How could I forget my ears?

A Body Map update

Yet another week passes with me failing to do half the things I wanted to do. Life in the slow lane means that events keep overtaking me. And what was it this week that caught up with me?

To be honest, I am not sure I can remember. Reading a good book for one, and I am a slow reader. I have bought a number of books over the past few weeks, as per the photograph below:

Three books were bought on a visit to the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists Gallery in the city centre with my wife Susan and a close friend and his wife from my teenage days as a Wembley South Young Socialist, who now live in Birmingham. The draw was a photographic exhibition celebrating the work of Phil Loach, a Black Countryman, who died last year. The Black Country 1970s - 1980s was accompanied by a small book of the the same name and published by www.caferoyalbooks.com, a truly remarkable working-class press. On the day of our visit we met Phil Loach’s widow and discovered that she was the driving force behind the book and the exhibition, and we shared the same values.

Susan was born and raised in the Black Country. We met in 1975 when she was a very young museum curator in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, and I was a young Birmingham city councillor and Chair of the then Midlands Area Museum Service, which distributed Government money. It was not love at first sight, but we were a couple in less than 48 hours and in love by then. All a long time ago. We both love Birmingham.

Arthur Lockwood’s book is a wonderful collection of his water colour paintings depicting the disappearing (and disappeared) Birmingham and Black Country industrial landscape.

This is a water colour from the book of two cupolas (the name given to the bulges on the top of the chimneys) on the site of Hermit Industries in Gornal before they wore demolished in 2001. Cupolas were, to quote Arthur, ‘a not very efficient way of stopping emissions escaping from furnaces’. Reg called them ‘Ku-bo-lows’. The Black Country’s distinct dialect is something still treasured, though with the demise of the area’s coalmines and rich industrial landscape, it faces an uphill struggle to survive

Susan’s dad Reg was an iron moulder, who died far too young (just 71) and was a life-long trade unionist and works convenor. I went to Birmingham in 1969 and worked in a large factory as a very young distribution manager before I lost my job after being elected a Labour Party city councillor, and I went to work for the Birmingham (soon to be British) Pregnancy Advisory Service, thanks to my days as a family planning clinic volunteer record keeper. Susan was born and raised in the Black Country. We met in 1975 at the (national) Museums Association Annual Conference in Durham. At the time she the youngest professional museum curator in England and in charge of a public museum in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, and I was a young Birmingham city councillor and Chair of the then Midlands Area Museum Service, which distributed Government money to help fund museum projects.

It was not love at first sight, but we were a couple in less than 48 hours. All a long time ago. We both love Birmingham. I fell in love with Birmingham within days of arriving in the city. It was a revelation, having spent the first 25 years of my life in London. I loved the city’s energy and drive; its people and how welcoming they were, so, despite leaving the city to live with Susan in Mansfield in 1975, it still feels like home every time I visit. The fact that I hold hands with a beautiful Black County woman helps — who is quick to point out the differences between Birmingham and The Black Country!

The book, Katherine Fryer: Life’s Journey is about a Birmingham artist who lived to the age of 106 (1910-2017) and is full of anecdotes, together with examples of her work. None of these people are remembered on the national stage, but to many, including myself, they are no less giants.

Then last Saturday we were drawn into Nottingham City Centre and its large market square by the chance to see a display of new single-deck ‘zero emission electric’ buses before they went into service on Monday. Sadly made in China, but none the less impressive. Most of Nottingham City Transport’s buses are low-emission bio-gas double-deckers. I intend to make a bus box soon, which I will share. This is an example of what I do:

I make boxes for The Plane Tree community art shop on Beeston High Road. Sadly, it is the iconic London Transport Routemaster bus that people like, so I make it. Now is not the time to delve into nerd arguments as to why this bus deserves to be knocked off its global perch.

I digress. Let me get back to the books I bought in the city’s independent Five Leaves Bookshop, starting with Armistead Maupin’s Mona of the Manor, which I finished reading yesterday evening. I have read all his novels and like him as a writer for all manner of reasons. The only thing which disappointed me was the use of the term ‘train station’ instead of ‘railway station’, but that’s the octogenarian in me having a beef. A few quotes to put you in the mood of wanting to read this book for yourself:

Her early days with Michael rolled through her head like an old newsreel.

We’re just not the same species of dyke. My lesbianism grew out of activism and appetite. Hers seems like something she studied in art school.

And, finally: An unexpected moment of casual tenderness that had grown out of friendship and mutual respect. She never regretted it, and never wanted more.

His description of north London’s Hampstead Heath has resulted in me seeing this large park I knew as a child in quite a different light.

Finally, a moment of fear planted early in the story eventually gave way to a cheer, and came as a relief. Ultimately, Armistead Maupin is a happy writer and I am a happy reader, so you could say as author and a reader we are a match made in heaven.

I am about to start The Wild Men… by David Torrance and all I will say now is that it has the most unlikely start of any book I have read about politics. More when I have read the book.

