Author Archives: pictishwoman

The magnificent motmot

Posted on by under adventure, humour, wildlife

 

Was it the effect of two hours lolling in a hot spring under the stars the previous night? Tessa and I packed slowly, retrieving our (still slightly wet) socks and knickers off the deck and getting the cleaners to show us how they do that clever towel folding thing.

“Dos huevos flip side over por favor may I take your picture?” The egg chef (there is always an egg chef in Costa Rica) sizzled in some oil.

“You all packed?” asked Tessa as I joined her with my breakfast.

“Mm, mostly” I took another slice of toast and drizzled on some honey.

“That’s not our minivan is it?” said Tessa.

“What? Can’t be. It’s not due till 8.55?”

“7.55” said Tessa “thought you were unusually chilled.”

“Aargh.” We scrambled to get our luggage. “Shit, where’s my passport, I had it last night?”

“My phone, where’s my phone” said Tessa.

I can’t bear to rush. My friend Caroline is the same, leading to a tendency to arrive hours before a film starts and sitting through interminable adverts and the scary ones that remind you you forgot to lock up properly.  Tessa is much better at a flying start.  Jose the driver was patient, the missing items were found, and we joined two French pharmacists (does that sound like a song to you?) in the van. The road wound and climbed up tangled string roads towards the mountainous centre of the country rocking us side to side and dipping us up and down. Torment for Tessa, sucking another ginger sweet and concentrating hard on not being sick. But we were on our way to the mysterious cloud forest.

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We arrived at Cala Lodge Monteverde shaken and stirred but once again thrilled with our accommodation. Built 20 years ago by its ornithologist owner the hotel is on the edge of town, surrounded by forest with pretty flowered gardens and mini nature walks. Two lovely Blue-Grey Tanagers gorged themselves, on the table by the open sided restaurant until the more dominant, cackling grackles deposed them. We hauled our suitcases up the two stories to our room which had the feel of a trees house with sunny balcony overlooking a magnificent view.

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Motmot

Tessa asked the receptionist if the Quaker School was anywhere nearby. A lifelong Quaker herself she is now a governor at her old school, Sidcot in Somerset. It’s part of what makes Tessa Tessa. A compassionate person, ever happy to read the best into a person. When she discovered there was a Friends school in Monteverde she emailed to see if there might be a chance to visit. It didn’t look very hopeful.  There had been recent flooding and landslip, and the address minimal. We weren’t sure how far it was, or how big Monteverde was, or if there would be time in our schedule to visit. Experiencing how advanced the Costa Ricans are in conservation and sustainability we suspected the strong Quaker presence might have had a great deal to do with it.  They even got rid of their army.  On December 1st 1948 President José Figueres Ferrer gave them their final marching orders. In a ceremony in the Cuartel Bellavista, Figueres broke a wall with a mallet symbolizing an end to Costa Rica’s military spirit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Forces_of_Costa_Rica

“One hour walk up the road” said the receptionist “or you could take a bus or a taxi”.

“And Curi Cancha? Is that nearby?”

“It’s right by the school” said the receptionist “you can see it from your balcony.”

Now Curi Cancha was my number one wish. I’d spotted a short paragraph about it in the Lonely Planet Guide described it thus: “Bordering Monteverde but without the crowds, this lovely private reserve on the banks of the Rio Cuecha is popular among birders…with a hummingbird garden and view of the continental divide.” I’d managed to arrange a private visit with Darlene from Monteverde Travel, after a long, and sometimes confusing, exchange of emails, for just the two of us with our own guide. It wasn’t cheap (around £46 each) but understanding that there was a chance of seeing abundant wildlife there I couldn’t bear to miss it. It took some juggling but we’d managed to wangle it into the itinerary. It wasn’t ideal to go in an afternoon, but it was worth a try as that was our only chance. I’m not exactly a birder (memories of freezing afternoons in February on the edge of sewage farms on the outskirts of London with my birder first husband had done for that years ago) but it is creeping up on me.

Discarding boots for sandals we slathered on sun cream and set out along the dusty road to look for the school, hardly able to contain excitement at our luck.

“Look at that, a little pastry shop.” Two women in floaty skirts and Birkenstocks passed us “just like Stroud,” I said “we’ve even got the right footwear.” Further along we saw  large wooden round house that looked like it had a Rudolph Steiner stamp. A couple of dread-locked hippies carrying yoga mats opened the door and went in.  Further up the road we came across where the landslip had scoured it’s way down the hillside taking half a row of houses with it. It was a long hot slog, broken with a visit to the women’s co-op shop, initiated by the school to help local women earn money from creative projects. The receptionist said everyone liked the school, and she often went there just to sit quietly.  We loaded up on more gifts, very happy to support the project.

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Women’s co-op Monteverde
Tessa and Headmistress of the Friends School Monteverde

We found the school eventually, passing a sign to Curi Cancha just before it. While I sat quietly in the meeting room Tessa found the headmistress and had a rewarding hour swapping information and hopefully sowing the seeds for a future link between Monteverde Friends school and Sidcot. I joined them in a tour of the classrooms, thinking how lucky some kids were to have access to this sort of education only wishing it was available to all kids.  On the way back we stopped off at Jiminez’s cafe for a claggy guava jam bun with fake cream and chocolate on top. I had no idea Tessa had such a sweet tooth.

The receptionist at Cala had persuaded us to take a night hike. Tiptoeing around the forest in groups of ten or so we shone our torches into the forest searching for animals, in the undergrowth and up in the trees. Well, most of us did. I for one was very relieved when a woman ticked off her American husband for speaking too loudly and shining his torch in other people’s faces. We drew the short straw with our guide Maurice, who seemed only to find things previous guides had scouted out, but I suppose everyone has to start somewhere.

DSC01099Just after we’d slithered down a muddy bank one by one to cautiously admire a fluorescent green side-striped pit viper, Maurice was alerted to a sleeping rainbow toucan, it’s improbable beak tucked under it’s wing, high up in a tree.  To be honest it was  pretty much a blob with a bit of yellow and orange showing, but a toucan nevertheless.  I could finally say I’d been to Costa Rica and seen a toucan.

Maurice moved us on along. “Look up there” he directed his red pointer light at a fine branch with a tiny nest danging precariously from the end. It had what looked at first like a sharp needle sticking out of the top. “Humming bird sleeping” he said “when there is no sunlight they are just grey, the colour only comes from the light, it’s a grey bird.”  That was quite a thought. I found a Jay’s feather once, and was astonished to learn the same thing about the tiny blue and white striped feathers on its wings that are so distinctive. There was the grey bird blending in nicely, snoozing away but, because of the delicate branch, unlikely to be disturbed by that viper. Nearby two very spotted white chested thrushes cuddled up closer when our searchlights found them.

As the hike ended, and the different groups merged one of the guides spotted a sloth. A sloth in action. At a tortuous pace it was picking its way down to the ground from its tree top home for its weekly shit.  Fortunately for us it was almost down – or we’d have been there all night waiting. Poor creature.  Possibly it was not thrilled to have such a large audience for what most of us prefer to be a private act. (There was more on the sloth in journey to the top right of )

Dripping wet, we stopped by for dinner at Don Lucia restaurant.  Their aubergine parmigiana, melty soft, was as perfect as ever I’ve tasted. We walked back to the lodge well fed, fairly content with what we’d seen (but not with the $25 fee we each paid for the hike) and on the way back I narrowly escaped being eaten by a crocodile.

