SPOOKILY UNCHANGED

I had a baby in the Queen Mum's on Monday. Of course, the press has been full of Queen Mum's stories all week because it was shutting down on Tuesday. Thomas spotted this story. Doesn't the setting looked eerily familiar despite the 46 year gap?

I had been ranting all last week about the QMH shutting and the possibility of being forced to hunt out the Southern General at a minute's notice while in labour, having never even visited anyone in that hospital, but now that the stress of last week is over, I have had time to reflect on why I wanted to make it to the QMH.

Obviously I had had all my kids there so I know the place inside out and many of the staff. I can find my way around in the dark! They had all my ante-natal notes, so of course it was sensible, but it was much more than that really.

Sentimentally, the QMH is the first memory I have in my life. I was taken up the green, buttercup-covered hill in a part of the city I didn't yet know but which was to become home 20 years later, one day in June 1971 carrying a toy lamb to visit my new baby brother. The weather was beautiful, the hill and flowers are so vivid, it could be yesterday. I remember the wards and beds. I remember being with my dad. In fact, ironically, the only two things I don't remember of that day are my mum and baby brother. I didn't want my first ever memory to shut down!

Then there are my own kids. I remember which room each one was born in and every minute of every labour. You don't want want those memories to shut down either.

After my first baby was born I joined the QMH breast-feeding group. We met every week, though none of us really needed the breast-feeding support, we all needed the moral support. I met Karen, Cynthia and Siobhan - friends for life... breast friends. We had more babies together, and more tea and cake. We've helped each other through the highs and lows of life ever since - all our divorces and new lives. That nostalgia was dying too with the QMH.

I realized after the dust of the last week's stress settled that what you need when you are having a baby is to feel at home because you are so vulnerable and the QMH to me was a kind of home - like a home-birth with all the trimmings - someone else to clean up and all the medical back-up you might need should your 10lb baby become stuck at birth. Even the revolting school dinners they served after you had the baby had a way of tasting acceptable in all their stodginess. My last meal there - of two wet beef burgers, heavy mash and over-boiled cabbage will live with me forever!

Shame on you whoever decided to close it :-( Now I will need to give serious consideration to calling a halt to my childbearing years!

And to celebrate the QMH years, here's a photo of Anna, who was born there and Amaia, one of the very last QMH babies leaving it together about 5 hours before they closed for good :-(

GOING SENILE?

When we went to Perugia last week I was quite excited. I had only been once (in 1992) since my time there studying at the Università per Stranieri di Perugia for three months in 1986. Perugia was my first stay away from home. Perugia was the first time I interrailed alone across Europe (there was no wimpy Ryanair for the students in my day - we only had the means to ship ourselves surface-mail!) So Perugia was where I grew up in the space of three months. I learned very quickly (the hard way) how to be a lone 18 year old foreign female. When I first arrived in Perugia, for example, I knew I needed a residence permit - this was way before the borderless 1990s. I heard the place to obtain one of those was the police station. I popped into the local Caribinieri and asked for one. The officer behind the desk, probably 30 something, asked me my name, address, phone number etc and filled out the forms. He then asked what I was doing Friday evening. I wondered if, with my fairly intermediate Italian, I was misunderstanding. He then went on to thank me for my private details, told me he'd look me up and pointed out I ought to be at the Polizia and not the Caribinieri! I'd started to learn. A week later I broke out in a rash. A friend back home had rung me the night of my departure to say she'd come down with chicken pox. The timing wasn't great given we'd had lunch the day before. I thought I ought to have it checked out. I went to the farmacia, they weren't sure and sent me to the cottage hospital nearby. I went in and asked two doctors in white coats. They made me strip, checked me over inch by inch and then declared that they too weren't sure but given they were porters they'd call me a doctor. I'd learned a little more! After that I think I got the hang of Italy. One thing I really loved in Perugia was my flat. I shared a beautiful attic flat in Via della Viola with two Austrian boys of about 20. It was an ancient stone building in a narrow street as you can see from the photo above. I used to love to look out on the red roof tiles of the neighbours. I can still smell the old wooden staircase. Unfortunately after just two or three weeks the roof began to leak in a storm and my landlord moved me to a boring modern flat two or three streets away with a lovely balcony, fig tree and several weird Korean inmates. I lived two or three weeks in my beloved Via della Viola and another ten in my boring modern flat. So Viola was my true home, my first love: the first flat of my own, the epitome of ancient Italy. I lived at number 88. I dragged Thomas, Marcel and Lots round the back streets of Perugia in the searing heat for half an hour before finding it. I skipped happily along the road as far as number 56, but the road stopped there! Huh?! I was 100% sure I lived at number 88 but there was no number 88. This is bizarre. I thought through later flats - one in Germany, four in France - I still know all those addresses by heart though they date from the same era. I even remember the boring modern flat in Perugia's address so how can I have got the Viola number wrong? I am now contemplating climbing up in the loft to retrieve an old suitcase where I kept the letters from my student days to get to bottom of the Viola address problem. Was it 8, or 18 or 8.8 or something? I doubt it, but how else can I explain it? Of course the other three have spent the week casting aspersions on my sanity or senility.

