From G-Strings to Applecatchers

Big is Best...

It is quite amazing how the female form, once ergonomically shaped to invite and tantalise the opposite sex, all too quickly turns to jello.

My mother is due to have her hip operation this week, so I have been busy compiling the endless tick list of items that MUST accompany her upon admission (cos Matron says so - you know a bit like MUST remove all acrylic nails - earlier blog) and I will have to banish my mother's essential list containing more comforting items like Whisky, Canadian dry, chocolate and SKY TV (so that she can watch Snooker all night behind Matron's back).  I will be checking her mouthwash for giveaway signs of alcohol and if the satellite dish is missing along with the tool kit, I will be straight back there like a dose of colonic irrigation.  

How the tables have turned.  My mind returns to a time when my mother would 'help' me pack my trunk and tuck box for the dreaded return to boarding school, which on sober reflection I realise I never really conquered the whole homesickness thing, or understood the rationale behind locking a load of pubescent girls together in one dorm with no access to anything with a dangly bit.  On the day I should have been sitting my history O level, I had legged it over the wall and was taking a bit of retail therapy in the town, whilst everyone else was frantically searching for an absent teenager.  I returned, trophy bags in hand, to a furore and a 'never in the history of mankind' lecture by the headmistress and was firmly sent to bed with no tea, pending a decision as to my fate.  The Church of England can be amazingly tolerant and sadly I was not banished from their midst but kept under close guard for the remainder of the O level examination timetable. Needless to say I chose to leave early by flying away to Barbados on BWIA with a friend. I subsequently discovered my punishment for leaving school before the end of term awards had been dished out, was that all four of my sports awards had been re-allocated to someone who was secondary in achievement, but present.... Then after a 'glorious summer of my great content' I returned to study at a technical college, with slightly more enthusiasm for knowledge, but a whole new dictionary of distractions.  The thought of spending a moment longer in an institution designed to turn out well bred 'young ladies' was a chapter too far.  I am ashamed to say, despite the efforts of a handful of teachers who privately admired my spirit but publicly felt they could change me, I left school with a cheque book, a figure and an attitude, a very dangerous combination in a headstrong young woman. Anyway one thing is for sure, Lilian (my mother) won't be legging it over anything for the next three months.

Whilst I have resisted making  my mother sew all her own name tapes on every personal item, I have in part made her accumulate, hunt out and select some of the less fetching items in her wardrobe.  In the words of Matron, BIG is best... I hope she was referring to clothing as the other Kodak alternative sends shudders through my spine.  The G-Strings, basques and stockings will be replaced by nothing less than apple catchers, bolder holders and surgicals to reduce the risk of DVT.  Lilian's usual fragrance is Hermes 'Caleche'  but this will be replaced by the waft of embrocation, and if this doesn't arouse the pheromones in the aging opposite sex, I don't know what will.

In digging around in her drawers for items which will remain nameless, I came across photos that haven't seen the light of day for years.  Photos of a beautiful woman, with ice blue eyes and a beguiling smile, arm in arm with my father, the light of her life.  She has lived without him now for nearly nineteen years, longer than many marriages and sadly some lives.  Lilian's life has been a homage to determination, womanhood and perseverance to see a job through.  Even though I tease her mercilessly, I admire the woman who only a few years ago took me war shopping, diagnosed engine failure during the second world war, miscarried four babies between raising my sister and giving birth to me, who allowed my spirit to shine through, who taught me how to drive in the empty car park of the Dormy Hotel when I was twelve years old, who showed me how to change a plug and cook a casserole, gave me several lessons in how to control a man by making him think all the good ideas are his own (sadly I never mastered it), who I used to meet weekly in Harrods for afternoon tea and who travelled around Europe with me staying in the finest hotels, who took me shopping in town, who had the best pair of pins even attracting wolf whistles in her sixties when she wore a pair of pink cotton shorts, who turned the eye of Prince Philip when she sat three places away from him at a formal dinner in the days when Sir Mark Millbank was head of the royal household, who held court at the Farnborough Air show by flirting outrageously with the Red Arrows.  A woman of many faces, who could turn her hand to anything from removing a chimney stack single handed, to making fairy cakes or entertaining dignitaries.  How easy it is to forget the lives that were lived out over the decades, the resilience and the resolve to still live life to the full.

I suspect once the hip has settled in, Lilian will be back to her old self, speed walking, training for the 2012 Olympics and cycling in the air to keep trim.  Long may it continue...