buried treasure

 

 

drained and empty

buried in the garden

lost from sight and mind

waiting

waiting for years

 

dug up and brought to the light

turned round and round

in our hands

a memory of time gone

slowly dissolving

before our eyes

 

 

 

family album no. 1

memories

guardian angel

Dear Sheddists,

the Angel of the North is an iconic modern sculpture by Antony Gormley. It's guarded the road to Newcastle for nearly twenty years now and the scale of it fair takes your breath away when you get up close.

But how many visitors have ventured just a few yards down the hill on which the Angel is mounted?  If you look carefully you will find a small clearing in the wooded area to the right that serves as a place of remembrance.

The teddies, soft toys, photographs and simple messages hidden among the trees provide a poignant reminder of the fragility of life.  It's good they too have an angel standing guard over them.

The winds of time may come and the winds of time may go, but love stands guard.

Yours as ever,

electrofried(mr)

from me to you - part 1

Dear Sheddists,

a few years ago my eldest daughter bought me a lovely book called, 'Dear Grandad - from me to you.'

In essence, the short tome contains a number of questions for the reader to answer and for a little while now I've been scrawling in its pristine pages.

I am, however, conscious my hand-writing is fast becoming illegible. It was never good at the best of times but fading eyesight means the contents of the book now resemble a sight-seeing tour to the dimly lit hieroglyphics of a lesser-known Egyptian pyramid.

Accordingly I've resolved to type out the more salient passages to add to my blog and this is the first in what I plan to be a continuing series.

What is your name?

My name is Simon. I understand at one point my parents were considering Toby as an alternative. Mercifully (and with apologies to all my friends and acquaintances who go by that name) they stuck to their guns.

So here I am ... Simon.

What colour are your eyes?

Unless I am very much mistaken they were blue last time I looked. Should they change I will let you know.

How tall are you?

I don't do the new-fangled metric thing so in plain English currency I'm six foot and one quarter inch.  I'm very proud of that quarter inch. It means I can boast of being over six foot.

Or at least I think I can.

As the years go by I appear to have metamorphosed by the transfer of inches from height to width.  Should this process continue into later life I confidently predict that by the time I reach one hundred and receive the mandatory Buckingham Palace telegraph I will be a two foot tall and five foot wide.

What are your earliest memories?

My very first memory was learning how to crawl. I'd spotted a spinning-top lodged just out of reach beneath the huge brown side-board in the dining room of the house where I was brought up as a child.


I can remember the pattern on the red carpet, swirling snakes of colour that painted a way toward the object of my desire. The top had a red handle and if I managed to push hard enough it made a little tin train run round a circular track inside its plastic-covered dome. Just to add to the excitement, the train would open and close a set of white railway gates on its journey whilst making a faintly comforting 'woo-woo' noise.

Suffice to say there were no wimpish, bureaucratic EU Health & Safety Regulations in place to ban the use of faintly toxic red-leaded paint or the miscellany of small metal parts secreted within as a tempting choke-hazard reward for curious toddlers.  We were made of sterner stuff in those days.

A few more early memories.  I recall dipping down into the hollowed recesses of a dark wooden writing-desk in the bedroom I shared with my younger brother. This housed a shelved collection of faux leather-bound Encyclopedia Britannica of a slightly alarming blood-red shade, the spines of which bore gold-imprinted letters of the alphabet.  A few visits to this secret hiding-place and I had the code cracked - I was ready to read!

One last early memory. The smell of bacon cooking in the kitchen, part of a glorious English breakfast fry-up overseen by my father, Rex. It was one of only two meals I can ever remember him attempting. The other was camp-fire cooked sausage, invariably charcoal coated and dripping excess fat like a sweating pig in a heatwave.

This was, of course, long before calories had been invented and at a time when cholesterol played a major part in the diet of the working man. Little surprise when poor Rex died of a massive coronary at the tender age of 48.

remembering mattie

Dear Sheddists,

the girls couldn't make Mattie's funeral so today we had a family lunch in the pub we took her to when she last visited us.

Her photo took pride of place at the top of the table and little Dottie took pride of place in our arms.

I rather think Mattie would have enjoyed watching us all tuck into our puddings!

Love,

electrofried(mr)

Pin-pricks of light

 Dear Sheddists,

it's been such a lovely week!

On the road again

 Half-term means more time with our two gorgeous grandchildren and Monday finds me loaded into the back of my eldest daughter's van with her two boys and our youngest grandson's off-road wheelchair.  He holds my hand most of the journey as we play clapping games together.

Our destination is the Wetlands and Wildfowl Trust centre at Slimbridge, one of nine set up by the charity established by the late Sir Peter Scott, the world famous conservationist and son of Antarctic explorer, Captain Scott.

We're meeting up with the parents of our daughter's fiancee. It's one of their favourite places to visit and we're really looking forward to seeing them again.

Jumping the puddles

We take lunch early to beat the rush then set off on a short tour of part of the grounds.  The main event awaits, which is a Puddle-splashing Competition. Both grandchildren are dressed for the part in wellingtons and waterproofs. Duly enrolled for the contest they wait their turn.

The eldest goes first, takes a couple of practice jumps into the first two bright blue pools before one last final leap into the air and a satisfyingly splashdown into the third.  His younger brother follows, lifted up by his mum and cheered the length of the course.

Two happy, tired boys are loaded back into the van and I amuse the youngest once again on the way home with yet more clappy-songs, this time accompanied by my warbling renditions of favourite works from the extensive canon of the late David Bowie.  'John, I'm only dancing' proves a hit with grandson and is repeated endlessly to his obvious delight.

The joys of modern cuisine

The second treat of the week comes two days later when eldest grandson is entrusted to my care for a boys' outing.

We start with an early McDonald's. He opts for the mcnuggets Happy Meal complete with complementary Disney watch.  My own choice is the slightly more sophisticated Chicken Selects, but I do cast envious glances from time to time at grandson's fine new plastic time-piece.  Two mcflurry's to follow see us suitably refreshed and ready to do battle with the Midlands motorways.

We're on our way to a half-term Workshop run by a local Arts Centre.

On making cameras

We arrive just as the Workshop begins and five minutes in we're hard at work constructing a pin-hole camera.  A soft-drinks can, a little cardboard and some black gaffer-tape are all it takes and now it's time to load up the photo-sensitive paper.

My grandson thrusts both arms into a black canvas bag, searching out the box of paper within.  A look of intense concentration comes over his face as he hunts out a sheet and presses it into the can, and then we're off again - out to the courtyard of the Arts Centre to take his first photo.

If at first you don't succeed

My grandson's first few efforts come to naught.  The first picture looks like an alien head, the paper being loaded directly in front of the pin-hole, the second is as black as night - the result of opening the top of the can before it's safely in the dark, but with each fresh attempt he moves closer to success.

The third attempt and it's nearly there - a faint, ghostly, over-exposed image. He cracks it on the fourth and final go, a clear image, albeit in negative.  Mission accomplished he lolls back in a chair as his photographic works dry ready to be taken home.

The joys of grand-parenting

How lovely it's been to spend a few hours with my grandson. The smell of the developing chemicals and fixative, the thrill of seeing an image appear on the paper - all these things transport me back to my own childhood when as a boy similar in age I watched my father print his own photos.

Such precious, precious time