t repeat some of the things I came across, but you may be interested to know that it is not illegal to have sex with one!   Fortunately, I did eventually find a nice man who disinfected the site, put the carcass in a body-bag and took it away (for a price of course).

My dad would have loved to blog.  But in the last few years as it became easier to do, his failing memory meant that he sometimes struggled with the computer.

He was a great lover of words and was never without a pencil and notebook.  I have yet to go through all the scribblings on serviettes, backs of shopping lists, bus tickets etc (which I have of course kept).  Below is a small selection of the mass accumulated over the years.   They will make a great scrap-book one day……….

Over the years dad had been a member of several writer’s groups.  I have already mentioned the one that was run by concrete poetry artist, Bob Cobbing (2) in a previous blog.  He also attended one that took place in the home of Stella Gibbons, author of ‘Cold Comfort Farm’ (3), (and whose daughter later became my aunt, after marrying my mum’s brother).  He was a member of a Cambridge writing group when he started on his book.  He had already had a couple of his short stories published and had been persuaded by friends and family to pen his life story. It was a ‘work in progress’ for several years and he would often send a completed chapter for my opinion. (To be honest, by the time the book did get published I had read through some chapters so many times, that I didn’t get around to reading it in its entirety for some years).

Having no success in getting a publisher, he spotted a competition being run by Heinemann and Eastern Arts.  What attracted him to it was not the cash prize, but the promise that the winner would have their book published.  There was one slight hitch, the competition was for fiction.  No problem thought dad, I will just change the names, add a couple of stories and no one will know any better.  Nobody was really fooled into thinking that this was anything other than a thinly disguised biography; nonetheless one day when he rang me for a chat he casually dropped into the conversation that he had won the prize and his book was going to be published.  He was 75.

His book, ‘Gravity is Getting me Down’ (4), was published in 1994 to good reviews and much media coverage.  You will not be surprised if I tell you that, as well as all of the press cuttings, I have found a box of cassette tapes with recordings of some of the interviews that were aired on both local and national radio.  The strange thing about listening to them now, is that I can finally hear what people have been telling me for years; that my dad had an accent. “Of course he did”, you may say, “He was Austrian”.  I suppose that having grown up with the accent I never noticed it, thinking that he spoke just like the rest of us.  The book was also translated into German. ‘Die Lust der Schwerkraft. Roman eines Lebens’(5) translated, courtesy of ‘Google Translate’, as ‘The Pleasure of Gravity, Story of a Life’; doesn’t quite have the same ring to it as the English title, but it did well and actually made the bestsellers list in Austria.  The book also went on to win the Society of Authors ‘Sagittarius’ prize (the award presented to him by Laurie Lee).  Sadly, the book is out of print now, and another thing on my ever-lengthening list of ‘To Do’ items is to see how easy it is to get it re-published, or make a digital version available for download.

One of my favourite chapters in the book is about my great-uncle Walter, an Austrian Jew, who was the brother of my dad’s mum.  Walter was the king of “If I can do something for nothing, why pay?” and if he did have to pay “I’ll give you half of what you’re asking”.

Sound familiar?  I have been with dad when has negotiated down a price for just the ‘bed’ part of bed and breakfast. (Without any consultation with me I might add!).

Usually though, dad’s was more of a ‘What can I do for you in return?’ type of approach and no money would actually ever change hands.  It worked well both ways for him and I always thought that he must have done a pretty big favour for the ‘Klose’ family who lived in the next village and who mum and dad were friends with.  Whatever he had done, in return their sons (between them) taught me the basics of the guitar.  For a whole summer I was dropped off at their house every Sunday morning (with the guitar that dad had built for me in his workshop) and one of the four brothers, whoever was around, would give me a lesson.  It wasn’t the best way to learn an instrument and I do seem to remember sitting around waiting  a lot of the time (watching the bush-baby that was caged in the kitchen being fed live locusts as I recall); but at the tender age of 15, spending a morning around four good-looking  young men between the ages of 18 and 24 wasn’t such a hardship.

