WOE: Music

I’m back but my head is still out of shape so bear with me!  This piece was inspired by an anecdote about a pregnant concert pianist, truly.

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It was the last day of term.  Mrs Winter popped a CD into the classroom music system, something light and bright, to go with the radiant sunshine that was dancing off the walls and the euphoric mood of the children, eager for summer holidays.

A couple of tracks later, several eras of frothy pop tunes later, she looked up, catching giggles and jeers in a corner.  She was surprised, confused.

Little Paul Rivers was literally bawling his eyes out.  It was the first display of emotion that she had ever seen from the boy.  It was a small school and although she hadn’t been his teacher all the way through the classes, she had seen his journey from reception up.  He had never cried, ever.  Not even that all-testing first day when his mother had let go his hand and let him walk into the playground all by himself, loosing him free to the hordes.

But children didn’t always cry, she knew that from her many years of primary school teaching.  You could never predict how a child would react and this seemed to be a case in point.  What on earth had happened?

She bustled over to his table, in the corner by the artwork, and came down low and looked at the six children.  The ripples were just starting to spread to other tables and she wanted to put a stop to it.  Paul was already looking a little uncomfortable.

“What is going on here?”  she asked sternly, looking at the other children but it was Paul who blushed deeply.

“It’s Paul,” answered a girl.  “He just starting crying!”

The other two boys on the table clearly thought that this was amusing and giggled some more at her statement.

“Like a girl!”  jeered one of them.

He quickly withered into silence after Mrs Winter aimed a well designed look at him.  She moved around the corner of the table and looked at Paul carefully.

“Paul, who made you cry?”

He wriggled uncomfortably but Mrs Winter held his gaze until he awkwardly surrendered the answer.

“The song,”  whispered low and with shame.

“Which one?  Why?”

“The last one,” his head hung lower.

Mrs Winter was even more confused.  The previous song, like all the others, had been a jaunty pop number.  She sent him out of the room to wash his face, silenced his peers and looked at the clock, grateful that there was only another fifteen minutes left of the day.  She would definitely be speaking to Paul’s mother this evening.

She asked Paul’s mother to step into the classroom for a word, singling her out from all the other parents bustling in the playground.  This wasn’t a mother who showed her emotions on her face but there was definitely a flicker of frustration, even embarrassment.  Paul looked embarrassed too.

Mrs Winter quickly explained the situation, appreciating the mutual feeling of having to wait around on the last day of term.

“I don’t know why.   I don’t recognise the title.”

Mrs Winter asked if she could play it, maybe it was something he’d heard as a younger child.  The song started playing.  Within seconds, the controlled mother too had tears pouring down her face.  Mrs Winter was embarrassed now, she hadn’t thought that she would cause that much distress by a simple song.  She apologised and quickly turned the music off.

“It’s Chris’ song,”  sobbed the younger woman.  “He’s never heard it, I haven’t heard it since I was pregnant with him.”

~

Yes, it’s a little over!  But I’m just glad that I found something to write, it’s been a tough week and the writing just hasn’t been happening.

The ‘S’ Word

I said yesterday that my husband has a stew phobia.  Yes, that it the dreaded ‘s’ word in the house.  The word will bring him out in a rash sooner than the threat of half a dozen other scary ingredients going into a dish.  Stew.  The problem is that stews are actually quite a handy concoction midwinter; they’re an economic, easy, warming and nutritious dish to serve up and unfortunately cover quite a few styles and cuisines.  Casserole, goulash, chili, one pot, hot pot, pizzaiola, braised whatever – all stews.  The trick is not to use the ‘s’ word without due caution or at least some kind of preamble of how this stew isn’t actually a ‘stew’.

The husband explains that this stew phobia comes from having an Irish father for whom the dish is both an integral part of their cultural heritage and their cooking repertoire.  Stew was a guaranteed regular visitor on their dinner table growing up, recalled with minimal affection and hereby described as ‘brown and boring’.   The most interesting part is the meat and gravy apparently but the vegetables that accompany the soft, sludgy browness were the definite downside.  Peas, carrots, swede – still not on the other half’s list of edible foods.  Potatoes – bearable.  His face wrinkles up recalling the offending, repellant article.

No offence to his Dad’s cooking, of course, because he hates everybody’s stews.  Similar dishes appear at my side of the family’s dinner table but they’re no longer on offer when he’s around.  Everyone knows to avoid the ‘s’ word.  The peas and carrots may be acceptable with a roast drowned under an ocean of gravy, no lumps please, but not in a stew.

But you see that’s what I don’t get.  Meat is probably the only ingredient that hasn’t featured in one of my whatever-you-care-to-call-it-but-just-don’t-use-the-’s'-word dishes.  I don’t eat it.  Barring vegetarian mince of course in chilis.  We rarely have in the house what we’ve come to call the ‘English vegetables’ – things like the loathsome peas, carrots, swede.  All of mine involve some spice or chili pepper, never mind any other seasoning.  Most of them probably include tomato.  And pulses are a regular visitor.  Not exactly the ‘stew’ of his childhood.

