The Blue Willow Plate. Magpie Tales#14

The plate had always been on my grand mother’s dresser alongside some pretty flower patterned ones as long as I could remember. As I saved blue coloured china bits I would have loved to have that plate and thought it would look rather nice on the shelf in my room.

I always looked at it first when I visited her and sat at the side of the kitchen table so that I could look at it while we drank tea and chatted. She couldn’t remember where she got it from, somebody gave it to me when I was first married she once said. I asked her about the story behind the design and she had laughingly said.. ‘Oh you don’t want to know that, it is too sad and we are having a lovely chat. I want to know all about your new boyfriend. Happy talk not old stories.’
But I wanted to know and so I looked it up the internet at home, I thought it was a lovely story and that the star crossed lovers were forever together now as doves. ‘That’s why,’ I thought 'Cross stitched Wedding Samplers often have doves.'

When I called in to see Gran the following week, the plate was gone, it was no longer on the dresser. My grandmother was busily making the tea and getting out her cake tin. ‘Where’s the plate Gran?’ I asked hesitantly.
‘Oh that old plate I have put it away, I kept thinking about past times and the plate made me feel sad, I can’t be thinking sad things, not when I have my lovely granddaughter here with me to cheer me up.’ And she smiled as she spoke. But behind that smile I could see that Gran was near to tears.
‘I love that plate,’ I said, ‘especially now I know the story of Koong-se and Chang, is that the story that is making you feel sad?’ I asked.
That story is nothing compared to the truth and real life,’ she answered. And by the way she was putting out our cups and saucers and how her face was set in that stubborn way, I knew there was no point in asking anything further about it. Once I was back home I settled down to my college work. But I worried about Gran, she wasn’t herself that afternoon and I had never seen her like that before.
Gran died later that year and it was my mother and I who had to clear her house, as it had to be sold. It seems I was to receive some of the money from the sale. ‘Good old Gran,’ I thought, but really I would rather have had the plate. Mum and I went to Gran’s house a couple of days after the funeral and we started the sad task of sorting through Gran’s things. Everything was very tidy and almost as though she would walk into the kitchen at any moment to offer us tea and cake, in fact there was a fruit cake wrapped in grease proof paper in the tin. And packed ready to go to the Home where Granddad was, were his clean clothes for the following week. He had already been there for two years with Alzheimer's, Gran used to visit him every Sunday but he didn’t know who she was, so he wouldn’t miss her, not like I would.

Mum’s eyes were very wet and I had tears too. ‘Shall we have some tea first?’ said Mum, ‘I brought fresh milk with us.’ We sat at the kitchen table just like I used to with Gran. I looked up at the dresser where the plate used to be, another now in its place.
‘Do you know what happened to her Willow pattern plate Mum? I asked. ‘I would have loved to have had it.’
'I expect it will be around here somewhere,' she answered. We gradually packed up all the small things that Mum thought we’d like and the rest was packed for a charity shop. The furniture was being collected for a Charity that helped people out of work. ‘My dad won’t need any of this’ Mum said. ‘ So it might as well go to where it could be of use.' The plate was nowhere to be found. I found some old cards and letters in a shoe box and Mum said to bring them home so we could look at them.
And we did, there were cards and post cards, letters and news paper cuttings that Gran had saved over the years, for her own reasons no doubt. One was about a soldier killed in the war, he was from our village, 'I expect Gran knew him,’ I said as they would have been about the same age. At the very bottom of the box in a paper envelope was a folded age spotted piece of fabric and as I unfolded it I could see two doves cross stitched in blue thread, under the doves were two names, one was my Gran’s and the other was the name of the soldier in the newspaper cutting. Then I knew why my Gran was sad that day and what the plate meant to her. Real life was just as sad as stories, I thought and like Gran said... sadder. I showed the stitching to Mum and she sighed.’ ‘Do you think he might have been her first love, her childhood sweet heart?’ I asked,
‘Possibly, Mum never spoke a lot about her life when she was young and before she met my father.’ She said.
We both looked at tiny piece of sewing again and our tears fell as we hugged each other. It was much better than the plate, it was stitched by my Gran and it was beautiful.

.

The Eye Magpie Tales#13

‘Eyes are the most precious things we have and yet some people don’t think to protect them,’ said the surgeon, as he got ready to demonstrate the technique.
Laura was standing the nearest of the two and the smell of the antiseptic he was using had started to make her feel quite queasy.
‘Pass me the scalpel nurse,’ and he held out his hand to receive the instrument.
She turned away as he made the cut and when she turned back, curiosity getting the better of her, she was surprised to see a watery bloody fluid leaking from where he had inserted the knife.
‘Dish please nurse.’ he said.
‘That’s right,’ he said as she held it out and he put the eye carefully into the sterile water which half covered it.
‘Now let’s see,’ he said as he looked into the opened covered box he had, ‘what would be the best colour match?’
Laura leaned over to see.
‘Yes I think this one,’ he said as he picked up a browny green coloured one, ‘this is perfect, what do you think Nurse?’

She watched fascinated as he carefully pushed the round glass eye into the empty socket, making sure it looked straight and matched the other one. