Recently I went to hear Ian McEwan speak at the Newcastle University, just over the river from where we live in Gateshead. He was amazing - so clever, articulate and erudite. Well, what would you expect from Ian McEwan?
I left here at 6.30pm. Rog had just walked in the door while I attempted to make a pretty sharp exit. And I left - the kids to their bed-time routine and the house to its mess.
Later, after the event I walked on my own back to the car across the beautiful old campus, underneath the ivy-covered arches and I felt acutely transported back to another time in my life 20 years before.
You see, I did my undergraduate degree at this university, far away from what was my home then in the south of England and when I worked it out it really was 20 years ago - more - when I started.
Walking across the flagstones past the building in which I had studied, all those years ago, I passed a group of students - kids they looked to me - with arms linked, all chatting and laughing. I felt as if I was passing myself coming the other way. Would I recognise my 41 year-old self, filled with different pre-occupations, hurrying back in the other direction to my three children? Would I have expected my life to have been as it has?
Cutting through onto the road I'd parked my car, the hospital loomed dark against the night sky. And there too were so many memories. In that hospital was where I'd had my three babies, and also where I'd had all my cancer treatment. The actual ward three storeys up where I'd endured my chemotherapy and my bone marrow transplant had been due for demolition not long after my treatment finished. The building was shaped like a thin arm and for a long time the partial demolition cut open the end so one could see inside the three storeys at once like a tube with the end severed. Into that maw I could see the space where the beds had been, hanging open to the elements. Because there were people who were so very sick in that ward, fresh air was not allowed. Instead there was some kind of system which kept the air purified and hideously stuffy - it was one of the many discomforts about staying there. I would drive past and feel glad that there was air in there at last.
Now, however that part of the hospital has been entirely demolished, and the cancer centre rebuilt elsewhere in the city with flash new facilities and all mod-cons - that's where I have my appointments now. And back at the old hospital the space where I had all my treatment just doesn't exist anymore. It's thin air. And that makes me feel very very strange. It's almost like a dream - or a nightmare. It's almost like it didn't happen. But that ward, those rooms, that space where my worst nightmare did come true are etched in my mind and in my memory. I dream about them and they don't exist anymore. I cannot successfully convey how uneasy their absence makes me feel.
Driving home over the beautiful Tyne Bridge, the river lit up by lights on the Millenium Bridge and the Sage, I realised what a connection I have with the city of Newcastle. It's my home now - my adopted home. Twenty-two years ago I came here to study English at the university. I had a fabulous time and made friends and memories which last until today. Then I left for a few years - did my teacher training in the south and worked for a while down there. But the place lured me back and for the past 14 years I've lived in Northumberland and then the city. I've married here, had my children here, nearly died here and hopefully will grow old here.
I miss where I grew up and those country lanes along whch I walked and rode are part of my fabric but this city is a shape superimposed on top, blending and blurring until I almost can't tell which came first. My southern accent will forever mark me out as a newcomer, my children are already skilfuly mixing the Geordie and the South in their speech. And they truly belong to the city, born in the centre. This is their home.
(apologies for this re-posting!)
Showing posts with label memories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label memories. Show all posts
Tuesday, 9 November 2010
Friday, 1 October 2010
To Newcastle
Yesterday evening I went to hear Ian McEwan speak at the Newcastle University, just over the river from where we live in Gateshead. He was amazing - so clever, articulate and erudite. Well, what would you expect from Ian McEwan?
I left here at 6.30pm. Rog had just walked in the door while I attempted to make a pretty sharp exit. And I left - the kids to their bed-time routine and the house to its mess.
Later, after the event I walked on my own back to the car across the beautiful old campus, underneath the ivy-covered arches and I felt acutely transported back to another time in my life 20 years before.
You see, I did my undergraduate degree at this university, far away from what was my home then in the south of England and when I worked it out it really was 20 years ago - more - when I started.
Walking across the flagstones past the building in which I had studied, all those years ago, I passed a group of students - kids they looked to me - with arms linked, all chatting and laughing. I felt as if I was passing myself coming the other way. Would I recognise my 41 year-old self, filled with different pre-occupations, hurrying back in the other direction to my three children? Would I have expected my life to have been as it has?