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Journey to the steaming bit in the middle

Posted on by under adventure, humour, travel, wildlife

A fiery love affair

Not everyone followed advice on dressing appropriately for a jungle. As we sped away from Tortuguero, churning up the canal, a delightful Argentine woman, clearly comfortable in her own skin and very little else, had chosen what looked like baby-doll nightie (remember those?) and bikini ensemble.

 

“Spider monkeys” called out Oliver and the captain slowed the boat and turned it sideways and back, like a pointing bee, so everyone could get a view.  I watched them closely, grateful for my ex-husband (a retired nature reserve warden) advising on which binoculars to buy.  Binoculars, which by then were practically welded to my chest, because at any moment, who knows, I might see a tapir, or a toucan? The spider monkeys reminded me of a sticky stretchy thing the kids had when they were little that would slowly climb down the walls (leaving greasy slicks that never came out).

The drive to La Fortuna, where I could continue my love affair with volcanoes, rewarded us with glorious views of little houses painted in a pallet rarely dared in the UK.  Tessa spent the journey snapping away, consequently making herself thoroughly sick.  She offered me a ginger sweet and I learnt that she is best left to close her eyes and get through it without me fussing over her. We arrived at La Fortuna around lunch time, and were dropped off at Montechiari Lodges, tucked on the outskirts of town.

“Oh my God, she’s done it again,” we exclaimed “look what Paula’s found us and it’s hot. The view of the Arenal Volcano, one of the only 5 active perfectly pointy ones in the world, was framed by the lodges. We rushed to shed our stuff and take pictures – completely unaware at the time how lucky we were. Some people, we discovered, visit La Fortuna and need to be convinced there is actually a volcano there.

This was the place to go shopping our friend Amanda had said, and where I discovered we both like to shop. With gifts to buy, we quickly hung out our socks, umbrellas and shirts (on Tessa’s part who had exchanged trying to dry clothes in a soggy climate for a lighter suitcase). Our toes welcomed the relief from entrapment in walking boots into flip flops. La Fortuna is a pretty little town arranged around a square with restaurants, gift shops and upmarket chocolatier.  We baulked at paying $8 for a slim bar and opted for one small coffee chocolate each.  we bought real dried bananas in the health food shop, the like of which hasn’t appeared in the UK for a few years now since a hurricane.  Quite unlike the crispy banana discs you find in muesli and trail mix, these were about 6 inches long, slim and gooey. A treat in my lunch boxes as a child, along with honey and ground hazelnut sandwiches, they marked me out at school in the 1950s as a totally weird vegetarian. I didn’t care, I loved them. My own children loved them too, though I suspect they were often swapped for crisps.

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Tessa in pizza cafe La Fortuna

Encouraged by an American woman, a regular visitor to Arenal with groups of students, we had supper that night in the local pizza restaurant.

“If you like birds” she said “get up at dawn.  They feed them near the restaurant, it’s amazing. Go watch.”

The pizza was, well, a pizza. Conversation was drowned out however by her students, off the leash from home and away from teach, and football on an overhead screen.

At 6am I quickly dressed and tiptoed out so as not to disturb Tessa.  Taking my place, by the bird tables I waited, aware that I was not the only one: the bushes stirred.  Just after 6 the bananas arrived and slowly at first, then in a rainbow flurry, the birds began to arrive led by chattering orange chinned parakeets.  A mere 4 or 5 feet distant I watched as they were joined by a yellow crowned euphonia, scarlet thighed dancnis and scarlet rumped tanager. It must be what tripping is like. I shared a picture with my cat sitter back home in Gloucestershire. She returned a picture of mine with a squirrel on it.

“Look” said Tessa “that tree is covered in iguanas.” We tried to get pictures, but they were too high up for anything really satisfactory.  We crossed over to the office to wait for the mini van for our next expedition, dressed in swimming costumes, shorts and skirt ready for a trip to the hot springs.

“Oh my god, look behind you, don’t move.”

Right beside the bench, keeping a close eye on us, but also not moving except for a that following eye, sat an iguana, more than a meter long head to tale, with claws you really wouldn’t want to mess with. What a poser.

We thought we were just going to the hot springs. Once again though, through lack of properly checking, we had failed to realise there was a scheduled hike up the volcano first.

“We are going to the dark side’ said Gabriel our guide, “the one where the lava flowed down, not the one you see now.  The last eruption was in 1968, 120 people died, mainly women and children who were at home on the slopes; the men were out at work. It erupted from the top, keeping its perfect cone shape. Most people died from the gas, like Pompeii, slowly, hiding in their houses.  Only 87 bodies were found.  The rest were probably buried under huge lava bombs the size of our minivan.”

“Will we go to the top?” I asked, ever keen to see a bubbling cauldron waiting to blow.

“Too dangerous” said Gabriel “tourists not allowed.”

“Do toucans live up here?” I asked Gabriel.

“Yes, they do, I think I hear one” we scanned the trees “but maybe not see one. Toucans like cool weather. This is a bit hot for them.”

We cursed that we were in sweaty bathers, unprepared for a hike. We passed a lake covered in green algae, and watched a wattled jacana pick its way carefully over the scum with those huge blue feet. As we crunched up the solidified lava flow, now regenerated with trees and bushes,  I was constantly aware of this fact, that in we were trespassing on a graveyard, that some of the bigger clods of lava were grave boulders on top of the  missing.  I wondered how people can live so close to volcanos?  How do they sleep at night?  I remembered the rumbles of Mount Merape in Java, the massive ejections of lava from the top the size of my house, every 10-15 minutes. The noise they made of cracking and banging as they cooled and solidified tumbling down the cinder slopes. We were thoughtful as we picked our way carefully down, and delighted and grateful by the sight that met us when we rejoined our driver.

“For you” he beamed.

“But for you too” we insisted.

 

Ecotherminales was our next surprise – quite unlike the hot springs I’d enjoyed in Thailand which were what you could call truly natural and rustic.  Ecotherminales was more like a smart spa, subtly lit, with a series of very posh springs, with graded pools from comfortably bearable to ‘would you really want to do that to yourself?’

Men with Kindles held aloft lounged reading in the comfortably warm lowest pool.  We lolled about and swam around for a bit, lay on our backs and watched the stars come out, swam to the waterfall and gave our shoulders a thumping massage.  There was a surprise for us in the next pool, the cocktail bar pool ,filled with American students intent on getting wrecked.  I indulged in a cocktail. This is the life, I was thinking…when I saw two familiar faces.

“Hi ” I said “remember us?”  The Argentine woman and her husband floated past. The woman looked puzzled…but then with wet hair only she could look distinctive.

“The boat,” I said “Tortuguero?”

It went on like this for a bit and Tessa and I floated off to another corner. Then “Ah si,”pura vida” said her husband saying something to his wife in Spanish. Her face lit up.

