A Story Uncovered

It is only now that I feel as though I am back in the land of reality, the land of the forever long white clouds.

Having been hit with the common old bug and virus that every second Kiwi seemed to have contracted over the winter months, it is only in the past couple of days that I am feeling anything like my normal self.

The good intentions of returning home and hitting the roads in my running shoes, or enjoying clocking up lost mileage in the bike legs, then regaining any semblance of swimming – well that all went out the door.  Managed two or three bike rides whilst pretending that it was just a cold and I’d train my way through it.

Dingbat.  If any of my crew had done that I would have given them lecture No 247 on the stupidity of being stupid.

I paid for it – became more bogged and clogged up, lost my voice and had to succumb to another dosage of antibiotics to attack the virus that had strongly developed by the end of the second week.

All was not helped by not resting – there is so much to do and much needed doing immediately so I attempted to purge through the many physical chores that were causing me some mental grief – consequently my list of 53 items on my Tuit list has diminished a little, so I rather feel some good was achieved by my refusing to curl up and cough.

Anyway, all is well and apart from an overhanging tiredness I’m feeling almost full throttle now (and could certainly throttle a few) and looking forward to moving into the future.

Which is going to be my segue into things of the past.

While I was away my sleuthful brother, whose latest pet project is seeking family history, unearthed a hand written and type written memoir that was written in 1983 by a great uncle of ours, Uncle Ted.  His full name Edward Cook.  My brother allowed me to take the memoir manuscript home and I found it compelling reading, if a little tedious at times, but fascinating due to the fact it was real, it is history, it generally covers a 16 year period of when he was a teenage school boy in The Great Depression, to his spending over three years as a prisoner of war in German POW camps during World War Two.

We, this baby boomer generation of mine and all the generations proceeding can have no idea of the day to day living folk endured during those hard years of The Great Depression and the following war torn times.  We are so busy now being so busy and those that are not are so busy convince themselves they are, that we do not take the time to stop, listen and record some of the stories our elders could have told us, had we actually stopped and listened.

My uncle was born during the First World War to poor farming parents who lived on poor farming scrub land somewhere up north near the Hokianga Harbour.  A little place called Rangiahua; State Highway 1 runs through the area but if one drives that way when heading to Rawene, not a skerrick of what once was remains, today it is beautiful, rolling farmland. 

Uncle Ted was one of twelve children, Maori, poor and with little resources.  As a child I remember him as being a quiet, warm man who myself and all my cousins felt an affection for due to his slow and kind manner and words.  He walked with a walking stick and I vaguely remember being told as a child the need for the stick was  due to a war injury, no other information was forthcoming, nor sought. 

Being Maori, being poor and being from the northern wop-wops one would presume he and his siblings would not be well educated or eloquent.  Wrong presumption as this memoir of his will show he was very well education and had a beauty about his ability to script a memoir with words and phrases eloquently put on paper.  I would like to insert three passages from just the first thirty pages of his typed up memories.

The first passage is referring to his final year as Head Boy of his school house at Hamilton Technical High School – at the approximate age of seventeen.  It details his love of the game of cricket.  I too like cricket and surely wallowed in reading his descriptive manner of his experience as a seventeen year old.  One does not need to be a cricket lover to enjoy his writing:

“So it was 1929 my final year at Hamilton Technical High School.  I was Head Boy of Arawa House, vice-caption of the First Eleven, a member of the First Fifteen, was a school prefect and indeed, at the time did not take it as any great achievement but thinking back now, holding these positions in all field games and then involved in the running of the school affairs would seem that I played no small part.  For a school with a roll predominantly white, I was one of perhaps only half a dozen non-white, and so to hold all these positions gives me much satisfaction. 

I do not wish to labour my writings directly at cricket, but really at this stage it was always my first love:  the beauty of the game, the different settings, the dress itself of all the different players, the splendor and beauty of most grounds, the majesty and grace of some of the overseas players it had at those times always enthralled me, just to sit there in the shade of the trees enclosing the park itself,  to glory in the artistic touch now being unfolded before my very eyes, both from the overseas stars as well as our own, such as Jimmy Mills a left-hand and elegant opening batsman from Auckland.” …

He goes on:

“To this day I can still see Kumar Shar Duleepsingi, with his Cambridge Blue University cap on head, striding out majestically to the wicket to take up his stance at the batting crease.  He was tall, slim, truly looked the part of the high-ranking Indian prince he was.  His manner, dress and bearing really suited such an elegant figure.  His technique, artistry of stroke play was true poetry.  To this day I often think of Duleep and how fortunate I was at having witnessed the wizardary unfolded by such a cricketing master.

