Mywishingrock.blogspot will be used for:
- A repository of memories (words and pictures) of childhood - life in and around Newlyn, Penzance, the Battlefield, the Reccie, Market Jew Street, Causewayhead, schools (Newlyn Infant, St. Paul's, Penzance Grammar), colleages, first jobs, family stories and rituals;
- A site for reviewing books and articles - about Cornwall, memoirs, about teaching and learning;
- A site for teachers, new and experienced, to share their successes and challenges in their classrooms, for the benefit of others;
- a site for anything and everything that you want to store and share.
To start, here's my wishing rock childhood story........an extract from my memoir, Through My Eyes, published in May 2012. Enjoy.
The Paull family, Arthur Charles and Hazel Monica, their three
sons, Jimmie, John and Charles, Grandma Paull, and Joseph the black and white
tabby cat, lived in a newly built, low-income housing area in South-west
Cornwall. The house overlooked the busy fishing village of Newlyn. Just beyond
Newlyn’s picturesque harbor, in the far distance, was St. Michael’s Mount,
rising out of the beautiful Mount’s Bay.
The big white stork brought me to
the back garden in July, 1942, the middle of the Second World War, when the
cities of London, Coventry, and the naval base in nearby Plymouth were
experiencing nightly bombing raids by the Nazi Luftwaffe. It was a time of
fear, blackouts, oil lamps, flickering candles, and food rationing.
Dad, a born-and-bred Newlyn lad, was a bus
driver for the Western National Bus Company. To supplement the family’s food
needs, Dad did what all our neighbors did – grew potatoes, sprouts, carrots,
and sweet peas in his small back garden.
When he wasn’t driving the big green
double-decker buses from village to village, Dad set snare traps for rabbits in
the nearby Bejoywan Woods and the hedgerows around the manor house lived in by
the famous painter, Stanhope Forbes. Weather permitting, he’d go to Lariggan Beach,
dig in the sand for the brown and red sand lugs, then set and bait a long
spiller - a fishing line holding perhaps twenty or more hooks, tied to tins
that were buried in the sand - hoping to catch flounder or bass.
Dad also kept a few chickens in a
nearby farmer’s field, selling the eggs to neighbors in our street.
To celebrate the birth of his sons,
first for Jimmie in 1938, then, me, in 1942, and finally, Charles, in 1947, Dad
planted three gooseberry bushes near the back garden fence behind the few rows
of vegetables.
When we were in the garden, picking
sweet peas, eating goosegogs, (1) or, more likely, looking for worms and other
small creatures, Dad would always say, with a smile and a twinkle in his eye,
That’s where the big white stork left the three of you, just there, right under
those three gooseberry bushes.”
I had no idea what a stork looked
like, but, as it had carried me, I sensed it was much bigger than the herring
gulls that perched on our roof.
I remember the day Charles was due
to be born, I wanted so badly to see the stork. So I waited patiently in the
garden, next to the two gooseberry bushes, with next-door neighbor, Johnny
Hoskins, hoping to see the big white stork swoop down to the garden with Mum’s
new baby. When it was time for bed, 10
year-old Jimmie wasn’t surprised when I told him the stork didn’t arrive.
“See,”
he said, as we got into bed,
“ told you. Ain’t true.”
“It’s
just a story.”
The next morning, over breakfast, a
very tired looking Dad told us that the big white stork had indeed brought baby
Charles during the night and left him under the new gooseberry bush he’d
planted. Aunty Stella, the neighborhood midwife, brought him upstairs to our
mum’s bed.
So it was true. I was so thrilled
that, yes, we were left under the gooseberry bushes by the big white stork. Dad
said so, didn’t he?
In the daytime, I played with
neighborhood kids outside in the street, down the Bowjey, or, when the weather
was nice, we’d kick a ball around in one of the nearby farm fields.
After clearing away the teatime
dishes, Mum, a Lancashire girl, usually sat in the kitchen with my Grandma,
close to baby Charles lying comfortably in an old wooden drawer. Sometimes she
listened to the latest news about the war on the crackly yellow Ferguson
wireless as she worked on her weaving, making fishing nets to sell to the
fishermen.
My brother Jimmie and I sat on the
small worn carpet in front of the open fire. He’d read aloud The Beano and Dandy comics before we played with my long-gone Granddad’s clay
marbles. Sometimes, we played a game of cards, tiddlywinks, ludo, or snakes and ladders.
If Dad wasn’t on the late night
shift, he always sat on the soft green chair under to the front room gas lamp,
with Joseph stretched out on his knees, reading the rugby reports in
The Cornishman Newspaper sports pages. He’d set aside Sunday afternoons,
when he wasn’t driving his bus, to take the family on walks to the beach.
It was Dad’s
chance to show off what he knew about the jelly-fish, sharks,
seals and dolphins that swam in the warm currents of Mounts Bay.
Lariggan Beach was the best place to
go. I loved going there most of all because you never knew what you
might find lying on the pebbly sand - especially after a stormy night
After the
Sunday midday meat and potato pasty dinner, washed down with a cup of hot,
steaming tea, if the sun was shining, Mum would pick up her old, scratched black
leather bag. She’d drop in a big Farley’s
Rusks tin filled with a sliced apple, cheese sandwiches with the thick
crusts cut off, two empty ‘OXO’ tins, and two of dad’s empty ‘OLD
HOLBORN’ tobacco tins.