Cutting through onto the road I'd parked my car, the hospital loomed dark against the night sky. And there too were so many memories. In that hospital was where I'd had my three babies, and also where I'd had all my cancer treatment. The actual ward three storeys up where I'd endured my chemotherapy and my bone marrow transplant had been due for demolition not long after my treatment finished. The building was shaped like a thin arm and for a long time the partial demolition cut open the end so one could see inside the three storeys at once like a tube with the end severed. Into that maw I could see the space where the beds had been, hanging open to the elements. Because there were people who were so very sick in that ward, fresh air was not allowed. Instead there was some kind of system which kept the air purified and hideously stuffy - it was one of the many discomforts about staying there. I would drive past and feel glad that there was air in there at last.
Now, however that part of the hospital has been entirely demolished, and the cancer centre rebuilt elsewhere in the city with flash new facilities and all mod-cons - that's where I have my appointments now. And back at the old hospital the space where I had all my treatment just doesn't exist anymore. It's thin air. And that makes me feel very very strange. It's almost like a dream - or a nightmare. It's almost like it didn't happen. But that ward, those rooms, that space where my worst nightmare did come true are etched in my mind and in my memory. I dream about them and they don't exist anymore. I cannot successfully convey how uneasy their absence makes me feel.
Driving home over the beautiful Tyne Bridge, the river lit up by lights on the Millenium Bridge and the Sage, I realised what a connection I have with the city of Newcastle. It's my home now - my adopted home. Twenty-two years ago I came here to study English at the university. I had a fabulous time and made friends and memories which last until today. Then I left for a few years - did my teacher training in the south and worked for a while down there. But the place lured me back and for the past 14 years I've lived in Northumberland and then the city. I've married here, had my children here, nearly died here and hopefully will grow old here.
I miss where I grew up and those country lanes along whch I walked and rode are part of my fabric but this city is a shape superimposed on top, blending and blurring until I almost can't tell which came first. My southern accent will forever mark me out as a newcomer, my children are already skilfuly mixing the Geordie and the South in their speech. And they truly belong to the city, born in the centre. This is their home.
I left here at 6.30pm. Rog had just walked in the door while I attempted to make a pretty sharp exit. And I left - the kids to their bed-time routine and the house to its mess.
Later, after the event I walked on my own back to the car across the beautiful old campus, underneath the ivy-covered arches and I felt acutely transported back to another time in my life 20 years before.
You see, I did my undergraduate degree at this university, far away from what was my home then in the south of England and when I worked it out it really was 20 years ago - more - when I started.
Walking across the flagstones past the building in which I had studied, all those years ago, I passed a group of students - kids they looked to me - with arms linked, all chatting and laughing. I felt as if I was passing myself coming the other way. Would I recognise my 41 year-old self, filled with different pre-occupations, hurrying back in the other direction to my three children? Would I have expected my life to have been as it has?
Cutting through onto the road I'd parked my car, the hospital loomed dark against the night sky. And there too were so many memories. In that hospital was where I'd had my three babies, and also where I'd had all my cancer treatment. The actual ward three storeys up where I'd endured my chemotherapy and my bone marrow transplant had been due for demolition not long after my treatment finished. The building was shaped like a thin arm and for a long time the partial demolition cut open the end so one could see inside the three storeys at once like a tube with the end severed. Into that maw I could see the space where the beds had been, hanging open to the elements. Because there were people who were so very sick in that ward, fresh air was not allowed. Instead there was some kind of system which kept the air purified and hideously stuffy - it was one of the many discomforts about staying there. I would drive past and feel glad that there was air in there at last.
Now, however that part of the hospital has been entirely demolished, and the cancer centre rebuilt elsewhere in the city with flash new facilities and all mod-cons - that's where I have my appointments now. And back at the old hospital the space where I had all my treatment just doesn't exist anymore. It's thin air. And that makes me feel very very strange. It's almost like a dream - or a nightmare. It's almost like it didn't happen. But that ward, those rooms, that space where my worst nightmare did come true are etched in my mind and in my memory. I dream about them and they don't exist anymore. I cannot successfully convey how uneasy their absence makes me feel.
Driving home over the beautiful Tyne Bridge, the river lit up by lights on the Millenium Bridge and the Sage, I realised what a connection I have with the city of Newcastle. It's my home now - my adopted home. Twenty-two years ago I came here to study English at the university. I had a fabulous time and made friends and memories which last until today. Then I left for a few years - did my teacher training in the south and worked for a while down there. But the place lured me back and for the past 14 years I've lived in Northumberland and then the city. I've married here, had my children here, nearly died here and hopefully will grow old here.
