Mum's Diaries

Working with Mum's diaries (I have just begun 1944) is like having a time slip conversation with a very old friend. The person who is talking in these pages is the person I remember her to be; at times caustic and critical of others, at times (and much more often) a woman who cared and felt deeply and did all she could to make other's lives better. She is a mixture of naïve and mature, reflective and dismissive, longing for friends and company, as all only children are, but requiring too much from folk. Mum tended to be an all or nothing person, and that intensity shows in her writings. When she talks of "Mummy" in my minds eye sits my Ganna, who wrote novels and was my rescuer and second mother when we came here "after Daddy died". The diaries are full of family names and stories with which I am deeply familiar.. At times there are quirky little sketches inserted, like this, of her new coat or quick drawings of their new kitten George.

But mostly she records her thoughts about life, and events and happenings and family interactions. I wrote earlier of Nirvana, the holiday cottage which belonged to her Aunts, Connie and Harry. These folk are so familiar to me, I met them as a tiny child, we lived in their house (without them - we inherited it) when we moved to Hastings after my Dad died, they are part of the folklore of my childhood, and at times took on an almost incantatory presence for me, I could feel my molecules mingling with theirs. Numerous of those little incidents are recorded here, and were part of my childhood's pattern. I find myself at times almost alive in these recountings of hers, because they were the foundation of our life together

The gender fluid cow

As our isolation and social distancing settles in we are keeping ourselves occupied in a variety of ways. I am taking great delight in returning to my Mum's diaries, transcribing them little by little each day and wishing she could know how much they are contributing to my touch typing skills. As I follow her adventures I occasionally come across mention of letters written to her beloved "Mummy". You can imagine my delight when I investigate one of the many old suitcases that I have kept,

and find each of those letters carefully tucked away. Little did her 14 year old self think that her daughter would be reading them all these years later.

Letter from Sept 1939

So, it is 1940, she is staying with her beloved Aunt Connie and her companion Harry out at Nirvana, by Iden lock during a break from school

Connie and Harry at the gate of Nirvana

Harry and Connie pedalling across the fields

Her life is full of very simple pleasures; taking their dog Benjy for walks, picking bluebells, going to collect the milk from the nearby farm, wrapping 5 dozen eggs in paper to take back to Hastings for storage in "waterglass", and feeding one of the local cows "8 or 9 basins full of lovely grass". Having spent the day doing this, much to the cow's delight, she then goes for an evening walk across the fields. The cow, obviously anticipating more spoiling, comes ambling up for more grass. In her letter home she describes the scene

"… he stalked across about half the field to meet me. I showed him that my hands were empty and she put down her head as tho' to eat grass and butted me (don’t laugh). I was scared stiff and dashed nearly the length of the field back to Nirvana. She followed but saw I was too fast for her. I think it was a dirty trick after my feeding her all day with sweat upon the brow."

You will notice, however, that the "cow" changes sex in the extract, in fact, she changes sex several times during the recounting of the tale. Obviously my grandmother, in a reply that I don't have, commented. In the following letter, a few days later, Mum elaborates, noting that

"The “sack” of the cow was feminine but I think it must have had a bit of bull in it to want to butt me."

Obviously in Mum's world feminine was good, udders were best not mentioned and masculine was likely to misbehave!

Here she is the following year aged 15 in her garden in Cheam, with her much loved cat Patsy - who despite the name was male!!

A real treat

For four days last weekend, I had the pleasure of attending a workshop led by Eszter Bornmisza, hosted by Studio 11 as part of Christine's programme of "re-treats". She always has inspiring textile artists, and I have been on several over the years. This one was called "Captured in Nets" and was a marvellous introduction to the techniques Eszter uses to craft her beautiful artworks. If you've not seen them, pop over to her website to have a look. If you have seen them in person you will understand how evocative they are; ethereal, yet firmly grounded in the townscapes that are her primary theme. Eszter was a generous, patient and supportive tutor and we learnt a great deal. In addition to nurturing and broadening my textile skills, the four days gave me an even deeper appreciation of her art, and of the time, skill and meticulous planning involved in each creation.

