Goose Fair: 2020

There is no question that birthdays are ‘different’ in the world of Coronavirus.  I suppose that only applies if you are mindful of the spread of the disease and don’t think gathering in large groups is ok.

This year most of my birthday cards came from one of two sources: either handmade or crafted or from the internet.  This year those birthday cards are imaginative, creative, unique and just very different.  People this year have had to ask themselves “where am I going to get a card from?”.  I’ve really appreciated them.

There is nothing unusual in the fact that I have got a number of tea towels for my birthday (and oh how I love them!!).  Lyn used ‘The Suffolk Dialect Translator’ as a protector for the gift she sent me.  You can’t wipe up with bubble wrap but you can with a tea towel!  Jai transferred one of Hamish’s drawings onto a tea towel.  It’s brilliant but still to be signed by the artist.  Hermes and the Royal Mail have done exceptionally well with the delivery of my presents.  The shape of the various boxes doesn’t give away what is in it, birthdays are still a great surprise.

Liz follows a photographer from Nottingham, @TraceyWhitefoot, on Twitter and she got one of Tracey’s photos made into a unique, one-off tea towel, that of Goose Fair.  At the time she ordered it, we didn’t know that Goose Fair would be cancelled this year.  It’s nice to have a reminder of Goose Fair and hope that it will be up and running next year.  Goose Fair has been going, under Royal Charter, since 1284.  It has been cancelled on very few occasions: in 1646 due to bubonic plague and then again due to the two world wars and now because of the Coronavirus pandemic.

Liz was particularly extravagant this year and also got a jigsaw of the same photo.  When I look at the picture I just think “That’s going to be a challenge”.

There was no big party, but then I have never had a party for my birthday but Liz, Pete and I went to Middleton Top in Derbyshire.  Liz used the Tramper, we took a picnic With birthday cake and candles, walked further than I would normally walk.  After lunch but before the eating of the cake, the rains came and boy, did they come.  We managed to get back, somewhat wet.  Instead we all returned to the house for the cake and one candle.

The fact is I loved my birthday.  It was different and that was important because, under normal circumstances, my friend Gwyn would have been there too.  But she always loved Goose Fair so this was a good tea towel to celebrate my birthday with.  I expect she was sitting on her cloud thinking ‘I’m glad I wasn’t there in all that rain’.  We missed you, Gwyn!!

1999 Calendar Tea Towel

 

Over the last couple of months, where activities have been limited by Lockdown and semi-Lockdown, I have developed a fascination for Calendar Tea Towels.  I like their design, often very traditional, but also the fact that they are a challenge to my memory.  I’ve run out of my own Calendar Tea Towels so I have had to ask people on Twitter whether they could send me a photo of one of their own Calendar Tea Towels.  Not a lot of people have been forthcoming.  I think, because of my extensive collection of tea towels, that people think I’m asking them to give me a tea towel.  But no, I just want a photo, doesn’t have to be a pristine tea towel; I like a well-used tea towel.

Recently, @themikehm sent me a picture of a 1999 one.  1999 was a significant year for me, but it started in 1996.  In 1996, my husband John dropped down dead in a park.  It was an awful time, as anyone who has been bereaved will know.  The thing that I hadn’t really expected was that other people assumed there was a ‘time limit’ on bereavement and, when you passed through that time, they assume you will go back to ‘normal’, to how you were before the death.  It can never happen; you won’t necessarily be crying every day, or even be miserable every day, you might learn to do different activities but you will never be the same.  For me, the pressure from people I managed at work was too much and I looked for another job.  I decided that I would try and get a job, away from Leicester, away from people I knew but that I would not move house, I would commute.  An ideal job came up in Stevenage and Stevenage was certainly not somewhere I would want to move to, and live, permanently.  ‘Executive Advocacy Manager’ was the title, sounds a bit pompous.  It was a two-year contract, exactly what I needed.  Time to be away from Leicester, time to think about what I wanted to do, time to see if I could face the world again that I was familiar with.  The advantage of commuting was that I had to start early, an hour and half of listening to ‘Today’ on Radio 4 and another hour and a half to get back by which time I could get some chips from the Chinese take-away and then go to bed.  Start again next day.  No one in Stevenage had any idea of my circumstances; I was anonymous.