“I’ll try my Spanish” I said to Tessa.  My understanding is definitely better than speaking. I learnt that she was a belly dance and salsa teacher (of course she was, what else?).

“Tessa and I met at belly dance classes” I attempted in Spanish, already out of my depth, but gestures help a lot.  Then, and I still don’t know why I said it, but maybe it was because he said he was a vet and they had 6 dogs and would understand the pain of losing a pet, I launched into what I thought was “my cat died just before we left, it was a shock.”  Actually I don’t know what I said but surely morte is dead?  And gatto is cat?  But as I was duel learning Spanish and Italian at the beginning I may have got in a bit of a muddle.  I tried again. They still looked blank.

“At least you tried” said Tessa “and you understood what they said.  Well done.

We showered and dressed in the changing rooms to the accompaniment of one of the American girls kneeling on the floor of one of the loos vomiting loudly. The friend who’d been holding back her hair said “it’s time to go in to dinner, do you want any?” What was she thinking?

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Journey to the skinny bit in the middle.

Posted on by under adventure, humour, memoir, wildlife

Costa Rican Mafia and polyamory in the swamp

Type in something http://www.rickshawtravel.co.uk

Cute aren’t they? The White-Faced Capuchin monkey, as gorgeous to look at as a decorated cup of the brew it’s named after, as well as the hooded friars, is also known as the Costa Rican Mafia.  It didn’t take us long to go from ‘oo, wouldn’t it be amazing to see a Capuchin to ‘oh my god, it’s trying to steal the sugar.’ Sadly, where they are around easy pickings (i.e. tourists) they’ve developed a sugar addiction, making them relatively easy to snap, but a nightmare for restaurant staff. They are also extremely clever.  We were told about two beach capuchins putting on a bit of a show dancing for a charmed tourist, while their accomplice unzipped his backpack and necked a bottle of coke.

We arrived in Tortuguero well in time for lunch and, such was our lack of checking, had the unexpected delight of finding two tours were included as well as the canoe trip at dawn the next day. As we waited to go into the dining hall capuchins did their best to cement their reputation. Someone thought they saw a toucan, we missed it, only catching the post-seeing-a-toucan excitement.

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Oliver gathered us together at the dock to take us by boat down the canal for a jungle hike. Some guides, you can tell immediately, get it – have a passion for the environment, oodles of experience and are full of knowledge.  As soon as I heard him imitate the call of the rare Trogon, I knew we were in the hands of an expert. I used to help my ex (a warden with the RSPB) with bird surveys and that’s how you do it, especially in the UK where most of them are LBJs (little brown jobs). It worked.  Soon a pair of Trogons answered his call and came to check out the competition.  For those that are curious they were either Orange Bellied (4, below) or Elegant (No.7 below) close relatives of the iconic, extravagantly tailed Quetzal.  I have a particular interest in seeing a Quetzal because for years their truly crazy call startled my friends when I used it as a ringtone on my mobile.  The trogon however has a soft 5 or 6 descending note call.IMG_0091

Our little group walked quietly along the concrete path through the jungle – concrete because a law was passed a couple of years ago in Costa Rica to make everywhere accessible to wheelchairs. Whilst it might take something from the experience of adventuring in the jungle, it actually protects tourists from it in many ways and the rainforest from them. “Don’t touch anything, or lean on a tree without checking first” said Oliver “there are snakes, insects, and some plants have savage spikes, same are  poisonous. Be careful.” A row of leaf cutter ants flagged up a warning on the handrail.

One woman complained it was too dark to take photographs. rain drenched us, but as Oliver pointed out “it’s a RAIN forest”. Swathed in capes and waterproof jackets, binoculars and cameras (the lucky few with long lenses) at the ready, we hoped to see a jaguar slinking by or a tapir sloshing about. How can anyone live in a jungle let alone find time to build fantastic temples?

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The soggy forest floor was lit in places by a tiny fungus like glowing cups of fire; sap from the ‘blood tree’ bled a massacre onto the concrete path. A spiny nut had provided a good bite for a monkey or a possum.

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Blood Tree

I heard the young woman travelling with a woman around 80 years old, call her  ‘Nanny’. I was curious. As we boarded the boat to go back to Evergreen Lodge I asked if she was travelling with her grandmother. She was doing  exactly that, she said, and what’s more, they were having a great time. I was inspired. I resolved to offer to take each of my four grandchildren on a special trip, somewhere they really wanted to go, when they reached 18. How cool would that be? The plan risks it being a bit naff for the youngest of the four, who is only 10, if I’m a bit decrepit by then, but hey, what better incentive to keep fit?

The next trip  to Tortuguero village was an exercise in how to keep jolly in the rain. Easy for a couple of Brits, neither of us moaners.  ‘No such thing as bad weather, only wrong clothes’, we reminded ourselves.  We looked at the ice-cream stalls along the ‘high street’  (mostly a row of tourist shops) but it was hard to work up an enthusiasm for one under our umbrellas. No wonder Tessa and I are good travel companions.  She and I share a passion for hardware shops.   I’ve  visited hardware shops all over the world, and usually find something different to bring home, though I never did have the nerve to fit the squirty loo hose I brought back from Thailand.  (What was I thinking? A hose attached to the loo in a wooden floored upstairs bathroom with four grandchildren?) Sadly Tortuguero hardware shop had little to intrigue, though I regret not getting a picture of the leather machete sheaths hanging in a row.

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We headed for the beach instead, behind the row of shops, famed for the turtles who, in a spectacular event each November, heave themselves ashore in their many thousands to lay their eggs. “Don’t swim” Oliver had warned “there are crocodiles and sharks in the sea.”  A sea, despite being Caribbean, that churned and crashed angrily on the shore. Funnily enough I wasn’t in the least bit tempted.

As night closed in I went for a soggy walk alone along the path from our cabin. Always a good mimic I repeated the Trogon call.  Birds stirred nearby, but they weren’t coming over to play. The night shift was starting, and I stopped to listen to the ringtone frog, the alarm clock frog, the faulty smoke alarm frog and the dripping tap frog. It was another world, and I loved it.

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“Listen” I said to Tessa when I woke next morning “hear that?”

“No, what?”

“That’s it. Nothing. Nada. It’s stopped raining.”

The light was different, it was warmer, and in the far distance we could hear Howler monkeys call.

It couldn’t have been a better omen, for this was the day I’d anticipated for over a year when I saw a picture of my friend Amanda canoeing up a tropical river. It had been the stuff of my dreams for so long I can’t actually remember when it began but it was undoubtedly inspired by a plethora of wildlife documentaries and reading about female explorers.

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We assembled at the jetty at 5.45 a.m. and were introduced to our guide Ray Brown.  We wobbled onto the small rowing boat with a German and Swiss couple, Ray standing at the back doing the paddling.  A black vulture circled overhead. Someone thought they saw a shark fin.

“Possible, said Ray ” there are sharks and crocodiles in the canal here, manatees sometimes.” Ray explained he grew up in Tortuguero village.

“Did you swim in the canal?” I asked him.

“Of course” he said paddling across to the other side, “ask me any questions you like” he said “what do you want to see?”

“I’d love to see a tapir” I said.