I miss where I grew up and those country lanes along whch I walked and rode are part of my fabric but this city is a shape superimposed on top, blending and blurring until I almost can't tell which came first. My southern accent will forever mark me out as a newcomer, my children are already skilfuly mixing the Geordie and the South in their speech. And they truly belong to the city, born in the centre. This is their home.
Wednesday, 9 December 2009
Christmas Past
It’s the morning of Christmas Eve. My brother and I go downstairs especially early and stand outside the sitting-room door. The sign reads, ‘No Entry, by Order of the Angel’. It doesn’t occur to us to peep inside. We know we must do as we are told or the Angel won’t come when it gets dark – and then we can’t have Christmas. My sister toddles over – just two – she is old enough to pick up on our bursting excitement.
“It’s the Angel”, I say. “We can’t go in there until tonight. It’ll be dark and there’ll be the Christmas tree with candles and presents underneath.”
Having a mother with Austrian-German ancestry meant that our Christmases were a strange mixture of different traditions. Explaining the Angel at school to friends obsessed with Father Christmas was tricky and full of danger that She (the Angel, not my mother) might be the cause of teasing to be avoided at all costs.
“What do you mean she lights the candles? What candles? You don’t see your Christmas tree until Christmas Eve? When it’s dark?”
Explaining that we opened our presents on Christmas Eve, not on Christmas Day and that the Angel came back later on to bring our stockings, caused - at best - more pitying consternation . I think my brother and I separately but quickly decided not to even try to describe how we would huddle together behind our sitting-room door and listen to our dad talking to the Angel.
“I heard her knocking on the door!”
We rush to the closed hall door and listen to our dad,
“Hello, come in. How are you? Have you come far?”
As the catch on the sitting-room door rattles we rush through and stand in the hall straining our ears to hear her replies as my dad continues to chat.
“Would you like a drink? No? Well I suppose you need to keep a clear head with all that flying ahead of you tonight. Are you alright with that candle? Can I help you?”
Literally hopping with silent thrill we listen, listen, listen, trying to quiet our sister who exclaims loudly at intervals, trying to hear the voice of an angel.
“Be quiet! If she hears us she’ll be scared and fly away. Shhh.”
At last we hear my dad saying goodbye.
“Well, it’s been lovely to see you. Take care and fly carefully. Goodbye!”
We hear the sitting-room window open and crowd to the little window in the porch where we can see my father just closing the window.
“I saw her, I saw her!”
We’re thrilled, convinced beyond question we can see her flying off into the Christmas night sky.
My dad tells us that we can come in and we enter. The room is beautiful, breathtaking, and transformed. Touched by the Angel the place glows with the candles on the tree and those dotted around the room. Firelight moves against the hearth. The tree looks beautiful. We see the wooden robin perched on a high branch, the star on the top and all the other familiar decorations which thickly hang with artistic abandon year after year. Underneath the tree are presents spread out – surreptitiously we check that they are spread thickly under the tree. Around the room, bowls of crisps and dried fruit are laid. Coke and lemonade stand alongside wine and whisky. This is enormously exciting to us – through the year we feel horribly deprived of such delectable treats compared to our friends, but not tonight.
“Get what you want and then come and sit down,” mum says, pouring juice for my sister. We fly about deliriously happy, grabbing handfuls of crisps and nuts. Finally we sit, all of us in our traditional Christmas places, and my dad settles on the floor next to the presents ready to choose them one at a time and give them out. He waits until the lucky person has opened, admired and shown off before moving to the next one. So the excitement of present giving is drawn out to the last possible moment.
Later it’s frankfurters with herring and potato salad with fruit salad and cream for pudding. Unfailingly, for forty years I’ve eaten this on Christmas Eve. Unfailingly, the idea is always better than the eating, and unfailingly every year we’ve considered eating something different. But the strength of the tradition passed down from my German/Austrian grandparents to my mother and her brother and sister, and then to us, is too great a bond with the past to break. It’s frankfurters for us, I fear, for many Christmas Eves to come.
“It’s the Angel”, I say. “We can’t go in there until tonight. It’ll be dark and there’ll be the Christmas tree with candles and presents underneath.”
Having a mother with Austrian-German ancestry meant that our Christmases were a strange mixture of different traditions. Explaining the Angel at school to friends obsessed with Father Christmas was tricky and full of danger that She (the Angel, not my mother) might be the cause of teasing to be avoided at all costs.
“What do you mean she lights the candles? What candles? You don’t see your Christmas tree until Christmas Eve? When it’s dark?”
Explaining that we opened our presents on Christmas Eve, not on Christmas Day and that the Angel came back later on to bring our stockings, caused - at best - more pitying consternation . I think my brother and I separately but quickly decided not to even try to describe how we would huddle together behind our sitting-room door and listen to our dad talking to the Angel.
“I heard her knocking on the door!”
We rush to the closed hall door and listen to our dad,
“Hello, come in. How are you? Have you come far?”
As the catch on the sitting-room door rattles we rush through and stand in the hall straining our ears to hear her replies as my dad continues to chat.
“Would you like a drink? No? Well I suppose you need to keep a clear head with all that flying ahead of you tonight. Are you alright with that candle? Can I help you?”
Literally hopping with silent thrill we listen, listen, listen, trying to quiet our sister who exclaims loudly at intervals, trying to hear the voice of an angel.
“Be quiet! If she hears us she’ll be scared and fly away. Shhh.”
At last we hear my dad saying goodbye.
“Well, it’s been lovely to see you. Take care and fly carefully. Goodbye!”
We hear the sitting-room window open and crowd to the little window in the porch where we can see my father just closing the window.
“I saw her, I saw her!”
We’re thrilled, convinced beyond question we can see her flying off into the Christmas night sky.
My dad tells us that we can come in and we enter. The room is beautiful, breathtaking, and transformed. Touched by the Angel the place glows with the candles on the tree and those dotted around the room. Firelight moves against the hearth. The tree looks beautiful. We see the wooden robin perched on a high branch, the star on the top and all the other familiar decorations which thickly hang with artistic abandon year after year. Underneath the tree are presents spread out – surreptitiously we check that they are spread thickly under the tree. Around the room, bowls of crisps and dried fruit are laid. Coke and lemonade stand alongside wine and whisky. This is enormously exciting to us – through the year we feel horribly deprived of such delectable treats compared to our friends, but not tonight.
“Get what you want and then come and sit down,” mum says, pouring juice for my sister. We fly about deliriously happy, grabbing handfuls of crisps and nuts. Finally we sit, all of us in our traditional Christmas places, and my dad settles on the floor next to the presents ready to choose them one at a time and give them out. He waits until the lucky person has opened, admired and shown off before moving to the next one. So the excitement of present giving is drawn out to the last possible moment.
Later it’s frankfurters with herring and potato salad with fruit salad and cream for pudding. Unfailingly, for forty years I’ve eaten this on Christmas Eve. Unfailingly, the idea is always better than the eating, and unfailingly every year we’ve considered eating something different. But the strength of the tradition passed down from my German/Austrian grandparents to my mother and her brother and sister, and then to us, is too great a bond with the past to break. It’s frankfurters for us, I fear, for many Christmas Eves to come.
Monday, 23 November 2009
Memory 1
1981
I’m breathing hard, almost panting as I walk quickly away from the school bus. No-one really notices. My brother has disappeared into his junior school without a backward glance and the driver is looking impassively ahead as more kids file on bound for the secondary school in the nearest town. And that’s where I should be heading too. But I’m not. I’m getting away as fast as I can before I’m carried, screaming inside towards that place.
This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to escape school. I’ve been doing it on and off since I was four and my dad and teacher had to chase me around the car – ‘I’ll get out, but I won’t go in…’ Now I’m in my first year at our local comprehensive school, I’m eleven and while I may be older, the primal fear feels just the same.
The walk home is about two miles. I’m too innocent or not brave enough to bunk off and hide somewhere else for the day – I’m scared of getting into trouble at school and petrified of the attention that would bring me. I just want to go home to my mum and dad – who’ll be there with my little sister. I think I just want to be safe.
The school is enormous. Huge and terrifying it contains hordes of people who are able to cope and understand what is expected of them. They have friends, know what to do at lunchtime and don’t appear to have a lump of anxiety inside them weighing them down. My father – always patient and increasingly baffled– sits on my bed in the evening and tries to find out what is so difficult about being at school. I am incoherent, unable to describe as I can now that memory allows me to be incoherent, the smell, the timetables, the new books and new bags, the teachers and the vastness of it all – a jumble of sensations which feel overwhelmingly impossible to manage. I’m a clever girl – good at all my subjects, able easily to shine academically, but not nearly so able to feel part of the crowd, not able to shine socially. Every day I feel clumsy, anxious and inept and close to tears and the time drags heavy and long.
So finally I arrive home feeling sheepish and tearful and I’m faced with my exasperated mother not quite as patient as my father but just as worried about me. And I’m allowed to shelter briefly before I’m driven back to school in time for the second lesson of the day. The desperation I feel is palpable and fills the car as I’m driven towards the horror.
It seems, as a child, my perplexing lack of self esteem filters into all new experiences I want to take on or have to take on. I find life quite difficult despite having the trappings of a reasonably idyllic childhood. At least, I have parents who appeared to love each other most of the time, a younger brother and sister who I played with a and fought with in pretty much equal amounts, a lovely house in the country (rented not owned for a long while: my parents were eccentric and fairly penniless for much of my early childhood at least) and plenty of cats and dogs. My dad was quite disabled it is true, and my mum carried with her some of the baggage of her German-Jewish refugee past – but home was a safe and happy place for me, somehow it was the outside world which was not.
Now I look sadly back at that girl, climbing the lane out of the village. I don’t really recognise her now, but I can feel her little shadow buried deeply inside myself and I would like to be able to console her just, I suppose, as my parents tried to comfort her all those years ago.
I’m breathing hard, almost panting as I walk quickly away from the school bus. No-one really notices. My brother has disappeared into his junior school without a backward glance and the driver is looking impassively ahead as more kids file on bound for the secondary school in the nearest town. And that’s where I should be heading too. But I’m not. I’m getting away as fast as I can before I’m carried, screaming inside towards that place.
This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to escape school. I’ve been doing it on and off since I was four and my dad and teacher had to chase me around the car – ‘I’ll get out, but I won’t go in…’ Now I’m in my first year at our local comprehensive school, I’m eleven and while I may be older, the primal fear feels just the same.
The walk home is about two miles. I’m too innocent or not brave enough to bunk off and hide somewhere else for the day – I’m scared of getting into trouble at school and petrified of the attention that would bring me. I just want to go home to my mum and dad – who’ll be there with my little sister. I think I just want to be safe.
The school is enormous. Huge and terrifying it contains hordes of people who are able to cope and understand what is expected of them. They have friends, know what to do at lunchtime and don’t appear to have a lump of anxiety inside them weighing them down. My father – always patient and increasingly baffled– sits on my bed in the evening and tries to find out what is so difficult about being at school. I am incoherent, unable to describe as I can now that memory allows me to be incoherent, the smell, the timetables, the new books and new bags, the teachers and the vastness of it all – a jumble of sensations which feel overwhelmingly impossible to manage. I’m a clever girl – good at all my subjects, able easily to shine academically, but not nearly so able to feel part of the crowd, not able to shine socially. Every day I feel clumsy, anxious and inept and close to tears and the time drags heavy and long.
So finally I arrive home feeling sheepish and tearful and I’m faced with my exasperated mother not quite as patient as my father but just as worried about me. And I’m allowed to shelter briefly before I’m driven back to school in time for the second lesson of the day. The desperation I feel is palpable and fills the car as I’m driven towards the horror.
It seems, as a child, my perplexing lack of self esteem filters into all new experiences I want to take on or have to take on. I find life quite difficult despite having the trappings of a reasonably idyllic childhood. At least, I have parents who appeared to love each other most of the time, a younger brother and sister who I played with a and fought with in pretty much equal amounts, a lovely house in the country (rented not owned for a long while: my parents were eccentric and fairly penniless for much of my early childhood at least) and plenty of cats and dogs. My dad was quite disabled it is true, and my mum carried with her some of the baggage of her German-Jewish refugee past – but home was a safe and happy place for me, somehow it was the outside world which was not.
Now I look sadly back at that girl, climbing the lane out of the village. I don’t really recognise her now, but I can feel her little shadow buried deeply inside myself and I would like to be able to console her just, I suppose, as my parents tried to comfort her all those years ago.
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