Unfinished

 

Did you ever set out to make something beautiful and good or even just nice, only to give up when it was nearly completed ?

I've done this a lot and sometimes it distresses me, but mostly I just spend time thinking, with a kind of detached interest, about the reasons for it.

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She sits on the little bed with it's painted wooden arms that Dad made especially and attached to its sides so she wouldn't fall out. Mum's rampaging through her wardrobe, as if she's looking for something and suddenly pulls out a hotch potch collection of what looks like just bits of material but in and amongst are some little half stuffed toys that began as attempts for her brownie sewing badge.

She'd been to the lady's house, with another brownie, and the lady had shown them how to make a pattern with some paper, pin it to the material, cut it out and sew it, leaving a small hole, which you could stuff with special stuffing or some old tights if you didn't have any proper stuffing. 

There was the little felt Humpty Dumpty with his long loose legs which the lady had praised but had made some comments about making the stitches smaller or something and making sure the button eyes were secure which had felt slightly embarrassing, and she hadn't done that because she'd got the badge anyway and hadn't really liked the Humpty Dumpty toy anyway because 

she didn't know why

she sighs as she sees him

Mum places him on the bed beside her and pulls out the three other, aborted, attempts at different characters and places them beside him. 

They make a motley crew. 

Why don't you ever finish things ? she cries in frustration. The strength of feeling in the mother's voice is startling. The child is shocked into silence. She didn't know her mum felt that way about her. 

Paralysed in that moment, she can but look askance at the Motley Crew, thinking churlishly for a moment how they'd got her into trouble, but then the sight of the poor things with their flat heads and gaping holes, old tights peeping through, their lack of arms, their insufficient legs, the way their sometimes one eye gazed unblinkingly, unaware of the consternation they had caused in their incompleteness melts the small child's heart and she gathers them up and puts them in the fairy cot her mum and dad had made her one Christmas and turns around and says not sorry to her mum but that she will, she'll finish them 

but she doesn't. 

She attaches some bits of green wool to the flat head of the smallest, whose one black button eye is sewn on with a rather garish yellow thread, making her look a bit demonic and she hugs and kisses her and tells her she's beautiful she doesn't need another eye as she lays her back in the cot next to the hard bodied beautiful black baby doll with her sleeping eyes and her silky blue bonnet that the child thinks is absurd but doesn't remove because the soft black curls underneath are also wrong somehow she doesn't know why they just are. 

Another day she sews an arm onto the turtle shaped toy but she doesn't have enough of the same material for any more and anyway she isn't really sure what a turtle looks like she just liked the word, so she pops him in the cot on the other side of the baby doll, next to nearly complete Humpty, whispering one day she'll fix him when she's found a picture and the right stuff.

The biggest one is like a sun she thinks, but worries that the sun shouldn't be fat, nor have limbs, so she simply sews the buttons on with some pleasing red thread, so pleasing she doesnt notice immediately that they're placed rather strangely close to the edge and when she does she simply sighs and puts them with their friends in the cot.  

The child covers The Motley Crew with the pink frilly edged counterpane that mum had sewn by hand because at that point they had no sewing machine then sat on her bed to read. 

The mother never mentions them again and the child never finishes them, but often tells them that they're good enough for her and she'll protect them from the mum if she should ever uncover them. 

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It's not as if blame can be attached to anyone, nor a direct cause and effect cited because, after all, these tiny incidents are just part of growing up and learning are they not. Sure, the mother could have been less emotional about the Motley Crew. In a different mood she might have been. A different person might have not mentioned them at all, or maybe taken one out, sat down next to the child and asked her if she'd like some help - they could look through the button box together and find some more and this other person would help the child sew them on securely ?

The child doesn't even know of a different way because she is a child and lacking in experience. There are other people in her life but no-one yet to help with projects such as these. 

And these facts are also the reasons for the Two Lost Summers. 

The first was one following the rather surprising event of the child winning an art competition with a rather psychedelic picture of a sunflower. Each seed was a different colour, meticulously drawn and coloured in with wax crayons. The somewhat ominous dark blue powder colour wash her teacher had shown her how to paint over it was a strange and striking foil to the flower's gargantuan brightly coloured head. Everyone seemed impressed, most of all, her class teacher whose response was to give her a cutting from a magazine with a photo of a waterlily pond and suggest she could make another picture based on this over the summer holidays. 