“Ah, difficult” said Ray “but I’ll try my best.  They like to graze in the shallows.  They eat Water Hyacinths.  Look Howler Monkey” and he paddled us over to look. “Iguana” he said poking the boat into the canal side. Iguanas, explained Ray, change colour from green to orange, depending on what they eat. It reminded me of an acupuncture patient I had once who’d turned herself bright orange with her serious carrot habit. The iguana we saw was half way there. Ray knew where things hung out, poking the boat into the side canals and lagoons. The cayman’s lair was empty that morning.

Ray Brown
Iguana corner

“What are those ?” The trees on the banks looked from a distance as if someone had thrown tissues up them.  He paddled in close. They were exotic flowers, as big as a head with red stamens and phallic pistle (if I remember my biology right).

“I used to be a Rastafarian,” said Ray “can you believe that? But I had to cut my dreads off to get work.”  He picked a flower to show us close up. “This is what we used it for. Not allowed now, national park.” Tearing up and mushing all the parts of the flower into canal water he mixed it to a pink slime.

“There,” he said pouring it onto his head “makes your hair grow very nicely. Anyone want to try?”

“I will” said Tessa, to my astonishment “come on Mary, you too.” The others in the boat declined while Tessa and I rubbed it into our hair. I can report my hair has grown very fast this last month, though I’m afraid it’d take me till I’m 80 to grow dreads.

As he paddled Ray told us how there were no doctors or clinics in the village.  His father had helped in all the births of his brothers and sisters . Such was his natural skill, he was midwife to all the children in the village.  I wonder if he learned something from the amazing Feminista bird?

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Bobbing on a boat doesn’t necessarily make for great photos, so I share this with you from a bird guide.  The Jacana, with its improbable feet for walking on floating vegetation, has a habit I can’t resist sharing.  Ray said it was known as the ‘Feminista’ bird explaining she took no part in the upbringing of her eggs…but he left out half the story.  She is actually polyandrous, defending a territory of 2 – 4  males at a time. She puts in a bit of effort at the beginning, helping her first male to build a skimpy nest on the floating vegetation. Then she lays him 4 buff coloured eggs, scribbled over with blackish crisscrossing lines (like a very young child might decorate an easter egg).  He incubates them, (without any help from her, carefully tucking his wings under the eggs to insulate them from the damp of the floating nest) while she buggers off to make eggs with her other paramours.  He has even been observed rolling the eggs to safety over the vegetation if a flood threatens the nest.  They hatch after 22-24 days, when he carries them to safety tucked under one wing, like recalcitrant toddlers, legs dangling. ‘The mother may help to guard them’ says the bird guide.

Ray Brown steered us into the side canals, where crocodiles lurk and vegetation brushes the arms of the unwary. Honestly, it was one of the biggest thrills of my life.

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On our last morning in Tortuguero Tessa and I went for a bit of an explore on our own.  Walking to the far end of the lodge “do not eat in the wrong restaurant, stick to the one I direct you to” was clarified. Our pool was a rather sorry affair, even despite the weather it didn’t look at all attractive. The other half however had a luxury pool with bar and loungers.  No doubt the food was an upgrade too. But we were content without the luxury, we agreed we didn’t need clipped lawns and stylish ‘tropical’ planting. Our only regret was we hadn’t had time to take a couple of kayaks into the back canals on our own…but maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

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Journey to top right of the skinny bit in the middle.

Posted on by under adventure, humour, memoir, wildlife

“It looks a bit posh to be our hotel” I said to Tessa.

“It is though, look, ‘Don Carlos'”. We’d arrived at San Jose in the dark, impressed by the exorbitant display of Christmas lights, and cunning ways they’d created Christmas trees, surprised by how big the city was.

“Wow”. We trundled our cases into a 1920s lobby to be greeted warmly by the receptionist in perfect English. Formalities over, he reminded us our bus would leave for Tortuguero at 6.30 in the morning.

“I think it leaves at 5.30” I said. He smiled politely.  “Maybe”.  If there was one thing worrying me about our trip it was the knowledge that Tessa prefers a slow start in the morning. I know better than to call her before 9.30. I do too, but by that I mean back to bed with a cup of green tea, check Facebook, 10 minutes learning Spanish, 15 minutes yoga, 10 minutes trying to meditate, and half an hour breakfasting shouting at John Humphries on the Today programme….How on earth was I going to get her up in time?

I scrutinised the travel programme.  “He’s right, it does leave at 6.30.” Seeing an opportunity to justify 6 months struggling to learn Spanish I took myself off to the desk. Duolingo says I was 50% fluent after all.

“You are absolutely correct,” I said in hesitant Spanish “the bus does leave at 6.30” I beamed when he nodded a yes. “Was that OK ” I asked, ” my Spanish I mean?”  “Perfect” he said, his one eye twinkling.  I burst back into our room “I did it. He understood. My Spanish works.”

“How about I shower first in the morning so you can wake slowly?” Tessa readily agreed.  Too jet lagged to eat, despite our having researched several vegetarian restaurants in San Jose, we turned in at 8 o’clock. I felt guilty at passing up the opportunity to get a flavour of the city, but fell into a dizzy sleep, listening to the Archers on Tessa’s huddle.

“Aargh. Bugger.”

“Everything alright?” asked Tessa when I emerged from the bathroom.

“I forgot. I put loo paper in the pan. Just had to fish it out”

“But I didn’t flush in the night after I peed.”

“Neither did I, but better that than a blocked loo when we need it.”

“Eew,” said Tessa.

“It’s Ok, I washed my hand after.”

This was to become a familiar cry on our trip – Costa Rican plumbing is absolutely fine, as long as you remember to put the paper in the bins provided next to the loo and preferably not mistakenly reuse it like Margot in My family and Other Animals.

Rickshaw had warned us about ‘Tico time’ so our expectations were so relaxed about departure I was startled to find the lobby full of people and luggage at 6am and drivers calling out names and destinations. I hurried back to our room to warn Tessa. She’d been having a bit of a re-pack and the bed was spread with the contents of her suitcase.  “I’ll tell them you’re coming” I said and trundled my shamefully heavy suitcase stuffed with ‘might come in handys’ (50 years of travelling the world has taught me nothing) round to the lobby.

Gallery image of this property

Lobby, Don Carlos Hotel

Gallery image of this property

It’s never a good idea to do a long bus ride on an empty stomach, especially if you get travel sick like Tessa, so I lent her my acupressure wrist bands and we snacked on cashew nuts.  There was only coffee available, which neither of us drink. It was going to feel a long wait till the breakfast stop half way through the 2 hour bus journey.

The mini van called at a smart hotel to pick up more people, then an even smarter one where we were re-shuffled into different coaches.  I watched our cases like a hawk there being some confusion about destinations, which luggage hold, which part of the luggage hold. and which coach they went in. Stomachs grumbling, we set off into traffic in a slow trundle out of the city, tempted by distant views of mountains in cloud.”Look,” I nudged Tessa “rainforest.”

“It’s so green,” she said “just like England. We could be in the Slad Valley.”

“It’s meant to be the dry season” I said, as rain lashed the windows and condensation fogged the inside. The driver was peering through a small clear patch about the size of a football. “There’s something wrong with the air conditioning.”