When the contract ended I was offered an extension but I knew it was time to move on, to a job that did not involve so much driving.  And in 1999, I became Director of an organisation run for, and by, disabled people.  It didn’t have a good reputation at the time but it had a history (and I love a bit of history).  The job was advertised for someone who could carry out a ‘Radical Transformation’.  It was the job for me.  I didn’t want to antagonise anyone but I also didn’t want to make friends with people; I had a job to do.  1999 was certainly a challenge and I loved every minute of it.

I remember the day of the interview.  I was dressed completely in black, head to toe.  I had to do a 15 minute presentation, using a flip chart.  When I was finished, and sat down for the questions, I realised that one of the members of the interview panel was a man I had worked for back in 1975, in a job I hated but I had liked him.  After that interview, I was taken around the building.  My guide said “Sorry, I can’t show you what would be the Director’s office but the current Director keeps it locked all the time and we don’t have a key”.  Bit of an odd organisation I thought.  The third part of the interview was a panel of six disabled people who were very challenging, wanting to know what I was going to do for them.  I knew I wasn’t going to get the job.  I got that wrong and started on 6 July 1999.

I was a bit sad to leave Stevenage but my time wasn’t over.  I had to appear at an Employment Tribunal in Bedford.  I had been responsible for dismissing a member of staff who then took the organisation to Tribunal.  I have never been to anything so stressful.  I have no regrets because he was an abuser.  But I paid the price, that’s an exaggeration I don’t know if I paid the price, but in November 1999 I had a stroke, not a big one.  Was that appearance at the Tribunal responsible for my stroke?  The only thing that was really affected was my speech; it was just rubbish and gobbledegook.  I went to the GP who said I was too young to have had a stroke and I went out feeling so much better.  He said my speech was just a “bit of dysphasia” which would get a better of its own accord.  Was he qualified‽  It was 12 months later that a stroke was diagnosed, as was epilepsy as a result of the stroke.

1999 was certainly a year to remember and the epilepsy still remains.  It was good I changed jobs, and didn’t not need to commute because I have never driven again.  I worked in that job until the day I retired and loved every minute, I never regretted moving to Stevenage, nor moving back.  Some things work out well in the end.

Thank you @themikehm for this great tea towel!

Bodelwyddan Castle Hotel: Acquired 2015

Yesterday, in the Blog about ‘Scenes from North Wales’ I queried how many more tea towels I had of Wales.  This is because (a) I’m amazed at how many I still actually have, that haven’t been Blogged about (all given to me as part of someone else’s collection) and (b) I committed myself to using them all to write about my friend Gwyn who died recently.  There are four left, including this one.

Gwyn didn’t have a large family.  Her mother, father and brother John had died many years ago.  Her father came from Anglesey and she still had a few relatives living there.  When her father was alive, she used to take her parents on holiday, ‘back to the old home ground’.  When her mother died she would still take her father and finally, when he died, she and Pete would still go, sometimes more than once a year, staying in a cottage on the farm of friends.  All my Anglesey tea towels came from Gwyn, as a ‘thank you’ for looking after her cat.  Gwyn didn’t speak Welsh as such, although her father did, but she could say “Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch” with ease and grace.

Thursday’s funeral reminded me that Gwyn’s proper name was Gwyneth but no one ever used that except for her Welsh relatives who would use nothing else.  I have never called her “Gwyneth”.

Today, I found ‘Bodelwyddan Castle Hotel’ tea towel.  This was a tea towel I acquired from my friend Jean, back in 2015.  In 2015, she went into a Residential Care Home and realised that she didn’t need tea towels any more.  She bought this on a holiday to North Wales, looking at the state of the tea towel it was probably sometime ago.  She was staying at this hotel, with her friends from the Trefoil Guild, loved it and bought the tea towel!  A woman after my own heart.

