I have no idea where it came from. It wasn’t the sort of thing any member of my family would ever have intentionally owned. Probably a jumble sale find. My arms were lost inside its sleeves and as I struggled to walk in high-heeled shoes far too big for me, it trailed on the ground behind me like a magnificent, regal train, but I thought it was the most beautiful garment I had ever seen and of all the odd collection of clothes that I had acquired for my dressing-up collection, this coat was my favourite. It was made of deep, plush velvet, with a mandarin collar and patterned in shades of russet, orange and red that swirled and eddied together. I would lie for hours, idling away the time by tracing the flow of the colours with my fingertips, brushing the soft textures against my cheek. I have come to suspect that it may have been quite old. It had the most exquisite buttons. They were orbs of red, layered glass, held in the tiny palms of silver hands. I have no idea what became of that coat, but many times I have longed to catch a glimpse of those amazing buttons again. I have never seen anything like them, since.

    Our clothes, nearly all home sewn, were made oversized and to a design deemed to be ‘summat sensible’ – a term which loosely meant, ‘nothing within the realms of fashion during the last twelve hundred years’ – to be passed down the line and then some, before being cut and put into service as dusters or neatly hemmed handkerchiefs. Vests became dishcloths. Sleeves were cut and sewn into mitten shapes. Squares of thicker material were utilised as pan holders. When they became too worn for practical household use they were used as rags. Jumpers were carefully unravelled; the wool held over the steam of the kettle to remove the kinks and then rolled into neat balls.   Nothing was wasted. Every zip, button and piece of knicker elastic was carefully removed and stored, to be used again.

    My mam’s red, button tin had a picture of a begging dog and a precocious child scoffing Thornes toffees and bore the slogan, “It’s too good for you, Spot”. The buttons it held were nothing like the beautiful, red, glass ones, although there were some delightful items. I loved scooping up handfuls and dribbling them through my fingers. There were ones made of rubber, tin, celluloid and bakelite. There were uniform buttons with their pressed, brass insignia and a very pretty, glass millefiori set in shades of green. Mother of pearl, leather, plastics in every shade of cardigan we had ever possessed and some hideous, orange crimplene-covered ones that came from a dress I had despaired of ever growing out of. Tiny lemon, lamb shaped buttons from a baby’s coat and even tinier, bootee fastenings in glazed, tan ceramic with golden, stud shanks. An inch-long, flat-backed owl carved in ivory with two holes in his stomach and eight miniature landscapes executed in oils on rounded plastic surfaces. Amongst the tens of utilitarian tortoise-shell and wooden duffle-coat toggles were the more unusual; two dull metal, shield and sword cloak fastenings and pierced, carved bone, fan sticks with mother of pearl grommets. Thrown into this eclectic mix was an assortment of Kilt pins, a piece of yellow painted meccano, collar studs and stiffeners, suspender clips and nappy pins with blue and pink cap-sheathes, hooks from sanitary belts, buckles, gallusses fastenings and a bronze League of Ovalteenies badge. Shirt-waister dresses often had buckles and buttons that matched, so these were strung together in the salvage process, on oddments of Petersham or thread and I would slide them over my wrists to make jingly bracelets. I would run my tongue around the edges and over the surfaces of the buttons, feeling the textures, the coldness of metals, the intricacies of embossing and raised areas. I can still hear the noise as I tipped the tin and the buttons rushed out, splaying over the dining table, the satisfying clicks as I moved them into patterns, categorising colours, shapes and sizes. My mam wasn’t one for revealing memories or telling stories, so I knew nothing of the provenance of many of the contents of that tin, but, no doubt, all had some story to tell of the garments that they had adorned and, more importantly, of the individuals who had worn those clothes. The soldier, the infant, the labourer and the mother, their essence captured and preserved in a Thornes’ toffee tin.

As part of a study project that I am involved in, I am looking for three people who would be willing to read and answer questions, or provide comments, on a number of pieces of text (amounting to only about 2,500 words overall). If you think you might be willing to help with this, please contact me via the comment box and I will provide further details. Many thanks.

March.

