L4388

female 26 years single Bootle freelance writer Saturday, 2nd June - At breakfast-time - 9am - I noticed a number of small, hard, flesh-coloured spots on the palm of my right hand. According to mum they’re may be callouses, which can appear quite early on in life. I always associated these with hard physical labour, not writing and typing. The right is my writing hand and the only one with which I can manipulate anything with ease, but I wouldn’t have thought it had had enough use to show on the skin, especially not the palm.... After my usual breakfast (small glass of milk, slice of buttered bread, small bowl of porridge and half a hot-cross bun) and flick-through The Times and i - avoiding the formers’ ridiculously twee articles on the royal family - mum and I walked to the Aintree Retail Park for shopping. There was a cool breeze and mizzle in the air. The grass in verges and a patch of nearby ‘waste ground’ is lush and sending up tall seed-stems. At least a dozen species of wild flower must be in that area alone. The waste ground is so thick with them, grasses, horse tails and young trees I call it ‘the Garden’. A double-decker bus headed for Heydock Park came onto Dunningsbridge Rd. out of Heysham Rd., the first time I’ve seen a bus come that way and bound for Chester. It reminded mum of the first and only bet she won on a racehorse at Haydock, decades ago. She chose it for its name ‘Blue Jacket’, same colour as the bus. Heysham Rd. itself was blissfully free of the HGVs that thunder down it every weekday. At the retail park we played dodge -‘ems with the other grazers, most of them either naturally wall-eyed or made that way by each other. It’s always bad on Saturdays and the long weekend to come may be acerbating it. There were the same Union Jack-embossed objects that have been there for weeks and months. Seeing these things all year feels like being in America. Who buys them and why I don’t know. The two-dimensional attitudes behind flag-waving leave me cold. Still, they’re better that the the one-dimensional attitudes behind the flying of most St. Georges’ flags. As for signs of Jubilee fervour, in the surrounding handful of miles around our house I’ve seen about ten houses showing flags and bunting and half a dozen or so small shops with same (an odd selection of bakers, hairdressers, a solicitors‘, a jeweller, news-agents, a printer cartridge-seller, an army surplus, pubs, restaurants, and a motor parts dealer), along with a couple of churches, a school, two social clubs and three community centres. The most bizarre shop display is in Liverpool city centre - in River Islands’ store window black mannequins in patterned summer shirts hold leashes attached to model corgis (who sport sunglasses). There are no street parties happening round here and I’ve not heard any conversations about the Jubilee. 1 pm : After lunch in my room (mini sausages, chips, strawberry yoghurt and cucumber slices - no ‘patriotic’ clichés intended!) I looked through the Radio Times, including their personal-memories-of-the-Queen page. There’s a wildlife-spotting feel to these, of a creature glimpsed in and out of its habitat (the Queens’ habitats probably being palace grounds, racecourses and yachts). Considering RT has been asking for contributions for months there don’t seem many of them. Had my 4 o’clock snack - two satsumas, some grapes and a Tracker - then wrote my diary. At 5 I eschewed my daily online GCSE maths lesson and watched the unbeatable BBC4s’ documentary about the coronation on playback via the laptop. An evocative social history, great to see MO contributions used after more than half a century. Some of the memorabilia reminded me of the cardboard palace and carriage mums’ step-father bought her at the time. Childrens’ stuff notwithstanding, I couldn’t help wishing that there was a tighter control on tat now and that the press were currently handled in a manner more similar to that jowly Dukes’. Following this I had my dinner at 6:40 - fish, buttered bread, sliced raw carrot, peas and a slice of malt loaf. At 7:15 I read John Maxstone-Grahams’ The Only Way to Cross for a couple of hours in mums’ bed (mine’s a bed-desk combo I‘ve been sitting at for most of the afternoon) then listened in the same place to The Little Princess soundtrack (again, no Jubilee connection!) on my portable CD player. Have just realised that my cool linen trousers have the faint shape of sailor-pants and that on top I’m wearing red, white and blue… Downstairs with mum I watched the end of the BBC news and the beginning of a BBC4 programme about zeppelins. Remarkable that a female journalist was present on one of their flights and that her diaries form the entire narration. Looks to be well worth watching in a few days. To bed at 11 o’clock. Sunday 3rd June - Washed my hair and moved bath-time forward a few hours, in order to watch the pageant on BBC 1, followed by weekly low-level preening (eyebrows, cuticles etc.). Listened to some Classic FM on the radio. They’re doing four days of ‘British’ music, needless to say. More surprisingly, there have been some nice pieces I haven’t heard before - a real novelty for this station. Lunch at 1 in my room - chips, fish fingers, apricot yoghurt, cucumber slices. Spent an hour afterwards dusting my room then settled in for the pageant, on my TV with mum (eldest brother watching in his room). 