Because our birthdays were not far apart, Gwyn and I often celebrated our birthdays together.  We’ve had picnics out, gone to the theatre in London to see ‘Matilda’, enjoyed Afternoon Tea at various posh places (like Claridges and Clivedon).  We’ve had a day of playing games and even gone away for a long weekend.  I think our favourite was the trip on a narrowboat, actually four trips on a narrowboat.  Two trips we hired the boat and invited a mutual friend, Liz K, to come along.  Liz K and Pete were probably the two fittest of us to help moor up, work a lock etc.  Both these trips were in beautiful weather and I think we all had hundreds of photos of swans on the canal, old boats that seemed to be abandoned, cows on the banks……. We took a picnic on both trips, picnic breakfast, brunch, lunch and a bit of supper.  As Gwyn became a bit frailer, we decided on the accessible narrowboat that belonged to the organisation that I worked for; this came with a skipper.  It had a lift to take you inside the boat, in a wheelchair, if you wanted.  The trip went two hours one way, an hour’s stop at a waterside pub for lunch and two hours back with a brief stop for an ice cream.  Gwyn loved gliding along the canal; she didn’t particularly want to steer the boat but just look at the birds and wildlife.

For me, this year, I am glad that the pandemic has meant that the narrowboat is going on trips yet because then I don’t have to think about what we would be missing because it wouldn’t have happened anyway.  I’ll miss those birthday trips.

Scenes of North Wales: Acquired 2019

So how many tea towels of Wales have I still left to Blog about?  Goodness knows, but each one will be ‘dedicated’ to my friend Gwyn, who died a couple of weeks ago, and whose funeral was yesterday.  This tea towel was given to me by Sarah, the woman who has painted, and upcycled, several pieces of furniture for me.  In September, she is going to repaint my Virtual Tea Towel Museum cupboard; she had been about to start in March and what happened?  Lockdown.  It’s something to look forward to.  You see, everyone who has a collection of tea towels, however small, seems to have at least one of Wales.

I have a bucketload of memories of Gwyn but perhaps the clearest is her love of giving presents.  When she was younger, she was enthusiastic, and creative, about the presents she would give at Christmas and for birthdays (although I know it was Pete who did the wrapping).  She always used to buy in ‘themes’.  If the theme was cats there would be one main present and then a number of smaller presents, all about cats.  My Christmas present, the year I retired, was about ‘Islands’ since one of the things I wanted to do when I retired was to travel to all the islands around the coast of Britain.  Her presents, almost always, included a tea towel and even those fitted in with the theme.  As her health deteriorated, and she was tied up (probably literally) with chemo, Amazon and the internet more generally was a ‘life-saver’, a way that she could continue her present-giving.

About five years ago, Liz and I decided to hold a ‘Christmas Buffet’ for Gwyn, Pete and a few shared close friends.  We provided the Buffet and Gwyn the fun games.  She gave us the ‘Penguin Game’, a battery-operated HelterSkelter where the penguins run up and down. It comes out every Christmas and will do so for as long as it will work.  At the first Christmas Buffet, Gwyn bought ‘goodie bags’ for everyone, completely unexpected.  It was a joy; and she continued the tradition.  She even managed it when she was in hospital, ordering online and getting Pete to come along and deliver them.  The ‘goodie bags’ were always beautiful Christmas bags, at least Pete didn’t have to wrap all the presents because there were always about six small presents.  One of my favourites was the erasers.  It’s the sort of thing you remember as a child, collecting erasers.  In this period between her death and funeral, we all still talked about Gwyn’s ‘goodie bags’.  We would also play very silly games at the Christmas Buffet, throwing hoops onto a blow-up stag’s head or racing wind-up Santa’s, saved from Christmas crackers.

