Lost and Found While Breastfeeding

Catie Wilkins, comedian and writer, wrote a blog about leaving something on a train. Then, rushing away from the job hunting men, I left my hat behind. I don’t often forget to pick up my things (although I lose things in the house all the time) and I’ve been trying to remember times I’ve done it.

In the hot summer of 1990, a few weeks after Nina was born, we moved to Leeds. Considering how young and hopeless I was, I made a fair stab at parenting.  It was tough though, and perhaps sensing this, Nick’s mum G came all the way from Cornwall on the National Express Coach. She brought her apron and all of the finely honed housewifely skills that I expected to acquire on marriage, but which even now have failed to manifest themselves. Nick was happily surrounded with his three most loved women, two of them in unspoken competition to serve him his favourite food. He busied himself with his new job and left his wife and mum to make the best of the fortnight.

It has taken G a couple of days to clean the flat and tidy away the contents of the packing cases I had left in corners. She brought logic to cupboards, and a shine to every surface. After that, she would get up early ‘do around’ and sit reading romantic novels and cooing at her first grandchild. They were forming the bonds of love and mutual admiration that  leads them to write to each-other once a week now. We all liked to get out, and we had already seen the delights of Leeds, which, at this time before it became the cultural capital of the North, were limited to the markets and Kirkstall Abbey. That was how we decided to have a daytrip to York.

I don’t remember the day. I suspect it was hot, and like all the days of that summer made up of thirst, feeding, nappy changing, sudden all-consuming tiredness and strange pelvic sensations as my body post-childbirth body adjusted. We had taken the train, and I fed Nina on the way home, wedging her between the table and my breast, trying to be discrete as the non-feeding breast tingled and leaked and she guzzled noisily, attracting attention. The train was crowded and I had stuffed my bag to the side of me where it propped my elbow. It’s not a long way from York to Leeds, but still I fell asleep, baby attached. I don’t suppose G liked to disturb me. She approved of breastfeeding, but not so much of it in public where swapping sides is the most awkward. Perhaps she didn’t know how fast Leeds would come up. Who would want to kick a sleeping, breastfeeding woman? Even lightly with the toe of an elegant court shoe?

I was woken by the sound of the brakes of the train. We needed to get off quick, finding the pushchair and G’s shopping, squeezing between other passengers. It was after we had stood on the platform and I had tucked my breast back into my bra that I realised my bag was missing. The train had gone. Gwen was even tempered with me, but it was no small thing. The nappies and clothes could be done without, but my purse had all the cards and money Nick and I had. Worse than that, I had lost our only set of keys, including those to the communal entrance.

We queued at the enquiries desk, and were sent on to see the station master who had a small office in an oily back room up some stairs. I left G with the bags and the buggy, but carried grizzly Nina up with me. There’s been a lot of work done by companies about customer services since 1990, but this has mostly come to mean bland reassurance and attempts to sell things rather than the actual ability to fix problems. I had no such trouble back then. I was told by this man who was king of his station that I had been very silly and there was nothing he could do, the Penzance train was on the way to Wakefield. He then sighed in dismissal and went back to his papers. ‘But’, I said. ‘Nothing I can do’, he gruffed again. Nina started wailing and I stood telling him about the keys to the communal entrance door that would mean that we would have to replace the specialist lock that we couldn’t afford. Then I lifted my shirt and silenced the baby, starting to cry myself. ‘There’ll be no need for that’, said the station master ‘you sit here’. He went away, returning some minutes later with a cough and a cup of tea. The bag had been located and was en route from Wakefield arriving ….

In the end, I was reunited with my patient Mother-in-Law and my bag, purse intact. ‘Never mind’, she said, ‘at least it wasn’t the baby that got left behind’.

The Memory of Cement

I sometimes find it hard to believe that places stay in the same err, place, it is me moving around. I mean to say, my patterns of movement change and places that were once close and familiar become far away and exotic. Even places that are twenty minutes drive away.

A few days ago, H, searching for industriously photogenic places asked me for suggestions. Rugby Cement immediately sprung to mind. It is the only place I could think of locally that has an iconic tall tower belching a smoke-like substance that I'm sure is steam. The building is visible from the road, ripe for the pupil photographer with a brief to explore HDR (I don't know what that is either) on a deadline.

In my twenties I worked in Rugby in a job that involved driving about the town, I got to know the place well and would routinely drive past the factory. The only thing was, I couldn't remember the route. I could picture the shape of the trees, the hump in the road which I once went over too fast almost runing into the car in front and making my passenger, who never spoke, gasp. It was a therapeutic breakthrough at the time. I just couldn't remember the road network that linked it with Coventry. The sat-nav, I found, drew a blank when asked for Rugby Cement. Driving through the sleet in the general direction, I hoped for the best and tried to hide my surprise when we came upon it by accident.

How things change. The factory looks the same, but the hump in the road is all smoothed out and being turned into a jazzy roundabout. The run-down industrial estates that bordered the place are still there, but there is a shiny new addition. A block of first time buyer flats, "50% Sold" trills the poster. Some of the flats have floor to ceiling windows with balconies. They overlook the cement works. The lorries are their neighbours. A room with a view indeed. I'll bet that the residents love it. Not the view itself, but the having of a place, living the new carpet dream. Live anywhere long enough and you cease to notice the ugliness.

This is a blog entry that deserves a photo. I would have asked H for one, but she is busy with her new fad, a borrowed bass guitar. Also, for ages now, I haven't been able to get pictures to upload.

In more disturbing news, Blogger have made alterations and I can't find the spell checker. Humble apologies. Think of it as some sort of spot the mistake quiz, and I'll try and sort it all out next time.

