The Garden Fence - proper Old Style support and chat!

LameWolf

Nargleblast said:

Now there's a welcome sight, water on a hot day. Perhaps we should leave activities like knitting and crochet to the autumn and winter months, and do cooler stuff like embroidery  and art in the summer?

Never satisfied, are we? Remember back in May when we were moaning about the wind, the rain and the cold?

Reminds me of a poem I heard many years ago:

Man is nothing but a fool,

When it's hot, he wants it cool.

When it's cool, he wants it hot;

Always wanting what is not!

Btw @Nargleblast in answer to your question a little way upthread, yes, the Maypole is indeed a phallic symbol.

newroadahead

Hello All
I read along but don't post often 
Reading back about religion I used to love how Dave Allen used to finish his shows 
"May your God go with you "
I always and still feel he was all inclusive with that comment
Another one struggling with the heat we moved our tower fan on a bar stool into the bedroom on Sunday night after my 6 1/2 hour trip home from Norfolk due to Dartford Bridge being closed it helps a little just wish it would stop DH snoring and now for some reason talking in his sleep !!!
NRA 

Hard_Up_Hester

It's too  hot here for me to make scarves but I have to make enough stuff to fill the stalls at the craft fairs. I'm currently making Worry Worms as they are small. I need to look for more patterns so we have an assortment of goods on offer.
Crochet Worry Worm Pattern- Super Cute And Super Fast To Make - Knit And Crochet Daily (dailycrochet.com)

MingVase

Absolutely loved Dave Allen

MrsCD

Love those worry worms, Hester!
My Dad's friend used to have a market stall and he would make little googly eyed creatures just from scraps of fur fabric. They all sold like hot cakes.

pollyanna_26

newroadahead said:

Hello All
I read along but don't post often 
Reading back about religion I used to love how Dave Allen used to finish his shows 
"May your God go with you "
I always and still feel he was all inclusive with that comment
Another one struggling with the heat we moved our tower fan on a bar stool into the bedroom on Sunday night after my 6 1/2 hour trip home from Norfolk due to Dartford Bridge being closed it helps a little just wish it would stop DH snoring and now for some reason talking in his sleep !!!
NRA 

I loved Dave Allen and agree he was all inclusive as well as wise , thoughtful and very funny. I was devestated when he died.

I'm the good Catholic who parted ways with organised religion when I was 15. We had a good Parish priest but when my dad died when I was 15 his answer to my Why my Dad was God needed another angel. The nuns that taught myself and my younger sisters, the priest and my mum were forever talking of Gods heavenly host of angels so that didn't cut it with me. My mum was telling me not to dare question the father.

My dad had been bedbound for about a year and had recently been admitted to hospital. Children weren't encouraged to visit but I had been allowed to a couple of times. I was told he had a bad cough. Mum and her older sister took me to see him the day before Christmas Eve.

He was talkative and happy and reached for his wallet and put a £5 note in my hand . He told me to buy something nice for us all and as he'd said in previous visits he was coming home on Christmas Eve - the next day.

I lay in bed staring at that £5 note, wondering what to buy. It seemed like riches.

He didn't come home Christmas eve mum and her sister went to the hospital myself and my sisters were bundled into my dads  brothers car, We barely knew him . He'd recently come back from living in London ande we were taken to his hotel on the Dock Rd in Bootle that night . it was noisy and quite scary downstairs in the bars so he led us upv flights of stairs and into a large room. There was a woman we'd never seen, he didn't say who she was just went down to the bar and back to work.

The woman made us a drink and something to eat without speaking a word. We lay awake all listening to  the noise. Next day we were driven home to be told Dad was dead.

Things were just badly handled. No explaining , my mums brothers and two of her sisters were in shock. It transpired mums older sister was the only one who knew he was never going to come home. I was sent by mum to let my youngest and favourite auntie know. She forgot to give me bus fare so I called at my best firends houseand we did the long walk together. We were laughing hysterically when  Auntie J opened the front door she told us to come in and asked if there was something wrong so i said no mum told me to come and tell you dad's dead then burst into tears.