At the funeral yesterday, where there was just one flower arrangement on the coffin, Pete said to everyone that they could leave with a flower taken from the arrangement.  I thought “Gwyn would like that very much, a bit like a ‘goodie bag’, something to remember the event by”.  There wasn’t any question which flower I would choose.  There was a very bright orange carnation, quite unusual, and I thought that it was exactly the same colour as a very very bright orange trouser suit Gwyn wore to a conference we were jointly organising.  Two things: (a) this was very unlike Gwyn who usually dressed in more muted colours and (b) she didn’t tell me what she was going to wear.  Quite important because I chose a very very bright pink trouser suit, something unusual for me, and we clashed in colours.  Oh, how we clashed and there are photos to prove it.  We swore, that if we were jointly organising an event again, we would tell each other what we were going to wear, to avoid such a faux pas.  We didn’t however. The next conference we organised, we both wore a two-tone, grey striped top, exactly the same, bought in M&S.  Maybe we weren’t the most stylish of dressers but we are talking about 1990, thirty years ago, and the memories are still so clear.  I said to Pete that I was taking the orange carnation in memory of the orange trouser suit and he said “Yes, it is exactly the same colour” and he laughed.

Mwnt: 2020

Yesterday was one of those days.  A good day.  Liz had arranged, some time ago, to meet up with Jai, Roger, Hamish and Lyra at Middleton Top in Derbyshire, in the open.  While she had ‘met up’ with them all via FaceTime, during Lockdown, this was the first time she had seen them ‘in the flesh’.  It was also the first time since March that we had been out anywhere for pleasure; hospital, doctors, podiatrist, Co-op but little else.  This felt Exciting and, just a little bit, scary.  We knew that the Trampers wouldn’t be available, because nowhere had got them out after Lockdown, so it would be a not-very comfortable ride along the trail.

But, joy of joys, they had got the Trampers out.  This was the first time Liz had been self-powered for over nine months.  There was no stopping her.  Since the others were on bikes she could try and keep up, and I plodded on behind.  It was mainly dry, not too warm, a delightful day for a ‘walk’ and a socially-distanced picnic.  We were discussing this first outing and I said that weirdly I would feel safer if I wore a mask but wearing a mask isn’t necessarily an easy thing to do if you are walking any distance.  After a couple of hours I felt it was time to go home; I felt I needed a wash down.

It was lovely to be out, so much so we booked the Tramper for my birthday.  Doesn’t matter what the weather might be, we can always wear waterproofs.  Besides the ice cream that we had, the final piece of good news was this tea towel from Jai’s holiday in Wales.  What a joyous tea towel, the sort that makes you want to go there.  And it is from Wales.  A couple of weeks ago I said that I would use all my Welsh tea towels to include a Blog about my friend Gwyn, who died recently.  So here is another one.

People often talk about the new skills they have developed, or things they have done, during ‘Lockdown’.  I didn’t learn anything new but I did develop a passion for jigsaws.  1000 piece ones but since Gwyn died I just can’t do them.  I can’t concentrate, get involved with them.  One lies on the dining table waiting to be completed but I can’t build up that enthusiasm.  I recently tried to explain this to someone that I know, with little success

“Wasn’t it expected, her death?” She said, like that made it less significant.  I suppose you could say it was expected in that she had had cancer, three different sorts, unconnected, plus what used to be called ‘secondaries’, for more than 15 years.  An operation, chemo (several times), radiotherapy, medication, hospital admissions but she was a fighter.  From the beginning, she said she would take whatever was offered and she did.  She rode through the side effects of treatment but she never gave up.   This was not a good time, in a pandemic, to have cancer; she was fearful of getting Coronavirus and although, during Lockdown, she went into hospital three times she didn’t catch it, although at her most vulnerable.

I have thought a lot about what I was going to wear at her funeral, in the open air.  I still have no idea except that it will be black because black is my favourite colour.  And I will wear a mask, out of respect for Gwyn, who was so frightened of getting COVID-19.  I think it is unlikely that I have it at present but I would never want to think I might be responsible for giving it to someone, if I did have it.  In fact, all over the news today, are the research findings which say that wearing a mask, while outdoors, will greatly reduce the spread of the Coronavirus, so that’s what I’ll do, in memory of Gwyn.

Wales (or Sylvia Pankhurst and The Fidget Spinner): 2017

I’m using up my Wales tea towels if I am writing about my friend Gwyn so any Reader will find the link tenuous.  Sorry.

Coronavirus has definitely brought about new ways of communicating with friends and family.  Whether it is FaceTime, Skype, Zoom or any other fancy devices, I’ve been using them on a regular basis.  It is interesting how different people use them differently; some people prepare the ‘setting’, sit in front of a blank wall and are quite formal.  Not so my friend Fee.  She is much more relaxed, herself.  When ‘the call’ comes, she answers it but continues whatever she is doing.  She is Herself.  Yesterday, she was wiping up; not something I would expect to find her doing.