“I might sue you for damages for misrepresentation of the weather” she said, shivering and fishing for her raincoat for another layer.

“Bet you’re glad you brought a fleece” I said, wiping a hole to see out of the window. No sooner had we left the suburbs than we were driving through tunnels of dripping, gushing, vine strung, creeper-clinging jungle.  It didn’t remind me of Laurie Lee country it reminded me of Tarzan. I kept my eyes peeled for Howler monkeys and toucans.

The breakfast stop, to our surprise, was at a smart cafeteria, with an enormous dining area, set up for tourists to be fed, coffee’d and redistributed into different coaches and mini vans. A kind of tropical Victoria coach station surrounded by rainforest, with breakfast buffet of rooster (fried rice and red beans), pancakes, rolls, eggs, meat and that dire stuff Lipton’s has the nerve to call tea.

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Noticing a crowd gathered on the path staring up at the tree tops with binoculars I lept up, grabbed mine, and slammed straight into a glass wall.  Fortunately the damage to my nose was slight, my pride took the hit worst. But like the slap on the wrist I once got from a jelly fish in Thailand when I swam out too far, it was a good reminder to pay attention. It was a false alarm.  Someone thought they saw a sloth, a crowd quickly formed and it turned out to be vegetation.

Sloths are like that, I was to discover, looking for all the world like a bunch of moss and moving just as fast.  Moss grows happily all over their fur, fertilised by the Sloth Moth. Since the sloth only eats leaves it’s digestion is very very slow. Once a week the sloth makes a torturous journey down from the canopy to have a shit. The Sloth Moth has a charmed life laying it’s eggs in sloth dung.  Next time the sloth takes it’s weekly dump emerging moths hop on, their mucky feet adding a little je ne sais crois to the sloth’s coat which grows an excellent disguise of green moss. It’s a win win if you can bear to be a moth farm covered in dung.

The next stop was at the end of the road to Tortuguero, a village buffeted by the Caribbean on one side with a quiet lagoon on the other. It’s accesible then by an hour or so boat ride along a river and canal. We were let out at a busy dock area by the river with cafe and loos near the waiting boats. Here I had my first experience of the confusing Costa Rican currency.  I handed over $10 to the loo attendant, and got a handful of colones coins in change.  I had absolutely no idea if it was the right change. Since the notes are for thousands and millions and I didn’t understand the coins, (I am dyscalculic) I often rely on other people to do the maths.  Tessa was baffled too however.  We no doubt tipped too much or too little, were constantly shocked by the prices and wondered why no one really wanted our colones. However it was a welcome ‘comfort break’ and I’d probably have paid $10 for it anyway. Dragging our suitcases down the rough ground to the river bank we were re-sorted onto different boats depending on our Tortuguero hotels, luggage loaded onto separate boats.

There was a kerfuffle from one of the other boats. A woman had mistakenly left her suitcase at the hotel in a pile set aside for temporary storage there. Oliver, our guide, is on the case, but has to tell her bluntly the only way is back.

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“It’s a boat” sighed Oliver on our Evergreen Lodge boat” don’t all sit on the same side.” The last boarders shifted over sheepishly, rocking us back level. “There are sharks and crocodiles…don’t trail your hand in the water please, and put on your life jackets. If the captain sees something interesting he will turn the boat for you to see it in turn, don’t all stand up at once.” Red Fingernails obviously didn’t listen.

We churned down a soupy brown river thickly lined on both sides with all the pot plants we’d ever known in the 60s and 70s, blown up to jungle height. It was a completely thrilling way to arrive.

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The river opened up to a broad canal for the last part of the journey, rather ominously called the Penitencia, and pulled up at Evergreen Lodge dock.

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“OK” said Oliver “I will give you your room numbers,some go to the right, some to the left, there is a restaurant each direction.  Your cases, if they were labeled, are already there. Do not muddle up. Eat at the restaurant on your side.” (We were only to discover why we were instructed thus just before we left.) And so we arrived at the fabulous Number 17, soaked, happy and thrilled to be so immersed in the forest, where, who knows, anything might come sliding, howling or creeping by?

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A journey to the skinny bit in the middle

Posted on by under Uncategorized

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“You’ll need a fleece.”

“A fleece?”  Tessa looked at me, baffled.

“You know, a fleece?  You do have a fleece don’t you?” She didn’t, and wasn’t sure what one was (but she is my unfailingly classy friend).  I’d looked up weather in Costa Rica for our immanent trip: San Jose the capital and Monteverde Cloud Forest areas predicted a week of thunderstorms and heavy rain. Tortuguero on the Atlantic coast didn’t feature on my weather app, nor did Corcovado in the far south on the Oso peninsular.  So, a real adventure then, into app-unknown territory.

“Better pack our umbrellas,” I said, “and some walking trousers and boots”. I was remembering my last visit to a rainforest, in Thailand, where leeches lay in wait, waving up from the leaf litter like little brown shoots.  Clever little brown shoots that are also able to lurk up trees,  detect the carbon dioxide in your out-breath and drop on you from above. I’d watched with horror as they tried to wiggle in through the loose weave of my Bangkok hippy trousers, and the sarong I was using as an ‘umbrella’. I lasted less than 24 hours before I fled for a beach.

“I thought I’d wear my white linen trousers” said Tessa.

“I think we’d better make a trip to Cotswold Outdoor” I said, moving on down the list from Rickshaw Travel, noting to self to pack my snake bite kit (which is at least 20 years old and I don’t actually have a clue how you use it, but the bit of string and blade look handy)) and an extra supply of anti mozzie lotion.

Tessa met me at Cotswold a few days later.  She’d brought her friend Barbara, another Fine Artist, along.  Barbara agreed linen trousers would be perfect in the heat “nice and loose and cool.”

Loose trousers?  In the jungle.  White?  “The list says you see more birds and animals in muted colours,” I said.

The shop was full to the gunnels with ski wear, it was, after all, December.  No thin fleeces, no muted long sleeved cotton shirts, but a distractingly lovely rack of down coats on sale. Tessa didn’t like the look of any of the walking trousers.

“I think what you need is a cashmere cardigan” said Barbara. Tessa’s eyes lit up.

“But….” and I gave up.

So it was with great relief when Tessa arrived at my cottage , on the morning of our departure, in a pair of walking trousers, boots and thin grey fleece, and unloaded a funky zebra patterned suitcase.

Settled on our beds in the Gatwick Marriott we ate our sandwiches, watched the news, listened to the Archers and turned in at nine ready for an early start in the morning.

 

An inclement proposal

Posted on by under humour, memoir, religion, Uncategorized

Letting down her hair

Bianca was at the door. I smelt her as soon as I opened it: rose and lavender with a hint of mothballs. Rose was that day’s theme. A floaty chiffon scarf around her shoulders, rose coloured. A gauzy print dress, rose patterned on deep purple, the asymetric hem falling  in as yet unfashionable waves. All topped off with a large straw hat encircled with faded silk roses, crowning shining plaited coils of fox red hair.