Slayer of the winter, art thou here again?
O welcome, thou that’s bring’st the summer nigh!
The bitter wind makes not thy victory vain,
Nor will we mock thee for thy faint blue sky.
Welcome, O March! whose kindly days and dry
Make April ready for the throstle’s song,
Thou first redresser of the winter’s wrong!
                                                  -   William Morris   (1834 – 1896)

  Happy New Year!

Well it would have been.

Until 1752, when we changed to the new fangled Gregorian calendar, March was the beginning of the calendar year, something that hailed back to the Romans. The word, ‘March’ comes from the Roman ‘Martius’, the month being named after Mars the god of war.

   The Anglo-Saxons had  different names for it. They called it, ‘Hlyd monath’, which means ‘Stormy month’ or, ‘Hraed monath’, which means, ‘Rugged month’. The weather figures a lot in the sayings about this month;

‘When March comes in like a lion it goes out like a lamb, but if it comes in like a lamb it will go out like a lion.’

               ‘A dry march and a wet May

               Fill barns and bays

               With corn and hay.’

                                              ‘As it rains in March, so it rains in June.’

                ‘March winds and April showers

                 Bring forth May flowers.’

Botanists tell us that the powerful winds of March are needed not only to aid early pollination of plants, but also to allow the trunks and main branches of trees to be flexed, which helps the flow of sap to be drawn up to nourish the budding leaves.

            The afternoon is bright,                  
       with spring in the air,
       a mild March afternoon,
      with the breath of April stirring,
      I am alone in the quiet patio
looking for some old untried illusion -
some shadow on the whiteness of  the  wall
some memory asleep
on the stone rim of the fountain,
perhaps in the air

the light swish of some trailing gown.

                                            -   Antonio Machado, 1875-1939

                                                                       XLVIII

March is the month of expectation,
The things we do not know,
The Persons of Prognostication
Are coming now.
We try to sham becoming firmness,
But pompous joy
Betrays us, as his first betrothal
Betrays a boy.

                                -   Emily Dickinson (1830-1866).

 Ode To March.

Ere frost-flower and snow-blossom faded and fell, 
       and the splendour of winter had passed out of sight,
The ways of the woodlands were fairer and stranger 
       than dreams that fulfill us in sleep with delight;
The breath of the mouths of the winds had hardened on tree-tops 
       and branches that glittered and swayed
Such wonders and glories of blossom like snow 
       or of frost that outlightens all flowers till it fade
That the sea was not lovelier than here was the land, 
       nor the night than the day, nor the day than the night,
Nor the winter sublimer with storm than the spring: 
       such mirth had the madness and might in thee made,
March, master of winds, bright minstrel and marshal of storms
        that enkindle the season they smite.

                                                 -   Algernon C. Swinburne (1837 – 1909) 

 Indoors or out, no one relaxes
In March, that month of wind and taxes,
The wind will presently disappear,
The taxes last us all the year.
                                            -   Ogden Nash (1902 – 1971)

Celebrated annually on the 14th of the Jewish month of Adar, the wonderful occasion known as Purim commemorates the deliverance of the Jews in Persia from their evil royal advisor Hamman about 2,500 years ago. 

   In the reign of King Aschashverosh, Mordecai, a Jew, refused to bow down and prostrate himself before Hamar, the vizier to the King. Haman immediately set out to destroy every Jew in the kingdom. In order to carry out his vicious, racist plan, Haman decided to enlist the help of the unsusping King Achashverosh. Haman had lots cast to determine on which day he should carry out the killings. The word for lots is ‘Purim’. The chosen date was the thirteenth of Adar.

   The king, who trusted Haman, agreed to his plan to murder the Jews, because Haman relayed to him that the Jews were ’scattered abroad in all the provinces’, and that ‘their laws are different from those of every people ‘(Esther 3:8). 

Letters written by Haman and signed by the king, were sent out through all the provinces, commanding all persons ‘to destroy, to slay and to cause to perish all the Jews’ (Esther 3:13). The Jews would have been massacred had it not been for Esther, Mordecai’s cousin, who had been chosen queen a few years earlier. Queen Esther was able to intercede and save the Jewish community from genocide. Haman was hanged on the gallows that he himself had prepared for Mordecai.

Mordecai sent out letters to all the Jews calling upon them to observe the fourteenth and fifteenth days of Adar in celebration of God’s goodness in saving the Jews.

