Chocolate cake

As I begin writing this, I was just a few minutes ago licking melted dark chocolate from a wooden spoon and pondering.

In my oven just now is a cake... a cake neither of my grandmothers would recognise.

I have written about them both before in relation to other things (Babcia http://sodifferentstuff.blogspot.com/2014/01/imagine-this-re-imagine-this.html and Granny http://sodifferentstuff.blogspot.com/ )

But today I want to write about baking... The everyday kind.

I can not for certain tell you much about the baking of my Dad's mother.... She died the day before my first birthday, but from my father I have heard stories of yeasted doughnuts filled with apricot jam, and poppy seed cake fresh from the oven and still slightly warm with coffee. The thought of both of these things makes me want to book a flight straight to Krakow!

My Granny and I though, we shared an understanding about cookery. I was her helper... not that I was around that much and she didn't really need me to do anything. We both had our places in the kitchen, at some point my grandfather had extended part of the worktop to allow my grandmother a large rectangular surface where she had easy access to the sink and the stove top.
My spot was on a wooden stool at the "breakfast bar" in the corner where I would eat my, specially purchased for the visitation of grandchildren, chocolaty cereal each morning and where over the years to stared at a succession of toasters of different styles colours and levels of gadgetry. One of which I clearly remember the handle broke off and it had to be operated with half a wooden sprung peg.

Anyhow I was Granny's helper, it was unusual for her to have company in the kitchen. The kitchen to my grandfather, like many men of his generation was a strange foreign land from whence they would be shooed when they started to prevent the work of preparation and such taking place. My grandmother had not been a stay at home mother, in fact she worked as a teacher even after she had her children and when I was small she had been retired several years and actually seemed to quite enjoy having her own domain. She had a beautiful view of the garden from her work area, and a chest freezer full of... well everything possible... bread, stewed apples, cuts of meat.

And so it was that I took to sitting often in silence watching my grandmother cook, I was fascinated by the mixer, the slicer, the pressure cooker. We would talk... topics of conversation I forget... but I learnt things about my grandmother's kitchen which came in useful when my mother and aunt were clearing the house after my grandfather's death. We also became quite close as I sat and watched her. I overheard her say to my mother a few times that she greatly enjoyed talking with me. I watched her bake coffee sponges, biscuits, brandy snaps, mince pies... And I'd fetch things from high up places she couldn't reach so well any more...  And make jam clangers with the left over pastry which she taught me to shape and roll.

The last proper conversation I remember us having, alone, was at my grandparents house as we were making preparations to move her to the residential and nursing home where my grandfather moved to after his stroke. They had been married for over 50 years and didn't really know what to do without the other close by. She hated being spoken about... Especially in hushed tone...  She and I were together in the dining room I'd been at the piano and had finished playing and moved over to where she say. Her social worker, my aunt and my mother were in the sitting room. She leant over to me and asked said...  "They're speaking about me again...  Instead of to me...  I wish they wouldn't do that....  I'm not completely unaware." I remember being struck by her tenacity, she was too polite to tell my mother directly that she'd like to be more involved in her own future and she did trust that her children were doing the best things by her, but I knew that the reason she shared how she felt with me was because she saw me as a friend, and she was unsure and frightened.

In the years after, in the home, after my grandfather died I missed us being alone...  We were never alone any more and there was no more baking. There was always someone else there...  In her room my brother, sister, uncle, aunt, father, mother. She became frailer and her command of language slipped from her grasp slowly. In fact her stubbornness meant she refused to speak if she couldn't find the right words.
I spent one last time alone with her before her death. I don't remember visiting again... It actually became to painful to hear my mother rabbit on at her in a one sided conversation. So when I visited the Wirral in 2010 I went both to the Frankly to see my grandfather's grave and to The Manor to visit granny. I had my mobile phone with me... And I have video on there of the choir I was in at the time... I played her a little and I remember how very wide her eyes were. She had no idea about the technological advances of the first part of the 21st century.  From here perspective standing in front of her was a young woman with a tiny television. She never lost her grip...  Not that I remember...  I would always kiss her cheeks as I left her and it would take her hand and squeeze it.  She would squeeze back, and I would lean over and whisper that loved her. If I did she her again before she died I don't remember it clearly enough to recall. I must have done, because she changed rooms in the home... And I remember taking the stairs up to her new room, but I remember nothing else of that visit.