Anyway, back to Walter.  He found his niche in the Viennese furrier district, selling and buying.  I say ‘selling and buying’ rather than ‘buying and selling’ because he would never pay money for anything until he had already sold it.  Each morning he would do his rounds, crumpled brown paper package under his arm; making sales and collecting payment for items that he would, later in the day, buy.  Never having to put any money up front or take any risks.  At the same time, he would pick up the off-cuts of fur thrown out because they were too small to do anything with.  When he had enough of these off-cuts he would sell them as a bundle, often back to one of the furriers he had collected them from in the first place.

He used to seek out oil spills on the road and rush to rub the soles of his shoes in them as he said that it extended the life of the leather.  Once, when walking along a Paris street with dad he stood by a spill in the road and gestured magnanimously “Here, Freddie.  This one’s for you”.

He had the foresight to get out of Austria before the ethnic cleansing began and he set up in Paris, hardly losing a day’s work and continuing trading from his small brown paper parcel.  When, in the wake of Anschluss, half of Vienna’s furriers turned up in Paris, Walter was ready and waiting and business picked up where it had left off.

Foresight again took got him out of Paris before the German’s arrived and into the UK where he sat out the rest of the war in the British army as a store-keepers assistant.  This incidentally qualified him for free NHS care even when he was no longer a UK resident. While I was growing up he was a frequent visitor despite living, first in Canada, then Switzerland.  Not surprisingly each visit just happened to coincide with some hospital check-up or other.

I visited him and his wife Trudy in Switzerland while I was on holiday there in the ‘80’s. The habits of a lifetime had not changed.   He was most welcoming, offering us all cups of tea and yoghurt.  He then proceeded to make one tea bag stretch for all six cups and he opened one small yoghurt carton which meant we just about managed a tea-spoon full each!

His penny-pinching finally caught up with him in the end.  After years of shopping around for cheap food, which often meant bread, cheeses and fruit with their own micro-cultures, he died at the age of 72 from a tropical disease (diagnosed  courtesy of the NHS) that had only been previously found in the slums of third world countries.

Finally, just in case you wondered where I am with the sorting.  The pictures above are just a small section of the workshop.  I have already spent some considerable hours clearing the floor just to be able to get to the shelves, and as you can see have many more to go.

To make any further progress I have realised I can put it off no longer; the time has come to venture into the shady world of scrap metal dealing.

Also, for those of you who have been asking.  The Fat Nude will be up for auction at Christie’s on June 11th as part of their ‘South Asian, Modern Contemporary Art’ sale.  I will be there!

Notes

1. I have said before that this process of going through my dad’s stuff has led me into some strange situations, and odd conversations.   I would never have contemplated writing a blog, a clandestine meeting in a car park, selling a painting at Christie’s or handing a gun over to the police.  Nor would I have ever thought that I would have an email discussion with my daughter’s guitar teacher (and coincidentally an old friend of my dad’s) on the use of the word ‘Manky’; which incidentally doesn’t figure on the Microsoft Word spell check.  But this is the strange road I have travelled over the last year and long may it continue…..…)

2.  Bob Cobbing – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Cobbing 3. Stella Gibbons – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stella_Gibbons 4. Gravity is Getting Me Down – Fred Plisner ISBN: 0 434 59078 9 5. Die Lust Der Schwer Kraft. Roman Eins Lebens – Fred Plisner ISBN:3 351 02333 2

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A few months ago, during the clearing process I found a large wooden box containing an equally large pair of binoculars.  Ugly things painted a military green and so heavy that I could barely lift them.  As with all such items, they went into the boot of my car to return home with me.

My family is now well used to my return from a clearing session with a full car load, and have progressed from the “Ooh, is there anything interesting in there?” to the sarcastic “Oh good, more junk!”   There are constant moans that I have cleared our old junk, from drawers and cupboards in our house, only to replaced it with ‘Fred’s junk’.

This particular junk/treasure went straight into my garage for dealing with a later stage. Never let it be said that putting off today what you can do tomorrow is not the best policy.  It enables you avoid making decisions and, more importantly, means you don’t have to do it today!  Procrastinators Unite! (tomorrow).