Preceded by two days of fasting, Purim which, this year, began at sundown yesterday and continues until tomorrow morning, is a time of  jubilant carnival, with children dressing in character costumes, jokes being played, beauty and talent contests and much feasting. Shakers and football rattles are waved noisily whenever Haman’s name is mentioned in the re-telling of the story and gifts are given to both the needy and friends. 

Hamentaschen (Haman’s Ears) are pastries that are shaped to resemble the three-cornered hat that Haman was traditionally thought to have worn. Children enjoy making these as much as the adults, sculpting their pastry to look like realistic ears! Each family has its own recipes, but, basically, they are made in pastry, filled with jam, stewed apple, pie-filling or mixed fruit and then pinched into shape, rather like pasties would be.

Chag Purim

‘These days should be remembered and observed in every generation by every family, and in every province and in every city. And these days of Purim should never cease to be celebrated by the Jews, nor should the memory of them die out among their descendants.’ – Esther 9: 28.

‘People boil in oil while blocks of ice stand watching’.

I am not a theatre critic. When I go to watch a play, I like to totally lose myself in the story and not concern myself with the actors’ abilities. If they are actors worth their merit, then that is how it should be. Usually, I am not disappointed, although there was one memorable-for-all-the-wrong-reasons performance at Whitby Pavilion last year, featuring some very well known luvvies, that wasn’t worth the inflated price of the programme, let alone that of the seat. Those keepers of Gertrude’s abysmal secret could have learned a great deal from both the cast and production crew of ‘Hypothermia’, performed at Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough. This is the third production by Full Body and The Voice Theatre Company that I have had the utmost pleasure to see.    

   The play, which is performed in-the-round, giving it a very intimate feel (and going right to the heart of SJT’s roots) was written by Vanessa Brooks, whose many credits include, ‘Poor Mrs Pepys’, ‘Penny Blue’ and ‘All At Sea’. It centres around a psychiatric hospital of 1940’s Germany and is an incisive examination of the Nazi eugenics policies. Brooks also directed ‘Hypothermia’.

    Ben Langford, who is quickly becoming established as an ‘actor with clout’, took the central character, Oskar’, a long time resident at the hospital, through his transformative journey from the joking, singing patient to the terror of  facing the holocaust with a skill that drew upon all his physical, verbal and emotional energies. Johnny Vivash was the suitably dark and sinister Dr. Katscher, Faye Billing, the hospital administrator who kept an all-knowing eye on unfolding events, Bradley Cole, the doctor who could not heal the downward spiral of his own life and Margaret Fraser embodied Frau Poppendick, who desperately wants to hang on to her beliefs despite her shattered dreams. All were convincing and emotional performances.

   The icy and snowy conditions outside the theatre seemed somehow appropriate, echoed as they were by the ice-laden motifs running through the production. Kevin Jenkins’  set design, appearing on first sight to be a simple affair with two vomitories, a couple of desks and four chairs, belied the intelligent attention to detail that Jenkins always imbues his work with. Snow surrounded the set, the bird’s footprints representing the runic symbols for life and death. The landscape that unfolded was one ‘where breath freezes on the lips and bodies ache for human kindness’. I won’t spoil the last sequence for anyone hoping to catch up with ‘Hypothermia’ on its tour, suffice to say that Jenkins and lighting designer, Keith Forryan, have put together something that makes the audience leave the theatre, stunned, numbed to the core and amazed, all at the same time.

   Composer and musical director, Laurence Kaye, whose work is familiar to me from ‘In The Footsteps of Mr Butler’ (another Full Body and The Voice production) and ‘The Glass Mountain’ (Trestle Theatre), has produced a score for ‘Hypothermia’, which is mesmerising and impacting. Drawing upon Schubert and Kurt Weil amongst others, he follows through, as he must, the ice sequences that are lynchpin to the sound plot, when characters engage in swimming competitions beneath the ice, rhythmic sections that are truly chilling, but to counterpoint the darkness, Kaye includes a number of sections with dance-like, even comedic, qualities. The whole is a rich, varied banquet for the ears.