I have a tooth waiting to have root canal work and, at times, it is extremely painful, so I am periodically dosing myself up on painkillers. I have got to get through another five weeks before my treatment begins. I am lucky to have a dentist and an NHS dentist at that. There are millions in England who cannot get regular access to a dentist, such is the bad state of the NHS when it comes to dentistry. Like teeth, the NHS is crumbling, thanks to years of Conservative (and let’s not forget the Liberals part in all this when they were in coalition government with the Conservatives from 2010-2015). Labour might once have been seen as the cavalry on the horizon riding to the rescue. Not any more. They are committed to Conservative fiscal policies and budgets if what the Labour leadership keep saying is true. The only hope is that this yet another lie to help them appease Conservative would-be voters at the coming General Election. I will vote Labour holding my nose despite being a member of the Party since April 1960 (64 years ago). I tell myself I am voting for the future of others, including my grandson Curtis and his partner Becca, both Labour Party councillors in nearby Long Eaton. With me there is no escaping politics. Being a Libertarian Socialist and Localist I have a lifelong suspicion of leaders regardless of Party. I truly believe that the UK Parliamentary system, as presently constituted, results in elected dictators and what is envisaged in America, assuming Trump wins, is little different to what we already have here. If you doubt what I say, look no further than the House of Lords. Unelected fat cats, whilst communities and neighbourhoods everywhere are starved of resources and local councils are cutting services to avoid going broke, although for some, like Birmingham and Nottingham, it is already too late. Government Commissioners are dictating to councillors what they should too. It is inevitable result of Government stripping local government of funding and what few powers that had. I stopped being a councillor in 1985. I was 44 and saw what was coming that long ago.

Enough, enough! Let’s get back to my body and a revised ‘Body Map’. How did I manage to forget my ears? Without my NHS hearing aids I would have been stuffed as long ago as 2009. Last October I got new super-duper bluetooth NHS hearing aids. I don’t wear them all the time and have a small pouch I carry them about in. I actually enjoy being deaf a lot of the time. I still hear muffled sounds and happily ask people to speak up at time - which they do, but they are physical aids to my body I think I can fairly describe as ‘exterior aids’, whereas the Californian Cow ‘O’ ring in my Aortic heart valve is an ‘interior aid’ which has been keeping me alive since February 2017 and for two years now I have been able to see because of my cataract eye implants, and so the list goes on - hence my ‘Body Map’.

A P.S. I have no false teeth. Given the choice of having a tooth out or root canal work to save what might turn out to be a cracked tooth, I chose the latter - hence my present need for pain killers. My dentist said ‘Robert, it might last only a few years’ to which I replied ‘Renata, I am 80, two or three years might be enough to see me out’. Susan says that is becoming one of my stock replies when I am asked about new clothes or shoes: ‘These’ll probably see me out. Don’t waste the money.’

Finally, a photograph from my Lenton Recreation Ground Archive. From 1979-2014 we owned a large Victorian house overlooking a seven acre public park, the first of its kind, dating from 1887, where we spent a great deal of time and the children and grandchildren played. This photograph dates from 17 June 2007 when these teenagers from nearby Wollaton came to one of our ‘Tea in the Park’ Sunday afternoons, which we ran for a good few years and were very popular. I published the photo in my then ‘Parkviews’ blog, which ended in 2014 after is was hacked beyond rescue, so I deleted it. Since then it sat on my computer, along with hundreds of similar photographs I classify as ‘Lenton Faces’. I wonder where they are now, seventeen years on?

What I loved about the photo at the time, and still do, is that it reminds me of my own joy and the pleasure I got being in my mid-teens, already preferring the company of girls to boys. In 2007 I was 63. Now I am 80. I will try to end each olbunny.substack.com post with a ‘Lenton Faces’ photograph and memory. I hope it captures some of how you felt in your mid-teens.

The week just gone ended yesterday with a visit to our local hospital so Susan could have a check-up. Having had breast cancer twice (in 2006 and 2017), no one likes to take chances and whilst we waited at the end of our visit for some new medication drinking coffee, I wrote this story in just under 30 minutes. It made Susan laugh, so I hope it works some magic on you too.

WAITING FOR A PRESCRIPTION I SEE A BOY IN A PARK BY A POND WITH HIS NAN…

Doreen was helping her grandson Tom launch his toy sailing boat onto the park’s pond when he lost his balance on some slippery moss and took both of them into the pond, both getting very wet.

It was the first time Tom heard his Nan say the word. His Mum said it often enough, but never his gran.

Until he started school aged five, Tom thought it was a word only grown-ups used when they got cross with themselves, but at school he learned the word meant another thing too, not that he understood what that was until his new friend Joel explained the word to him.

'My Mum told me I was “a fucking accident” and that she should never have let my dad do it’.

‘Do what?’ Tom had asked Joel.

‘Make me. That’s what.’

Until that moment Tom had never thought of himself as having been made by anyone. He just was, and he didn’t have a dad, so who made him?

OLO BUNNY.🐰

©ROBERT HOWARD 14 MARCH 2024,

A FINAL FINAL P.S. Another thing I have been doing this week is making book marks for the Plane Tree Gallery: Easy and fun to do:

(and whilst writing this post I have prepared lunch and made a dozen rolls, two of which are about to be filled with watercress and eaten for tea. Our favourite!).