As the 6 weeks dragged by, the weight of the task of drawing something for the teacher sat heavily on the child's shoulders and the usual dread of returning to school after the long break was inflated further by her inability to do something with it. Paralysed by her lack of familiarity with water lilies (she'd never seen one, and really had no idea what they were) the child found herself unable to enjoy any of the usual summer holiday activities. The swings at the local park didn't make her feel ecstatic as they usually did, she was too listless at the beach to clamber over the line of stones, shells and seaweed to paddle at the sea's edge as she longed to. Ice cream was allowed to drip down the cornet her Dad kindly brought her along the difficult path between the dunes. Her skates, once her favourite things to don and roll precariously down the drive's slight incline and come to a stop at the bottom with a skilfully executed extravagantly sweeping turn, lay forlorn and abandoned in a dark corner of the garage.

September crept up like impending doom. The kindly, wise teacher never mentioned the water lily task and as Christmas approached, the feeling of dread lifted but never quite left entirely, hovering around her head and shoulders, ready to descend whenever it wanted. 

The following summer was not quite as bad. The task presented was prompted by her Dad mentioning to her that she might become a weather girl, so, smilingly, the lovely teacher gave the child some equipment; an exercise book, some sharpened pencils, a rubber, an outdoor thermometer and a small book on clouds for children like her who could learn their names and meaning. 

Nobody had accounted for the lack of variety of clouds or variance in outdoor temperature in a child's life should they be wanting them. The diary was religiously kept for a long-enough period to see the monotony of the weather in those parts during those days and the ensuing blank pages testimony to the stability of the climate, or perhaps she just couldn't be bothered to recount the drizzly summer rain that occasionally fell or try to name the drab grey covering from which it fell. The cloud book promised great variety, but couldn't teach the child that only time and travel could fill her exercise book diary with that.

Maybe lost was a misnomer for these two summers; maybe they were merely markers for the pain of growth and change, but as she made her transition into adulthood, the child resisted many of the changes that was to bring. 

Later she would realise this and the two summers would sit together like a double hyphen in her story, following The Motley Crew and delineating a break 

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Well it's decades later and I write with the distance that the passage of time affords in order for me to separate myself from the child I was in that scenario; just enough to have a kind of realisation that here was the beginning of the development of my own taste and hence my personality.  

And lest I leave you with the impression that my mum was a horrible harridan, which she was not, what she was, well let me tell you what she was at least in terms of the development of my own personal taste:

Mum was a very keen ' maker ' . This was common in the sixties and seventies when diy, woodworking, photography, dressmaking and cake making became popular with many magazines dedicated to the different crafts and activities selling well. Gardening, but really, growing food on an allotment or your own back garden, had, of course, been made popular out of necessity during the war. Pickling, bottling and jam making too and this carried on of course. Whilst my Dad grew the fruit and veg, my mum would either make something of it - chutney or jam - or freeze it. Perhaps the transition to giving more space over to flowers and ornamental shrubs reflected the relative tranquility of this time. 

Dressmaking was also a war activity due to rationing. Mum told stories of altering dresses for the weekly dances so she didn't look like she was always wearing the same one and making underwear from parachute silk. Where that came from I don't know. Thinking about it now, I wonder if that was just a one - off incident as a result of an enemy aircraft coming down. The acquisition of a sewing machine prompted a dress-making craze in our house and I have fond memories of going to market stalls with rolls upon rolls of different fabrics which filled us both with joy. 

But it was knitting in which my mum excelled in particular. She must have taught herself this skill because I don't remember my nana ( mum's mum ) knitting. 

