Hanging Baskets

On 25 Aug 2022 By Kay TrailleIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

I love the rows of uneven books in our home, they are lined up on shelves on either side of the mantel piece and on a small wooden bookshelf Mum buys from the secondhand store on the corner of First Avenue.

I like that secondhand shop, but it smells musty as if someone has left old socks somewhere or if you have some clothes that are not properly dry, and you put them in a drawer and they make you screw up your nose and say “urgh” and “yuck!” That shop always has lots of things, chairs, tables refrigerators, cupboards, huge wardrobes and beds. They have so many things that they spill out onto the pavement and sometimes dogs cock their legs and pee all over the stuff, and the man selling inside runs out and chases the mutt down the road shouting things like “bugger off you little tow-rag.” You can see this if you are going to Muriel Mann the children’s clothes store to get something important, like socks.

I can’t remember learning to read. I just can. Mum says I’m reading at age three long before I start school. My brother Paul is three years younger than me. He doesn’t know even the easy words in his Peter and Jane books. I feel hot and want to hide when people say, “what a clever girl, can you read this?” and they show me a newspaper and ask me to read something stupid. I want to hug Paul and tell him that it’s alright. I’m ashamed because I find reading so easy. I wish I could share my reading with Paul in the same way that I share my last dumpling with him because I know he likes them. It is dangerous to leave things that you like on the plate in our house. You learn to eat the nicest things first, because my sisters Patsy or Rosie would say as their fork pierced the piece of food you had been saving “You don’t want that do you?” And in a gulp and a giggle it would be gone. The morsel of chicken, or baked potato vanished in front of your eyes. No, I couldn’t share my reading and Paul couldn’t steal it from me.

No one knows the word “dyslexia.” Travelling salesmen come to visit our home and my Mum purchases books on credit. She buys a set of twelve children’s encyclopedias that I read and reread repeatedly. I run my hands over the thick, burgundy-colored books and my fingers feel the raised gold lettering. A picture of the Queen is the first thing you see in volume 1. All the volumes (except the last volume which is an index) are full of green and brown sepia photographs of famous statues and places around the world. I read fairy tales and stories about famous people and lots of poetry and riddles like “As I was going to St Ives,” and “Three little kittens have lost their mittens and they began to cry.”

Once a travelling salesman brings a set of Peter Rabbit books, there are a lot of tiny pastel-colored books with slippery shiny covers that to me smell divine. “Now Mrs.” He says a smarmy tone decorating his voice. He’s dressed in a grey shiny suit with a large blue and grey kipper tie. Kipper ties look like kippers, which are really herring, and some people think that kippers are a real fish, well of course they’re real, just another name, and Mum sometimes for a treat cook them up with onions, tomatoes and peppers.

“These books are fresh off the press. Remember the ones you bought a couple of months ago? Well, these are much better. Perfect children’s stories, you can’t beat Beatrix Potter. It would be a sin not to buy them for your kids.” The salesman says to my Mum. Her big mistake is letting him into our room. Someone has let him into the house, or perhaps the front door is open, and he just comes up and as we’re on the middle floor it’s easy to find us. Mum says she can’t afford them. “No, I’m sorry but I really can’t buy them, I don’t have the money.”

“Alright then ducky,” the man says. I know my Mum doesn’t like being called “ducky.” He continues. “Alright, I’ll tell you what. I’ll leave them for you to have a look at for a week, no pressure. If you change your mind and want them then I’ll ask for a five bob down payment.” Mum says “no, don’t do that I really can’t afford them.” But the salesman puts the books on the red and grey coffee table with the yellow and cream crocheted decorations and leaves quickly, all the time my Mum is smiling and protesting. She must have seen that look in my eye. Boy I really wanted those books. She says, “Angie, I’m sorry, they’re lovely, but we really can’t keep them.” I guess I must have screwed up my face as Mum continued, “hang your basket where you can reach it.” This is Mum’s motto. Along with “Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.”

I don’t listen and gobble down every one of the books before the salesman returns the following week. I loved the stories about Flopsy, Mopsy and Cotton Tail, Jemima Puddle-Duck and Benjamin Bunny. I loved the smell and the touch of the shiny white pages with the pastel drawings of the tiny creatures. I must admit that I skip over most of the Tale of the Two Bad Mice.

Years later my motto will become, “A man’s reach must exceed his grasp or ah, what’s a heaven for.”