But no, we go on tiptoeing around the issue and now the slow cooker is here, and here to stay, I’m going to dig out the thesaurus and get inventive about just what exactly is going to come out of it.  Because it won’t involve the ‘s’ word.  Or rather, can’t, for the sake of domestic bliss.  Although reading through this post has caused hubby to reflect that chili is rather stew-like.  Hopefully this is progress rather than a new limitation.  We will see.

Is this an Air Raid?

There’s an air raid siren in town, a genuine World War II type with the freaky shaky wail that rises tremulously above the town.  We only hear it about once a year, in late summer, when it is tested for about ten or fifteen minutes.  It’s on the site of a large defense manufacturing plant, right smack bang in the centre of town and we reckon that they’re using  it as a fire alarm.  Even in the middle of the day it’s a little bit eerie to hear it.

We’re definitely not old enough to remember them going off for real during the War (and yes there was air raids in this corner of the country too) but it’s such an evocative sound.  I always worry whether or not it disturbs the people who were here during the War to hear it again, PTSD style, especially those who were maybe living in the bigger and more heavily bombed cities.

A lot of people seem surprised that there still is an air raid siren in town.  I’ve never heard of another one still being in action.  Maybe it just is for a fire on site or some other accident/disaster, I don’t know.  The US seems to have continued with such precautions, it isn’t unusual for there still to be designated bomb shelters, alth0ugh these are mostly connected with the threat of nuclear attack during the Cold War.  It is a little offputting to find one though just round the corner from the hotel you’re staying in though!  Are there any operational bomb shelters in this country?  I don’t know.  Plenty of tatty and disintegrating WWII concrete bunkers and other defensive lumps lurking partially hidden in the undergrowth, full of rubbish and stinking of pee.  But they’re not really somewhere I would recommend heading in the case of some kind of attack.

I wonder too whether this air raid siren is still intended to serve some greater civil role, protecting the town in the case of air or nuclear attack.  Would anyone know that that is why the siren is sounding?  We live in a highly apathetic society, the siren rarely raises many eyebrows, life and people continue blissfully ignorant.  So what would happen if it was to sound a warning?  Could it even count as a warning?!

A couple of nights ago it sounded.  The air raid siren.  Now if you think that this thing sounds creepy during the day then you should hear it at five to eleven in the dark night.  It was terrifying!  Immediately my thoughts went to anyone for whom the air raid siren was once a genuine warning of a genuine threat above, how shaken some of them must have been lying in their beds to hear this wail!

In the relative quiet of the night with low cloud the sound just hung and echoed around the nearby hills.  It wasn’t as powerful as you may think but quietly menacing, a plaintive wail rather than a rallying cry to action.

So what do you do?

I’ve never heard it go off at night nor of it going off at night.  Does this mean that there is some larger threat, that the whole town is in danger?  What is the correct course of action when one hears an air raid siren?

I quickly prepared a list of options:-

1.  Find out if there was a fire down there (or more accurately, send my husband to investigate).

This didn’t come to fruition as my husband was not keen on getting out of bed, especially not on the part that involved him getting dressed and cycling across town as we both agreed that we wouldn’t be able to see the flames from our windows.  It also didn’t come to fruition as I’m the kind of person who deals with loud scary noises in the night by pulling the duvet over my head and hoping they go away.  There were no fire engines though, nor any other emergency vehicles for that matter.

2.  Hide under a table.

This was fairly common practice in air raids, especially during World War I when there were no shelters.  This also didn’t come to fruition as it also involved getting out of bed.  It was also hampered by the fact that we don’t own a table, well other than a very low and awkwardly shaped coffee table which at best a dog or very small child could crouch under.  Definitely not two adults, one of whom isn’t particularly concerned by the siren and wants to go to sleep.

3.   Brace oneself in a door frame.

Apparently this is what you can do in an earthquake.  I don’t know how effective it would be in an air raid.  But as I didn’t know quite what the threat was it seemed like a good option to add to the list. (Although I wouldn’t completely trust the strength of our door frames as we’ve just had to fill one jam full of filler to get it to have some kind of relationship again with the wall behind).

4.  Would a bathtub count if you didn’t have a table?

For that matter we don’t have a bathtub.  So what about a shower?  (You should be able to tell by now that I’m panicking and getting desperate).

I listed these options to the husband (who was definitely the one who wasn’t particularly concerned) and he seemed to think I was crazy.  So he rolled over and went to sleep, DURING an air raid siren!  If you can believe.

So I waited a little longer.  It’s now twenty past eleven.  TWENTY FIVE minutes!  Surely there has to be a reason for this thing going off?

After a while your ears become accustomed to the sound and you’re not really sure if you’re still hearing it or not, whether that fainter sound is now just an echo, a memory ringing in your ears.  Maybe you are cracking up, maybe you’ve just imagined it.  Nothing has happened after all.

Ooh.  Has it stopped?  Or is it that my ears have finally cleared?  No I think it has really stopped.  An HOUR that air raid siren sounded over town the other night.  No one seems to know why and for once everyone has been talking about it.  It kept people awake and it woke people up.  Except my husband.  Who managed to get to sleep during it.  Alright for some!