Purple was the background theme of my childhood, much favoured by members of The Order of the Cross. Their scriptures, invented in the 1930s and 40s by the Reverend J.Todd Ferrier (‘Our Friend’) were heavy tomes covered in …purple damask. Order members were all pacifists and vegetarian. On Sundays at the Sanctuary (an upstairs room above my father’s surgery) my parents and their friends, fellow members, would in turn transmogrify into preachers, cloaked in soft purple satin robes. During the long and incomprehensible services, with wheezing hymns pumped out on an organ, I watched the coils of incense rise. I listened to the caged budgies in Gloucester park opposite, and felt the hard rush seats barcode my bare thighs and dreamt of escape and the nut roast for lunch.

Bianca was just one of the colourful characters of my childhood, where a FatherMother was worshiped instead of god, Christ was ‘The Master’ and where angels hovered everywhere. Androgynous pictures of them in floaty garments hung over my parents’ beds. A Guardian Angel, I learnt, was always there to protect me. (A dangerous idea for an adventurous child addicted to the Famous Five books). Bianca, of all the members of The Order, transfixed me. She sits here by my desk. A little cloth sculpture by a fellow member. Her hands are suspended in front of her chest; the knitting needle pins that held a tiny ball of wool have fallen out of them long ago. Her neck is broken and her head would lol onto her chest without the strip of masking tape that holds it up, so you can see the coils around her head. Nevertheless she is every last stitch the Bianca I knew.

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A ‘grunge’ dresser long before the word was invented, before charity shops existed, she would trawl jumble sales to assemble her outfits; topping them off with gaudy paste broaches. She already seemed ancient when I knew her – but then most grownups did. By the hairs on her chin, and freckled arms, she must have been in her mid 50s or 60s when my five year old self opened the door to her.

In ‘reduced circumstances’, I believe Bianca lived in a grace and favour caravan in the woods next to Resthaven, an old people’s home near Stroud. On Wednesdays she would take the 56 bus from Pitchcombe to our house in Gloucester to help my mother with the ironing. Ours was a busy doctor’s household. In school holidays there would be shirts for four brothers and my father to iron, whilst my mother fed sheets through a rotary iron. But on quieter visits, when my big, rowdy, messy brothers were all away at boarding school, I would have quality time with Bianca. I would be ready for her with a little hoard of gold coloured hairpins clasped in my hand, pins that she had shed around the house the previous visit. Pins that held the coils in place.

Taking a break from the singeing hot kitchen, Bianca would retreat to the cool of the downstairs cloak room, which smelt of damp woollen coats and air-wick loo freshener.  There she would indulge me by letting down her hair. Hair that when released fell heavily down to her ankles in fiery Rumplestiltskin waves from the plaiting. She brushed and brushed it till it shone and crackled letting me feel it’s silky softness. How I envied that hair. My brother Ian once found me sobbing in front of the slightly foxed bathroom mirror after the savage haircut my mother favoured. “No one will marry me now” I wailed. It became the family joke for a while, making me blush to my roots each time it was mentioned.

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I asked Bianca one day “Did you ever have a fiancee? Didn’t you want to marry?”

“Oh dearie me. What a question. Well as a matter of fact I almost did. He was an emperor and a king you know.” My eyes widened. “Black and beautiful and his chest was covered with gold medals and chains. A neat silver beard – oh he was so handsome. “

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Emperor Haile Selassie

Emperor (and self appointed King) Haile Selassie was exiled during World War II to Bath, in the West of England. She told me that at the time she was a companion to *Lady Macaulay and often attended elegant social events with her. Presumably it was at one of these events she met Selassie. I found this picture of her in fancy dress. She stands on the far right, hair not yet ankle length, but well on the way.  I imagine him transfixed, like I was, by her long red plait, and graceful bearing.

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“He proposed to me darling, and gave me a black-stoned ring. I had to turn him down. He was King of Ethiopia. It’s very hot there. I didn’t think the sun would suit my complexion.”

Many years later, when I was in my 30s, it fell to my mother to clear out Bianca’s  possessions when she died. A kindly duty she often did for friends and one I was always eager to help with because who knows what treasure might be unearthed? Bianca had ended her days in a high ceilinged, but small room in Faithful House in Cheltenham. A home for elderly nurses who were on their uppers. The staff were rather keen for a quick and thorough clear out, she had piles of suitcases in her room and in their storage. I searched every little faded box, tissue paper screw and suitcase for that ring. I didn’t find it. Perhaps she gave it back? What I did find, however, was pure gold. In a long box, wrapped in tissue, tied at each end with a pale blue satin ribbon, was folded a fox red plait.

 

*A Wiki search for information on a Lady Macaulay has sadly revealed nothing.  However I did find this woman, a writer, Dame Rosa Macaulay, whose home was completely destroyed in the blitz. Might she have fled to Bath at that time? She too was drawn to deeper spiritual dimensions. Macaulay was never a simple believer in “mere Christianity”; her writings reveal a more complex, mystical sense of the divine. Her unusual take on Christianity would have been right up Bianca’s street, she would have made a perfect companion. Like Bianca she too was a pacifist and between wars was a sponsor of the pacifist Peace Pledge Union, until she recanted in 1940, after her home was flattened perhaps?

I want to believe this is the Macaulay that Bianca companioned in Bath.  Who could not resist someone who writes this memorable first line from her book The Towers of Trebizond: ‘”Take my camel, dear”, said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.’

 

 

Pictishwoman gets her placard out for Trump

Posted on by under memoir, personal development, politics, Uncategorized

On Friday 21st January 2017  I shared on Facebook:

“It’s like when a close relative dies.  You half wake and it’s a good day, a normal day.  And then you remember….It’s the worst reality show ever. (Or ever, ever, as Trump would say).”

I spent the day on a ‘craft project’ and kneading bread. The bread rose exceptionally well.

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Grannies against Trump

Next morning, Saturday 22nd January,  if not literally painted in wode, I rose fired with enthusiasm, shining out my inner wode, in Pictishwoman mode.  I travelled with friends to Bristol to share the love, communality, humour and determination of 1000 women, partners, children, grannies and babies because I had to add my voice.  I had to say this is not normal.  He is not normal.  Times are not normal.  But together we are strong and we won’t be silent.
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Knowing I was joining with millions of women all over the world,  made me feel just a little bit better.  I had to be with the truth tellers.  People who can count, and do count in more ways than one.  Who see black and know it is black.  Who see white and know it is white and won’t be told otherwise.  But don’t misinterpret this.  We know  a ‘race’ is something you run and is otherwise completely irrelevant to our friendships .Who know a combover con when we see one, and come on, really, we couldn’t give a fig about the size of your genitals Mr Precident (yes I meant that spelling).  As  one banner said ‘Melania, Blink if you need Help’.

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Pictish Woman

Naked woman hanging in straps – extreme life-drawing

Posted on by under humour, memoir, personal development

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“Ha”, you might well ask, “you felt uncomfortable,  what about the model?”

New year, new you.  It’s the January mantra isn’t it?   This year, with us boomers defying our dodgy knees and wrinkles, the mantra was elaborated with a promise to halt mental decline by trying something new.  At our age wandering into a room and thinking “now why did I come in here?” is a little bit scary (not that it isn’t something I’ve done for, I don’t know, years…)  so I decided to fill the yawning gap left in my life by the folding of my much loved calligraphy class with something completely different.

