31 Postcodes - Poem 16

 

Once a barn

My mum has a maypole.

It’s not her own property

but she looks out on it fondly.

The village has a green.

There are pubs either side,

a lion, an ox,

the smallest post office,

a hidden ‘prep’ school.

She puts down firm roots,

clematis, wisteria,

and works an allotment,

hands deep in the dirt.

She invites all the neighbours

for sherry and chit chat,

has quakers at New Year,

boils up a huge soup.

The house was a barn,

note its ‘farmhouse’ doors.

It’s rustic and rattly,

awkward and cold.

RF 2021

Video/audio for this one here.

When I finished university in 1989 (I was 22) I went to live with my Mum for a short time while I signed on and applied for jobs. She had moved to a more permanent home in another Nottinghamshire village called Wellow. The house was a converted barn and she was the first resident of this stage in the building’s life. She stayed there right up till 2004 when she (spoiler alert) came to live with us in Scotland. It was a big place for a single person (3 bedrooms, a great big sunless sitting room so hard to heat that she didn't use it much in winter unless she had company) but she hoped it would be full of visitors and family (close and extended) and that did happen on and off. We’re not a family that comes together in giant gatherings very often as we’re pretty spread out geographically (several offshoots in New Zealand) and then there's the fact that some of us can’t stand each other (that would need another writing project) but we did celebrate her 70th birthday in 1994 in this house and there were quite a few of us there for that.

This summer of ’89 was the longest time that I stayed in this particular ‘home’ (it was really more her home than mine). My brothers were both still in the south of England but Mum had a family connection a few miles away (one of my sisters) and she did what she had always done – put in a lot of effort to make new friends and find new things to do (Mum was 65 in 1989). She was a very capable person and turned her hand to all kinds of tasks (physical and mental). I remember when she was living with us, and was in her 80s, she did some tiling round the sink in her room that had my practically perfect partner applauding her in admiration (ok, he said ‘she's done a brilliant job’). I was always aware that she had to work harder at most things than people who still had partners (she’d been widowed the second time in 1973 remember) but also that she could pick exactly what she wanted to do and didn’t have to compromise or put up with someone else’s tastes. Every now and then an old (widowed) boyfriend of hers would emerge and suggest she couple up with them. Her response (to me) was ‘I am not going to wash someone else’s socks at this time of life’. She stayed single (but always had a dog).

She was involved with a local theatre (making trifles for buffets, as far as I could tell), an adult education literature class, and did a lot of gardening, as well as helping out with both the children and the aged of local family. She had as many visitors as she could and I stayed there over the years with various friends and boyfriends. I even spent Millennium Eve there in 1999 (pregnant) but I am getting ahead of myself. Next stop – Leeds and a kind of very low-rent Mad Men.

This poem is part of the annual Fun A Day Dundee project where participants try to do something creative every day for the month of January. You don't have to be in Dundee to take part and there are other Fun A Day projects around the world. People post as much of their work online as they want to (largely on Instagram but it can be elsewhere too). This year I am posting a whole poem a day (one poem for each of the 31 addresses I have lived at, covering the period 1967-2021). Videos/photos of the poems show the places remembered in the poems but were mostly taken from recent Google Street View. The videos are on my Instagram, maybe elsewhere too. Use the hashtag #fadd2021 on social media to see other people's online contributions.