She wouldn't have recognised the type of cake have made but my favourite thing to watch made was her apple pie.. It was large and deep and packed full of sliced apples sprinkled with nutmeg and cinnamon. She did teach me to make it but in the time since I have never have found the heart to try. I suppose I find myself thinking that if I make the pie I have closed a chapter we shared and started a new one of my own... I soon might... Maybe this autumn when there is a fresh crop of cooking apples in the farm shop I will stew them sliced and in layers like she did and when I am making the pie I'll take a spoon and taste the tart unsweetened juice and giggle to myself like we used to together.

I wrote this...

I wrote much of this in my head,  in a sort of internal dialogue while I was driving my car to the supermarket. I was as I say driving at the time,  and you may worry I was not concentrating on the road. So rest assured that I know for certain that I was concentrating very hard on driving because the part of the journey where I was doing this thinking is etched into my mind.

Also thinking about what I wanted to say in the following text gave me a headache, so naturally I carried on thinking about it all around the supermarket  as I ticked off things on my electronic list and scrabbled around for items to replace those the store didn't stock.

I was wondering how I came to enjoy writing. Directly to type, like this, because I know for certain that the advent of my ability to write is almost inextricably linked with the decision my family made in the mid to late 1990s to "get online".

I know this in part because I remember the hundreds of blank pages of my childhood exercise books/jotters and the red responses from my teachers that informed me of the occurrence of one or two regular events in my earlier/pre-teen school life:

A) That I had written almost nothing... I remember a lot of stories that started and never finished because try as I might my right hand was just not capable of going any faster. Or that I tailed off part way through an idea.

B) What I had written was illegible... Teachers often asked me if I was left handed so shockingly awful was my written presentation... Even worse than being leftist many of my teachers were also sexist and wanted to know why I wrote so much like a boy and in not beautifully formed text like the other 24 girls in my class (I'm excluding my sister from this...  She suffered the same presentation issues I did)

The other thing that would happen that my teacher never commented on since in the context of my writing, because they couldn't see it, was what happened in my head when I was asked to write. I did not, as some people say when asked why they have not done something,  have no ideas... I had the exact opposite...  I had too many ideas... The fact that there was nothing on the page or alternatively, everything looked like it had spilled out there as an incoherent scribble was that I was either trying so hard to wrestle one strand of thoughtful response to the stimuli from the screaming mêlée or I had given up trying to appear coherent and they were going to get everything I had whether it were relevant or not!

The issue with presentation and getting started didn't go away once I reached secondary school (from 11yo onwards) for the most part it got worse, there were more subjects and homework to manage,  and I lived the furthest away from my school it was possible to live and therefore I had to wait for my dad or mum to get out of work and collect me from the library where I waited after the bus journey.  I'd finally get through our front door at around 5.30... Then dinner, then homework.... I did lot of my work in the school library just before lessons or on the bus on my knee on the way into school! Initially my teachers were pretty hard on my lack of diligence and due care to my work but as I got older I learnt to get by with enough input to get through my classes and I was ubiquitous enough to get away with the occasional late, or sometimes entirely absent, submission.

Examinations were a physical challenge to be practised for... I didn't need to revise, in the main I could scroll back mentally to the actual time we had studied a topic in class and work from there. So unusually my study time was often devoted to handwriting practise where I filled page after page of patterns and letters which helped my fluency and devouring other people's texts in the form of novels so I had used up the extra in imagination that may get in the way of my thinking.

