Pentlands Writers: Georgina Phillips

I worked originally as a Children’s Librarian, took time out to raise a family, then started working in their Primary School. I retired last summer from being a Learning Assistant. The spoken and written word have always been of paramount importance and I am glad that the whole family shares this passion. I became aware of the Pentlands Writers Group through the enthusiasm of a school colleague and former member of the Group, Dani Viola. I was asked to join in 2006 and have since participated in Workshops and “Readings”.

I appreciate the format of our meetings which encourages us to write in different genres. My main love is poetry, fed by an enjoyment of music and singing in our church choir. I also like researching and writing articles of historic content, or pieces based on my other absorbing interest, family history.

The Group is most supportive in building confidence and giving constructive criticism, whilst offering the opportunity to hear, and learn from, the work of others.

My Mother's Button Box (A Poem) - Routine (Flash Fiction) – Products Past (Flash Fiction) –
Selective Memory (A Poem)  

MY MOTHER’S BUTTON BOX 

 

Buttons lie jumbled in the blue and white tin,

cascade through my fingers as I pour them onto the old wooden tray.

They ping, bounce, scatter like mercury beads,

awakening memory.

 

Tiny iridescent slivers of pearl sewn on a baby’s gown,

twinkle like the smile of its infant wearer.

Little red ladybirds, butterflies and frogs,

decorate a small girl’s dainty hand-smocked frocks

made with no money but plenty of love.

 

Bold, in-your-face, chunky black disks

have been thriftily snipped

from a coat of wartime Navy flannel.

“Things were made to last then”,

I can hear my mother say.

Today, with new buttons it’s our daughter’s retro chic!

 

Rubber buttons, sixpence a card, pallid and flabby,

that didn’t crush in the mangle when you heaved

a sodden soaking garment from the hot suds,

and stood in the freezing cold turning the handle

with reddened hands and swollen knuckles.

 

Each button’s a snapshot of an earlier time,

memory distilled in plastic and metal;

now the children use them as counters in their games.

 

^{May 2009}

 

ROUTINE

 

 

Radio pings into life - 6 o’clock in the morning, another dark, cold start, trudge down the road, stumble into potholes, buttock-clenching fear of falling on the ice and doing in the knee again so that by the time you reach the foot of the road every muscle is screaming, tensed and aching. Wait for the bus, will it arrive or leave you stranded, have to take the car? Passengers sleeping, ashen-faced children prematurely evicted to reach Edinburgh schools; coughs and splutters; bloody mobiles disturb your snooze. Trail up the hill, force a smile, start planning survival until break time, caffeine fix, focus, focus, how many trips to the office, comfort breaks, can help spin out the morning. Lunch, the comfort blanket of macaroni cheese, only a few hours until doing it all in reverse. Slide down the road to the bus stop, press into the hedge so only snow-coated on one side, change the weight from one leg to the other, can you change the wait by wishing? Glowing green light seen far off round the bend, will the driver remember to stop, see you through the driving snow, can you stay awake for the 15 minutes it takes to reach home, alight, trudge zombie-like up the road, oh joy, kind neighbour takes pity on the pathetic figure struggling along, bad thoughts seethe around all who speed past waving cheerily. Find the key, where’smykeywhere’smykeywhere’smykey!

This was a homework exercise, based on a daily routine. (I did actually enjoy my job!)

 

PRODUCTS PAST

 

I was going to write about Mum’s indispensable companion, slayer of foreign bugs and beasties, so dear to her that it travelled back from Malaya, only to languish in the garden shed. However, Pam Ayres beat me to it when she immortalised it in the following memorable verse: “My Mother had a Flit gun…”

So I turn nostalgically to that panacea for all stains and stigma, with its smell so evocative of bathtime, truly a tactile memory of childhood, literally ingrained in one’s very being. I give you …..VIM!

Introduced about 100 years ago, this was found in most houses, praised for its abrasive quality that shifted all but the most stubborn stains on bathroom and kitchen surfaces. The white powder was sprinkled generously on the desired area, then liberal quantities of elbow grease added to work it into a grey/blue sludge, smelly strongly of bleach. Very effective it was too, but it was important to remember to rinse it ALL away. I emphasise the “all”. I have only to see a cylinder of the product to have instant recall: sinking into a tub of hot water, slooshing back and forth to create waves as children do, only to have one’s nether regions forcefully abraded by the lingering gritty residue of my mother’s enthusiastic housework.

At least I didn’t use it as toothpaste, as the artist Francis Bacon is reputed to have done; nor mistaken it for talcum powder, with searing after effects!

I always said housework was bad for you!

  

SELECTIVE MEMORY 

“This is my sister”, my mother says

to a fellow resident in the Home.

Today I am not her daughter.

 

Some days my husband’s her long-dead man,

our son a nephew dead full fifty years ago.

This unsettles me.

 

This chair-bound cage for mind and soul

has out-fought two World Wars,

been homemaker, parent,

now great-grandmother

cocooned by glass-framed memories, pot plants and fluffy dogs.

 

“What’s happened to the dogs?

Maudie needs her tea!

When did you say Mother died?”

 

This is not the spectral dementia;

merely the memory-laden mind downloading

after ninety-four years.

 

Suddenly,

out of the blue –

whilst we talk of politics –

culled from a far-off, clear-remembered text:

“a plague on both your houses”

encapsulates our electoral apathy!

 

Now she is my mother!