    ‘Hypothermia’ deals with dark material. The idea of killing the ‘incurably ill’ – an incredibly broad and sweeping definition covering many diverse conditions – was posed well before 1939. In the 1920’s, debate on this issue centred on a book co-authored by Alfred Hoche, a noted psychiatrist, and Karl Binding, a prominent scholar of criminal law. They argued that economic savings justified the killing of “useless lives”. During the First World War, patients in institutions had ranked low on the list for rationing of food and medical supplies, and as a result, many died from starvation or disease. The war undermined the value attached to individual life and, combined with Germany’s humiliating defeat, led many nationalists to consider ways to regenerate the nation as a whole, at the expense of individual rights. In 1935, Hitler stated privately that ‘in the event of war, [he] would take up the question of euthanasia and enforce it”, because ‘such a problem would be more easily solved’ during wartime. War would provide both a cover for killing and a pretext – after all, hospital beds and medical personnel would be freed up for the war effort. The upheaval of war and the diminished value of human life during wartime would also, Hitler believed, mute expected opposition. Unlike the forced sterilizations, the killing of patients in institutions was carried out in secrecy. The code name was ‘Operation T4’, a reference to Tiergartenstrasse 4, the address of the Berlin Chancellery offices where the programme was headquartered. Physicians, the most highly Nazified professional group in Germany, were key to the success of ‘T-4’,  organising and carrying out nearly all aspects of the operation, targeting adult residents in all government or church-run sanatoria and nursing homes. These medical experts rarely examined any of the patients. The doomed were transported to killing centres in Germany and Austria which were walled-in fortresses, mostly former psychiatric hospitals, castles, and a former prison — at Hartheim, Sonnenstein, Grafeneck, Bernburg, Hadamar, and Brandenburg. In the beginning, patients were killed by lethal injection, but by 1940, carbon monoxide gas was used as the preferred method of killing, the gas chambers disguised as showers, complete with fake nozzles, in order to deceive victims. Meticulous records, discovered after the war, documented 70,273 deaths by gassing at the six ‘euthanasia’ centres between January 1940 and August 1941.

In the early 1980’s, I was privileged to be given two artist-in-residencies for brief periods. One was in a psychiatric institution where I heard sad stories of elderly people who had been incarcerated there for many years, not considered fit to interact with society and labelled mentally ill because they had been unable to learn to read, had had the misfortune to get pregnant outside of wedlock, or, had epilepsy. They spent their days counting brass nails into plastic bags and packing plastic dolls into cardboard boxes. A sweet, generous, ninety-two year old lady,  who been there since she was fourteen, told me, with great articulacy,  that she had endured years of incestuous abuse by her older brother. She was due to start work as a live-in girl  and, before she left home, decided to tell her mother what had been happening to hopefully prevent her younger siblings from suffering. Her mother disbelieved her and had her committed for her lies. That confession robbed her of her life. My time amongst these people was just before the advent of reintegration into the community…and what a hoo-ha that caused amongst the more narrow-minded in our world. These people, gentle and creative beings that they were, would all have been destroyed had they been resident in Hitler’s Germany. My other residency was in a ‘Rubella unit’, where the clients had learning disabilities, blindness and deafness, brought about because their mothers, almost certainly unwittingly, had come into contact with German measles whilst they carried their precious babies. Had these people lived in Hitler’s Germany, they, too, would have had their lives curtailed.

A friend of mine, Sally Johnson, died in 2000, at the age of 25. The daughter of acclaimed artist, Ken Johnson, Sally became an accomplished water-colourist, selling more paintings than Van Gogh. I have one of her pictures on my study wall. There is also one of her paintings on a wall of No. 10 Downing Street – when John Major was prime minister he said it “expressed the peace and tranquillity missing from my busy life”. Sally’s amazing life-story was written down in the book, ‘Face Like A Flower’, by her biographer, Bill Anderson. Had Sally have had the misfortune to be born into Hitler’s Germany, we would not have ever got to hear about, or see, her astounding gifts. Sally wouldn’t have survived the gas chambers, because Sally had Down’s syndrome.