Then he writes about another, an Australian cricketer, a bowler –

“Hans Ebeling, most surely one of the fastest to grace a cricket field at any time.  Seeing his approach, the long smooth run-up, his delivery of a ball, then to see a stump go hurtling backward, shattered by the speed and impact for a distance of the length of a cricket pitch, the distance of 22 yards; the sight of seeing this beheld my love of cricket for a lifetime.”

Uncle then moves his story to his eventual leaving of school and returning north to work with two of his brothers and his parents on the farm they were scratching a living for survival from as it was during The Great Depression years.  There are superb descriptive pages of the land, the house they lived in, the old milking shed where they hand milked their cows early mornings and afternoons – and then describes the hard work they all participated in in clearing the rough, hilly and scrub covered land.

“In the early 30’s our main occupation on the farm when not hand milking the cows was to continue to clear our hilly and scrub covered land. Both Mum & Dad many times accompanied us up the hill to clear the scrub and tea-tree, even come rain or sunshine, increasing our tea-tree cutting power.  How we all plodded along through narrow trackways between the tall scrub paths, through still standing tea-tree, mud slush near ankle deep, till finally reaching the area where the tree felling was in progress.  Mum would be dressed for the day’s work, men’s working boots protecting her feet against the tea-tree stumps, a sack apron adorning her waist, carrying her own slash-hook or two, while on her back, carried piggy-back style, would be the young grandchild.  In those days of near pioneering farming, most womenfolk were expected to do their part in helping in the manual labour; I think we all took it as a matter of course. Mum would see that the grandchild, at perhaps 2 or 3 years of age, was made as comfortable as possible, bedded down on an old cow-rug with coats for outer covering, knowing that in time sleep would come to him, then would allow her to take up her slash hook adding further woman-power to the tree felling in hand.”

 …… he then comes to a dramatic period in his life

“So now I come to that evening of 3^rd September 1939, this is one evening I will always remember.  There were just the 3 of us, Mum, Dad and myself sitting before the open fire in the front room, Mum and Dad were seated; I was standing on the one side leaning against what was meant to be a mantelpiece.  We all 3 all so silent, gazing at the flames, as though waiting on someone to arrive, something to happen, or some important news flash, as it was to be, broadcast over our newly acquired radio.  That was the reason for complete silence.  None of us moved or spoke.  The silence was intense.  It seemed our interest was wholly on those flames being drawn up the chimney.  We waited, still in silence, calm and unmoved, waiting for the other news bulletin that was certain to follow an earlier news flash.  We did not have long to wait – minutes, perhaps, but it seemed hours, when our Prime Minister of the time, in a voice slow and deliberate, as though searching and pondering on each separate word, made that announcement – that we, as a member of the Commonwealth, were to follow the lead of the mother-country who, from that moment of the day the 3rd of September, the year 1939, now considered herself as being at a state of war. 

Still now it must have been 15 or 20 minutes since that first declaration, still in silence, still flame-gazing, Mum was to finally interrupt the still silence with:  “If you think you should go, if you want to go, we will give our blessing to your decision.”  Without change of position, without change of her gaze, those were the only words spoken that whole evening.  My parents gave me their blessing and finalised my decision.  I know myself, I never spoke a word.  I just went over to them both, patted each on a shoulder, and went off to my own bedroom.

It was the 4^th September 1939, the day following the declaration of war, I enlisted for the Special Force to be our countries initial contribution of aid.

This part of UncleTed’s memoir only takes us up to Page 30.  The rest of the 240 pages takes in his over three year stay as a prisoner of war in German POW camps in Italy and Austria. 

Finally, after all these years, I now know why Uncle Ted walked with a walking stick. 

It is a fascinating story & I feel very responsible about doing something with this memoir.

I am hoping that any of you who are reading this will find my story today a little reminder that – all lives have stories.  Stories from previous family members are jewels of history, to be treasured and nurtured. 

Most of us have uncles and aunties and parents, all of whom will have stories, stories you may know nothing about.  Their lives, their hopes, their energies, their early desires, their regrets, their loves, obstacles, grief, despairs, illnesses – like it or not, the stories they lived are what make you today.

I keep thinking of the old saying – every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end  …   Record their beginnings before they, the story, end.

               

I ogled a castle

I am staying in a castle at the moment.  Be it a rather small castle. This castle will be my accommodation for two more days. 

