Tag: childhood

Book Ostrich

~ Ruth ~ 2 Comments

My secret hiding place as a child was often a book. I loved getting completely lost in whatever imaginative story I was reading, finding myself temporarily in lockstep with whoever the main protagonist was, inexorably drawn in to different worlds and different times and different situations.

Curled up somewhere quiet where I could be unnoticed and undisturbed, feeling invisible in my self-imposed solitude, I could hide for hours from the everyday hustle and bustle of family life going on all around me. I was like an ostrich with its head in the sand, except I had my head buried in the pages of a book instead.

I suppose for me the basic premise remained the same – if I can’t see you, then you can’t see me either. And surprisingly, it worked quite well in that I was left alone much of the time just to enjoy indulging my love of reading in perfect peace 🙂

John’s Writer’s Workshop Prompt for this week asks ‘Where was you secret hiding place as a child?

Hook

~ Ruth ~ 4 Comments

When I was young, one of my close school-friends had a living grandfather with an old-fashioned metal hook. He was a rural farmer who had lost his hand in an accident years before, but for practical reasons found a hook easier to work with than a real-looking prosthesis.

To begin with I found it odd to see his hook – it felt a bit scary, a bit menacing, too much Peter Pan. But he was a big, gentle, friendly old man and watching him going about his day using his hook with surprising dexterity soon made me realise the sensible decision he had made all those years ago.

He died when we were still quite young and I never did ask exactly when or why he’d lost his hand, and to be honest I haven’t thought about him for years until this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt of ‘hook’ brought him to mind.

Sadly my school-friend also died a couple of years ago at the age of 61, so I can’t ask her now, either…

Watch With Mother

~ Ruth ~ 12 Comments

As soon as I saw Fandango’s One Word Challenge prompt word of ‘Weed’ today I remembered watching ‘Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men’ on ‘Watch with Mother’ on our one-and-only small black and white living-room TV when I was young.

Bill and Ben were little string-puppet-men made of flowerpots who lived at the bottom of the garden, and their friend (and guardian angel) was Little Weed, who grew behind the large flowerpots the flowerpot men stayed in and kept an eye on them as they got up to all sorts of antics. All she ever said was ‘Wee-ee-eed!’ in different tones to indicate different messages. And Bill and Ben spoke their own little language, too.

And then that reminded me of other similar puppet programs on Watch with Mother – Andy Pandy with his friends Teddy and Looby-Loo the ragdoll who lived in a wicker toy-box indoors, or the Woodentops who were a whole family of puppets who lived on a farm, and had the biggest spotty dog you ever saw called Spotty Dog. I loved the way Spotty Dog walked, straight-legged on all fours – what fun!

And Pogles Wood springs to mind, too, although I think that was maybe stop-start animation rather than string puppets like the others, and I’m not sure that was on Watch with Mother, I think it was on something else?

Anyway, Watch with Mother was a 15 minute TV slot on weekday afternoons with a program for little children to – yes, you’ve guessed it, watch with mother! I think some of the programs were actually made in the 1950s and maybe some originated during my childhood years in the 1960s, but we watched them all anyway and loved the simple characters.

And now I’ll probably have the Bill and Ben theme tune going round in my head for the rest of the day – Bill and Ben, Bill and Ben, Bill and Ben, Bill and Ben, flowerpot men!

Oh, and of course, Wee-ee-eed! 🙂

Show and Tell for Adults

~ Ruth ~ 8 Comments

Very early on in primary school we used to have a class exercise to do first thing every morning that was a kind of individual ‘show and tell’ in book form – we all had special jotters that had a half page blank and a half page lined, and we were required to draw a picture on the top blank half, then write a couple of lines about it on the lined bottom half, generally something ordinary and everyday to do with your life.

It was an exercise I always enjoyed, because I loved drawing and I loved story-telling, and even better I didn’t have to stand in front of the class to read it out so it was a perfect task for me! I’ve often thought blogging for me is the updated adult equivalent of that old daily written show and tell exercise? I take photographs or make paintings and post them with a wee story about it, or sometimes I’ll just write a poem or whatever without a pic to go with it.