‘Hypothermia’ is a play that doesn’t shy away from asking how far removed  are we now from making judgements about the worth of humanity and whether a reluctance to take action and fight prejudices could result in similar ‘acts of mercy’ happening today, a questioning made all the more poignant by the fact that some of the cast of ‘Hypothermia’ have learning difficulties and, had they have lived in 1940’s Germany, they would not have survived Hitler’s culling. Full Body and The Voice can be so proud of all that they have achieved. Many of their actors, over the years, have gone on to work on equal terms with non-learning disabled actors in a variety of settings, including the soaps, ‘Emmerdale’ and ‘Eastenders’, and have more than proved their worth. Hypothermia’s own cast showed a talent, charisma and energy for acting that was second to none. They are all stars in my book – and that includes James Munton, who did not appear, but who I know was ready to step-in at a moment’s notice. Their performance in this play was magnificent. I sincerely hope that there are awards in the offing for the whole of that production team. It was a triumph for every one of them, for their ground-breaking company, for Vanessa Brooks’ writing and directing skills, for the talented crew, for theatre as an art form and for our society. It takes guts to play a role knowing that, ‘there but for the grace of God…’ and it takes more talent than the famous ‘Gertrude’ has in her secretive, little finger to do it with such style and panache.

Links: Exclusive mix of one of Laurence Kaye’s tracks for ’Hypothermia’ available on soundcloud.com

http://soundcloud.com/lozkaye/procedure-must-be-followed

Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough – http://www.sjt.uk.com/

Full Body And The Voice – http://www.fullbody.org.uk/

‘Face like a flower’, the story of Sally Johnson – http://www.downs-syndrome.org.uk/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=114&category_id=4&vmcchk=1&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=62

 To a Snowdrop. 

Lone Flower, hemmed in with snows and white as they
But hardier far, once more I see thee bend
Thy forehead, as if fearful to offend,
Like an unbidden guest. Though day by day,
Storms, sallying from the mountain-tops, waylay
The rising sun, and on the plains descend;
Yet art thou welcome, welcome as a friend
Whose zeal outruns his promise! Blue-eyed May
Shall soon behold this border thickly set
With bright jonquils, their odours lavishing
On the soft west-wind and his frolic peers;
Nor will I then thy modest grace forget,
Chaste Snowdrop, venturous harbinger of Spring,
And pensive monitor of fleeting years!

                                            - William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

It seems that every bankside, woodland and verge around where I live is covered in a beautiful, blanket of snowdrops at the moment. In the Victorian language of flowers, Snowdrops signify ‘hope’ and they certainly convey a feeling that the worst of winter is over and that Spring is well and truly on its way.

 In gardens, too, the cultivated varieties are at their best. There has been a great upsurge of interest in the different varieties of snowdrops in recent times. If you thought there were just singles or doubles (‘frilly petticoats’), it may come as a surprise to learn that there are more than 500 named cultivars derived from the 19 or so species found in the wild. All are variations on a theme, basically white petals with green, or occasionally, yellow markings. Personally, I love the simple purity of the common, single type.

 According to legend, the snowdrop became the symbol of hope when Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden.  Eve sat weeping. No flower had bloomed since The Fall. Snow fell ceaselessly. When Eve was about to give up hope that the cold winters would ever end, an angel appeared. She transformed some of the snowflakes into snowdrop flowers, proving that the winters do eventually give way to the spring. Germany has a different legend, whereby, when God made snow he asked all the flowers to give up a little of their colour for it; the flowers refused to oblige, all except for the snowdrop, who willing gave her colour to the snow. As a reward, the snowdrop was given the honour of being the flower that heralded the approach of spring.

Snowdrops aren’t native to this country. In the thirteenth century, the bulbs were transported to Europe from Turkey and Rome by monks wishing to plant them around the monasteries. A snowdrop bulbs lasts for ever and many of those snowdrops are still there, around our ancient monasteries and churches. Some of the pictures on this page were taken at Fountain’s Abbey and Studley Royal, last week, where those snowdrops of the thirteenth century still cover the landscape.

 Sadly, the presence of snowdrops in churchyards had a downside. People began to associate them with death, comparing the flowers to shrouds and considering a single snowdrop as a portend of death. Certainly, when I was a child, in some parts of North Yorkshire, it was considered deeply unlucky to bring snowdrops into the house.