2:30pm-6:15pm - It seems to be much darker over London than here, maybe because it’s been raining steadily here for much of the day whereas it’s just building up there. What an otherworldly effect the silver-grey light has on the scene - like an old photo, historic in a way not intended. Wonderful seeing the cloud repeatedly obscuring the Shard, improving its aspect considerably. How cold, tired and aged the Queen looked. It was good of her to stand for so long but she and the Duke really should have sat down more. Their barge was better-looking than expected. I particularly wanted to see the more unusual boats and sailing ships and hear the bells (floating and land-bound). These wishes were only slightly fulfilled. To blame for this could be the sheer number of vessels, the fact that sail-ships had to be sail-less and close to the dock and the BBC. The latters’ presenters were as numerous and full of themselves as I feared they would be; there was no knowledge of the boats, their haunting calls or flags:; continuity between the commentator and the multiple camera-shots was near-non-existent; where there should have been surrounding sounds (bells, music) there was talk and silence; they got bored half-way through (or presumed we were), leaving many boats to pass unseen and un-heard. Shambolic, in a word. At least we knew when we wouldn’t miss anything while going to the loo, fetching Cornetto treats, writing my diary, putting the roast in the oven etc. Fortunately we didn’t miss my favourite moment, which came from land - Joey. Its operators' legs gave it the fleeting appearance of a pantomime cow, but the structure itself had the beauty and bearing of a real equine. Inexplicably, it brought me close to tears. So spirited, distinctive and unexpected (not to mention dangerous - manhandling a large object on a wet roof in a wind). It only took a few breaks in routine for it not to feel like a Sunday At 6:45 I had dinner - boiled egg, pasta in tomato sauce, peas, carrot and malt loaf - in my room then read another few chapters of my book and listened to Fiddler on the Roof on CD before bed at 11. Monday, 4th June - Went on the Circle walk after breakfast - from Park Lane, through Walton Vale, Bootle cemetery, Orrell Lane, Bridle Road and back onto Park Lane. This is usually my least favourite walk because of the busy roads and crowded Vale. Today, though, everywhere is much quieter - at times there was nothing stirring in the vicinity except me and birds. On a lawn around the Shop Direct offices on Park Lane a man in green overalls was throwing a rubber ring for an English terrier, the only sign of life I’ve seen by those blank-faced buildings. Such inversions are the true worth of bank holidays to me. That said, since March I have volunteered each Monday at a charity bookshop in Ormskirk. I like being there but I also appreciate not being there on bank holiday Mondays, so much so that I don’t give the place a thought at these times. There were few clouds left in the sky but those that were there grew tall and grey-bellied as I walked. The grass seed-heads on Bridle Rd. are shoulder-high, taller than I’ve ever seen them. During the hour-and-a-half walk I used my spectacles, sunglasses and umbrella (though not simultaneously). Between 2 and 4 I did a bit of the MO directive then at half-four watched the horse show on ITV playback via the laptop. ‘Ethnic’ things are always interesting to me, as long as they’re authentic and have meaning to the participants. These seemed to be both, despite the sense of absurdity that accompanies every public event and the slight air of kitsch variety-show. I’m glad most of the acts involved horses doing natural things (running and trotting about) rather than pussy-footing. Fewer musical accompaniments would have improved it, as they added little to most of the acts. Presentation-wise, there were a surfeit of un-necessary speakers, who both addressed the Queen rather toe-curlingly and spoke about her as if she wasn’t there (I wish the monarch had greeted representatives of the performers at the end rather than the speakers, but I suppose that would take a while). I don’t know how ITV decided which bits were ‘highlights’ and which weren’t but the effect was much quieter and more contained than the pageant, not least because of the differing natures of the events no doubt. Had beef-balls and bread etc. for dinner at the usual time, then read my book and listened to the Highgrove Suite CD - lots of beautiful music on this for a mere £5 - before bed at 11. Tuesday, 5th June - The roads and streets are even quieter today, a small miracle. Walked to Netherton Village this morning, a handful of beautiful stone houses around a small green near the Leeds-Liverpool canal. To think these have survived all that has been built around them and that I didn‘t know of their existence until a year or so ago. I stopped on the small bridge over the canal to watch the ducks and a coot family below. Within seconds, though, each one was paddling towards me, evidently with treats in mind. I didn’t have any so to save their energy and the coot chicks’ plaintive cheeps I moved on. On a roadside verge opposite some arable fields (another revelation to me) there’s another dead magpie, just an impression of greasy feathers, beak and feet. After lunch I watched the parade on BBC 1 for the horses, catching some of the Westminster Hall lunch beforehand. The relative simplicity of todays’ jubilee events probably made them the most generally meaningful ones for the royals (though not much to me). Would have liked to hear the horses’ hooves but the soft ground and cheering must have muffled them. There can’t be much swiftness about the great drum-horses Achilles and Mercury. Names more indicative of weight and presence might be better - Ajax is the only alternative I’ve thought of so far. It was good to see the Queen perhaps genuinely smiling during the ‘balcony scene’ afterwards but fly-pasts, for me, are at best dull and at worst distasteful. For the three hours following this I wrote my diary and some of the MO directive, had my half-hour break/snack and re-started my maths lessons, stumbling over multiplication, division and ratios (multiplication and division in disguise). After fish and pasta etc. for dinner I finished The Only Way to Cross. What a readable, if occasionally opinionated, tome considering it‘s over 50 years old. My favourite chapters are those describing life on board the liners, particularly for the crews (my great-grandfather was a steward on board at least one of the ships mentioned) and immigrants (I have forebears who emigrated to America and Britain from Europe in the early 20th century). I only heard of the book because it was mentioned in the bibliography of a very enjoyable novel, The Secret of Jules and Josephine. Listened to the Pride and Prejudice TV series soundtrack before 11 o'clock bed.