Category: Personal Fragments

The death of a baby, the kindness of strangers, and a seasonal message

As the year ends and as families gather together to celebrate, amidst the good cheer and good will there is often sadness and grief at the loss and absence of a loved one. Recent events have brought back a lot of memories and thoughts about the death at birth of our own baby boy – known to all and sundry as ‘Rocky’ (real name Alexander) – in January 1990.

In 2000, as a complement or counterpoint to the traditional Queen’s Christmas Message, BBC Radio 4 offered a listener an opportunity to deliver their own seasonal message to the nation. It was coming up to the anniversary of Rocky’s death, and it was also one the rare years when the festivals of Christmas, Chanukah, and Eid coincided.

So I wrote something down and emailed it off, thinking that’d be the end of it.

A couple of weeks later, just before Christmas, I got a phone call to say my piece had been selected. So I recorded it in what seemed like a broom cupboard at BBC Manchester on Oxford Road,and it went out, and seemed to have had some impact.

Here is that recording:

The Kindness of Strangers

http://youtu.be/m3pqCtqGaSAahttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3pqCtqGaSA

On the Eight Days of Chanukah….

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Over the years we’ve acquired a small collection of menorahs (properly called a hannukiah): family heirlooms, gifts, and a couple we’ve bought. It’s become a family tradition to use a different one every night for the eight nights of the festival.

Menorah 1
First night of Chanukah – one of my mother’s ‘ancient’ oil-lit menorahs. Using candles instead of oil.
Menorah 2
Second Night of Chanukah – my late parents’ menorah.
Menorah 3
Third Night of Chanukah – the ‘Irish’ menorah

There’s a story behind our ‘Irish’ menorah: http://wp.me/p47zDC-2y

Menorah 4
Fourth Night of Chanukah – afloat on our boat.
Menorah 5
Fifth Night of Chanukah – miniature menorahs given to our kids when they were also miniatures

For the 6th night, we couldn’t decide which menorah to light…so we lit both of them.

Menorah 6
This belonged to Jo’s great-grandmother, and went from England to Canada and is now back again.

Menorah 6 - Jacob
This was given to our son on his barmitzvah.
Menorah 7
This menorah was a wedding present.
Menorah 8
The eighth and last night. Our last menorah for this year, but not our last. Still a few we haven’t used. But there’s always next year!

No, you started it (a brief and incomplete history)

No
No
No, you
No, you
No, you start
No, you start
No, you started it
No, you started it
No, you started it by….
No, you started it by….
No, you started it by stabbing us
No, you started it by shooting us
No, you started it by firing rockets at us
No, you started it by bombing us
No, you started it by killing our boys
No, you started it by killing our boys
No, you started it by throwing stones at us
No, you started it by building settlements on our land
No, you started it by sending suicide bombers
No, you started it by occupying us
No, you started it by waging war against us
No, you started it by insisting it’s your land
No, you started it by refusing to accept we have a right to live here
No, you started it by refusing to accept we have a right to live here
No, you started it by wanting to throw us into the sea
No, you started it by coming here in the first place
No, you started it by refusing to recognise we’ve always been here
No, you started it by leaving Egypt to come here
No, you started it by making us slaves
No, you started it by coming to Egypt in the first place
No, you started it by….
No, you started it by…
No, you started it
No, you started it
No, you started
No, you started
No, you
No, you
No
No

Family photos (1948)

Shirley (centre) with the crew of Broken Journey and the star Phyllis Calvert (with the scarf). Pinewood Studios 1948
Shirley (centre) with the crew of Broken Journey and the star Phyllis Calvert (with the scarf). Pinewood Studios 1948

When my mother, Shirley, died aged 86, we knew that she had kept a detailed page-a-day diary from the age of 16 until the day before her last journey to hospital. What we didn’t know, until we started clearing her flat in north London, was that she had carefully and meticulously kept and archived all the important (and many not so important) documents and records of her life and the times in which she lived: letters, postcards, photos, journals, newspaper articles, travel guides, maps, etc.

As well as that, she had regularly, particularly towards the end of her life, revisited her diaries, adding what she called her “rememberings” of people, places and events, such as growing up in Deptford near the London docks, the blitz, and being evacuated to a farm in Devon.

During and after the second world war, she worked in the British film industry, first as a secretary, then in continuity. In her letters, journals and diaries she wrote detailed, acerbic and often very funny descriptions and reflections on the various goings on.

brokenjourneyThe photograph is one of several we have of the various productions she worked on, along with her production diaries and notes. This one is of the whole crew and the actor Phyllis Calvert (with the scarf) who made Broken Journey – a film about survivors of an air crash in the Alps – shot at Pinewood studios and on location in the French Alps by Gainsborough Pictures in 1948. It was directed by Ken Annakin (who later directed Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines).

My mother is right in the centre, as she was throughout her life.

(This first appeared in The Observer newspaper, 29 August 2015)