It is in the north of England.  Far north.  Just a tad north-west of Newcastle and only a few miles short of Scotland’s border.  This castle is one of a number of little castles in the Northumberland area.  From what I gather it has a long history of involvement in the Scottish-English marauding and battles.  I shall not maraud or battle but enjoy some quiet, self-time in this castle and its surrounds.

Why here and why this castle?  Because I can.  

And because in July after Sister Delwyn reminded me of its existence it was added to my ‘If I Had Time I Would Like To Do’ list.  By chance I found I have the time.  

The ‘castle’ (it really is now only a largish house but is known as a castle and shall continue to refer to it as such) is called Ogle Castle.  The first written history about the castle, that I am aware of, was in 1341 which means it would have been built prior to that date and most probably in the century or three earlier as the first recorded history of a person named Ogle is lodged in the Magna Carta in 1066.  A chap called Humphrey.  A descendant of the Saxons.  It was in 1341 that King Edward 111 had the Ogle manner named as a castle, Ogle Castle. 

                       

My paternal grandmother was an Ogle.  At home on my bookshelf is a book written on the history of the Ogles from New Zealand back through the centuries in Britain to their known origin.  The book, or journal as it really is only a journal, was given to me by my grandmother’s daughter in recent years.  Pity is, it would be a good few years since I read the book and of course, due to much of it referring to the British history, I did not retain too much of that which I read.  Consequently when Sister Delwyn reminded me there was an Ogle Castle in Northumberland I expressed surprise.  My floppy disc brain always takes a while for it to whir and regurgitate the information stored and it wasn’t until much later that some of the history I had read in our family book began to return to the somewhat failing hard drive.

Ogle is not a common name, there are a few in New Zealand, some in Australia and a number in the US, all descendants of original immigrants from Britain.  There is no doubt that any Ogles in the world today will have some DNA link to one another.  And that DNA would be traced back to here, this very place I am presently at.

Therefore, once I knew I would be in the UK longer than anticipated the concept of visiting Ogle Castle became a possibility.  And here I am.  Writing this sitting in a quaint, yet solid four-poster bed, in a room that has a large stone fireplace, and the room has windows on both my left and my right overlooking beautiful gardens.  The windows give one the feel they have been thrown back in time to the 12^th or 13^th century – they show the walls of the castle are two foot thick.

                

The view from my bedroom window:

                

I took afternoon tea in one of the lounges yesterday, its fireplace was huge.  Delwyn and I visited Hampton Court Castle in July and the fireplace in that castle’s kitchen was enormous, big enough to stand up in – the fireplace here is almost as large.  

               

Over the centuries the Ogle Castle fell into ruin, so much of it has disappeared leaving only this present building which was only one small wing of the original castle.  Thankfully this has survived, be it for many years as farm buildings but in recent years reconverted into living accommodation and now run as a private bed and breakfast hotel.  Probably one of the more unique ones I have stayed in during my many stays in various places these past four months.

The castle is for sale, at quite a nominal price, $NZ 2,600,000.  Well, the castle is not for sale, this left over part of the castle which is now described as a ‘detached 9 bedroom house’ on the castle estate is for sale.  With its nine acres and separate stone built 3 bedroom, 2 lounge house at its entrance way.  A snip of a price.  

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-26983774.html

                    

Should you feel like a life style break, something different to do for a couple or more years, buy this place.  I am sure you would enjoy the English country life style – I note there is a market day in the local town today, the ideal place to sell the eggs from the hens you would have running on the property.  Or the bread you bake in the enormous fire places.

I have already seen the area is popular with local cyclists as had to negotiate passing three or four on my journey here yesterday.  On these lovely, country lanes negotiating the passing of a cyclist is not an easy or relaxed task.  With the lanes being so narrow and inevitably winding, with the hedgerows so high one cannot see any oncoming traffic, or sheep, there is little opportunity to pass safely which means one tends to have to drive at a cycling speed for a period before planting the foot on the accelerator for the only one hundred metre opportunity of passing.

And one can swim locally too. Before checking into the castle yesterday I visited the local town and to my annoyance parked right outside the town swimming pool.  Annoyance because I had no swim suit or goggles or towels with me and it would have been prime opportunity to test my memory recall on the ability to swim again.

After this scribe I shall don my rather tired and semi-redundant looking running shoes and head out onto those narrow lanes and negotiate my way around the bends and see how well I can run for a whole fifteen minutes, before turning around and returning the fifteen minute journey.  That will be about it.

