Things have been quite busy of late, what with the Northern lights extending over much of the UK, a brush with some scammers and the joys of life.
I don’t know about you but last week was the first time I had seen the Northern lights. We had areas of reds and greens drifting across the sky in a remarkably subtle way. There were no vivid swirling patterns lighting up the sky; moreover it was quite subtle but still definitely worth seeing.
A part of me wanted to walk out into the fields where the heavenly displays would be clearer still. Alas it wasn’t quite the right time to do that, so next time I will hopefully be a little more prepared. This could involve dusting off my hefty wooden tripod and sorting out the correct camera settings (always helps!).
All of this coincided with my mother coming to stay for a few days and this is why I’ve not posted anything for a while. She has quite a tendency to recount stories from the past, mostly her childhood and being evacuated out of London to avoid the bombings (as she grew up in WW2). She has had more than her fair share of tragedies and we have often heard these being recounted, again and again.
My cunning plan has been to ask my mother to write some of these down for posterity but I came to realise that wasn’t going to happen. So instead I used the voice memo app on my phone and I now have some recordings of her.
After a slightly hesitant start, she got into the swing of things and explained what life was like in Mitcham, south London in the 1930s. Her family lived in a very average house in a very average road. Only one person had a car in their road and because they knew this person, they felt quite important. She had her parents, an older brother and a younger sister.
Her father was an optician and worked in Tottenham Court Road, central London. He was a conscientious objector and therefore was required to use his professional skills to make all kinds of optical devices for the war effort – gun sights, periscopes etc.
When war broke out, it was initially known as a phoney war, as nothing much seemed to happen. They even went on holiday to Hastings but then found, as things were heating up, children weren’t allowed back into London and therefore my mother had to start her schooling in Hastings. After a while they were evacuated to Somerset and that’s where she has stayed since.
Initially my mother was in a children’s hostel, hastily cobbled together by the powers-at-be in the seaside town. Her mother returned to London supposedly to look after their house and garden, while her father was at work in the usual way. Unbeknown to my mother, her father had become ill, was admitted to hospital and died. The first my mother knew was when her mother came to visit – dressed in black and didn’t explain why. My mother had nevertheless put two and two together, realising her father must have died. She didn’t say anything to anyone, she kept it to herself as she didn’t want to upset her little sister.
This has stayed with my mother ever since. She has never really got over that grief which came her way as a young girl. At least through capturing these stories as voice recordings I can preserve them. Surely all families have these stories which get handed down from generation to generation, sometimes lost or forgotten, sometimes with stories losing some of the accuracy. Nonetheless, capturing this history does seem quite important.
And the scammers
Life trundles on nicely. Then out of the blue I am reminded of those ne’er-do-well characters. Firstly there are the usual phone calls with an obvious pause before you hear anything. Then you hear an office background and an Asian voice introducing himself as Stephen, or William or some other English sounding name.
Would we like new loft insulation? How about cavity wall insulation? Well that of course could lead to an interesting conversation through saying the house is several hundred years old (long before cavity walls were constructed) and stringing him along before he realised he was being taken advantage of and slammed the phone down on me!
Next was the amazing number of people supposedly interested in buying something I advertised on Facebook Market Place. Suddenly everyone is wanting to buy but so busy at work, so many offering to send a courier and needing my bank account details (not a chance).
When I say “people” I wouldn’t be surprised if they were bots or some kind of computer program trying it on. It is all so time consuming having to read all of this useless garbage and I hope I can tell the difference when a real person pops up.
Eventually a real person did pop up and came to see what I had up for sale. He brought the right amount of cash and only half-heartedly tried to beat the price down. I figured that if someone drives up from London in a very expensive car, they can afford the asking price and so the deal was done.
So a funny ol’ week after all. Scammers, the Northern lights and some heartwarming tales from my mother. All’s well for us here in the Quirky Museum.