The Crackerjack connection

 

THE MIND MOVES IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS... THEN FORGETS ALL ABOUT IT

My brain made a random (and initially incorrect) connection yesterday. It was 10 o'clock, precisely. On a Friday. Suddenly the jump was made. It's Friday, it's 5 o'clock, it's Crackerjack. Why? I've no idea, as this was something I hadn't thought about in decades.

For those not in the know, Crackerjack was a children's TV programme. A variety show with comedy, sketches, music, and quizzes where kids from the audience took part. My incorrect link was that the time would have been 5 to 5, and not 5 itself. But, at that moment, the only other thing that came to mind were the names of 2 of the presenters, who ran the show during the period of my childhood, the sixties, when I would have been watching - Leslie Crowther and Peter Glaze. Beyond that I recalled nothing of the detail of the format or content.

I mentioned this sudden memory to Barbara and she was off... so many other details, other people who appeared. She remembered the cabbages, which kids who answered questions wrongly had to hold. How could I forget that? But it's a blank. Even reading the Wikipedia entry for the programme didn't jolt any real memories, other than knowing it was one of those shows I tried not to miss when I was a wee kid. So how come she remembers this stuff, and I don't?

This has come up before, that she has so many detailed memories of growing up, whilst much of mine is fuzzy, uncertain of periods and places, full of inaccuracies and doubt. She says she can recall something that happened when she was 3. I might have some early memories, but I think most are actually suggestions, stories I've been told later. My first real memory, I can place reasonably accurately, was around the time I turned 5, when I fractured my left wrist.

This has happened to me elsewhere, that realisation that others have far greater clarity about their early years than I do. A decade and more ago someone organised a reunion of our primary school class, so ages 5 to 11. I recalled most names and some faces of my classmates. I could remember the school itself, and that for our final year we moved to a new building. I could just about recall a couple of the teachers. But that was it. Yet so many there brought up arcane details of teachers and their habits, games played, lessons taken, projects we did. I sat back and listened and none of it really registered, or parked genuine memories. One of the guys had become a music teacher at the secondary school I had switched to, and asked me to sing the school song. While I didn't even know there was a song... So the memory fog continued into my teenage years.

Is this common, or am I the odd one out here? Do most people have these detailed memories of growing up, that I seem to lack? And if so, where lies the source of my failings? Is it being an only child, meaning I never had anyone to discuss stuff with? There weren't really any close friends either. Do shared memories survive better than those experienced alone? Does discussion implant the image in the brain?

I don't find any of this disturbing. It doesn't make me sad, just curious. It's too late to ask anyone, so I'm happy in my ignorance. The only person I know from those times I met at school at age 14, and we didn't really become close friends until we were adults. So there's only a bit of shared school stuff there, nothing really wider.

Maybe I don't have sufficient curiosity in my nature? Or I lack the necessary sentimentality? Does it matter? There were events in my past that shaped me, even if I can't dredge them up now. It's all in the past. But I do remember that Leslie and Peter made me laugh.

Seven Days in September (#3)

WEEK 3 

Monday 15 September. We went to pilates, and I made a passable curry for dinner.  But my highlight was going to the Sicilian Pastry Shop for a couple of their strawberry tarts (the last 2 they had).  Delicious.  Oh, and we had The Plumber's Return.  Not a new job, but a continuation of the work I mentioned so many days before.  He left us with clouds of dust and a bit more done.

Tuesday.  Remember that plumber?  We ended the day with a new shower.  And a lot of mess, but the shower was done.  We went to another P&P&P at the Traverse.  And I wrapped some presents, because...  

Wednesday.  Barbara's birthday.  The usual pilates class, with an unusually giggly French woman on the mat next to me.  Dinner in Mowgli, delicious, but noisy.  However my highlight for the day was my wife's reaction to her main present, the Sherlock Holmes Book Nook Lego set.   We don't have to be grown ups  all the time, do we?

Thursday.  On this day I enjoyed the creativity of an Instagram post I put up.  But the main pleasure came from something more physical.  I do pilates to keep my wonky back in order, and part of that same regime is a monthly massage.  Not the incense and whale song kind, more the type that's only 2 steps removed from invoking the Geneva Convention.  Sometime painful, but worth it in the end.  For a long time I was manipulated by a young Irish woman, who gave great rugby craic, but she returned to Dublin and now I'm in the hands of a Pole.  No sport talk, but very entertaining, and I always leave having laughed, as well as having my muscles deknotted (a veeeeery tight left shoulder being the main culprit this time).

Friday.  Return to The Hive.  A double header of preseason matches for Edinburgh Rugby.  Good to be back shouting for the lads, good to be back chatting to my oldest friend, who I've known since I was 14 (I don't want to think how many years that is...).  Some rubbishy food in the break between games, a spectacular sunset sky, and a win to end it all.  I look forward to the season to come, as the point in time where all seems possible...

Saturday.  We met Barbara's daughter off the train at Waverley.  Nothing was planned for the rest of the day, so we ended up sat at the table putting bits of bricks together.  While the two women put a Lego kit together, I tried making one from a manufacturer called Cada.  And it was fun for all.  