The nice thing is, somewhere on that thirty minute journey I will most certainly be treading some footsteps, some pathway that some far, far and distant relative of mine would have tread back in the twelfth or thirteenth century.   Cool aye!

                     

 

    
               The Ogle motto is:
                 Prenez en Gré 
                "Accept in Gratitude"

That damn mirror again

Oh God, I did it again.  I looked in the mirror.

We were going out to dinner at a local beachside restaurant so I showered, dressed and went to put a little make up on to make myself look nice and presentable.  So I stood in front of the mirror and looked.  Then looked again.  And thought ‘damn’!   

Damn.  Damn. Damn it.

When he who created man and woman put them on earth, why did he have to have them age?  If he was so great and so clever, why could he not have placed us on this earth and kept us looking at our prime, forever?

Don’t tell me it was to keep the population down – that we had to age and die to allow the new generation through.  If he was clever enough to make us he should have been clever enough to give us the ability to procreate until the earth was populated with exactly the right number of humans to keep it a vibrant, productive and a happy place to be, forever.  Then he could have all our reproductive bits drop off, or out, and keep the earth’s population maintained at one perfect level, thereby keeping us ageless. For ever and ever.

But he didn’t.

I sighed, that mournful-type sigh of resignation and continued to apply lipstick, with the aid of the strongest glasses I had so that the aging and forever fading eyesight could ensure the lipstick went on the lips and not all over the chin.

Then I remembered.  I remembered Tony.   I remembered those lovely words he used to say to me so often whenever I complained of the aging processes on our bodies.  I wrote about it last year, and will paste the relevant part of that writing here:

….then I was reminded of what Tony had said many, many years ago when I first had a clear, magnified look at my face and bemoaned the fact to him that age, sun and outdoor pursuits are not conducive to keeping at bay the inevitable results of time, ozone holes and weather exposure.  No longer would there ever be a lineless, clear, smooth appearance on this facial full frontal.

Darling Tony immediately responded to my negativity with his endearing, positive retort, “Well my sweet, that’s why whoever our maker was had our eyesight decline with declining years too.  Because with my eyesight getting worse with age I can’t see any of those faults you moan about, I can’t see those lines and imperfections.  To me you look as beautiful as you ever were when we first met.” 

That was so Tony.

The reflection on that memory had me smile.  It brought me back to reality and I relooked at the face in the mirror and reminded myself that looking back at me was a face with a life time of living memories.   

Every line, crease, scar and every sun spot was made with and by memories.   

That young, lineless, clear, smooth face of many decades ago was poignantly naive, gingerly unsophisticated, unsophisticatedly inexperienced and had not yet lived.  This face in the mirror now has lived;  it represents a life that has been full but not yet a full life, and I should be proud of it. 

I am.

        

Talk About It

This past year has certainly been a very tough year for a number of people I care for dearly. Since Tony’s passing there have been further deaths to mourn, further losses for my family or friends to endure.

It has seemed to me that Tony’s dying was the first of an episode of untimely departures; not that any death could be called ‘timely’ but for those around me there have been awfully unexpected departures of loved ones.

Nine months after Tony’s death my much loved and ever energetic step-mother passed away, only a week after competing in a 10 kilometre walking event in Rotorua.  Between her death in December and May, the month I left New Zealand this year, there were two other dreadful and sad losses occur to people who really matter to me.  

Since arriving in the UK three months ago one more dear friend and two other long term, sweet and lovely friends have departed our living world.

The obvious conclusion is that I have reached the age when my contemporaries will die as we are in the latter part of a normal life span.  But not all of those who died in this past period were contemporaries.  There were heart breaking tragedies.  The tragedies are the hardest for family and friends to deal with, due to their total unexpectedness.  The trauma of the unexpected only adds to the agony of the sudden bereavement.

It is not until you have experienced death of someone you deeply love that you can truly comprehend the heart break, anguish and misery it gives those closest to the departed.  I know, as even though I lost both of my parents some years ago, the effects of losing Tony, my partner, my husband left me in a  far deeper chasm of torment and misery than when I lost my parents.  We live with the knowledge that inevitably a parent is going to depart – and as great a loss as it is, there is a deeper, yet more agonising grief of the untimely loss of a partner or a child.

Losing Tony has given me a greater understanding and insight of the difficulties families and friends of those who have recently departed are going through, at the time of the initial bereavement and in the many months and years that follow.  A much greater understanding.

Due to my own experience I know I have better tools with which to be a more helpful and supportive friend, for which I feel grateful.  Not a great way to learn, but at least a learning has come out of it, as I hope does for many others. 