A Forgotten Birthday Present

On 3 Oct 2021 By Kay TrailleIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Home is where the heart is a cliché of unyielding power as it contains a grain of truth in it. For me home is a place with my own bed a place where I can sleep and dream and be myself. A place where if I choose to leave the sheets on for one more day no one is going to come and literally drag the sheets from off the bed to feed a hungry machine lurking in the corner of the kitchen.

Friends told me that for them Sunday mornings in their homes was a time when you could lie in bed. Not ours. Sunday was the day clothes got washed and moreover, beds were stripped, and you had to relinquish your cozy warm sheets to the drone of the twin tub washing machine that was in the kitchen come bathroom. Weird, but that’s how it was.

Home for me is a place that I like hiding in now that I am older. When I close the door, I can strut around in the eclectic style of mismatched socks, holey cardigans or beloved hoodie and unkempt hair or my birthday suit if the fancy takes me.

Talking of birthday suits, I spent years or at least several months looking for mine. Thinking about it now, my mother was probably tired of my morning whine in the age before school uniforms,

‘Mum what shall I wear?’

My older sister always jumped in before my mother could come up with a suggestion. I knew what Rose Marie would say eyes glinting.

‘Wear your birthday suit.’ She seemed to derive pleasure from my bemused wailing.

‘But I don’t know where my birthday suit is’. I groaned as usual and began my quixotic quest to find the hidden items. It was bad enough trying to work out how people had hung an iron curtain across half the world. I mean did they have something attached the the sky? I was perplexed by these curtains and my missing birthday suit.

I was sure I had been given clothes for my birthday and just couldn’t find them, I looked high and low, but no birthday suit. It didn’t help when my sister sneered

‘You’re wearing it’.

‘Nope I didn’t get these for my birthday.’ Exasperated and tired from my futile searches came my reply, “Mum got these pajamas for me from the John Moore’s Catalogue or these were from Aunt Molly. They weren’t a present’.

Come to think of it, birthday presents were as rare as hens’ teeth in our house, which may have been why I was convinced that on one lucky birthday someone had given me a suit. I did get white ankle socks one year. Those are the only present that I remember getting for my birthday. Usually, people forgot when it was.

I was secretly glad my birthday came at the start of the school year; friends were too busy talking about the school holidays and learning about new teachers to ask the scary question,

‘So, what did you get for your birthday?’

And I could reply with pride

‘I got a suit, a birthday suit’.

Aberfan, Churchill and Piggy

On 5 Apr 20215 Apr 2021 By Kay TrailleIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

I’ve met death before, but it never wrapped itself around and choked me, like it’s doing now. When children are buried under a landslide in a coal mine in Aberfan, it makes everyone very miserable.We hear our teachers whisper to each other about a school incased in coal. We children are gloomy because we watch the news with our parents and see huge mounds of coal.

“What’s a ‘slag heap’ Mum?” a lot of coal Angie in a large pile, like a hill? Mum replies her eyes glued to the flickering black and white screen. “Why are people crying Mum? What happened to the children? A million and one questions pour out unfiltered and children learn that children like us are buried underneath a black avalanche, and our parents shake their heads around us, and hug us just a little bit tighter than usual. Parents mutter to each at the school gate and look distraught and we watch sobbing parents over and over again on our screens.

When I’m in Primary school, Winston Churchill dies. My mother doesn’t think very highly of him, she says,

” he never set foot in Jamaica, just stayed on his ship when he visited the Caribbean.”

We learn that he made grand speeches about fighting them on beaches, but Mum is not impressed. She kisses her teeth “Chuuppps.”We all know this is a sound which means dislike, distain, disbelief and don’t care, all in a single sound.

All our family watch Churchill’s funeral on television one Saturday. At school our class make a large scrapbook history of his life from magazines and newspaper cuttings that our teachers give us. We also write our own stories about him, although we don’t know much about him, just that he likes sticking two fingers up in photos, the victory sign, but if you turn your fingers the other way you are telling people to fuck off.

At the end of the year the teacher gives me the honor of taking the scrap book home. “Look Mum we made this at school,” Mum glances at it. “Find a safe place for it” she motions with screwed up lips to a place in the corner of the room. I’m enormously proud of my scrap book and keep it for years looking at the clumsy writing of eight year olds and the slightly askew placing of back and white photographs.