To buy ready made knitwear was unthinkable in our house and if mum was sat down, she was knitting. Eventually, she taught herself fair isle and cable stitch, once knitting a beautiful aran cardigan for me which she draped over the back of a chair for me to find when I returned home. Unfortunately, we had a naughty puppy at the time who sat on the chair and quietly chewed all along the bottom of it. Mum's initial shock and dismay was quickly replaced by hilarity. It's testimony to her good sense of humour and love of animals that she didn't get angry with the puppy; a very nervy fox terrier. And anyway, she admitted, it was a silly place to leave it when you have a naughty puppy who had already chewed the bottom of a friend's scarf whilst sat upon his knee. 

I can't say I was very disappointed if I'm honest. A cable knit arran cardigan wasn't something I yearned for as I navigated the tricky transition from childhood to adolescence. I'd worn and not really appreciated many good quality items of clothing over the years - fur lined real leather boots that I remember cost £5 which seemed at the time like a fortune - a caring attempt by my parents to ward off the chilblains I was plagued with each winter - a burnt orange wool (very itchy) bell bottomed trouser suit; a surprising present from my trendy aunty. I probably looked very fashionable for a ten year old in it, but the itchy material, combined with the lack of suitable shoes to go with it made me feel rather uncomfortable wearing it. Even at that tender age, I knew that brown, square-toed Tuf lace-up school shoes ruined the total look. I don't know what would have suited better - white patent block heeled shoes perhaps ? I'm no more au fait with fashion's styles more than 6 decades later. The inkling that there probably was no pair of suitable shoes for a 10 year old to wear with such an outfit is probably testimony to the fact that I felt wrong in that itchy burnt orange highly fashionable outfit, as I felt wrong in alot of the up-market hand-me-downs my thoughtful aunty passed on to me from her wealthy brother's daughter. 

Lack of sufficient funds and a lack of interest led me to turn my back on fashion per se, but not lovely clothes. 

I have hankered after dark red velvet ankle boots, circling round the shops around them and returning when the need inside consumed me sufficiently to make me bold enough to march right in and buy them, bankrupting myself for something beautiful that did not fit in with my current wardrobe. 

I have regretted evermore not buying a certain ankle length flowery cotton dress that would have made my Dad very happy and proud of me if I'd worn it to his retirement do.  As it was very expensive, I chose something in an entirely different style and material; peach satin, knee length, thirties style fitted dress. Probably more ' me ' really if I'm totally honest, but the price difference cinched it for me, probably due to the amount of material in the holly hobby style one.  It was, I suppose, a choice I only really regretted when, arriving at the do, I walked in at the same time as a lady much older than me wearing the same dress. A Scouser, she had a quick quip on the tip of her tongue - " we've both got good taste " and she actually stole the show, having a good figure and being a good dancer. 

I think my Mum would have liked that dress and probably worn it and worn it well too. 

It was in the birthday cake department where we parted company - in terms of taste that is. 

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Mum's birthday cakes were spectacular events. Huge rich fruit cakes which took all day to bake, another to cool and several more to allow the marzipan to dry out, because she always iced them properly with royal icing. Other people's mums made Victoria sponges. It's a mystery looking back because I now know how very expensive fruit cakes like this are to make and one thing I was aware of at that time is the shortage of cash for luxuries. 

But it was the palaver with the icing that would get to me at the time. The way Mum would do and re-do the initial covering to get it as smooth as she needed it to be. The writing and the scraping off and the re-writing of the greeting on the smooth white surface, sometimes having to re-do that because the colour of the writing had smudged into it.

Yes, my mum was a perfectionist. A perfectionist who, I now realise with the benefit of my own maturity, had to make-do with whatever materials were to hand and which were usually sub-par since the good ones, the right ones, were too expensive. 

So there was that, along with the way she would knit without looking at her knitting and if, on inspection, she had made a mistake, would undo the whole thing if need be and re-knit it, complaining all the time about how hard it is to get the tension. right with wool that has already been knitted up once.

On reflection, this tendency is commendable and I have inherited it, but have sought to fight against it. 

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If I could distil my idealism into a piece of creativity, I think it might be a well-timed photograph, something caught almost by accident, yet after years of looking and contemplation, developed maybe cropped only a little, which encapsulates a moment, like a haiku

I suppose this would involve an awful lot of scraping and smoothing and perfecting, but that would not be apparent, nothing like a cake, but still a celebration