Wherever possible I shall share with others the value and skills of what Tony’s death has taught me, and whenever possible I shall point the learnings out if I consider it would be helpful for the future for anyone who listens.

We have all gone to funerals or wakes and shed a tear for the departed and the family they have left behind but we have not always fully comprehended the depth at which some may be feeling that grief.  Naturally so, until it occurs to us.

And of course, the post period of someone dying is the time when those left need to feel the support and comfort from all areas of their lives – whether home, family, work, social, sport. Knowing there are people there to reach out too is vitally important.  Usually it happens that there is a rallying call for those closest to the inner circle to do just that, rally around and provide the support and love required to help the bereaved in those challenging days afterwards.

And then time passes.  Months pass.  The support is there, but there with less intensity.  Friends stop calling in as often, the phone calls become less, and the invitations to socialise become less.

It is not a criticism this occurs, it is a mere fact of life that people’s lives are busy and there is only so much support in grief time many people can give before moving on with their own general lives.

Then a year passes, maybe two.   To everyone’s relief the one left behind appears to have moved on with life and overcome the initial obvious signs of grief.  Those who have lost partners are often lucky enough to meet someone else, others don’t.  Sometimes by choice, often not.

During the past three months here in the UK I have spent times with others who have gone through their own distressing losses.  Two tragically, two along similar lines to me (which in our view is still a tragedy but am sure the reader understands the difference).  

Whilst some may deduce that my being with others who have lost a loved one could possibly create a depressingly solemn and mournful situation, it has actually done the opposite.  After all, we have all had something very life changing in common.  We have all shared the deepest grief and despair one could possibly endure.    That has given us mutual understanding.

In each case with each person I spent time with it was the mutual understanding which gave us all the common thread that made talking about our losses sometimes up lifting, supportive, often encouraging, always enlightening and many conversations were delightfully happy.

It felt good.  Because we could talk about it.  Certainly there was the odd tear shed, but hey, that’s what losing someone does, and very often that was momentary before the conversation ended with a touch of humour or warmth on our reflections.

There was never a time limit on these conversations.  They were never planned.  They were never melancholy or distressing.  They were naturally occurring through a mutual understanding, a bondship almost.  

They were nice.  They were nice because they allowed each of us at some time, time to talk.  To talk about the loss, the grief.

That is what all this long script is about.  Talking about it.

I am one who experienced bereavement fairly recently.  One gorgeous lady lost her loved one eleven years ago, yet the loss is as great now as it was then.  I know, because we talked about it.

We talked about our own experiences, the way we managed our ways through, the serious, the light hearted and macabre of our losses.  We talked and shared.  It was good.  It felt uplifting.  And there was an almost relief of a heavy weight being share and lifted off the shoulders. A little of the burden lessened.

Uplifted and unburdened because of talk.

It was this that had most of us realise a commonality that we had each noticed.  A thread that became a theme.  And that was - the friends, associates or family, who we see or meet whether regularly or infrequently, who don’t, or won’t talk about it.

All of us found it baffling, sometimes irritating, sometimes awkward, often perplexing – and usually difficult to understand.  People who won’t talk about it, or seemingly can't talk about it. Whether it is because they don’t know what to say, or whether they feel awkward or embarrassed; whether they think it will upset the bereaved and therefore try everything possible to completely skirt around the topic. Or whether they don’t want to raise sad memories for either the bereaved or themselves. Or whether it is just plain inconvenient and they are not the least bit interested in conversing about it, or you, or the parted one -that is, those that don’t give a damn and don’t care.

Each one of us had experienced glaring examples of this, of the elephant in the room.  Of being somewhere with someone or some others where silence seemed a preferred option to them rather than bringing the deathly topic up.

Of all the people I have had who come to visit, or call, or who I happen to encounter in the supermarket, the gym, at dinner parties, over a coffee, on a run, a walk or at a social function, the ones I have truly appreciated the most are those who have the intelligence and sensibility to say to me, “Do you want to talk about it?”  

It is as simple as that.  “Do you want to talk about it?”  

The best support a friend can give is to ask if it will help to talk, and if it is not wanted the person has the option to say, no. Let it be their choice to talk or not – if they would rather not then move onto another subject.  The weather is always a good fall back!

It’s so easy to do. It stops those awkward moments, the squirming moments of finding something else to talk about. It is better than the short, yet long moments of deathly silence.  The elephant in the room moments that you pretend you cannot see.

“Would you like to talk about it?”   “Do you want to talk about it?”  Then talk.