Postcard 004 - Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling by Sir Philip Burne-Jones, 1899.

Rudyard Kipling, sent to [Kirsty L]

I am currently reading Kirsty's new book, a collection of short stories entitled A Portable Shelter.  It is dedicated to her father, for taking her to "the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo river, all set about with fever trees." It's a quote from the 'Elephant's Child', from the Just So Stories. 

And so this card went to Kirsty because of the Kipling quote, and because he's pictured here in the act of writing. And Kirsty is always writing.

Some of her work, when it comes from personal experience, can be arresting in its honesty.  Do I mean fidelity?  Its openness.  Certainly she's written about things I never would, or rather that I would feel a level of discomfort about disclosing. On first encounter with some of those pieces, years ago, I remember thinking that I could never be so open, and I immediately felt the restriction of that realisation. What's stopping me, really?

I tend to be more unfiltered in poetry than prose. I once vaguebooked half-formed lines of an unfinished piece which elicited an angry response from a family member when he recognised what it was they were about. I think he felt that it was disrespectful of me to have written them. Facebook may not have been the place, but in retrospect I wonder if I would have been better not to have shied away from it, as I did then.  I envy, or admire, in K the confidence she has to be open.  I wonder what it is about me that makes me feel that I could not, that I don't have permission to do that.  I prod and poke at the thing, in the hope that it will give up its secrets. And I try to write more honestly, even if I disguise the names, and weave deniability in from the start.

Guestcard 001 - Fundraising for Nepal @ Doune the Rabbit Hole

Nepalese prayer flags, sent to [Mum]

Glastonbury Festival has a postcard stand from which you can send cards, complete with a smudge of the sticky Glasto mud, should you so desire. I've sent a few of these, usually to my mum.  But until Doune the Rabbit Hole last weekend, I'd never seen a similar stall at another festival. 

Myself and the boy were there with the Shedload of Science Science Shed, demonstrating centripetal / centrifugal force using the back end of a bike strapped to a wallpaper pasting table and a lot of paint.  It was messy.  It was fun.

A late night bar conversation held in the spaces between bands and pints of Thistly Cross told tales of a postcard stall, and I went wandering the next day.  Came across a lovely woman, and her group/stall Rangichangi Sapana, fundraising for Nepal after visiting the place a while back.  She'd taken a range of photos and had them turned into cards - not CC licensed, she said, but ok for me to post on this blog.  For an extra 50p, she'd post the cards once they left the site.

Seemed a perfect opportunity to send a card to my mum.  We keep missing each other, which is unusual.  I'm used to speaking to her most days and it feels odd not to do so. Thus, a card it is, of prayer flags dispensing blessings on the countryside.

I lucked out with my mum. She has a talent for knowing The Right Thing To Do, especially in times of crisis.  There's been a few too many of the latter recently. I'd like there to be fewer, for her not to need that special skill so often, for things to be just a little quieter.  But there are some things a body cannot change, no matter how hard a daughter wishes.  Ah well.  In the absence of a magic wand, I have a postcard, and a pen.

Postcard 003 - Sir Alan Ayckbourn

By John Thaxter (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL],
via Wikimedia Commons

Sir Alan Ayckbourn, sent to [Tom]

It's the Scarborough connection. Ayckbourn was born in London but was the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough for 37 years.  Nearly 80 full length plays, and seven one act pieces.

I must have been to Scarborough many times, but I can only remember two occasions clearly.  Once, walking along the beach at night with my family on my mum's 40th birthday, and on another family outing, eating fish & chips on the seafront and my Aunty H wearing a tshirt that said "High on Life".  Sitting on the sand with my mum, watching donkeys plod back and forth along the same stretch with child-size burdens.  Slight peeling paint and fading seaside glamour, salted air and a bright sunshine not-quite-off-season day.  Buckets and spades clustered round doorways.  The time we were there at night, myself and Uncle K walked as far as we could in bare feet, until the threat of broken glass made putting shoes back on important.  I was disappointed to have to do so.  But we'd gone from the dark out to sky sea to the bright Saturday lights and club queues, and needed to dress appropriately.

Tom did one of my jobs before I did, and has an accent that is more like mine than either of those belonging to the cities we live in.  He makes fire breathing dragons with a frequency that others may find unusual, and is good at negotiating council licensing departments.  Handy person to have around.  He writes eloquently angry posts about politics on Facebook, and plays guitar.  I thought of him for the card because he worked in Scarborough.

Ayckbourn's picture is oil on canvas, by Allan Ramsay, 1989.  It's one of these explorations of Caucasian skin tones in patches that shouldn't make sense, but does, of course.  

Postcard 002 - Sir Cedric Lockwood Morris

Cedric Morris, sent to [my Grandad].

The second card out of this box is a self portrait of Sir Cedric Lockwood Morris.  (Artist and Plantsman, according to his gravestone.) It was painted in 1930, but given that the guy didn't die until the 1980s, it's still in copyright so no pic, I'm afraid. Oil on canvas, it's all soft pinks and browns, a knitted jumper underneath a brown jacket, and a valley of fields and trees in the background.  

I included the url to this blog on the card, but whether or not Grandad comes and finds it on his tablet, I don't know.  Hi Grandad, if you did. Do you still play Candy Crush?  I sent this one to you because of Morris' interest in horticulture, which made me think of you. 

My memories of my Grandad are of eating potatoes he'd dug up from the garden not half an hour previous, his boilersuit, and hands lined with mud.  Tomato plants in the greenhouse and the sound of a lawnmower.  Helping him lay the concrete at the back of the old house. (Well, "helping".)  My grandparents used to live next to a stables and a pub, and being a proper grown up meant being allowed to go for a pint with him before dinner.  Grandad can grow anything, and fix anything.  He works harder than anyone I know, and calls me "lass". Yorkshire. Pipe smoke. Long service to farming award at the Great Yorkshire Show. I don't see him, or Grandma, as often as I'd like. 

He has an app on his tablet that shows him flight paths, where planes are going, when they land. He likes to see where people are going, I think.  

Postcard 001 - Ethel Smyth

Ethel Smyth, by John Singer Sargent.

Ethel Smyth, sent to [un-named]

In 1912, Thomas Beecham visited Smyth in Hollway, where she'd been imprisoned for breaking the windows of an MP who did not support women's suffrage.  He walked in to witness a group of inmates singing her 1911 song "The March of the Women", "marching round [the courtyard] and singing lustily their war-chant while the composer, beaming approbation from an overlooking upper window, beat time in almost Bacchic frenzy with a toothbrush." (Beecham, Thomas (1958). "Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944)". The Musical Times 99 (1385): 363–365.) 

I like her already. And her Bacchic toothbrush. 

Her Wikipedia page says.... Composer, writer, and suffragist.  All round interesting lady.  Fell in love with both Emmeline Pankhurst, and Virginia Woolf. When encroaching deafness ended her music career, she turned to writing. I like the look on her face here, in Sargent's drawing - I didn't take a picture of the card but it's the same one that I've used here, available on Wikicommons.  Is she expectant?  Inspired?  Determined, ready to face the future?  

I sent this to a friend who's currently living up north and has been in my thoughts a lot recently.  We don't see her enough.  Ethel seems like the kind of lady that she'd like, or indeed would like to have a pint with, so it seemed appropriate to send Ms Smyth winging through the mail to say hi.