The leaflet wasn’t particularly specific.  What was ‘extreme’ life drawing? I’d heard rumours, I’d seen the straps at a recent exhibition held in the studio. I called the teacher.

“I hear you hang your models from the ceiling?  Won’t that be a bit advanced for me?”

“It might be a bit tricky the first couple of sessions, then it’ll click in”.

Apart from an inspiring afternoon in Cricklade with their art group in November it had been 50 years since I did any life drawing. I wasn’t convinced. Wouldn’t I be running before I could toddle?

“There’ll be other beginners,” said Paul.

“Can’t I just try a session and see?”

“You’ll be fine.  Really.”

Some people have the knack of entering a room gracefully whatever the circumstances.  I’m not one of them.  With my board slung under one arm, art kit in the other hand, bundled up against the sou-westerly monsoon raging outside, I clattered my way in.  Having politely stepped back to let other students lead the way in, I found all the best places bagged.  Not that there really is a ‘best place’ when you’re life drawing, it somehow always feels like that.  It’s like choosing in a restaurant and then preferring the other person’s platefull.  My memory of classes at the Richmond Institute all those years ago was arriving late and seeming to always  get the rear view.  Hence I’m quite good at bottoms.

Layered up for January, I’d not allowed for the fact that of course the studio would be hot enough for a model to strip. Our model, in this era of health and safety, was well looked after. When I modelled at St Martin’s Art School in the 60s it was a couple of 3 bar electric fires on a stand directed at my torso.  I was so nervous a trickle of sweat would form just below my breasts and trickle down to pool in my belly button, while my feet froze.  It was very tense waiting for the pool to spill over and tickle as it made it way south.  (There may well be, in attics, pictures of a model with gritted teeth and blue feet.) I squeezed my way back through all the easels out to the loos to strip off as much as I could with decency.

When I came back in the model was sitting on the podium under the shiny blue hanging straps wearing a rather fine silk dressing  gown. I had no idea of this protocol the first time I modelled.     I’d rushed to St Martin’s from a hard day’s kicking up dust at the ballet school. “How much do you pay?” I’d asked.

“7/6 clothed or 8/9 nude.”  It was a no brainer for an impoverished student at The Brooking Tully Ballet School in Chalk Farm, living on Vesta curries and Mars Bars. I was very nervous, but I needed the money. I took a deep breath before I left the curtained off changing room in the corner of the studio, and strode out boldly, naked and ready to roll.  The teacher had a quiet word with me during the break.  I reappeared after the break wearing my black PVC Millets mac with needlecord collar, which just about covered the nether regions.  I don’t think I even owned a dressing gown.

Our model dropped her gown gracefully at a nod from Paul, climbed on top of the 3ft high podium, nimbly hooked a foot up into one of the straps, grabbed two of the other straps and settled into a pose.  I thought of orangoutangs who make a nest like this in the forest.  But this wasn’t anything like a sleeping position, it was extraordinary.  I wondered if she was also a circus performer?  With her hanging quite high above us it dawned on me that however which way she posed there would be extremely challenging foreshortening to cope with and I am no Michael Angelo.

Next door to my right was making huge bold charcoal strokes; the other side was groaning.  I started on an inhibiting piece of A3 paper with her head, so at least there was room for that. 15 minutes in, of the 40 minute pose I found that there was not enough room to include her elegantly placed foot.  This was a shame because that was the part of the pose that kind of made it.  Her toes rested very lightly on the podium anchoring her. If I chopped a theoretical foot off her leg would it fit in? Cross with myself I decided to use A1 paper next, or was it A2?  I’m that much of a novice, I wasn’t sure.

“How much longer?” asked the model. I wasn’t surprised.  Those straps looked like they cut in, even though they were about 3 inches wide. (Actually they too added another layer of complexity despite her slight frame.) I was in admiration that she could hold the pose with only the smallest stretch of a hand occasionally to release the grip. (The hand part of my drawing began to look like a bunch of bananas – a sort of time-lapse hand.)

“You’ve got 5 minutes, but come out of it now if you need to,” said Paul.

It was a relief  for me too when she took a brief break.  I asked next door if she was a professional artist.

“I’m a set designer.”

“Thought you were experienced…would I have been to any of the productions you’ve done?” When she lists the RSC among other places she’s worked I knew I was out of my league.

“Put your pictures up on the wall” said Paul “step back and take a look”.

“WHAT? You didn’t tell me we had to do that? What is this, the wall of shame? Please don’t make me do that.”

“It’s the only way to learn.  Here’s some masking tape.  No one else is going to look.”

I winced and pinned up my drawing as near to the floor and hidden by my  easel as I could get away with.

Another pose, this time so foreshortened that I mostly had arms and hands to deal with and the rest peeping behind like far off mountains, her face, the first mountain, hanging down this time.  In the longer tea break I had a sneaky look around the room.  There were some seriously good artists.  No one else had bananas.  I ate a piece of shortbread.  It didn’t help.  I had a chat with the model.  She told me about her other job – so that’s where I’d seen her before.  I recognised her as soon as she described the uniform.  And no, it wasn’t in the circus.

I suffered nightmares all the week following.  Naked ladies hanging in straps kept appearing swinging above me with their distortions, cackling and jeering.  I phoned my niece Delphine in Bristol.  She does life drawing.

“Wow Aunty Mary, it sounds fantastic.  I’d love to do that.” But the class was too far away for her to take it over for me.  I’m not usually a quitter.  Honestly I’m not.  That song ‘pick yourself up, dust yourself down…’ it was written for me, but the morning of class the following week I texted Paul, spoke to him and quit.  I felt really bad about it, then huge relief.  And then I remembered.

One of the last life drawing classes I did at the Richmond Institute I was interrupted.  It was a rather good drawing too, I still have it in the attic, with it’s significant date.  I used to stay overnight after the class with my old school friend Liz who lived nearby, we took class together.  That evening there was a knock on the door and her parents came in.  They had that look.  Some of you may know it, and if you do I’m sorry.  They had the terrible misfortune to be the bearers of bad news.  They asked me to come with them a moment.  They didn’t have to speak.  How did I already know? In the bleak corridor I learned that my beloved father had died suddenly: a heart attack, playing golf – it’s how he would have liked to go. He was only 63.  I was 17.

This week I transferred to Paul’s ‘basic drawing skills’ class.  There are a few excellent artists in this class as well but I didn’t mind.  I drew an ancient metal tea pot and an old Tibetan bell.  The drawings I did are not perfect, but I loved the process: the smell and shine of the metal pot, the weight of the bell, the feel of the squashy rubber.

There’s a blank page here I can’t wait to fill next week.

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A Vegetarian Child’s Christmas in (1950s) Gloucester

Posted on by under humour, memoir

Once upon a time Christmas began in December, with just a little tease, no baubles, no blast of lights. The tiny window, number 1, hidden in the busy picture sprinkled with glitter. When we propped the calendar against the window the picture always thrilled. Around the middle of the month, when I opened number 15, the delicious smells of Christmas would waft upstairs to my bedroom.