Our first day was an introduction to net making with soluble fabric, machine stitching into it to create a web that, once the fabric has been dissolved, will hold itself together. This is harder than it sounds as you have to make sure that wherever your stitching goes, it is tied in with what has been before, otherwise bits will fall apart. I found the first day challenging. In part this was because my Janome was misbehaving. Once I'd  popped home and returned with the Bernina; my preferred machine for embroidery (but heavy to move about), the rest of my time was undisturbed by machine failure. Having not done much machine embroidery for a long while; my shoulders and upper back were tense and intensely painful, my stitching unruly. However, I managed a couple of samples, and began to understand more about its creative potential.

Here, my various samples at the end of the sessions in the studio

And the thought processes that brought it all about - with retrospective notes

A preparatory drawing inspired by Eridu, exploring the pattern of temple spaces and how continuous line might all hold together

stitch and imagery,

lace and thread, boundaries and mounds

The second day also had its difficulties; I stitched my forefinger - breaking the machine needle as I snatched it away. A loud bang, a sharp pain and a few minutes of feeling rather peculiar followed, but the studio had plasters and there was more stitching to be done. I still felt I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing but, following instructions, managed to produce a couple more samples and felt happier by the end of the day.

Inspired by Nirvana; a different sort of layer, that of family myth, nestled at the edge of the Rother, home to childhood dreams

and what to do with the spaces removed?

Then Babylon, drawing on an ancient map; imagery printed out several days before the workshop and pondered on

the reverse of the embroidery makes a more powerful statement - lesson learnt

By day three things were looking up, the accumulation of techniques was beginning to make sense, and I was starting to see where they might apply to the projects I am working on at my regular Studio 11 sessions. More samples were made, more stitching was done, more bobbins were cleared of thread and at end of play, a very enjoyable meal out, organised for us by Christine at a local hostelry. We began with making voids, mending them, bridging gaps. Organza carved out with a soldering iron, mended with Islamic pierced window grilles in mind, same region, later culture, more layers of history. The cutout pieces were also captured in a net with additions

Here, working with painted clingfilm and very pink organza. As I stitched I was thinking about the growth enabled by Abzu, the life giving water; marshlands, foliage, ripples, grasses waving

Flowers and leaves strewn across gaps in the fabric, supported by a web of stitching. The flowers were hand stitched into a piece of soluble fabric with chain stitch, then pinned to the base fabric, the leaves simple knots in a piece of thread.

Finally there was the "bring it all together and make a larger piece" day. So we put all we had learnt into practice on our chosen design. In my case this was based around a satellite view of Nineveh - drawn from my Mesopotamia ruminations. Here a portion of Nineveh, the hill of Kuyunjik nestled in a bend of the Khosr River, on the outskirts of Mosul

Not anywhere near finished yet, there is still much stitching of nets to be done, suggestions of cultivated land at the top, soluble fabric to be washed away, but an encouraging start. I managed to do enough to know how to complete it, and will make time to do this, which will be a huge pleasure.

So, a marvellous and inspiring few days amongst friends old and new exploring thread, stitch, time and ideas to create something fresh. I feel I have learnt  techniques that chime with my thoughts about Mesopotamia; history, layers of time and layers of man made artefacts/marks on the earth. Techniques I can hopefully exploit in my own way to move forward with my explorations of what creating textile art is all about.

Thank you Eszter and Christine for a very inspiring retreat. Definitely a real treat.

An Adventure

When my Mum and her cousin, Aunt Cecil were children and young women they often had the pleasure of staying with their Aunts Connie and Harry out on the flatlands which surround Rye. They had a holiday cottage there, in fact a couple of holiday cottages, tucked away by the river Rother, nestled amongst the fields where sheep nibbled their way over the land and cows ruminated in the long grass. These were pre and post war times, when milk was collected from the farm in a pail, and the cream pulled off the top of the milk as it settled in a wide flat pan; no pasteurisation, just lovely milk fresh from the cow. Connie and Harry, as mentioned before, were a lesbian couple, very daring for those days, who found refuge in this peaceful place and delight in having their two nieces and other family members to stay. My great grandmother Nanya certainly stayed there, she painted the view down the river in 1924

my grandmother Ganna and grandfather Gerald stayed there, and Gerald was woken one night by the sensation of his sheets being slowly pulled down the bed by some invisible force; no-one was actually there. The two girls, sometimes together and sometimes separately, might sleep out under the stars, be chased across the field by an enthusiastic cow, 

Letter from Mum dated May 1940

or visit the farmer when one of the dogs had puppies. They watched our aeroplanes battle the Germans high above the levels during the war; Cecil slipped into the river just as she was about to leave to go back home, muddying her best shoes and frock much to her Mum’s annoyance; one day when they had been out picking blackberries, the kitchen being out of bounds because their Aunts were holding a religious meeting there, they washed the sticky juice from their hands in the toilet pan! Health and Safety hadn’t been invented and they both seem to have survived.