“Is that a tea towel I see before me?” I ask

“Yes” she says, holding it up from a distance.  “It’s one you gave me”

“What is it?” I ask, trying to decipher it.

“It says ‘Sylvia Pankhurst and the Fidget Spinner’.  Don’t know what that means.”

“Oh, it’s one I did with Gwyn when we designed tea towels.  I’d forgotten that one and certainly haven’t got a picture of it.  Will you take a picture of it and send it to me?  Worth a Blog”

Fee then rummages through her tea towel drawer (or a Drawer of Tea Towels as we say in the world of Collective Nouns).  “You have one with a fox, I remember because you did it as a Guest Tea Towel”.  She finds that one.

“I’ve got a Self Advocacy in Action one”.  She shows me it.  “And these two”.   A Christmas Tree and one about Prosecco. I gave her the Christmas Tree one (because I had two the same).  “But I never use this one” she says holding up one with a picture of herself on it.  I had created that from a photograph.  “I can’t use one with a picture of me on it”

Having gone through her tea towel drawer (there were no more), we started an ordinary conversation.  When we had said good-bye, I began another journey down the ‘Rabbit Warren’.  I remembered the ‘Craft Days’ Gwyn, Pete, Liz and I spent together in her lounge.  There were the solar light bulbs that we painted.  I loved doing that.  My light bulbs are in the garden, hanging from the ‘prongs’ of a broken TV aerial.  It sits as some kind of artistic installation in front of the beech hedge.  Gwyn thought this was amusing; I now see it as something to remember Gwyn by.

After the light bulbs, we decorated Tote Bags.  They were an excellent way of ‘gift wrapping’ Christmas Presents and finally, at my suggestion, we did tea towels, several sessions of tea towel creating.  I thought I had photographed all the tea towels that we all did but clearly ‘Sylvia Pankhurst and the Fidget Spinner’ was one I missed.  Between us, we must have done nearly 40, all so different.  Pete’s were very detailed and artistic and he only managed a couple: Locomotives, Kingfisher.  Gwyn’s were all about animals: Hippos, Owls, Cats, Hares.  Liz’s tended to be multicoloured, multicoloured cats and dinosaurs.  Me, I produced in colourful profusion.  No theme to mine, starfish, elk, fishes, fidget spinners.   But I am sure there was a meaning to ‘Sylvia Pankhurst and the Fidget Spinner’ but I can’t remember what it was.

I checked all my albums of photos to find our creativity sessions, and I did find them.  But more significantly, I found loads of photos of Gwyn, all looking happy and all in a different T Shirt.  This took me back to the conversation with Pete a few days ago about her T Shirts. Today I sent him a text; “I’ve been down yet another Rabbit Warren.  Exactly how many T Shirts did Gwyn have?  I must have photos, hundreds of them and she’s never in the same one.  This could be a Blog!”

The question is: how many T Shirts does one woman need?  The answer has to be: as many as she wanted!  And Fee sent me the picture of ‘Sylvia Pankhurst and the Fidget Spinner’!!

Let’s Go Round Again: Acquired 2020

That period between death and the funeral is a strange time, limbo (as the Nuns at the convent I attended would say).  It is probably good that this time of ‘limbo’ is quite long; it gives you time to get your thoughts and feelings straight.  This time, waiting for Gwyn’s funeral, is even odder.  I have no idea what a socially distanced funeral will be like, dressed in masks, no hugging, no sharing of tears (if possible), no singing.  It’s not what I want to think about.  Under normal circumstances I can imagine that there would be a large number of people.  Although this is an outdoor funeral, the guidance on numbers is very confused.  Is it 30?  Is it as many as you like as long as it can be socially distanced?  Will people be scared of coming, especially since it is near, but not in, Leicester?