Then as if in a fit of absent mindedness, when I was least expecting it the scrapbook disappeared.

“Mum have you seem my Churchill book?” “Oh you mean that old thing that was falling apart, I threw it out ages ago.” and she Chuuuupses long and loudly.

When I’m in primary school my older sister Rose Marie starts attending secondary school and Rose Marie’s books are more interesting than mine. Secretly I borrow Rosie’s copy of “Lord of the Flies,” and read it.

I still wear pink round National health eyeglasses just like “Piggy.” I’m scared.

“I hope I don’t end up like him,” I say to myself” over and over again.

I worry about this a lot and never tell anyone.

Baking and Hot Cross Buns

On 2 Apr 2021 By Kay TrailleIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Mum bakes.

I can hear the clapping sound of the wooden spoon creaming butter and sugar together as it hits the side of the beige ceramic bowl with the white insides. She bakes fruit buns and cakes, she also makes plaited loaves of bread, and we like to break the ends of the plaits off as a treat. Mum lets us play with dough and we make mini loaves of bread that we place alongside Mum’s big loaves. We need to wash our hands before we start cooking, the dough takes all the dirt off your fingers if you don’t and turns grey.

Kneading is hard work the dough starts off sticking to your fingers and as you turn it and sprinkle flour on the stickiness it becomes smooth. And then the dough must prove, and we knead, and it proves and once it doubles in size, we sprinkle it with water and sometimes we put too much water on. Mum puts them in the oven, and we wait for the smell of freshly baked bread.

I want to try some of the new Stork Margarine, but Mum says butter is better. I do taste Stork at my friend Julianna’s house on Mother’s Pride bread, and Mum’s right. Mother’s Pride bread is soggy and sticks to the roof of your mouth and you must swirl it around with your tongue or use your fingers to dislocate it from your teeth.

We learn that cakes are done if the knife we stick in the middle comes out clean. That bread is cooked when you tap it and it sounds hollow. We know that bread must be turned out immediately and left to sit on a wire tray or it will go soggy. Cakes on the other hand stay and cool down in the cake tin and then are gently pried out of their prison.

We help Mum mix the butter and sugar to make the cakes. You must mix the butter and sugar until they’re white. The best time to mix butter and sugar is when the television program “No Hiding Place” is on. We like the exciting music and we beat the butter and sugar to the rhythm of the show.

When we’ve made the mixture white, Mum breaks and separates lots of eggs. She then uses an egg whisk with a round handle to beat the egg whites until they’re white and stick to the beater like mini mountains. Then she adds the yolks and beats them. She teaches us to pour this mixture slowly into the butter and sugar, we’ve to be careful as if we fold it in too fast it’ll curdle and you’ll see the mixture starts to break up, so we’ve to put flour in slowly to stop this happening.

After we do this, we add the rest of the flour and fruit, vanilla and almond essence, lemon zest stops the cake from having an eggy taste says Mum so that always goes in, and anything else depending on the kind of cake. Cake tins need to be lined with greaseproof paper and then we can pour the mixture into the tins. Making cakes is a long process, but the smell as they cook is heavenly.

Although I like Mum’s baking one of my favorite places is a few doors down from Woolworth.

The shop is the local bakery brimming with ring and jam donuts, cream cakes of all different shapes and sizes. The ladies behind the counter wear pink gingham dresses with white aprons and caps to keep their hair in place. They glide around their tiny space behind the counter as they serve people.

In the shop window are sugar encrusted apple turnovers sometimes they’ve apple filling that has burst the seams of the pastry. There are current and Chelsea buns. Currant buns are like hot-cross buns, they’re brown on top and pale underneath and they’ve currants dotted all over them. Rose Marie and Patsy my sisters don’t like dried fruit, so if they get a currant bun, they pick the currants out.

Currant buns are the cheapest bun. I like Chelsea buns, and Swiss rolls. Chelsea buns are like currant buns but they’re square. I tried to make some once. You’ve to roll out the dough until it is flat and a rectangle, then you sprinkle sugar and currants on the rectangle, then you roll it up and then you slice it and the slices become Chelsea buns. You make Swiss rolls like this, but you make it with cake mixture that is cooked, and you roll the cake up, but first you need to put the filling in.

And then the most expensive things are chocolate éclairs, they’ve real cream in them. At school we learned to make Choux pastry and we made mini chocolate choux buns. You must pronounce the “Choux” like “shoe.” Our teacher tells us. It’s French, like chocolate éclairs. But our choux buns don’t taste like the chocolate éclairs. They taste nasty.