Unknown to anyone I was coming down the dreaded diptheria there was an outbreak. I crawled into bed when i couldn't stay on my feet any longer aunties and uncles ordering me to get up and help my mum I was still burning up the day before my dads funeral being ordered to get up ,  My favourite auntie was the one who ran for the doctor and probably saved my life.

I could barely open my mouth but he gently forced it open saw the web forming across my throat and ran to his surgery he came back with what he told me were magic and later he toldme they were called Penicillan and I  was the first person in my family to have them .

it took me a long time to recover and I did a lot of thinking and wondering why my dad. Mum didn't handle it well , the parish priest seemed out of his depth. He had a big springer spanieland I often used to take it for long walks or a run in the woods . I stopped that. The nuns at school had no answer than Gods will so I no longer went to mass , benediction , sang in the church choir or helped with Sunday school.

When my first husband and I were planning our wedding I made an effort for my mums sake and started to go to mass on a Sunday. I knew she'd be mortified if I married in a registry office. I diden't go to confession or take communion at the Nuptual Mass but I did send my son to the school next to the church again for my mums sake.  When my husband died young we moved a long way away and I looked at all the schools and chose the one with the best reputation a state primary and junior school.

Neither they or the two children from my 2nd marriage are church goers I left the choice to them. Had my grief been handled better things may have been different but it wasn't and they aren't . It seems strange to me to have been singing in the choir at the opening of the Metropolitan Cathedral all those years ago.

I have tried to be kind and caring , to help those in need whatever their creed or colour and to bring my children up to be honest , caring human beings. To me that is enough. All four of my grandparent were forced from their land in Ireland during the Famine. There were a number of reasons for the famine but religious differences was one.

The only timeI have thought of going to church again was on one of my rare visits to Liverpool years ago. They'd often be for youngests hospital appts at the Royal or Broadgreen.

If she was up to it later I'd take her to what was then George Henry Lees until it became John Lewis when it relocated to Liverpool One. She loved TJ Hughes so sometimes we'd go there.

I tried to go to my beloved  Georgian Quarter with it's beautiful buildings. I never knew if my first husbands family were churchgoers. It was never mentioned, My parish priest probably asked him during the pre wedding talks they had as I knew he wasn't catholic.

 His two favourite places of all were the Pier Head in Liverpool and the Anglican Cathedral in the Georgian Quarter. Other than that it was anywhere connected to the railways.. He worked a short walk from the Anglican Cathedral and would often mention he'd gone in there on his way to or from work. He loved the architecture and the peace. Inever went in in his life time but some time after his early death I took a walk around the ol graveyard and the grounds . Years later i went inside and was stunned by the plain but beautiful architecture. Some years ago I took youngest and we sat in the quiet sunlit interior.

When we were leaving there was a man in a clerical collar standing near the doorway . He said hello and we had a little chat. When he learned the reason why I a non church attender was there he spoke very kindly and siad he understood . We were welcome to go there no pressure many people did for the peace.

I felt the big knot of pent up anger at my husbands untimely death begin to ease slightly. There will never be forgiveness from me for those responsable because it is unforgivable.

As we walked away I found myself wishing I'd asked the mans name. I thought of how one gentle softly spoken man had brought about a change and i had no idea who he was.

I found out who he was on the news when they showed the new Archishop od Canterbury. Justin Welby. I thought I could engage with a faith like his but he was gone to Canterbury. He was one of the first people I saw talking about the pandemic on TV and later on the struggles of those extrememly clinically vulnerable, the isolated , ignored , the poor, those on the streets and the lonely also the carers who weren't being siupported and many elderly people confused and afraid.

Some time later he spoke of his own mental health struggles over the years and then I knew why and how he could talk to two total strangers in exactly the right way and change the hurt and anger inside me. Those in prison had influenced my feelings and thoughts for far too many years and I had to consign them to history so I did.

pollyx

VJsmum

Wow, Polly.  I don't know what to say.  so well written.

Justin Welby seems like a lovely man.  

MingVase

I remember thinking church was all complete rubbish when I was about 11 or 12 so I stopped going. Then I read about an inscription on a Viking grave that said something like "I believe in no gods but in my own strong right hand"  and that made total sense to me. As in, we are in charge of what we do, we know what's wrong and what's right etc. Personal responsibility. And that worked fine for me until I found Spiritualism - but I'm not rabid, I'm very grounded and commonsense and practical.