If the tide was out, we’d see what
had been washed up on the beach, and we’d hunt small green and red crabs or
brown bull cods in the rock pools. If we were lucky, we’d find a stranded
jellyfish that we could return safely to the sea. We’d collect beautiful black
and grey and white pebbles that had been worn smooth by the constant rolling
motion of the sea.
Pebble collecting was, for me, the
most fun. I’d search for heart-shaped pebbles, or, even better, black pebbles
with a vein of white quartz running through the middle.
These
pebbles with the line of quartz were special. Mum and Dad called them wishing
rocks.
Finding a wishing rock that
rested comfortably in the palm of your hand made you feel good. You’d pick it
up, slowly wrap your fingers around it and squeeze really tight. When your
fingers warmed the pebble, you closed your eyes and thought about someone you
wanted to send a special wish to. Then, slowly, you uncurled your fingers,
knowing that somebody, somewhere, suddenly felt a warm shiver down the spine,
just as that lucky person got your wish.
I always sent my very best wishes to Mum and Dad.
When the wish had been sent, you put
your wishing rock into what Mum
called your treasure tin, a small red OXO meat-cube tin. Mum and Dad put
theirs into the bigger, yellow OLD
HOLBORN tobacco tins she’d carried in her bag.
When we filled our tins with our
best finds of the day, ate our snack, we made our way home. If we were really
lucky, we’d visit the corner shop at the bottom of Old Paul Hill, and Dad
would buy everyone a thruppeny crispy cone filled with Daniel’s delicious
homemade ice cream.
When we got back home, we’d take off
our wellies, sit on the carpet in the front room, and emptied our treasure
tins on to a sheet of ‘The
Cornishman’ newspaper. Mum usually boiled the kettle on the gas stove, made
a pot of tea, and cut up a couple of scones and a fresh saffron cake. As we
drank tea and munched slices of currant-filled saffron cake, sweetened with
thick, yellow margarine, Dad, with Joseph the cat curled up on his knees, would
choose what he thought was the best wishing rock. He’d hold it in his
hand, look at us all, and always ask the same question:
“Who found this one?” “Was it
you, Jimmie? You, Hazel?”
“ You, Johnny? Is it yours?” “OK,
then you, Johnny, you can make a wish for us all.”
“Then, you make a wish, Jimmie,
alright?”
“OH, then me and mum, ok?”
“First, though, we’ll all make a
wish for baby Charles.”
After Jimmie and I closed our eyes
and everyone made their wishes, Dad put five of our best, most beautiful wishing
rocks in the old chipped
green-glass jar on the small wooden table near the window in the front room. Most
of the rest were put into Mum’s bag to return to the beach another day, so, as
mum would say, someone else could find and enjoy them. Then, lighting his
hand-rolled cigarette, Dad would take his first deep puff, slowly blow out a
circle of white and blue smoke, and then say:
“Ready, now? For a story?”
Collecting wishing rocks was great but this was always the best moment of the
day.
We were always ready for one of his
stories because he told the best tales about badgers, foxes, stoats, weasels,
rabbits, sharks and whales. When you listened to his soft voice, it was as if
you could see everything as he had seen it.
“Yes, Dad. We’re ready.”
“’Onest, we are.”
“ Tell us the one about the day you
and Mum collected wishing rocks. You know, when you found the dead seal. You
know, the crabs and stuff that were chompin’ on it.”
“NO, tell us about the man who had
his thumb bit off by a conger eel.”
“Tell us both stories.”
“OK” he said, shifting Joseph from one knee to another, “here’s
the one about the conger eel, THEN, the one about the poor seal eaten by...............well,
first I’ll show you what I found today...”
Leaning back in his chair, Dad stubbed out his
cigarette, slowly close and rub his eyes, opened his tobacco tin very slowly,
cleared his throat, and, showed us what he’d found on the beach.
Dad’s best find always surprised me. It was always something different
and was always something that he’d link with a story.
I clearly remember the day he found a small
bleached jawbone on the beach.
“Look
at this,” he said, “it’s a weasel’s
skull. Look at the sharp teeth. Wonder why it ended up on the beach……….”
He put his treasure inside his Old Holborn tin and rested it on the
side of his chair. Then, with the quietest voice, Dad told us how, when he was
out in the woods very early, one bitterly cold morning, he’d seen a family of
stoats surround a wounded weasel, waiting to pounce, kill and eat it.
As his story unfolded, I’d close my
eyes like my dad closed his, really tight. It helped me see the stoats and the
weasel and hear the wild sounds that his words drew in my imagination.
“I
waved my arms,” he said, “I shouted really
loudly, and the stoats ran off.” “I saved the injured weasel’s life.”
“When
the stoats had gone, the little weasel stood up, shook its head, and hobbled
off to the bushes.”
Transfixed, I sat at his feet and stared up at
him, sucking in every word.
When I went to bed, under which was
my growing collection of pebbles and shells in an old cardboard box, my head
was filled with bright images of pebbles, animals, birds and fish - and filled
with hope, hope that the weasel was alive and well.
I held my wishing rock and wished: Was the weasel ok?
Did it get home safely?
John Paull
From Through My Eyes: On Becoming a Teacher
No comments:
Post a Comment