So the thing with my writing is that I only recently realised I can write. I have a voice. It's such a strange realisation to make,  and I think it's probably something akin to the child who learns to walk not actually being all that sure how it happens. I love the Internet,  I have since I first heard Joanna Lumley bid me "Welcome to AOL." I just guess I never saw online chat as writing.

I talk. A lot. I am in almost constant dialogue with someone else if I am around people,  and if I am alone or appear silent I am probably saying something in my own head to remember for later or rerunning something that already happened. Even in my sleep I dream with conversations. So my writing voice developed as a natural extension of my interaction with what I would now call digital media... But back then I called simply IT. I used chatrooms to make friends and develop relationships with others... I was at an age and inclination that I just accepted this new form of communication as entirely natural. In fact in many ways it was preferable to the awkward social interactions I had to perform with my peers... I was an "awkward" teenager... I know everyone says that in their lifetime... As if what a terrible time you had as a teen has some sort of resale value in later life,  but for me it truly was painful... I hated being in between the carefree existence of childhood and the responsibility of being an adult. My outlook and interactions were reasonably mature for my age and this singled me out for some pretty rubbish experiences. I was not interested in doing anything remotely irresponsible and I certainly had exactly zero interest in dating anyone! Combine that with the remoteness of my home to those of my school friends and naturally I became an early adopter of many social networking tools, MSN, forums, chatrooms, later MySpace, Second Life,  Facebook and Twitter.

Over time, to me, every word I typed on the page became a word I spoke verbally out aloud in my own head, the same way someone would voice the characters of a book. And it became my voice, a way to have clarity...  I realised I was good at writing about myself in glowing prose when I completed job applications, but that the young woman who attended the interviews was not initially who the recipient's of the forms thought they would be getting... I had come alive in text form at the same time as realising that the adult I had naturally returned to become was more introverted and reserved than I  had been as a child. I have said before that there is something about being a twin that makes you ubiquitous... It is almost impossible to be a shy pair of identical twins... I honestly don't know of any... Even those where there is a natural inclination in one or both of the couple, there is something so fascinating to most other people, about the similarities of speech and posture and gesture that is so often expressed in stereo, that one becomes available to speak with others about this unique perspective pretty much whenever called upon. I realise with hindsight that the best company I often have is my own and I felt a deep contentment in solitude.

That said what people are always surprised about when I speak about my experience with online communities and communication is how honest I am. Everyone fakes a little...  It's a natural inclination... If we don't feel well but need to work anyway or if we are nervous about something. However the media for a long time portrayed online communities as frequented by hundreds of people who basically lied about every detail of their lives. Now those people do exist, but they really are in the minority. Just as they exist in a bar when a married person pretends to be single to flirt with someone. Or when someone knocks a few years off their real age to give a more flattering image of themselves.

I have always made sure I am me.... I don't doubt that over time who I am has been to a greater or lesser extent shaped by my online interactions, but the same again is true of face to face encounters. I don't give out my details to everyone I meet, but I do offer them genuine connection, and find I get back in return generosity and encouragement that spurs me onward in tough times.

Writing this blog started because of something someone said about making those sort of genuine connections... I realised that although my long held pseudonym had become an inextricable part of my own identity, that my name and general location were really powerful things to share with the world, if I believe that in working together we achieve more, more than the sum of the parts, more than any one can alone.

I wrote this and shared it here because I can, and because in part I am compelled to write, and share and debate and discuss, because my belief in connection via the Internet is so strong and important to my own identity. I have written of myself and in the writing I have seen my own strength and endurance and that perspective has helped... It's work but it's in the main enjoyable and I'm glad you are reading. 

Thank you for connecting, I am deeply grateful. 

Whoever you are.

Wherever you are.

I wrote this... For you. 

Treasure Chest Part One

Since early 2012 I have a been the custodian of a treasure chest. I knew it was a treasure chest because it was beautiful and I had originally had to dig it up from a mysterious place to which their was no map.