“Come and stir” she shouted. I whizzed down the mahogany bannister and thew myself at the kitchen door. She unlocked it, brow dusted with flour, housecoat awry, cursing “bloody patients” for the phone always seemed to her to ring while she was in the middle of something – which was always. I listened to her snap “Well how long have you had the cough? Then why didn’t you call Dr Horsley earlier? This is a very busy time of the year you know, you can’t expect him to just drop everything….” Afterwards the wooden spoon clattered harder against the side of the big cream bowl.

“Make a wish, and stir again.”
“You put breadcrumbs in there? Eeuw.” But when I stirred, feeling the heavy drag of the mix against the spoon, then tasted it – it was delicious.

Next came the cake, “far too late” she fussed “I should have done it months ago.” I became adept at dodging her cat’s cradle paths from the sink in the scullery to kitchen table, and stove. I learnt the importance of the ‘heavy drop’. Spoon suspended a foot above the bowl, I let the mix plop into the bowl like a cow pat. Not enough plop? More milk would be added. A splat instead of a plop and you’d blown it but with the drop just right the cake would be evenly moist all through. What we feared most in those days was not the soggy bottom, it was the soggy middle.

Biscuits were made in industrial quantities, almond and hazelnut. The smell of singed hazelnuts meant keep well away from the kitchen, for the stove was unpredictable depending on the direction of the wind. (The birds did well out of baking days.) Mum’s hands became shiny with butter as she rolled the dough into balls. My job was to flatten them slightly as I pressed a nut or a quarter of cherry into the middle of each one. The cooked biscuits were arranged on plates on a lacy paper doily and covered in greaseproof paper to be distributed to the receptionist at the surgery, Brewer our gardener, Mrs Grindle the cleaner, the dustbin men, the postman, Zigna Laarson (in exchange for her hated peppermint creams) and Bertie Robertson the sports master at my brothers’ school, also a vegetarian. Bertie, a bachelor with no family, would join us on Christmas day.

My poor mother had scant help from any of us as the day approached. My father would be fighting off his own asthma, struggling to cope with all the afflictions caused by the seeping, soggy, town of Gloucester (Dr Foster made a wise decision). I don’t remember my brothers, all older than me, lifting a so much as a scuttle. Perhaps the lock on the kitchen door was testament to my usefulness? Never easy about her relationship with her spinster sister-in-law who came to us most Sundays, Aunty Mamie would be fetched from her flat in Longford which overlooked the advancing floods. Sitting by the fire, knees akimbo, exposing long pink silk knickers she would read.

Aunty Helen in one of her good moods

Aunty Helen, another of my father’s sisters, who lived “Up North’ would be fetched from the station to sour the cream and spread misery with her interminable pessimism. (We’d beg to exclude her every year – it never worked.) In the afternoon the two aunts would vie for the spot in front of the fireplace, hitch up the back of their tweed skirts and rub the warmth into their buttocks and then turn like spits to do the other side, skirt held out. Banished from the kitchen, they bickered the day away in this manner.

None of this helped my mother’s crescendo of stress, which peaked around midnight on christmas eve when she’d finally get round to dressing the tree. Pernickety about how it was done, she left only the lametta for me to add in the morning. Sent early to bed I’d lie awake, fizzing with excitement, hearing her scuffle about in the boxes of decorations. I turned round and round in my bed like a dog in a basket terrified Father Christmas wouldn’t come if I didn’t sleep.

The weight on my feet and the rustle of tissue paper when I moved woke me before dawn. “Not yet,” she’d hiss through the door, “wait till seven.” After a few minutes I’d rap on the bedroom wall again until she gave up, and came in to perch on the end of my bed to share my surprise and delight as I unwrapped the gifts from their screws of tissue paper. The contents were deliciously familiar each year: a clicking frog, chocolate money, paper flowers that opened in a bowl of water, a few walnuts, plastercine, maybe a small cloth bag of brass jacks and ball, a few marbles. Lastly in the toe, without fail, a cox’s apple and a tangerine. (I’d completely forget that I’d spent the weeks before christmas with my head stuck between the gas fire and the chimney in my bedroom requesting a fairly costume.)

As soon as I was allowed up I’d race downstairs to be first to find the box of homemade fudge on the front door step. Each year Bertie ran all the way from from Stonehouse to Gloucester to deliver his present before dawn and then ran home again to change.

Opening our presents took up most of the morning; they were not the extravagant toys of today. Fuzzy felt, maybe an etch-a-sketch – one year a Mason Pearson hairbrush that I did my best to get excited about. A ten shilling note from Granny, the same from Aunty Mamie. I remember the year I realised that it didn’t have to be all one way. I had a small amount of pocket money and I used it to buy a pack of Price’s candles and some wax crayons. I melted them together on the stove and made big coloured candles in pudding bowls for my four brothers, aunts and parents. My brother Ian was withering, but I thought them very nice.

Bertie would reappear around 11, ice blue eyes sparkling in his tanned climber’s face, sheep white aran sweater; I loved Bertie from when I was about 4 years old. After he arrived we were rounded up to be taken for a long walk, leaving Mum on her own to cook dinner for 10. I’d bag the front seat in Bertie’s white sports car so I could have him all to myself. Dad loaded up my brothers and we’d drive miles to the Forest of Dean, the Malverns or even as far as the Black Mountains to ‘work up an appetite’.

Finally the meal: a great feast, spread out on the sideboard in silver serving dishes. Eaten off green Beryl plates on delicate white lace mats that only came out once a year. The silver candles, gravy boats, cutlery and crystal glasses had been polished to perfection by Mrs Grindle. Dad filled our glasses with fizzy apple Shloer – for there was no alcohol allowed for Order of the Cross members. The cake, the pudding and the trifle more than made up for it however.

We never had an hors oeuvre, the meal began with nut roast, gravy, roast potatoes and parsnips, and sprouts from the garden with the slugs washed out. The gravy was flavoured with marmite, the bread sauce by floating a onion studded with cloves in the milk and adding a rare treat: white breadcrumbs. There’d be jelly made from red currants I’d helped to pick in the summer. The Christmas nut roast was made special by adding a sausage roll of stuffing made from white bread, thyme, sage and grated lemon rind laid through the middle. When the roast was cut, circles of pale green stuffing appeared like magic in the middle of each slice. Pine nut kernels, rare and terribly expensive then, were sprinkled on top with dabs of butter to roast it.

Finally, the puddings. First we had Christmas pudding (brought to the table with blue flaming brandy licking the sides), served with a sweet white sauce. My mother, with sleight of hand, sneaked a silver 3p bit wrapped in greaseproof paper into each portion. Then we had mince pies served with top of the milk and strong cheddar cheese; trifle; fruit salad; meringues and brandy snaps stuffed with cream. Funny thing is, I don’t remember any of this being turned down by any of us. We even managed to end the enormous meal by eating one of mother’s favourite Elizabeth Shaw mints. The only thing we rejected were the Meltis fruit jellies (from a grateful patient to an ungrateful family) and Zigna Laarson’s dreadful peppermint creams.

With Chris at dinner