FIRENZE - MY PERSPECTIVE

The other day I went back to Florence after a delay of 17 years. I still remembered my way around as if nothing had changed. Indeed nothing had (or had it?)
I walked round the market and the famous squares and churches in the centre. I drove up to Piazzale Michelangelo and realized the little campsite with the view to die for was still there and the view was still stunning. I felt 18 again (as long as I didn't catch sight of myself in a mirror!) It was still as beautiful.
But there was one sad factor. In the city in which I fell in love with the old Fiat 500 from the 1950s, I didn't see one single little chuggy car :-(

NARDINI'S

Last spring I suggested a day trip to Largs because it was a nice day. I imagined a nice drive, a stroll along the beach and an ice cream at Nardini's. Much to my horror on arrival I found Nardini's derelict with a sign advertising luxury flats attached to the building. I bored Thomas and the kids with the story of my first ever flavoured ice cream on a trip to Nardini's circa 1972. I told of how my parents had bought me a strawberry cone and I had stared at its pinkness in wonder having only ever seen vanilla, or 'plain' ice cream as we called it, in my life before then. My kids of course assumed, as always, that I was some sort of prehistoric fossil from an era of black and white tellies.

We returned home and I sadly uploaded my last photos of Nardini's, or so I thought.
This week I was on facebook when I noticed a friend, who lives in Canada, had set his current status to 'going to Largs for ice-cream from Nardini's'. Could it be true? Several friends queried its existence there and then and the reply popped up 'Nardini's is very there - all redone and reopened.' Music to my ears! Less than twenty-four hours later with Thomas and all 4.3 kids packed into the car we drove down to Largs to find it was indeed 'de retour'.

The ice creams on display made your mouth water. The flavours and presentation were superb and for someone who tends only to indulge in such extravagances in the likes of Nice or Paris, the Scottish prices were even better!
I had caramel shortcake and honeycomb, Thomas had tablet, raspberry cranachan and one of their many chocolates, Anna had banoffee pie, Lots had After Eights, Irn Bru and caramel shortcake, Marcel had another chocolate with tablet and caramel shortcake and for my Pudgeman - what could we buy him at nearly 4? A large cone with Nardini's own fresh strawberry ice cream of course!
Hopefully one day he'll take his own kids to Nardini's and tell them all about the day when he was nearly 4 when Thomas and Mum bought him a lovely strawberry ice!

MY FIRST CAR

 9-2-91 Originally uploaded by PhylB

Here I am back in 1991 with my first car. It was about the size of a dustbin and about as reliable. My uni mates and I affectionately named it Chuggy because that's how it sounded and how it drove on a good day... on a bad day it just didn't start at all. Given it was pre-mobile phone days, I guess I should be grateful it almost always broke down beside a call box (generally the one in Thornliebank main street - I still know the local garage owner today!) So why am I on about Chuggy? Well, last week Thomas bought a new lawn mower - a heavy one spark plug chuggy thing that works on petrol. It reminded me a lot of Chuggy - a bit smelly, a bit smokey, a bit noisy and rattly. It had the same choke mechanism too. It just took me back 20 years. Today of course I realized that it was even more like Chuggy than I expected. Thomas tried to start the bloody thing on and off all day and it was as dead as a dodo. So Thomas's choice of lawnmower has catapulted us back 20 years. Anyone know how to fix a useless, if expensive, lawnmower?

THE GOOD OLD DAYS

Here is a photo of me out playing with my teddy bear (left) at the age of ten! I know that dates it straight away, given kids seem to give up bears a bit younger and swap them for boyfriends around that age these days! Anyway, my pride and joy at ten was my red and white stripy dolls' buggy. In fact if you have a look at this week's flickr uploads, my red and white stripy buggy doesn't look any different today than it did in '78, and can still hold a substantial weight, as you can see. They just don't make toys the way they used to, do they?

