Conversion in the lavatory.. a true tale

I may have mentioned my late husband was having some surgery last summer 2013.Whilst he was waiting [dressed only in pyjamas and dressing gown] he decided to go to the l toilet .He saw a door with two signs so that either sex could use it.He went in,locked the door and made use of the urinal.,which was in the open with no door, then went to wash his hands. Suddenly the door of the cubicle opened and out came a woman of riper years.Instead of looking surprised or worried that she had forgotten to lock the door she came over to him at once. Are you a Christian? she asked loudly Well,I believe in God,he answered dishonestly yet truthfully May I give you a tract? she enquired loudly and urgently If you must,he whispered sorrowfully But she couldn’t find one so she departed…..was she real I wonder? Beware of such shared conveniences as you never know whom you might meet.Maybe it’s a tactic for desperate lonely singletons. She declared she would pray for him.But is it always a good thing to pray for someone if they don’t want it?To me it seems a mite agrgessive. Why not pray for them without telling them? Suppose he had been much younger and more aggressive?He could have attacked her claiming it was shock… lock the outer door in such places,I beg you About these ads.. they are invisible! Occasionally, some of your visitors may see a hippopotamus here and it’s not your fault

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/oct/08/louise-gluck-where-to-start-with-an-extraordinary-nobel-winner?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Gazing down the green deep wild garden

I hear the birds making small private noises

Their little lives go on

They are happy unless their mate dies.

Geese can fly around for hours till exhausted searching for the one they have lost.

I like these small domestic sounds of birds or animals

No wonder cats want to eat birds, because the bird has got more free life than a cat has.

Imagine a cat’s family and their tame pet human shrunk to a suitable size by some magic potion like Alice in Wonderland.

Oh my little bird my garden bird I can’t see you but I hear you enjoying the evening sun

But no blackbird sings these times since they cut down the big tree.

If my hearing were better I would be able to hear even smaller sounds like the sounds of the worm pushing through the soil

Better than listening to the news.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/oct/08/wins-the-nobel-prize-in-literature-2026?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

I so hated the green plastic mac that my mother made me wear in the rain that after she had opened the door and thrown me into the street I went around the corner and instead of going to church I cried for an hour. When I saw people coming back from Mass I went back into the house and said nothing.

Fortunately I did not wonder whether I’ I was going to go to hell for missing Sunday mass…

Later I heard my mother say to somebody 

You have to break a child’s spirit before it is one year old 

I think things have changed a little bit since then I certainly hope so

Childhood is not the happiest time of life for many people but I was fortunate that a lot of it was very happy

But this episode with the mac made me feel very angry and afraid and I felt the determination inside me that I will not let people treatment like this when I’m older.. and that I will never say to somebody who’s worried about their appearance or their clothing

The king weren’t get off his horse to look at you

When I was a child I didn’t understand this but now I do it makes me feel angry. Instead you could say to a child I’m very sorry but you don’t have a mac of your own and it’s raining very hard so I would like you to wear my Mac even though it’s too big for you don’t worry people won’t be looking at you in the rain and you can take it off when you get to the church

I don’t understand the notion that children are like wild horses that have to be tamed into submission or otherwise they will do everyone severe harm. Children may have their faults I don’t believe they are possessed by the devil and that the parents have to beat the devil out of them in fact it could be the opposite that the

beating is what makes the child feel that the devil is inside when it’s their own hatred and anguish

It was as if we were plants growing in the soil of the street so deeply rooted did we feel in our home.

Sometimes my mother would bake bread and I have a feeling that before we had the bath taken out of the kitchen that she used to use the oven in the side of the fire in the front room to bake the bread

What a wonderful smell there was when we came home from school . My mother was a teacher but she had different holidays sometimes and that’s probably why she was making the bread.

Once  her sister took us out into the country into a wonderful place with a river I think it was called Turton Brook

Along the banks were masses of bluebells. I had never seen them before and it was almost as good as the first time I saw lake Windermere.