In 2011 we knew my grandmother was dying. She was old, she was frail, she no longer spoke or communicated in any way other than with a glare or a glance or the squeeze of a hand... And even then, these were open to wildly different interpretation.

Mrs Agnes Patricia Boote, widow of Alexander John Watson Boote. She was the mother of four children... Iain Alexander, Margaret Jennifer, Barbara Joan and Malcolm Graham. Married the same year as the current Queen Elizabeth II of England and her Prince Consort the Duke of Edinburgh. She had been a dedicated mother and grandmother.

Her children however were not always the best at communication. In fact, I think that the only time they had a been together in the same room, before the four of them took turns to sit with their mother as she slipped from this life, was the funeral of their father, my grandfather in 2002.

In the end "Mothers" death was peaceful and she was to be buried after a simple funeral and at my aunts insistence with the love spoon a relative had carved depicting her four children and three grand children in the caged peas which my mother would have much rather she had been able to keep... My aunt had been taken ill suddenly the week of the funeral and was in hospital unable to attend. But since no one had got much sleep for the weeks before hand we all assumed that she was just under the weather and would recover. Alas history teaches us to make no assumptions.

Barbara Joan Boote passed away just days after her own mother's funeral in the a critical care unit specialising in the aftercare of people who have had brain injuries. She had without any trauma suffered from a hemorrhage caused by a previously undetected anurism. Like her parents her illness and untimely death was ultimately caused a stroke.

I do not feel I really knew much about her personally until she was gone even though she had been a constant if distant presence in my childhood... I certainly had no idea how much alike we were until people who knew her well who I only met at her funeral and memorial would catch me doing something which they recognised as of her... I miss her deeply, but ironically because her death made me realise how much I had already missed spending time with her. And especially now as in a few weeks time I will be married, and she won't be there.

I already have one precious treasure of hers, my engagment ring is a perfect fit for my hand as the size and shape of our hands is something we shared... We also both liked to write... In the 1980s before the advent of the Internet she would type up her letters and she wrote to her close friend Jane amazing, and often quite hysterically observed, tales of Christmases with the Boote family and the baby twins her sister had... We found some copies of her letters, in her flat when we cleared it after her death.

Some other things she and I also shared were: a tendency to hoarding; obsessive collecting; a flair for DIY and designing and building our own furniture; a love of floral fabrics; buying reduced hosiery; a belief that we should have enough crockery to have as many of our friends to our homes as would fit at the drop of a hat; a love of real pearls; the natural ability to excel at piano playing (but no desire to practise); a love for London (which found her living in Putney, but me being content to hop on the train from the West Midlands!); Ikea (including coming home with the maximum amount of furniture whether that's Barbara's version of one woman on a bus or my unpacking the frame to a sofa bed in the car park in freezing pouring rain to squeeze into my Suzuki Alto) and many other hundreds of things besides.

There were of course ways in which our lives had naturally taken different paths... I don't really drink... She really enjoyed her red wine and I have never smoked (but I love the smell of cigarettes... Which is part of the reason I never tried.)

Sadly though it was obvious to us all, when we had to clear up her one bed London flat to sell, that periods of depression and anxiety had written there way into the story of her own life as they have mine. The flat was crammed with stuff and was so messy you could barely see the treasures... Now I know that I am still trying to work my way clear to not remaining in the position I know my aunt was in of living with every bill from 1989 filed carefully but not able to walk from one room to the next without tredding on something important. It makes me sad that she didn't have the haven she so desperately needed.

That said I am only really describing the owner of the treasure in the smallest of ways and to give those reading these words an insight into why this treasure is so important to me. It is the affinity I feel for the owner of this magical box that makes me feel better when I look at everything which is contained within. Because in exploring it I find out somethings about someone whom I love who I can no longer answer my questions.

END OF PART ONE TO BE CONTINUED...