And yes, I find I do still enjoy the whole process just as much today as I did as a child! 🙂

Fandango’s One Word Challenge: Show

Stop that Pigeon NOW!

~ Ruth ~ 1 Comment

OK, so there’s a bit of a rambling story that goes with this odd image I just have to share… 🙂

A couple of weeks ago I was alone in the house when I heard a loud thud, as if someone has whumped a big soggy balled-up chamois leather against a window or something. Puzzled, I checked around inside the house and saw nothing untoward. So I went outside and walked all around the outside of house, but all our windows remained intact and damage-free.

However the very next morning, with the sunlight shining at a different angle, we noticed the faintest traces of what looked like the outline of a bird on one of the kitchen windows. We realised that the sound I had heard must have been a bird flying into the window, but for the life if us we couldn’t work out which bird might be that shape and size, and it did seem a bit implausible but we could think of no other explanation at the time?

Roll forward to yesterday, when my husband, who happened to be looking out the kitchen window, saw a pigeon face-plant into the conservatory window with the very same whump noise I’d heard previously! The poor pigeon shook itself off, quickly recovered its composure then flew away apparently undamaged (presumably apart from its pride!). This time in the early evening light we were able to capture a very clear picture of a very similar outline of the bird on the window, wing-tip to wing-tip.

I suppose it shows just how much natural grease must be in bird feathers to make such a clear bird-shaped imprint on the glass, and I have to admit I couldn’t help but laugh at the sight – it reminded me so much of a cartoon we used to watch as kids, a spin-off from the Wacky Races where Dick Dastardly (and Muttley) spend all their time in flying machines trying to stop the pigeon… And now I have the fun theme tune stuck in my head…

Mind you, with Dastardly and Muttley at least the poor pigeon always gets through it all unscathed! 🙂

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Evening

A Different World

~ Ruth ~ 7 Comments

Writing about my mother-in-law’s rocking chair yesterday has stirred up a lot of memories in me…

I can picture it so clearly, sitting at a jaunty angle in the corner of their living room over 50 years ago, relatively new at the time, red and curvy and laid back with a sassy spirit that somehow spoke to the quiet, 10-year-old me. It was just so dramatically different from the practical-but-dull hand-me-down chairs we had at home, a breath of fresh air in my stagnant world of stolid sameness which was all I’d known up until that point at least.

For me the red rocking chair represents the magic of that time in my life, a first-hand introduction to American culture in the real world, brighter and newer and refreshingly bold. It was a tantalising symbol of something more being available, a promise that so much more might be possible than the limited experience passed down through generations of rural life in a Scottish backwater had shown me to date.

At the time I was dazzled by the difference of it all; different food, different customs, different attitudes, a whole different way of life.

Their family move across the ocean from the Louisiana swamps in the south of the US to Inverness in the north of Scotland had been prompted by the discovery of new oil fields in the North Sea, my father-in-law was an ambitious young oil executive who had jumped at the opportunity to be part of the developing oil production here in the UK. The changes brought to my part of the world by the discovery of North Sea Oil were huge – not only an influx of industry and infrastructure, but also an injection of American affluence and abundance that together altered the old agriculture-based landscape forever, in a good way.

The initial explosive economic effects of the oil industry coming to our local area may long be forgotten by many, but the equally expansive changes to my internal landscape have stayed with me over the years. My previously closed world was opened up as I was introduced to funny-shaped American footballs and baseball bats and gloves, American expressions and idioms. I discovered Betty Crocker Cakes, stacks of pancakes served drenched in syrup on dinner plates and eaten with a fork, grits and eggs, foreign food cooked with garlic and strange seasoning, food I soon learned to love.