A Bequest

Wednesday 3.2.09

In the process of looking out patchwork books to inspire me to begin work on H's Uni quilt (I have less than three years to make it so best make a start), I came across something from the past. An A4 file, faded from mid-green to light, dusty. In it, photo negatives spanning two years (1992 - 4), my monochrome period, where I took up serious black and white photography and developed my own negatives.

H and I looked through it together. She can't remember me making the images, although there are some of her as a small baby sprawled on Nick's chest, being held by our midwife, propped on the sofa. All of the usual baby images. She remarked that she was a fat baby, and so she was. Sorry to disappoint the food fascists, but she was fully breastfed for six months, so it was all our own work and no Farlies. Now, she plans to study photography at college, so she was interested in the contents of the folder, from the effects of exhausted fix (now sending the black and white prints brown) to the spare plastic wallets that hold the negs.

For me, the past rushed in. The past that I was barely aware of when it was the present. In the self portraits, I see young woman of 24 or 26 unfashionably dressed, yet with a Suede haircut as the britpop scene that I was barely aware of was in ascendancy. I wasn't living the britpop life either. No raves, no snorting coke, no intense multi-partner relationships. Unless you count wife and motherhood. You didn't then. I wasn't doing the fashionable thing by being married with children. In many ways, I'm still not. Plenty of my contemporaries from school and college are without children or just getting started with the IVF. Tick tock.

I was zigging while others were zagging. I hung out with a bunch of women from the flats down the road. Just about tolerated by them, now I look back. I had no career plan. I took odd paid jobs in the voluntary sector and volunteered endlessly. In those two years, me and my mates from the local estates raised the money to build a nursery, at at time when there was only one other in the city. It's still there, although it went into private ownership a couple of years ago. The bricks are made of left wing principles, bought with right wing grant money and are, as a matter of fact, only a cladding for the prefab underneath that was brought in by lorry and hoisted by crane to the applause of two year olds. We also built a play area, took a massive group of primary school children to the theatre, helped out at carnivals, gossiped, ate veggie food, and supported Labour (but not Blair). Then there was the photography project. We were funded for that, creche and all. It was the only reason I went at the beginning, truth be known. Then, I fell in love with the darkroom. The photos are quite good, though I say it myself, especially when I was working in the reportage style.

Seeing my own young face there gave me no jolt. I wasn't an attractive young woman so now, I don't find getting older a hardship in the way that once pretty women sometimes do. I regret though that I wasn't aware then of how handsome Nick was. A geeky style of young man who would have been fashionable if he was turning thirty in this decade. He was serious looking in aviator specs and worn tee shirts, as though he was solving a maths problem while holding his children with the tenderness now lavished on his dog. There's a good one of him just yawning, which may represent that time for him. I'll ask about that. Now, I fear for him, getting older. Although we've been through all manner of stuff between then and now, I don't know how to ask him to take better care of himself, or if I could. We were never very good at talking about the serious stuff.

They're only photos. I enjoyed looking at them, and H has promised she will develop one of the negatives of Nick. I never got that far. Perhaps I didn't think they were good enough, or perhaps he didn't want me to. I don't remember. In return, I've passed the whole folder on. By the look on H's face, it is one of the best gifts I've bestowed. To quote her facebook status, that stayed up for a heartwarming twenty minutes, 'My Mum = proper legend.'

Sunday 19.7.09

I was up all night thinking about a tiny thing I'd seen on Trending Topics on Twitter. A trending topic is one listed as one of the top ten most mentioned. They seem to rise and fall based on news events and commercial plugging but sometimes something takes off seemingly from nowhere. This one was 'In 1998 I". I scrolled along looking at what people had written. Age seems to have struck. To me 1998 seems clear and not too distant or different from now. To the Twitterverse, it is an ancient time. There were loads and loads of people saying they were seven, had got their first bike, or seen their first band. Some people talked about finishing school, and first loves. At first, I thought I had mis-read it for 1989, but no, the majority of the Twitterverse is young, and I am old.

In 1998, I was in my first social care management job. It was the year that someone said in my presence to a colleague that I was good and would probably end up managing them. I war arrogant to believe it was true. That year, I took a health service management diploma (the residential was near High Wycombe) and an introduction to psychology module with the OU at Brighton. I loved Brighton but have never been back. I did the work for them during night shifts (one or two a week) and worked hard to get the service I was running as good as it could be. I was ambitious and had a career plan.

We were at last saving some money, but still trapped in early '90's negative equity and all in our one bedroomed flat. The kids shared a room and we had a room on a corridor that should have been a dining room. I was quite in to decorating and that year I painted the walls of our room teal and put up seaside prints that I bought in Brighton. Nick got good at keeping roses, the yellow ones bloomed outside of the window.

In 1998 my best friend was H. She was at the beginning of a life-changing health problem, but neither of us were to know the full extent of that for another year. We did our nails, falsies in bright colours were in, as were the Spice Girls. Mobile phones were arriving, I got my first one for Christmas. We had a computer at home, but no internet, I used it for assignments. Between H, work and study, it felt like I was hardly at home. Nick left me to my freedom though, and we were happy when we were together. We would drive out with the kids to family pubs in the country and eat lunch while they played on slides.

Towards the end of the year, I started applying for jobs. I wanted a promotion so that we could move house quicker, I thought it would take a long time. In the event, I applied for three jobs, was invited for interview at all of them. Went to two interviews and was offered the one that seemed the best anyway. It was at PIA but I didn't start until 1999.

What strikes me was how confident I was and what energy I had. I would never consider taking on a quarter of it now, and yet I managed it all fairly well. I was strong and hopeful. I wonder if I will look back in ten years time and admire the person I am now. Shamefully, I doubt it.