We walked through the woods by the brook which was actually a small river until he came back to the road after about three miles and it seemed rather magical that there was a Catholic church there and I think we might have got inside and said a prayer

I didn’t know what religion was then I just believed whatever my mother and father believed and my school teachers.

But knowing that Jesus died for our sins had a bad effect on me because when my father died when I was eight years old I thought that he must have died to atone for my sins and it had a  permanent effect on me fortunately after 60 years it began to abate.

When we got back home mum had made some potato cakes. How delicious they are covered in butter when they have just come out of the oven If only my mother was here now, I would be well pleased.

So as well as the street itself and the local park we began to build up a little collection of beautiful places that we went to at the weekend up on the moors or by this river any quiet place where there were no cotton mills

Later on when my nephew is were growing up I think they craved for towns and nightclubs and cities but we craved for the countryside

The purple heather and in some places there were berries+(they were rather like bilberries) called whinberries.

There were sheep on the lower slopes that’s where we saw lambs for the first time.

Up on the moors are walking through the Riverside to a country village that was a place of transformation or possibly it might have even been what the famous child psychoanalyst Dr Winnicott called a transitional space. It was not an interior space it was not an exterior space it was somewhere in the space of an illusion but a necessary illusion because only in such a space could 0children play and later adults could create

I admire this man very much because he made play the most important thing in life and as I played with my mother’s button collection on the kitchen table I think i began to develop my feeling for mathematics although I had no notion of it at that time I could only count I didn’t even know what a negative number might be nor do most of the human race and it doesn’t seem to do them much harm

I think it’s a writer walking in a place like the ones I have described above could be the place where your ideas come freshly to mind.

New ideas born in a new place neither here nor there

Neither inside nor out

Can we imagine this?

https://www.themarginalian.org/2025/07/25/urns/?mc_cid=ee0812cbc9&mc_eid=d32e4171d3

Our Street was my whole world when I was little

Two rooms made up the ground floor of the house

They were called the front room and the kitchen

In the kitchen there was a bath

Because it was a miners cottage

We didn’t use the bath very much

Because we had to light a big fire to heat the water although I didn’t know that at the time.

Everything was as it was.

We used to play rounders in the middle of the road or the girls would play with skipping ropes.

The boys went to the park and tortured frogs

That’s how it all begins.

I loved our street and the cobbles and the ice cream  man’s  horse.

But underneath there’s always an element of fear

Lying in bed, I was afraid of heavy footsteps coming up the stairs

Why was I afraid when the stairs came up from the kitchen where my mother might be making a cup of tea.

We don’t like to think about the vulnerability of children even when they are not being abused. 

By today’s standards we probably were being abused

Instead they are teased like boys who were told, don’t cry you’re a big boy, you’re two years old. 

I remember the queen’s coronation in 1953 

We had a party with jelly and ice cream at tables down the middle of the road

I didn’t really understand why the Queen matters because we lived a hundred and eighty miles away from London and I thought everything important happened in our town and nowhere else.

I do remember Harold Macmillan saying ,you have never had it so good

I was totally puzzled by his statement what was it we’d never had so good?

Although I did start reading the times when I was 10.

For the previous 2 years I had read The Guardian until one day I asked  my motherat what was rape

She never replied but we changed our daily paper I can’t believe I was reading the times then it’s in ludicrous

There is something that wasn’t talked about much called print hunger where you will read anything even the print on the  soap powder box rather than just gaze around like you do when you’re small

What is so frighteningabout being without something to read?

Is there anything we don’t want to read yes the school textbooks

In our street the top half was covered in tarmac and the bottom half was covered in cobbles

It was because it was the meeting of two different parishes with different financial regulations or should I say different priorities?

