Toast And Television

                                                   
It has been a while, but I am once again the little Spanish girl navigating herself around a new life, a new culture and a new language in an unfamiliar land called England. The year is 1971 and soon it will be 1972. I am now seven but soon I will turn eight and along with me is Mama, Papa and Sis who is not yet three. A whole year has passed since I left my beautiful Tenerife Island home (see post Share The Moon), and with each day that passes the memories of my previous life fade one more degree. In the daytime the little Spanish girl within me is slowly eradicated as Maria del Carmen is gradually replaced by Marie (see post A Girl Named Marie), but at night I escape on my magic carpet and return to my beloved island. During these precious twilight hours England cannot touch me, as the mountains, the beach and the blue Atlantic waters all rush to welcome me home, enveloping me in their warm blanket of comforting familiarity. Once the first light of dawn begins to break outside the bedroom window my bewitching nocturnal adventure slowly concludes, and by the time the sun has risen into the morning sky I am once more on the emerald island of The English (see post 

Watching The English Part III). 

We are no longer living on the chicken farm in the village of Bloxham near to Banbury, and Richard, the English boy with the cobalt-blue eyes with whom I shared that magical first kiss has disappeared from my life forever (see posts This Lion Can Talk and B Is For Bullied); Papa has found a new job on a pig farm in a place called Ingatestone and we will now live in a nearby town called Brentwood just outside London. He tells me that London is the capital city of England and that means the biggest town in the country. We also no longer have to live in a mobile home and Mama, Sis and I are very happy; the owner of the pig farm is called William and he rents us a small terraced house in Brentwood. At first we live at number 37, and after a few months we move to number 51. This becomes our new home, and unbeknown to me at the time the enduring residence for the rest of my time in England.

In the beginning, Papa travels to work on the pig farm on his scooter, after while he has saved enough money and we have our first family car, a Hillmann Imp with number plate EUD-244C. While Papa does that, Mama stays home and looks after Sis and I go to my new school, the second one of my life in this strange new country. The house we now live in is a lot better than the mobile home; it has two bedrooms upstairs, and downstairs there is a lounge, kitchen and lavatory. It also comes with some basic furniture; two beds, one for the grown-ups and one for us girls, a sofa in the lounge and a table in the kitchen. The kitchen also has a cooker and a variety of kitchen utensils most of which I have never seen before. One of them is called a toaster. 

At the front and back of the house there are small gardens. Sis and I love the grass in the back garden, this is something we never had in Tenerife; for us it feels and looks like a luxurious green carpet, and we race one another from one end to the other as fast as our little legs will carry us. The back garden has a fence on either side separating us from all the other similarly sized back gardens, which are all in turn attached to houses similar to the one we live in. They all look the same and are bunched together in a long row. Papa tells me that the English call these homes 'terraced'. There's not a chicken in sight in our new neighbourhood and I am very happy, but I think that Papa is missing his previous charges, because he soon sets up a hutch at the end of the back garden and after a while it is inhabited by an adorable family of rabbits. From the other side of the fence a luscious plum tree overhangs our garden, and in the summer-time our luxurious grass carpet is covered with crimson-coloured, ripe and juicy plums. In the summer months to come we will have our fill of this delicious fruit. We even have our own address, 51 Crescent Road, and after having spent the past year living in a rudimentary caravan surrounded by chickens at every turn, this new home feels like opulent luxury.

Living next door but one to our home is a wonderful elderly lady and her name is Kathleen Robinson. When she finds out that the only family Sis and I have in England are all resident in the house next to her, she takes pity on us and declares that since we girl do not have a grandmother of our own in the whole of England, we will just have to call her Nanny Robbie. We also have other elderly ladies living around us: to our right and directly next door between us and Nanny Robbie we have Mrs. McCabe, and on the other side we have Mrs Hunter. They are all nice ladies, but none are as special as Nannie Robbie. Sis and I fall in love with her and she becomes for us the much-loved grandma that remained behind on our Island in Tenerife as we departed for this new land called England.

                                                     
Some time has passed since Mama first introduced us to English sliced bread (see post Watching The English Part I ), and by now we are eating it morning, noon and night. We notice that it tastes a lot better if you toast it and especially if you spread on some delicious sausage paté that Mama buys us from the new local food store called Sainsburys. For Sis and I, toast and English paté becomes our staple breakfast. One day Nannie Robbie comes by for a visit as Sis and I are half way through our delicious feast. Horrified by the sight that greets her, she shrieks to Mama: 'Heavens above, Francis, you're feeding the girls raw pork sausages, you'll be lucky if they don't end up with worms!' We don't understand exactly what she is saying, but we sort of get the drift that we're eating something we shouldn't and this spells the end of our toast and paté for breakfast. 