L'AUBERGE ESPAGNOLE

Thomas and I watched a sweet movie a couple of months ago called l'Auberge espagnole. I think the reason we both enjoyed it so much was it took us back to our student days dropping us into the type of flat and lifestyle we had both known so well during our numerous stays abroad. I would recommend it to anyone in a nostalgic-for-your-uni-days mood - though it is probably most relevant to language students in this country as few others spend months at foreign unis. Last night we saw the sequel - Les Poupées russes - another sweet movie.

NOSTALGIA

nostalgia
Originally uploaded by PhylB

I've been tidying out a lot of old boxes today and I found this. How fondly I remembered it and its many hours of use over the years. I went to throw it in the bin, knowing sadly, it would never ever be used again and then suddenly wondered firstly how many people would actually ever have seen one and know what to do with it if they had one, and secondly whether there might be some sad nostalgic nut out there who might pay for one on ebay now or in the distant future - just for old times' sake. I think I'll put it in the loft for now just in case.
:-)

CREAMOLA FOAM

Pregnancy is so strange. I woke up at 3am and felt a sudden urge to blog Creamola Foam! My granny used to buy Derek and I it as a treat on Friday evenings when I was 7 or 8 years old and I suddenly remembered how much I loved it. Of course thinking back on it, it was probably an unhealthy mix of sugar and acid of some sort that these days would be expected to kill a child at 100 paces but I would love to taste it once more just to confirm that theory. But apparently they no longer make it :-(

TOP CAT

See what happens when you do a job you like? You live to 95!
Actually, I just wondered why this article on the death of one of the men us 60s kids probably spent most of our childhood TV viewing hours with, doesn't mention that most wonderful of TV series Top Cat. Although T.C. of course was the main star, I had a wee soft spot for the ever-cuddly Benny the Ball. I loved the other Hanna-Barbera stuff too of course - I particularly liked the Flintstones - probably because I genuinely believed my dad was Fred Flintstone for a while when I was wee - they kind of looked alike! I loved all the modern gadgets in it, I remember a dinosaur tin opener in one episode. It's great all this stuff is still running today, just a shame though that kids seem to prefer to watch all that Japanese shite on TV - Yu-gi-oh and the likes - Nothing really happens in them and they all shout at each other. Give me Fred and Wilma, Benny and Brain, and Tom and Jerry any day.

AN ABBA MUST-SEE

Flicking throught the BBC's entertainment pages today when I found this. Hahahaha. I'll definitiely need to keep an eye on Ryanair's special offers so I can nip over to Stockholm next time they're doing free flights. I truly believe it is every true fan's duty ;-)

GEY HAIRY-ARSED TEENAGERS!

I was having a mid-life crisis the other week so decided to go on a trip down memory lane by watching one of my favourite movies: Grease! It brought back wonderful memories of singing, dancing and drinking all night with my uni friends as a 20 year old! I must dig out the Rocky Horror Picture Show too some time!
I remember when I first saw Grease in 1978 (when I was 10) thinking how old the actors looked for supposedly being schoolkids - but when you are 10, an 18 year old does seem like an adult. At 20 I still thought they looked pretty old compared to myself but I did look young for my age and google wasn't around in those days to check. I even remember my old Gramps shuffling through the livingroom one day as I watched the video, muttering in his own inimitable fashion: 'they're gey hairy-arsed teenagers, thaem!' However, I was surprised last week when I watched it again to still find the actors looked ages with me, given I am now pushing 40! It wasn't so much John Travolta who was narrow and therefore youngish but the women, come on! So onto google I went. Olivia was 30, playing a teenager and Stockard Channing was an astounding 34 playing an 18 year old! Who the hell cast this movie? (John was 24 btw, if you are interested). Maybe if they are doing a remake in the near future, I could audition for Olivia's role - I mean I do know all the words of the songs and at 38, I am definitely in the right age-bracket for playing an 18 year old ;-)

CEILIDHS

Just flicking through the channels and saw a bunch of people ceilidh dancing. I used to go to the Riverside all the time between about 1985 and 1997 - when you aren't the world's greatest dancer, ceilidhs are a fun and easy option.

I have great memories of there. I had to pretend to be a nursing student once to get in as it was booked for a private do. I also vaguely remember Vivian getting us all in after it was full one night by showing someone else's press pass and saying we were writing a piece on it for a big national newspaper! Another time Maree and I had an eye-opening experience in more ways than one. She got a black eye on a night out simply by following me - the problem being she's at least 20cm taller than me so as I walked under a shelf, she walked straight into it! That was a hard one to explain.

Of course the last ceilidh I went to was on 26-7-97. Maybe that Strip the Willow just before midnight was just one step too far at 39.5 weeks pregnant! (And it must not have been a pretty sight). Marcel, of course, showed up on 27-7-97.

I must get back to dancing.