Some of the men prefer cobbles, others say we must move with the times the motor car is coming we’ve got to get the roads ready for it

I didn’t like it because I like the little weeds that grew between the cobbles and the bits of tar that you can play with in the summer

There was no contest in my mind but they didn’t consult me fortunately

I think cobbles were better for the horses except when they were  wet

No doubt I would have objected to cobbles in a previous era

I suppose I prefer the earth the natural world to the world of pavements and cars.

Thank goodness there were no motorways in the 1950s

We were content with our outdoor toilets and our washes at the kitchen sink.

Partly because we knew nothing else but that and what your mother and father did that was right wasn’t it?

That’s the end for today

https://www.wunc.org/2018-09-12/claire-tomalin-moves-between-the-trivial-and-the-tragic-in-a-life-of-my-own

Near the Chiltern hills the River Lea

Dances like a lamb in spring,in glee

The water’s pure and sweet like wine, like sun

But all is changing as the river runs.

Industrial use and boats pollute the stream

The dirty water does not mirror dreams

At Hoddesden the mill destroys the scene

There are no Argonauts, no golden fleece.

At ancient Waltham  where the river  slows

I see the ruined monks,where did they go?

King Henry wanted money,wanted all

Soon  so soon,his dynasty would fall.

Then soon the Lea will meet the mother Thames

They run into the sea, the rivers end.

Is this the mystic love that some would like?

In the darkest shadow, hides the light.

When its moment comes the golden gleam

Returns our minds to nature and it’s schemes

You are smiling on the pier above the sands

The rippling waves stretche out like children’s hands

You look so strong I cannot comprehend

Your fatal illness and its grievous end

You were never  patient on dry land

You were living well and  feeling grand

We crossed the road ; I held your cold thin hand

  I suffered so much torment,would I mend?

I saw a fluid shape as dark it pranced

Through the open door it swiftly danced

With the  well known wiles of Tudor kings

Hoping they can make it on the wing

I learned with grief , it came to take you back.

Across the river wide ,my love, my lack

Is feeling low to be admired

Is deepness good, my heart enquired

Superficial’s criticisd

For in the depth love may arise.

When we rise high then we will fall

Like the wheat when rich and tall.

When trodden down it makes our bread

It feeds the soul the heart the head.

All that’s good must be destroyed

Before it finds it’s true employ

Do not fear your death and end

For in the darkness love descends

We become the food of worms

Of Beatles and the things that squirm

But without these creatures there’s no lifel

0pen your heart and feel the knife

From the seabed to the sky

We must live until we die

Then in death we are the food off

From which all new things are conceived

Like the circle we rotate

Life goes on in every state

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Never begin a sentence

Be careful with apostrophe’s,semi- colons and death

When in doubt, leave [it] out Don’t end at an adverb,generally.But it’s ok if not too frequently Don’t invent new words.

They might mean something in another language Think about sentences then they will think about you,possibly Learn with leisure using audio books.

Pray before the beginning of a thought

Never forget brevity.

Nor levity. Be natural.

Leave out ad hominem, QED and ipso fracture.

A fraction of infinity is as big as infinity.

That’s what infinity means , honestly! If you are a genius, write what you like, but warily

Chance favours the double bind as Gregory Bateson might have said.

Prepare your mind before deleting.

If your spelling is bad, vote to leave the EU and learn proper English properly.

Never use a nom de plume if you like Brexit Croissants are being withdrawn from the UK asap..

Can you spell croissant? Well forget it!

Hollyhocks,delphinium and phlox Foxgloves,cat mint, nettles,near by docks

The blind man breathed in air full of wild scent

His daughted named the colours now absent

High up on the Kentish cliffs we sat

Capel-le -Ferne I found it on a map We listened to this girl, we did not speak Absorbing by our senses,proud and meek

Now I recollect the details very well

In those dream like memories I dwell Snapdragons growing just beside my chair

I smell the scent as if I were still there

I may be blinded by the tears of loss

But I remember, love, our happiness