For just over five years, I have been Blogging about tea towels.  They have been a way of sharing memories, the good, the bad and the sad times and taking my mind off difficult times.  I’ve Blogged throughout the Pandemic; I’ve enabled other people to Blog through the Pandemic; I’ve shared my tea towels and now I’ve ground to a halt.  I have used Twitter to ask people to share pictures of their tea towels, especially Calendar Tea Towels.  It has brought me a number of pictures and a great deal of joy.

Yesterday, @birchanger sent me this picture with a note saying “Bought on a charity trip on an HST last December”.  A real joy.  How kind to send me the image.  What a great tea towel.  What is special about this gesture is that @birchanger joined Twitter in February 2010, has only 60 followers and since March has only made 4 Tweets (not including Retweets), yet he took the time to (a) remember my request for full-frontal tea towel photos (b) take a good clear photo of his tea towel and (c) send it to me.

In exchange, I have gone down the ‘Rabbit Warren’ of High Speed Trains, watching the slide shows from the ‘retirement trips’ in December 2019, learning about the new Azuma trains which will replace the HST 125 and are 90% more environmentally-friendly.  This ‘Rabbit Warren’ took me down the path to finding out that the profits from HST Retirement Tours, and all the merchandise (like this tea towel), went to CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) and the Samaritans.  Suicide is the biggest killer of men under 45 in the UK, with at least 18 deaths a day.  Suicide is, of course, a big issue that affects the train service since suicide on rail lines is a regular occurrence, affecting the person themselves, their family and the staff who might be driving the train or finding the body.

So thank you @birchanger for taking the time to send me the picture and giving me the opportunity to go down yet another ‘Rabbit Warren’, aptly named by my mate Nick who also can be distracted by YouTube or the World of Google.  I have had the opportunity to learn about CALM, an organisation I had never heard of.   Got any more interesting tea towels that you might share with me?

Birds of the Welsh Countryside: Acquired 2018

Another Welsh Tea Towel which means another Blog about my friend Gwyn which means another tea towel given to me by Susan’s mother.  Susan was my Reflexologist when I lived in Leicestershire.

My advice to anyone, in my position, is never to look through your photograph albums.  It can be very painful but it’s also another ‘Rabbit Warren’ that you can disappear down, only to re-emerge several hours later.  Ask me the first three memories of Gwyn that come to mind and Bonfire Night would not be one of them.  It’s not that we didn’t spend many many many Bonfire Nights together but, let’s face it, it’s always the same: bit of a Bonfire, a few fireworks and some tomato soup (Heinz, of course).  It’s always on the same night, maybe a day either side if we were working.  So why did I take so many photos of Bonfire Night‽ (That deserved an interrobang).  Bonfire Night is always in the dark, quite often a cold night, maybe even raining and there is so much smoke around.  Bloody awful photographs, certainly not going to win Photographer of the Year.

But actually I was wrong (not about the quality of the photos).  Gwyn loved Bonfire Night.  She would often celebrate with us but maybe also go to an ‘organised’ do as well.  The photos tell another story; it wasn’t always the same.  There was the year, early in our friendship, where John (Gwyn’s brother) came.  Three men lighting fireworks while Gwyn and I sat on deck chairs drinking wine.  There was the year when John (my husband) and I actually made a fully dressed, life-size Guy Fawkes.  It took ages, used up quite a lot of old clothing.  Why does a Guy Fawkes come with underpants and a vest under his jeans, shirt, jumper and overcoat?  There was the evening with Fee who also wanted to light fireworks.  Actually I’ve just realised that neither Gwyn or I ever lit a firework in all the years we celebrated Bonfire Night.  All the photos are about Gwyn and I sitting down amongst clouds of smoke, watching other people do the work and either drinking wine or tea.  There was the one with a small BBQ, two actually, one with vegetarian sausages and one with real ones.  There was the one with the Swedish Candle and you could certainly not see a thing because of the clouds of smoke, except for my striped jumper which I seem to have worn several years running.  There was the year when Gwyn hadn’t been very well so we just stuck to a few sparklers on the patio and tomato soup indoors.

Thinking about it, we could always be ‘creative’, making adjustments for her health over the last 17 years.  Gwyn always brought the sparklers, always way too many but enough to save to use to celebrate New Years Eve.  I always kept them in the kitchen drawer.  I’ve just been to have a look and there are none there; I thought there would be.  Damn!!