We soon get out first ever television. It's black and white and rented. Once a week on a Saturday when Mama is not working, Sis and I walk the short journey from 51 Crescent Road to the King's Road Rental shop where we faithfully pay our one pound seventy-five pence weekly rent. Mama pushes Sis in her pushchair and I dutifully walk alongside her. On the way, we pass a shop called Larry Morgan's that is really two shops in one; part of it is a photographer's studio, but there is also another part to it which sells a variety of bicycles all displayed in the shop window facing the street that Mama, Sis and I walk past as we slowly make our way to our destination. The photos in the windows do not interest me, but I cannot say the same for the bicycles. They captivate me and I gaze longingly at them each time I pass by. I have never seen such wonderful things in my short life, and there is one that particularly enchants me, it's called a Raleigh Chopper. I want one more than anything, but for me it feels like a far-away fantasy with no hope of realisation; Mama need not tell me, my young mind comprehends that that we do not have the money for such a luxury. I any case, even were I to be the lucky recipient of such a marvel I would not know what to do with it, for I do not know how to ride a bicycle and cannot in my wildest seven-year-old dreams ever imagine being able to do so.

I love the television rental shop; all around me are televisions galore and all simultaneously tuned into the same program creating an immense sea of repetition which mesmerizes me. Mama could leave me here all day and I would be happy as a lark, watching the same program hour after hour on all the sets around me until she finally stopped by to pick me up and take me home. Sprinkled in-between the black and white sets dotted around the store are also a few colour televisions but they are way too expensive for us. Maybe one day if we have enough money we can afford one. At home, we all sit in front of this marvellous thing called The Television, captivated by a new world opening out before us and in a language that we don't really understand. One of my favourite programs is of a simple picture: In this picture, there is a girl with a red dress and long brown hair sitting in front of a blackboard with a funny clown for company. She is called the Test Card Girl and is on television in-between programs when there is nothing else on. There is a piece of chalk in her hand, and on the blackboard beside her she is drawing circles and crosses that never seem to get anywhere. There she sits motionless hour after hour, with a never-ending stream of peaceful music playing in the background. And by jolly does she need the calming influence of that music; it must be excruciating sitting still in front of that blackboard for eternity and never getting to the end of your game of noughts and crosses! No-one else wants to watch this program but I like this girl and the fact that she remains inert. I'm only seven turning eight but have undergone so many changes in my short life that watching her frozen in time makes me feel safe and anchored. 

Next post published on Sunday, September 10th: Girl With Television


Note: All written content is the intellectual property of this Author. Image material is drawn largely from Pixabay with some additions from private family archives.

The Beach Club

Our day-long drive across Tenerife has indeed been a wonderful adventure (see posts Autopista With Vista , A Place Called Chinet,  and Steve, Beatriz And Columbus), but it feels equally wonderful to return home to San Juan as Mama opens the door and greets Zara and I with a beaming smile. It is now early evening and the warm sun is still caressing our skin, but soon it will dip below the horizon and bring to a close yet another sunny day on this largest of the seven Canary Islands. Mama is very happy that her daughter and granddaughter have returned safe and well back to the family fold (see post Women With Wheels). I ask Mama how she spent her day, and she tells me that as soon as she got up she went for a brisk early-morning power walk, followed by breakfast, followed by a swim at the beach with her retired girlfriends, the infamous Beach Club, followed by lunch, followed by a nap, followed by her favourite television soap opera, followed by yet another visit to the beach, and finally all ended with a relaxing evening walk, also known as el paseo. Zara and I Iook at one another with quiet awe. Just listening to this day's program fills us both with utter exhaustion. The seventy-three -year-old Mama and Grandma standing before us clearly has more energy within her than her daughter and grand-daughter combined! 