 The Swedish naturalist, Carl Linnaeus created the genus for the Snowdrop, giving it the latin name ‘Galanthus’, from the Greek, ‘gala’ meaning ‘milk’ and ‘anthos’, meaning, ‘flower’, although the common snowdrop was called the ‘milk flower’ before this classification, due to its resemblance to three drops of milk. The name, ‘Snowdrop’ is not all that old and comes from the German, ‘Schneetrophen’, which refers to the ear rings worn by seventeenth century ladies. In the time of Shakespeare it was known as the ‘bulbous white violet’. Older English names for the plant include ‘Candlemas bells’, ‘Fair Maids of February’, ‘Mary’s Tapers’ and ‘White Ladies’, all relating to church festivals of Candlemas (February 2) and referring to the white robed maidens in procession which took place on the feast of purification. A much more recent addition to the names this plant has acquired is ‘White Helmets’, which is a reference to the nickname given by the Brits to the American military police stationed in the UK prior to the invasion during World War II, because of their white helmets, gloves, gaiters and Sam Browne belts against the drab olive green uniforms.

 The first poem about the flower, using the word, ‘Snowdrop’ was written by Thomas Tickle (1686 – 1740), but many others followed, including Coleridge, Wordsworth, Louise Gluck and Yorkshire’s own, Ted Hughes;

           SNOWDROP

‘Now is the globe shrunk tight
Round the mouse’s dulled wintering heart
Weasel and crow, as if moulded in brass,
Move through an outer darkness
Not in their right minds,
With the other deaths. She, too, pursues her ends,
Brutal as the stars of this month,
Her pale head heavy as metal. ’

                                                  – Ted Hughes (1930 – 1998)

 On a more sinister note, ‘snowdrop’ is used as a euphemism for cocaine, as illustrated in Kenneth Slessor’s poem, ‘The Snowdrop Girl’, which deals with the widespread use of drugs as an escape from the realities of World War II; 

             Snowdrop Girl.

Snowdrop Girl in fields of snowdrops walks,
Whiter than foam, deeper than waters flowing,
Flakes of wild milk gone blowing,
Snowing on cloudy stalks.
The Snowdrop Girl goes picking flowers of snow,
Blossoms of darkness bubbling into dreams,
In a strange country, by the shadowy streams
Where the cruel petals of the Coke-tree grow.

Although we don’t need to walk far to see the masses of snowdrops gracing the woodlands around, there is an organised Snowdrop Walk at Burton Agnes hall, which is fun. The woodland walk has been extended this year, and there’s also a labyrinth and a jungle garden, with sculptures tucked away for the children to find by following the clues. Access to the Snowdrop walk also includes the rest of the Burton Agnes garden and grounds. For those in the know, the rabbits have all gone, but the guinea pigs are still there and chidren love to have their picnics with them running around their feet (I usually pack thermoses of soup and bread filled with hot veggies so that any bread not eaten can be fed to the ducks in the village. ) There are a couple of gift shops with some unusual things, a farm shop, an ice-cream parlour (go for the Supermix !!) and a reasonable café. Snowdrops in the green can be purchased there, as can seed and cuttings from most of the varieties of plants in the gardens. If you want to go specifically for the Snowdrop walk, you’ll have to hurry though – it ends on the 28^th.   

Links; 1. Burton Agnes –  http://www.burtonagnes.com/Home.html

               2. This is an interesting one. Apparently, alkaloids have been found in snowdrops that could be useful in the battle against Alzheimers – http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091220175319.htm

A father was trying to read the newspaper, but his young son kept interrupting him. Finally, the father grew tired of this and, tearing a page from the newspaper – one that bore a map of the world – he cut it into several pieces and handed them to the child.

“Right, now you’ve got something to do. I’ve given you a map of the world and I want to see if you can put it back together correctly.”

He resumed his reading, thinking that the task would keep the child occupied for the rest of the day.

A quarter of an hour later, the boy returned with the map, carefully sellotaped in place.

“Has your mother been teaching you geography?”, asked his father in astonishment.

“I don’t even know what that is”, replied the boy, “but there was a photograph of a man on the other side of the page and once the man was put back together, I found that the world was, too.”

I had been going to write the story behind this hymn, but recognised that I couldn’t express it as beautifully as this you tube video does;

What A Friend…

The music, ‘Erie’ , was added by Charles C. Converse in 1868. 

(Apologies, but I have no reference point to give credit for the photographs of Scrivens and Converse – needless to say, I didn’t take them!)