I was reminded of the binoculars some weeks later when I was getting something else out of the garage.  I can’t remember now what I was going to get, because once I saw the binoculars I decided that they needed to be photographed straight away.  Whatever it was will probably come to me next time I go to the garage for something else, which in turn will be forgotten, and so it goes on.    That’s pretty much how my life works.

Photographing the binoculars in their box was fairly straightforward, but I thought that it would be much better if I could get a picture of them on the tripod.  Cue comedy scene in driveway:

My first mistake was choosing the gravel driveway as a suitably stable surface.  You know that voice at the back of your head that tells you “You should really work out how you are going to do this before you start”.  Well, I always ignore it: a) because it seems too much effort and anyway, I want to do it now – not later – not another day; and b) because life is too short to read instructions.  I hasten to add that I don’t apply that same logic to household chores or really anything that actually needs doing; those tasks obviously need very careful planning and can only be done under the right conditions (blue moon, pigs flying, dry English summer).

Sometimes this approach works for me and sometimes it doesn’t.  It didn’t work very well when, in an attempt to repair a dripping shower, I ended up with a high pressured, horizontal spurt of water that resulted in a call-out by the emergency plumber, a bathroom that you could paddle in, and a promise to my husband never to attempt any plumbing repairs again.

One of the many drawers of lids that I found!

Back to the tripod that, even before the voice had finished, I had cleverly erected and which appeared quite stable; even on the gravel.

With difficulty I lifted the binoculars out of the box and balanced them on the top of the tripod while I looked for the hole on the underside which would secure them in place.  As I was feeling for the hole (I knew there was one, but hadn’t had the foresight to check exactly where it was before I had started) the tripod started to slowly sinking towards the ground; legs splaying outwards like a sick giraffe.  Determined not to let go of my new-found treasure, I was slowly sinking towards the ground myself trying to place my body between binoculars the ground.  It was only the assistance of a sharp-eyed son who had looked out of the window come to my rescue that stopped me being part of a tripod and binocular heap on the driveway.

I wasn’t too sure how the binoculars had been acquired, but I had my suspicions. Dad, being a jack-of-all-trades, was often the recipient of items in need of repair, or knives in need of sharpening.  He was always happy to help somebody out, but wasn’t particularly speedy about the process and it would be quite normal for the broken item to hang around the house for a year or so.  Eventually, the owner would turn up and dad would usually do the repair there and then, chatting to them over the lathe/welder/sharpening stone as he did so.  The trouble was that in his later years he couldn’t always remember who had given him which item to repair, and if said item wasn’t collected promptly it could quite easily have been given to some other needy person.  Dad was a generous man and couldn’t see the point of having two of something when he only needed one (and yes, I laugh at the irony of that now), and so he gave anything he considered surplus to his requirements away.  There was an awkward moment once when a friend returned for her newly sharpened knife to find that it had been given away only the day before.  This may or may not have been the case with the binoculars, but they had been lying around the house for about 30 years and in that time nobody had laid claim to them, so we will never know.

Incidentally, as a jack-of-all trades dad resented having to pay for something that he felt he should be able to do himself.  He could put his hand to most small jobs: electrics; plumbing (unlike his daughter); car maintenance; bricklaying (that one I can do) and welding to name just a few.  If he had to buy help in, he would watch that person at work to see how the job was done and by the time the need for it came around again he would have the tools and the expertise to do it himself.  It was something he found very hard to give up in his older years and at 92, only a few months before he died, he was up a ladder at the top of the stairwell replacing a broken light fitting.

Credit cards, train tickets, cigarette cards, and phone cards; they are all there. If you look carefully you should be able to spot one of the early cashpoint cards, with the punched holes for the computer to read, and my incomplete set of Monkees cards that I thought had been thrown away long ago.

I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the binoculars.  They didn’t look particularly old and I wasn’t really sure eBay was an option; given their weight postage was likely to cost way more than they were worth. 15 minutes browsing of the wonderful World Wide Web I was able to establish that the binoculars were most likely to be WW2 Japanese ‘Big Eyes’ and that they probably came from a captured Japanese warship at the end of the war.    I found out that the word “Kohgaku” which was written by one of the eye-pieces was the company name (later to become Nippon, then Nikon).  Although I wasn’t able to find an exact match, it did look like they would be worth a bit more than I first thought.