Bonfire Night certainly won’t be the same this year but then nothing will be.

Myths and Legends of Wales: Acquired 2018

I have always had a lot of Welsh tea towels, partly because I, personally, started collecting tea towels when I was at university in Wales.  Wales must be very popular for tea towels because in all the collections, large and small, that I inherited there have been Welsh Tea Towels.  Welsh Tea Towels are often very traditional or have Welsh Harpists or recipes.

When my friend Gwyn died, a couple of weeks ago, I decided that I would write about her in ‘themes’, each time using a different Welsh Tea Towel that I hadn’t already blogged about.  Today’s ‘Myths and Legends of Wales’ belonged to Susan’s mother.  She was clearing out a cupboard and found some tea towels that she no longer wanted, and gave them to me.

It occurred to me, yesterday, that Gwyn, Pete, Liz and I had been playing Mah Jongg, on a regular basis, since 2013.  Mah Jongg is a game for four players and we are now only three.  My last game of Mah Jongg with Gwyn was on 13 March 2020.  So how did this all start?  Don’t tell me you haven’t read the Tea Towel Blog of 15 April 2016 called ‘Mine is Playing Mahjong’‽   I’ll remind you.

I have always, for 41 years, met up with Gwyn and Pete on a regular basis.  It may have been a day out, sharing a meal, celebrating one of our birthdays, playing games, seeing the New Year in (until we all became too old to stay up that late and therefore celebrated New Years Day).  Board games has been a regular theme.  My New Years Resolution for 2013 was that it should be the ‘Year of the GamesFest’ when we would systematically play every board game, or similar, that any of us owned.  We would evaluate the games in terms of (a) ease of understanding (b) length of the game (c) enjoyment (d) interest.  Gwyn kept a special notebook and recorded all our comments.  It’s a good job she did because none of us would have remembered what we thought the following week.  My resolution included getting rid, to a Charity Shop, of any of my games that were boring; I don’t think Gwyn included that in GamesFest.  Gwyn was also in charge of the Rules.  She read the Rules, understood the Rules and made sure we all kept to the Rules.  If we ever got a new game then she was in charge of deciphering the Rules.

My favourite was ‘Catattack’.  I loved the ruthless nature of the game (everyone else hated it because they thought I was just too ruthless).  Liz liked Banangrams; she likes word games and is very good at them.  Pete liked Jenga and he was the only one of us that was any good at it; he has a Jenga sort of brain.  Gwyn liked ‘Bomb’; it was a creative word game, only she understood the Rules and it has a timer, Gwyn always liked having a timer.  We all loved Pictionary, a joyous game.  Having reread my 2016 Blog, I noted that we played ‘Baker Street’: what the hell was that?  I have absolutely no memory of it.  After about six months of playing GamesFest, I began to think about Mah Jongg (however you might spell it).  I thought I’d really like to play Mah Jongg.  None of us had a set.  Liz gave me a beautiful set for my birthday.  We were all mesmerised by the beauty of the tiles, the sound of the ‘clack’ of those tiles and the brief case that it came in.  We didn’t play the first time, just admired the tiles but since Autumn 2013, it was Mah Jongg all the way.  AND Gwyn and Pete bought me a Mahjong Tea Towel.

Gwyn took away the Rule Book, studied it and explained to us the Rules.  As Keeper of the Rule Book, she chose which version we played, for 7 years.  She always could correct us if we got lost in the mire of Chinese Rules.

But there was also a routine, a ritual to a day of Mah Jongg.  It started with a cup of tea, loose leaf although Pete always spoils his by adding COLD WATER.  There was a bit of a chat, couple of games of Mah Jongg followed by soup.  Gwyn has always enjoyed homemade soup, regardless of the weather.  A few more games of Mah Jongg, a cake or ice cream or some sort of pudding.  Gwyn is holder of the Rule Book and I score.