For a vase.

pollyanna_26

MingVase said:

I remember thinking church was all complete rubbish when I was about 11 or 12 so I stopped going. Then I read about an inscription on a Viking grave that said something like "I believe in no gods but in my own strong right hand"  and that made total sense to me. As in, we are in charge of what we do, we know what's wrong and what's right etc. Personal responsibility. And that worked fine for me until I found Spiritualism - but I'm not rabid, I'm very grounded and commonsense and practical.

For a vase.

For once I can confirm the vase is telling the truth. She is very grounded with commonsense and very practical. Well just not mention her strange hobbies.

I think that viking inscription makes perfect sense but maybe it's because I have viking forbears before the Irish ones. When my dad first became ill mum persuaded him to go on a pilgrimage to Lourdes. I have thought and thought over the years and don't ever remember dad attending mass not even on Christmas eve.

All the recent headspace keeps bringing .more looking back at the past. His older sister was a practicing Catholic and her children were. Dad was buried in our local churchyard but I don't remember him ever taking part in church life.

I've wondered if the fact he literally stowed aboard a ship at the Pierhead after his mum died when he was 11 his dad couldn't cope his sister  struggled with a lot of siblings so one day he walked down from Everton Brow to the Pierhead and disapppered for a while had anything to do with the non church going. He did join the Royal Navy just before WW2 and sailed alongside the Merchant ships on Convoy protection duties while the Spitfires protected from the skies.

I wasn't born until after WW2 So I have no idea if parents and other relatives were different before the war. I do know many of the extended family were changed by it. I was a young mum when I learned two of my mums sisters had husbands return home violent bullies. One of my mums sils had married mums brother and it was years before what she was suffering came to light. My dads big sister had married mums older brother and he hade changed terribly when the war ended.

They had two sons and four daughters and lived in a two up two down tiny terrace in Anfield. My mum used to worry about them all the time. Every now and then we were going on a visit. We'd take a tram to the Rotunda then either a bus up the big hill or sometimes we'd walk up.

I loved seeing my cousins but hated being in that house. Sometimes we'd walk along the road to Stanley Park. If mum was flush she'd give me the money for us all to go on the boating lake or if not swhe'd give me money for ice cream and lemonade. She always sent us to the shop along the road for fish and chips which adults and children would eat out of the paper before we set off home. It took me years to realise we all ate with our fingers because there wasn't any cutlery and little crockery.

The house had a front room with a rusty iron range. There was very little furniture. There was a kitchen at the back tiny and held just a very wide low set stone sink .  The one cold tap was always dripping and the walls were bare and damp as was the floor. There was a door in the kitchen leading to the stairs. I never went upstairs I didn't want to. Just two bedroms for 8 people. There was a tiny yard outside with the outside toilet I would avoid drinking hoping not to need to go in there.

Everything was dirty, smelly and very different from my own home. The eldest son set up as a plumber and went to America a few years later the  other son was a Haemophilliac- sp? He seemed to stay at home. Eldest cousin worked and tried to create some order in the house until she married.Another daughter went to Oz on the £10 passage and she thrived  and never came back. We have aussie relatives. Youngest cousin married around the same time as me and we had the horrible large but damp rented flat  after son was born and she was living around the corner with her husband and her baby. Ithink we kept each other sane for that year until We moved to the nearly new 2 bed council flat.

That house they lived in eacaped the slum clearance and remained while high rise flats were being built . The flats weren't great but they were clean and functional with hot andd cold running water and indoor loos.

obviously auntie was worn down , half starved and at the mercy of a very different husband from the one that went to war.  I never saw her do anything. The washing went to the wash house that was still there at that time . I never saw her cook but she never really had ingredients , mum would often bake a big meat pie and jam or currant eart to take there.

Sometimes auntie would have us all laughing and joking other times she'd hardly norice us. I have no memory of her death at all.

The house still stands they've had  sort of refurb but she have been bulldozerd after the war.

It's even hotter here I hope some of you have some shade and at least a breeze none here.

pollyx

Florenceem

Another hot one here.
We are released from flat/fish care as neighbour has arrived home - course finished early.
No scarves today - finished a caterpillar and a snake.