The bakery also has bread in a variety of shapes and sizes the most popular is crusty white “arm bread” sold unwrapped it’s tucked under your arm for the journey home where we fight over who gets the end of the bread. Once we win the prize it’s plastered with butter by the lucky winner.

Shop bread is much prized by us as our Mother bakes most of the bread we eat. I can’t understand why my friends like my uneven chunky homemade brown bread. I long for the even slices of white sticky “Mother’s Pride bread” that my classmates have for their sandwiches. Ashamed of my chunky uneven brown sandwiches I hide to eat them when no one is looking. My bread looks disfigured in comparison to the sharp triangles of Mother’s Pride sticky white bread.

The most amazing day at the Bakery comes once a year. On Good Friday the bakery is a source of wonder. That’s the day when Hot Cross buns take over every nook and cranny. They line all the shelves. They’re piled high in the window. As far as the eye can see there are brown Hot Cross Buns with fat juicy raisins peeping through the shiny brown and beige surfaces. And people line up for ages to buy them, the queues go on forever until the last bun is sold and the bakery always closes early.

“Mum why aren’t we allowed to eat Hot Cross buns?”

“They’re Pagan.” Says my Mum. So, I never taste one until years later and am disappointed with the doughy cross. Plain currant buns are nicer.

Blue Paraffin

On 22 Oct 2020 By Kay TrailleIn Blog2 Comments

“Girls you need to go and buy some paraffin after school,” Mum reminds my sisters Rose Marie and Patsy. They need to walk a long way twice a week to buy five gallons of blue paraffin (Mum says blue paraffin is better than pink paraffin).

Only Patsy and Mum have winter boots, so Rosie needs to wear Mum’s boots. Mum says, “come child I know the newspaper I’ve stuffed in the toe is uncomfortable, but what to do? Your feet will freeze in your ordinary shoes, there’s too much slush on the ground.”

It has snowed and the snow makes everything look pretty. It hides stuff like dog dudu, and when it begins to thaw all the dirtiness that’s been underneath mixes in with the snow and makes it grey, white, and brown. If a dog or cat or human pees on the snow, it becomes yellow.

Dog dudu is the worse, you don’t know when you’re treading in it until your shoe comes up with layers of slush and shit. Anyway, Rosie must wear Mum’s boots to walk the three miles to get the paraffin, her feet make swishing noises in them and slip out as she walks. I know her feet must hurt as she has corns on her toes where newspaper rubs the skin off as she slips and slides down the street.

For me walking in Mum’s shoes is fun. They make a clip clop noise around the house when I wear them. Rosie can’t wear her shoes at the same time as Mum’s boots, so it’s not fun. Mum says the doctor has told her that if I wear tight shoes it will make my eyes worse.

I always tell Mum if my shoes are too tight, except for once when I get some nice shoes and they hurt my toes, but I tell Mum they don’t as I want to keep wearing them. Me limping makes Mum suspect that they hurt, and I need to confess the truth. In school we learn a poem about shoes,

“New shoes, new shoes,

Red and pink and blue shoes,

Tell me what would you choose

If they let you buy?”

It was true I’d buy the “Buckle shoes” and what I got were “Tuff shoes.” They were supposed to last forever, but they really were “wipe-them-on-the mat shoes.” And impossible to destroy.

When Patsy and Rosie come back home with the two plastic containers of paraffin, we pour it through a white funnel into our heater in the bedroom. Mum sometimes lights the gas oven and that heats up the dining room and kitchen. My father has bought a secondhand television.

Come to think of it we’ve never had a new television set. We like the adverts for paraffin. “Esso blue, dum,dum, dum Esso, blue, Esso Esso, Esso dum dum dum blue,” is the jingle that we sing along too each time the advertisement comes on television. The paraffin heater we’ve in the everything room is green with a long body it has a flat top and you can cook things on it.

Paraffin heaters are great except for the smell and the fact that they could start fires, or you or someone else could get burned. Once baby brother Paul topples a saucepan of milk off the paraffin stove where it’s being heated and it burns his feet. He has to go to the hospital, and each day Mum changes his bandages and puts funny smelling cream on his pink blistered skin. He still carries the faint scars on the creases of his ankles.

Kay Traille's

Tag: childhood