As with the numerous beaches dotted along Tenerife's many resorts, the beach at Mama's own village of San Juan is the focal meeting point for the inhabitants within its vicinity. At some time or another, everybody goes to the beach or walks past it on the daily walking ritual known as el paseo. The beach is simply unavoidable, drawing you towards it like an invisible magnet as a place where the microcosm of village life is played out day in and day out. Mama's own group of companions make up many of the beach's frequent visitors. Collectively known as The Beach Club, they consist of an assortment of similarly retired older ladies who spend their days swimming, sunbathing, and generally analysing amongst one another the minute details of everyday village life. Free therapy advise is also dished out to anyone deemed in need, all you have to do is pass by the beach and make contact with The Beach Club; there's Juana, there's Morela, there's Maria, there's Juliana, there's Marta, and finally there is Mama. Everything is discussed in complete confidence and what is said on the beach stays on the beach. Well, almost. After laying bare the inner-most core of your soul, it will still take a full twenty-four hours before the entire village is made aware of the reasons for your divorce, the name of the woman at the centre of said tsunami, and the contents of last conversation between you and now ex-husband on That Day (see post Cars With Memories). Now that is what I call an impressive code of secrecy.  And here below is the beach in question.

If you have a problem, you simply grab your swim wear and pay a visit to the beach. At an appropriate moment, either before, during or after your swim you divulge your dilemma to the members of The Beach Club, and in return you will be rewarded with a wide variety of competing advice coming at you from all directions. Everyone has their own viewpoint on the resolution of said dilemma, so you just listen carefully to each viewpoint and then select the advice that fits your situation best. Or you can follow the path I sometimes take, which is listen in earnest to all said opinions and then simply discard the whole lot. The Beach Club is also a marvellous place for the acquisition and diffusion of general information. Who needs the Google search engine when one has this magnificent bikini-clad wisdom machine with a combined age of four-hundred-and-twenty years?


Want to find a new tenant for your apartment? The Beach Club will take care of that. Looking for a new job? The Beach Club will ask amongst their vast network who is currently hiring. Son not dating the right sort of girl? Worry no more, The Beach Club will run a background check on her. Adult daughter in need of boyfriend after recent divorce? Look no further, every eligible male in the village is on the radar screen of the Beach Club. I have already informed Mama and her companions to cease their futile attempts at matchmaking me, I am quite capable to finding my own company. One of the older men in the village makes the monumental mistake of stopping by to happily inform The Beach Club that he will soon be marrying for the second time. Why on the earth are you bothering at your age? he is asked, everyone is getting divorced! Marriage is like a business, he deftly replies, some close down and others open. The Beach Club fall unusually silent and rest their case; they cannot possibly know everything, and often they don't. Anyway, it's time for a collective swim and in they simultaneously pile into the water, all four-hundred-and-twenty-years-worth. The therapy session has just transferred itself from land to sea.

But for now, the Beach Club members are dispersed amongst their respective homes, the sun has already gone down and Zara and I sit on the sofa besides Mama, our very own specimen who is now indulging in her second favourite past-time after The Beach, and that is The Television. Zara watches Mama who is in turn watching the television, captivated as always by her regular evening show, The Eight O'clock News. How can someone become so excited over a simple news report, a perplexed Zara whispers in my ear. Mama momentarily leaves her ringside television seat to fix herself a small evening snack in the adjacent kitchen, with absolute certainty somewhere amongst this snack will feature the ubiquitous banana. It always does (see post The Banana Bunch). Taking advantage of this absence, Zara leans into me and discreetly share a confidence; she tells me that the telenovelas, or the soap operas that her grandma watches in the daytime are slowly doing her head in; 


Nanny cannot seem to comprehend that it is all scripted fiction and faithfully tunes in at the same time each afternoon, mesmerized by a plot that always evolves along the same predictable lines. There she is wagging her accusatory finger six inches away from the television screen as the villain is raked across the coals for his newest misdemeanour by an always-ridiculously-beautiful distressed heroine. 'Sinverguenza!', Mama shouts with simmering rage. That means shameless and is the first word that Julia ever learns in Spanish as Hugo takes his Finnish fiancé on an introductory visit to his Spanish grandma's home. 


I tell Zara that her grandma has been like this ever since we got our first ever television in England back in the early nineteen-seventies. And as I share this with Zara, a wave of nostalgia suddenly washes over me, and along with it is swept away the present moment and everything that belongs to it; San Juan, Zara, Mama and Maria del Carmen all vanish, and in their place appears a bewildered seven-year-old girl named Marie (see post A Girl Named Marie). Newly-arrived in a strange land called England, I am once more back in the land of Toast and Television (see post B Is For Bullied).

To be continued...

Next post published on Sunday 27th August: Toast And Television


Note: All written content is the intellectual property of this Author. Image material is drawn largely from Pixabay with some additions from private family archives.