The first Score Book started on 3 November 2013 (although we had been playing before that, using scraps of paper to score on).  The book was made of Banana Fibre and a present from Gwyn and Pete.  The second Scoring Book (having filled the first one) started on 16 October 2015, with a cover made from recycled car tyres.  Obviously I still have them, both plus all the scraps of paper.  Over the years, the four of us played 1082 games that were scored plus 13 games that ended with no score.  There were 26 additional games where only three of us played (so Gwyn did find Rules for just three players).  Once we finished playing that day, I would write down who would start the next game.  As time went by I added comments “Pete will be East in East and this has to be written down as ‘our brains are sieve-like’ says Liz”.  Sums it up really!!!  I’m not sure what “Gwyn is East in East with disappointing hands.  Liz has an arm” meant.  The comments reflected both what we were going to eat and the state of our health: “Barbara is East in West and we had a soup with a kick which was good and are waiting for a crumble” or “Liz is East in West and Gwyn is smiling because she got a high score but it could have been higher if a White Dragon had come up”.  The last comment, from 13 March 2020, said “Gwyn decided to finish and is East in East and balancing”. What did that mean‽  I think we always assumed that we would remember what all the cryptic comments meant.  Surely, we weren’t that stupid‽

It is strange, sitting at my desk, counting how many games of Mah Jongg we played, reading the comments; it is like a very weird Diary, or memoir, and now I know that (a) I will never throw those books away and (b) that you can play Mah Jongg with three people, Gwyn showed us how, maybe Liz, Pete and I will play one day, once again.  If I ever find the photo of us all playing Mah Jongg I will add it to this Blog!!

The Rabbit Warren: Acquired 2020

“I read your Blog yesterday.  How do you remember all that stuff?  I’d completely forgotten about Gwyn and I looking after your mother.  When was it?” Pete said when he arrived for lunch “What prompted you to write that?”

That was easy.  “1989.  My friend Nick, who lives in Canada, described it as ‘following a rabbit warren’.  Something I often do on YouTube.  Trains of thought run into each other and you forget how you started.  You remember I wrote about looking after each other’s cats?  Follows from there, sprang to my mind.  Even I had forgotten it!”.

“I was following a Rabbit Warren the other day” said Pete.  “Gwyn and I had to have our wedding rings expanded a number of years ago, when our knuckles had expanded.  Gwyn was having to remove her ring so many times, with all the scans she had; we were afraid it would need cutting off one day.  The jeweller made a great job of it, you couldn’t see the join.  Having had it adjusted to fit, then Gwyn lost a lot of weight and it became too loose.  We both took them off and she said she would keep them safe”

“I don’t remember any of that story” I said.  “Can’t say that I’d noticed that neither of you wore wedding rings”

“That’s where my Rabbit Warren began.  It’s all very well keeping it safe but she didn’t tell me where that safe place might be.  Then I needed to find them, got completely distracted.  Where would she keep them?  After looking in all the obvious places I tried her handbag.  Not sure why.  In the end, I found it in a secret pocket, within the handbag.”

Liz says “You mean you have been carrying them around all that time you’ve had to carry her handbag, several years?”

“I suppose so”

“That’s one of the reasons her handbag was so heavy” Liz adds

For a long time, we talked about the weight of Gwyn’s handbag, one of the things I will always remember about her.  I decided that the Tea Towel of Today would be the ‘Red Rabbit’ that belonged to Jean, that I acquired in 2015.

And here’s another ‘Rabbit Warren’, I couldn’t find it amongst all my tea towel photographs (probably because the rabbit is so small).  In the process of this hunt, which eventually took more than an hour, I came across so many photos of Gwyn.  I nearly changed the Blog.  I must have a photo of Gwyn, at nearly every Christmas since 1980!!!  And every birthday, and playing Mah Jongg and at Bonfire Night, not that you could see much, because of all the smoke from the bonfire.  Photos on steam trains, photos at Afternoon Tea at Claridges, photos of Firework Displays, photos in Paris.  Over the years we ate a lot because I have so many pictures of meals!  The one thing I don’t have is any pictures on, or by, the beach.  I can’t remember going to the beach with Gwyn.  Did I go to the beach with her?  I can feel another Rabbit Warren coming on.

I can also feel many more Blogs coming on!