Further investigation was needed.

Let me tell you that several tins of Brasso and much elbow grease has been expended in the process of getting these pictures to you

I sent an email and pictures out to some specialist dealers and to some auction houses who offered free valuations.  One auction house said they would probably “fetch between £300 – 400”, another said I would be “sadly disappointed” and the third said they were of “little value” and “not the type of item we would sell anyway”.  Out of the two dealers I had contacted.  One offered £800 – £1,000 and another £800 – £1200 depending on the condition.  My children rubbed their hands together with glee.  (If I haven’t mentioned before, any money made from selling the bits and pieces was to be divided between the six grandchildren).

…..and that’s how I found myself in the car park of Duxford Imperial War Museum counting a wodge of £20.00 notes.

I had established who would give me the best deal and, using the wonders of digital photography, a fixed priced was agreed before exchange.  Getting the binoculars to the dealer was not straightforward.  I wasn’t particularly keen on driving all the way to Notting Hill and there was no way I would be able to carry the binoculars on the train. The dealer had already offered to drive to my home to collect, but I wasn’t too keen on that, what if he was a crook and caught a glimpse of all my other treasure?

The next time I was close to the M11 junction I did a recce for suitable spots for the exchange.   I ruled out the McDonald’s car park as I know they had closed-circuit TV.  I had this awful thought that anyone who saw us might think there was a drug deal going on.  Why I then decided that wouldn’t be the case in the car park of the Imperial War Museum I don’t know? Anyway, that is where I chose.

I did a bit of checking before actually agreeing to meet up and, at the insistence of Paul (husband), requested a photograph – after all no serial killer would send you a picture of themselves would they?
Not experienced in meeting strange men in car parks, I was accompanied by my own personal bodyguard (son Ben) and armed with a picture of a man who looked like everyone’s favourite uncle we pulled into the car park ready for the drop.

After all the nervous anticipation the transaction proceeded very smoothly.  Ben made himself useful by counting out the dosh while I chatted to the dealer and handed over the goods; yet more junk was converted into cash and the six grandchildren were £200 apiece better off.

All this talk of things Japanese reminded me of an incident many years ago when dad decided that it would be amusing to poke a little fun at local bureaucracy.    The Parish Council at the time appeared to be a ‘closed shop’ populated by local landowners.  Planning permission appeared to be determined by who you knew and how much money you had.  Whether there was any truth in that I don’t know, but while mum and dad were refused planning permission on several occasions, the local farmers appeared to build wherever they liked.

Anyway, dad had a brother-in-law who worked for the AA, in the department that made up signs for special events.  Dad thought it would be amusing to get him to make up as sign that said, “Twinned with Yokohama”.  I can remember helping him attach this to the village sign in the dead of night (well just after dark really, but dead of night sounds much more dramatic).  The sign survived for a few days before being taken down by the village powers-that-be, tut-tutting as they did so, and tabling an urgent agenda item for the next meeting to discuss: a) whether planning law had been breached; b) by whom, though they had their suspicions; and c) to agree that even if they wanted to twin with a town, it would be they who would choose it and it would most definitely not be Yokohama, but somewhere much more fitting for dignitarial (I think I just made up that word) visits such as Provence or Tuscany!

A little story about the picture above.  I found these tools in a container on a shelf; I didn’t know what they were used for so posted a picture on Facebook and asked if anyone had any ideas.  One friend suggested that they could be apothecary tools, and looking at the various shaped ends it looked like a distinct possibility.  The next day I was moving some of dad’s old books and came across one that was a 1901 textbook about wood-turning, pattern making and sand casting; there was a bookmark sticking out and the book fell open at the marked page ……..

We were of course completely wrong; the tools are finishing tools used in the process of sand casting but if I had believed in communication from beyond the grave, this would have been a pretty sure sign.

I leave you with two more pictures: one a photo that I found a couple of weeks ago that just about sums up my dad’s unique sense of humour.

….and this, which having been inspired by doing the Christmas Tree, could be the start of several creations using items from the drawers.