Sunday.  While mother and daughter did their own thing, I did mine.  A bit of walking, a bit of writing, shared the blog post that described the first week in this wee series.  Dinner for 3 was in Cafe Andaluz in Stockbridge, and back home our visitor was introduced to the delights of Gary : Tank Commander (it's on iPlayer if you haven't discovered the daftness yet).  So a good day, topped by a discovery.  I'd never before seen or heard the collaboration between Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris from earlier this century, so playing footage of their concert was a huge pleasure.

And so endeth another week.  Is there a pattern here?  Is there some great secret of life?  Probably not...

You can choose your friends - but would your family choose you?

 

A FAMILY OF STRANGERS

I think it's fair to say that we were never a close family.  While I knew all four grandparents, they weren't a regular presence in my life.  There was even, very briefly, a meeting with one great grandfather.  But the older generation figure who featured most in my childhood was my mother's great aunt, who was more of the 'granny figure' in my life than my actual grandmothers, for reasons that would take too long to explain here, but are also the cause of my mother not seeing much of two of her three sisters.  And while there were five aunts and two uncles, only two of the former still lived in Edinburgh, while the rest were relative strangers, or even unknowns.  One I only met once, another I have no memory of, despite being told I'd seen her when I was three.  

A couple of weeks ago I attended the Genetic Clinic, as part of the ongoing investigation into the various bits of me that seem to going a bit wrong.  Before going I was asked a lot of questions about family members, and my ignorance ensured the process was over surprisingly quickly.  While I knew what my parents died of, I had no idea about their parents.  Having no siblings or offspring meant that was out the way quickly.  And other than one aunt who was a heavy smoker and died in her forties from lung cancer, I hadn't a clue about the others.  I knew at least one was dead.  But the last time I saw one of them was over twenty years ago, at my dad's funeral.  

Did I have cousins I was asked.  Oh yes, eighteen of them.  But I last saw one almost forty years ago, and had had no contact with any of them since.  Several I never met, I've forgotten most of their names, and I think there may have been two I never did learn what they were called, as they always seem to be talked about as 'the twins' (they were over in the US).  So I couldn't be a lot of help about their health conditions.

Two days later something a bit weird happened.  I was contacted, on Facebook, by someone called Jonathan Crawford, asking if I was Harry's son.  Maybe Jonathan was one of the cousins I never met, or whose name had refused to lodge in my brain?   I had a look at his Friends list and amidst more Crawfords than I'd seen in a long time I recognised three names.  Fiona, Catriona and Murdoch were the children of Liston, the one sibling my father always spoke warmly of.  Liston had long since moved to Australia, but I called him for a chat after my mum died in 2005, and enjoyed talking to him.  I remember liking him and his kids when I was in my early teens, as we met a few times, but I hadn't seen or heard from this trio of cousins for half a century.  

It turned out that Jonathan wanted to tell me that his dad, Jimmy, had died a few days before.  And I definitely remembered Jimmy.  But I wasn't about to tell my new found relative why - he was upset enough already.  I already associated Jimmy's names with funerals.

I'll be entirely honest before I relate the next part of the story - I am an unreliable witness.  My memory of events in my childhood is inconsistent and, I'm sure, highly selective.  Looking back at old diaries has confirmed I forget much, and distort what I do recall.  The first part of what I'm about to write happened not far short of fifty years ago, and there's nobody left who I can ask to confirm or deny my version of events.  But I think I recall enough to have good reason not to trust Jimmy.

My paternal grandmother died in 1975.  My father, the only one of her family still in the city, was named executor.  Both his brothers came up from their homes in England to attend the funeral.  Liston travelled by train, and must have stayed in a hotel or with someone he knew.  Jimmy drove up, in his Volvo estate, and spent the night in his mother's tenement flat.  The morning after the funeral Liston was still around to say his goodbyes, but...

You might have been wondering what the photo at the top of this post could possibly have to do with family.  By now you may have started to make a guess.  Come the morning of the day after and Jimmy was gone.  And his Volvo.  And most of the carpets and rugs in the flat.  Volvos were big cars.  My dad was not impressed.  OK, he was livid.  I don't think Liston thought much of his departed brother either.  The bad taste never really faded away.

Fast forward twenty seven years and here's Jimmy at a funeral in Edinburgh again.  My dad's. 

 No, he didn't nick anything this time, but he hung around longer than he needed to and pissed off my mother, who'd never really liked him anyway.  I found him too full of himself, pompous and brash.  And that was memory number two of Jimmy.

Jonathan doesn't need to know any of this.  He has own version of Jimmy and he should keep hold of it.  I have no intention of keeping in touch.  (He looked like a tory in his profile pic, but maybe that's me being a bit too unkind!)  However I did contact one of Liston's trio, Fiona, the eldest.  And we had a wee online chat.  She gave me email addresses for the others, and we've had a short exchange.  And I learned that Liston is still alive and independent, out in Oz, the last of the bunch.  

Will we be in touch in future?  Will I ever meet any of them?  I don't know.  Maybe it was a flash in the pan, or perhaps something will come of it.  It might be interesting, but I'm of the view that you can't miss what you never had.  I was happy enough without family before, and that won't change.

But a part of me keeps thinking it was a shame none of this happened before I got asked all those questions about relatives.  I'd have been able to tell them I actually had some!