Thursday’s Child
Well, two things have happened. One, in the last few weeks,
someone has got up and offered me their seat on the tube at least twice. Two, I
have bitten the bullet and travelled abroad for the first time since the
pandemic struck.
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More of the old git stuff, later. I was born on a Thursday
in August 1956, and the old rhyme says that Thursday’s child has far to go.
When I was two years old, my dad got a job in Malta, and we went to live there.
My memories of it are sparse and have probably substantially distorted the
actual events. I have already documented the dysfunctional relationship between
myself and the nuns who ran the kindergarten which I attended there, so no more
of that now.
When we went out to Malta, we travelled by air, and I have a
vague memory of a wait in an Italian airport for a connection, and drinking
some lemon-flavoured drink. However, when my dad’s tour of duty at Sao Paolo
Technical School ended, we travelled back to the UK overland, mum, dad and four
kids in a Morris Traveller. My older siblings can remember the details more
accurately, but as I understand it, we first sailed from Malta to somewhere in
Sicily, then another voyage to the foot of Italy, then over a number of days,
my dad drove us to Boulogne for the ferry back to Blighty. The sea voyages,
perhaps unusually for the Med, were very rough and we were all sick pretty much
continuously. It must have been a nightmare for mum and dad.
On the journey through Italy, various incidents are remembered by my older brothers and sister. One brother was stung by a hornet, and another was sick out of the car window as there was nowhere for my dad to stop on the winding and narrow roads in the Campania region. A particular memory which my siblings have, but which I do not, is arriving in Vallo Della Lucania in Salerno province late at night. We arrived in this ghostly settlement in total darkness (imagine the street lighting in a provincial Italian village in 1960), to be met by a grey-bearded ancient who led us up rickety stairs to the top floor of a gaunt and sinister albergo. My older sister tells me there were flying ants in the room and we were all pretty scared. Apparently, the next morning had blazing sunshine, and the place was idyllic, with goats with bells round their necks, people going to market and to mass, and so on. Such a contrast to our eerie, late-night arrival.
This YouTube video from the redneck jazz outfit, the
Squirrel Nut Zippers, reminds me of the Vallo Della Lucania episode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJzWGkgFcTU
The reason I am going on and on about the childhood trip
back from Malta is that my first venture in foreign travel since the lockdown
was to the Amalfi coast in Italy at the end of October. Our sons are in their
twenties now, and this was one of the rare occasions when they both joined us. This
was a walking holiday in which the company takes your luggage from hotel to
hotel, starting in Amalfi and ending in Sorrento. There was some beautiful
walking, including the Pathway of the Gods between Amalfi and Positano. But to
get from Naples airport to Amalfi, and on other occasions, we had taxi or bus
journeys on those same roads on which my brother was sick all those decades
ago. The first and last hotels in Amalfi
and Sorrento were quite grand, but the intervening ones were small lodging
houses like those we stayed in on the way back from Malta more than sixty years
ago.
Linda is very fastidious about reading the instructions on walks like these, and there were frequent stops while she studied the text, not so much to ensure that we didn’t get lost, more from fear of losing out and missing some features that we were supposed to admire on the way. Anyway, on the last leg from Marina del Cantone to Sorrento, number one son Bill lost patience and confiscated the instructions, declaring that he would lead the way from then on.
It was a lovely holiday, great to have the nuclear family together again, brilliant walks and weather, and we ate like kings. However, by the the seventh day, we had a craving for something different, and found a Thai restaurant in Sorrento.
It was lovely to have the last two nights in Sorrento, which is achingly beautiful, with a 1920’s Riviera feel. Also, you don’t have to walk there as we did or go on stomach-turning car rides on those winding mountain roads. It has a railway station. Go there if you get the chance.
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Back to the business of aging. Or maybe I shouldn’t bother
with it, it is too dispiriting. I am finding it difficult to come to terms with
being sixty-six years old. There are mornings when I put in my dental plate,
instal my hearing aids and put on my specs, when I think, like Navid on Still
Game, ‘What a class act you are.’ Next
thing I will be sitting on the lavvy eating a bag of Monster Munch. However, getting
old beats the alternative, and bearing in mind what I have been eating and
drinking all my adult life, I am lucky to have got here. I feel guilty that Linda,
who is as fit as a flea and has looked after herself much better than I have,
has had my health problems for me.
Both Linda and I have noticed something else about being old-
young people don’t see you, and shop assistants either ignore you or roll their
eyes up to heaven at your every imbecile utterance. Maybe this happens all your
life and actually noticing it is a symptom of old age. Linda is very good at
remarking on the impertinence of youth and reproaching the offenders for their
lapses in courtesy, but I tend to shrink away in shame and cowardice.
Because I watch lots of whodunits on ITV3, Alibi and Drama
channels on the telly, I am bombarded with ads for lavvy apparatus and associated
chemotherapy. Stuff to make you defecate, stuff to stop you defecating, various
garments to sport if you have problems with leakage of one kind or another… Say
goodbye to unwanted bowel movements with JOBBIGONE!
Did I tell you the story of Madam getting her first COVID
booster last year? She returned from it in a towering rage. The lady who gave
her her jab, making conversation, asked her what she had been doing that day.
Linda replied that she had been working on a report on the treatment of
thoracic aortic aneurysms. The vaccination lady clearly paid no attention to
this, and after the injection, said, ‘There you are. You can go home and put
your feet up, have a nice cup of tea, and Countdown will be on soon.’
You should have seen her when she got home. Tom and I were
terrified. Think Victor Meldrew, Jack Nicholson in Here’s Johnny mode, Basil
Fawlty when his car wouldn’t start, Geoffrey Boycott, Brian Clough and the Ayatollah
Khomeini all rolled into one.
Sorry there is no message in this month’s blog. Let’s make the
most of the pandemic recovery epoch.
Paola Tech
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