I first learned how to play pool on their very own pool table that sat in its own shed in the garden. I first learned to play Nintendo Pong on their TV via a console, slowly with large paddles to begin with then faster with smaller paddles as my dexterity improved. Their boys, who were of similar ages to us, had a playroom upstairs next to their bedroom, a room with beanbags to slouch on and a music system to listen to and a space that was just for them (and us) to hang out in.

More than anything, I suppose this was the point I first learned that the world I lived in expanded exponentially far beyond the shores of Scotland.

It truly was an introduction to an entirely different world for me, an evolving eye-opener to the reality of different experiences, and when I think back to that transitional time in my life I picture the red rocking chair sitting there quietly watching everything unfold, rocking to its own rhythm, almost delighting in its difference. So for me, for that same red rocking chair now to be coming to live here with my husband and I in our own home back in Inverness all these years later is something very special.

Because to me it’s not just a rocking chair, it’s a precious memory of a quiet 10-year-old me first seeing the potential promise of so much more in life… ❤

Writer’s Workshop Prompt: Magic

Red Rocking Chair

~ Ruth ~ 6 Comments

I first met this red rocking chair in the summer of 1973, when I first met our new American neighbours who had recently moved to the north of Scotland. Those neighbours soon became firm family friends, and many, many years later their eldest son and I got together, moved in together, and eventually got married.

In the meantime my new in-laws had separated then divorced, the red rocking chair remaining with my mother in law. Red was always her favourite colour, and she told me the story of how she got it: She said that one year Mother’s Day fell on her birthday, so it was a joint birthday and Mother’s Day present she chose for herself.

I’ve always loved that rocking chair, for me at the age of 10 it was the height of sophistication, nothing like any of the boring chairs we had at home. In fact the memory must have remained strong in my mind because it later became the inspiration for me buying a cheap version for myself when my own children were small.

Sadly my mother-in-law died last month, and amazingly her red rocking chair will now be coming to live with us. Who knew that the red rocking chair I fell in love with as a child all those years ago would end up back in my life over five decades later ❤

PS I checked back to find out which year the rocking chair might have been bought, and it turns out that 1972 is the only year that Mother’s Day fell on my mother-in-law’s birthday, and that fits in with my husband’s memory that it was bought not long before they moved overseas 🙂

Ragtag Daily Prompt: Who Knew?

Emotionally Baggaged Out

~ Ruth ~ 10 Comments

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about all the dysfunctional emotional baggage I still seem to be carrying around with me in life, and how much of a frustrating burden it still feels even now I’m in my sixties.

I think about all the negative messages I inadvertently picked up from my mum, passed on under the radar, invisible yet powerful, expectations and perceptions of womanhood I internalised in childhood regardless of her proffered advice and encouragement, silent messages of bitterness and disappointment that continue to whisper to me even today.

I think about all the negative messages I’ve also unwittingly passed on to my children in turn. All those times I said one thing yet by my actions showed another, all those examples of not-good-enough-ness and depression I modeled without meaning to, all those myriad mistakes and miss-steps and misunderstandings that have clearly messed them up emotionally.

And I can’t help but wonder what negative messages my grandchildren might currently be picking up from their parents behind the scenes, what dysfunctional emotional baggage may unintentionally be created and passed on to the next generation. Different issues for sure, but they too may turn out to be potentially harmful in time.

As parents, our lived experience is always out of date, out of step, behind the curve. We can only know what we know from our own childhood experiences, so however much we try our best to do the right thing by our children we will inevitably get some things wrong and there can often be unintended consequences to the most innocent of intentions.

It feels that whatever we tell our children on the surface in trying to guide them as best we can, if ultimately we behave differently underneath then what is modeled rather than what is said seems to be what sticks with them, becomes the underlying message that survives in their psyche long after the spoken words have been forgotten.

Oh, I don’t know, don’t listen to me! It may just be my introspective low mood that is talking here, and hopefully everything may start to look a lot different tomorrow, but right now I feel completely emotionally baggaged out…

Word of the Day: Baggage