The two cottages were called Sedges and Nirvana. Sedges was their first summer holiday home; Nirvana was built later by Harry, not literally you understand, but she organised the builders and had the materials brought up from Rye Harbour via the Rother.

Connie and Harry outside Nirvana

This was Connie and Harry’s happiest place named, perhaps, for the way it afforded them a refuge from society’s disapproval, release from the problems of the world, a space of sanctuary, where they could just be themselves. This was in the days when Radclyffe Hall’s novel The Well of Loneliness was declared obscene by a British court and ordered to be destroyed, so their relationship could have brought them a lot of censure.

Connie and Harry cycling across the fields

Both my Mum and Cecil always spoke of Nirvana as a place set apart from the world, where they could be cheerful children and young women, staying with their much loved aunts for a time, before being sent back to school or work. I have pictures of Mum there as late as the 1950s so it had a central place in their lives for a long time. The name was in my mind before I ever understood that it was related to Buddhist philosophy – Nirvana was in the summer lands where Mum and Cecil had been happy with Connie and Harry, I accepted it as part of the fabric of their lives.

Cecil had her 90^th birthday last Monday and she and I went out for lunch together, and sat in the garden later, enjoying the sunshine and stroking the cats. However Jen, my lovely daughter, had wished to celebrate Cecil’s birthday as well, so it was agreed that we’d go out together on Saturday for fish and chips in Rye and a trip down memory lane to Iden Lock. We duly drove out to Rye and enjoyed our fish and chips, then travelled on through the town and out the other side. As we approached Iden Lock (completed in 1808) Cecil became more and more delighted. We got out of the car and decided to walk as far as she felt she could manage, on what was a very hot day. Nirvana is set well back from the road along a track that runs between the Rother and farmland. I had no expectation that we’d get very far, but wanted her at least to be able to look across the fields to the places she and Mum had been so happy. As we walked carefully along, Jen and I taking an arm each for support, I suddenly thought – there are no “Private” signs on this track, nothing to suggest that I shouldn’t bring the car along, and if we use the car, we can take her right to the end, to where Nirvana is.

Now the original Nirvana has recently been replaced by a rather lovely wooden property. Jen and I discovered this in June, as we had been out to remember Mum on the fifth anniversary of her death – we scattered her ashes in the river there in 2010, releasing her in the best place we could think of, to be absorbed back into the Earth. I’m sure that breaks some nonsense regulation somewhere, but our family has never been much for rules and regulations. We met a very nice lady there in June, who told us a bit about the new building, and to whom we related the history as we knew it. She was a friend of the owner and said she would let him know, I promised to get in touch as she was sure he'd be interested in our story. As the car wobbled its way down the track this time, I realised that there was someone standing just by the house. We drew to a halt and I approached him with apologies for disturbing his peace, explaining that Cecil was in the car, for he was the owner of this new Nirvana. I had hardly finished my apology before he said, with much enthusiasm, “oh, I’ve been hoping to meet her!” Making us welcome he invited us into his home and allowed Cecil to sit for a while as, between us, we told him what we could of the history as we understood it. Fierce cows and puppies were mentioned, wartime evacuation and collecting milk from the farm. Mums final resting place was offered as an explanation of our presence, along with those long ago days of summer happiness. The current owner was charming, despite the fact that his friends were arriving to have an afternoon picnic and swim in the river. I did my best to ensure that we didn’t outstay our welcome.

On our way home Cecil kept exclaiming, again and again, “oh I have had a lovely time”. She has a great capacity for enjoyment, but this was a special day for her and Jen and I were overwhelmed by how much better our trip had been than we might have imagined. Cecil will have no memory of what fun we had, her memory retains almost nothing for more than an hour or so, but we know that she had fun, and will always remember that we had a great adventure with her in these late years of her life. Thank you James for sharing Nirvana with us.