We made Jam

My daughter brought home strawberries and raspberries from Culross Palace gardens and wanted to make jam. I haven't made jam for about 25 years. Homemade raspberry jam used to be a regular occurance, but I never finished it, and then the kids were around, and I was too busy. So .... Jam sugar was acquired and of we went using the very simple recipe on the back of the packet. My cooking thermometer was broken long ago, so setting was done by a timed method - I didn't even use the 'wrinkle' test. Fortunately it worked.

 

 

Soft fruit - 800gms

Jam sugar -1000gms

Mix, heat slowly until sugar dissolved

Bring to a rolling boil

Boil for 4 minutes.

Pour into sterilised jam jar

Cool and seal.

 

 

 

This all reminded me of olden times. In the summer we used to go picking endless blackberries, diving into thickets with buckets, my memory paints them as large and juicy, but the blackberries you see in the wild now always seem very small and tart. The kids always seem horrified when I pick them - unclean, unclean!

The other thing we did when young was winkle picking, down on the beach with buckets, bringing them back to wash multiple times to remove the grit, then boil to sell in the shop. None of us drowned, unlike the winkle pickers of recent notoriety, but then we were 'locals' and knew the tides well. The only time I almost got caught out was when walking around the harbour slightly too late on the tide and having to climb the fence into the fields to get around the edge as the path was underwater. I would have been in trouble if I'd waded and got soaked shoes, also, the sand had a nasty tendency to turn into quicksand when wet, so it might have been a bit risky.

Pagham Harbour, a nature reserve, without boats

Pagham harbour, a nature reserve and no boats, seriously disappointed William and Jenny, they wanted boats not sand and wind, but I spent hours here as a child, walking or cycling around it, watching the tide and the birds, sitting and reading. The big house near the harbour used to be owned by friends of my dads and they had a cage full of parrots, and what I thought was a monkey, but, as I remember black and white, might have been a lemur.

Life was much freer then, I wandered everywhere, on foot or bike, frequently away for hours. We played in the farmers barns, building houses from bales of straw, fed the calves, collected eggs at the stables. Sometimes I had company in the summer when the visitors where down, they were regulars and there were 2 girls I met up with every year, who had summer homes on the beach, other times of the year I mainly wandered by myself. No one thought of danger or risks, no mobile phones of course, and one came back when hungry.

 

 

 

 

 

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On Poodles

 

When I was young I had an assortment of carers, after school, holidays, weekends. It comes with having parents who both worked. It was much less formal than now, I assume they got paid, but there were certainly no checks. The one I remember most clearly was Marion. She lived in a beach house (two railway carriages put together with a space between and a roof over the middle) next door to my best holiday friend and had an assortment of people staying with her and, always, poodles. The small yappy variety, grey and smelly but very affectionate. She had a greenhouse full of fuchsias and, wonder of wonders, a TV. I spent lots of summers there, mostly playing on the beach. Not a beach as you would think, sand and sand castles, but a good, old fashioned, hard to walk on, pebble beach.

One summer was the one my dad died. He was taken ill and I was sent into the garden until the ambulance collected him and then to Marion's. He never came home and I never saw him again, children weren't allowed in hospitals in those days. I sat watching Wimbledon, Chris Evert, so I know it was summer. I was nine.

About me: how much difference has it made growing up without a father? How can you know? My Mum was always busy, but so are many mums. We has enough money for reasonable comfort, very few holidays, but that was usual then. I has a de facto stepfather from when about 12, but no real emotional relationship there, and he didn't live with us until I was at boarding school, and even then wasn't there during the holidays. Physical affection was not a factor in our family. I remember Dad carrying me on his shoulders, but not with enough memory pictures to be sure it was a real event.

 

 

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Who am I?

Who am I?

So much depends on where you are, how you are brought up, your circumstances. I was born, and remain , intrinsically middle class, comfortably off, definitely not rich. A job that gives satisfaction, mostly, and a family. No jail birds, no drug addicts. So to reflect:

Pretend I was born in Scotland. In a very poor area, maybe in Granton. Lots of shouting at night. The stairways smelling of urine and vomit. Most of the older men, and many of the women, drunks. Most of the younger generation druggies. Lots of teenage pregnancy. Lots of violence. It's a scene I can visualise as have visited professionally on many occasions. But that's very different from living there. Would I have attended school? What would the school have been like? Never been properly clean.  Never been able to rely on anyone else. Bullied a lot, too fat and too clever. Would I be the same now? I don't think so. Intelligence rises, but you still need the right circumstances. Would I have had the willpower to kep working, or would I have taken the apparently easier path.

It's a hard reflection, difficult to imagine, and I've picked a lifestyle I know some things about. What about living as a black in white South Africa? Or a Native American on a reservation. Trying to imagine it is  beyond me. I am trapped in my own thinking patterns.  So how much can I truly understand others?

How much does my sense of self depend on what's around me, the trappings of a lifestyle where things often seem as important as people. No space in my house is empty. No space is uncluttered. Everything holds memories. I am a collector. Not of things of external value, but of small objects, of books, of music, of pictures. Would I still be me without them? How much of my persona is internal, and how much external?

So, a chance and a change, become more compassionate, and more accepting of compassion directed at me.  I think the latter is the more difficult. Treat it as fun. Look forward. Accept.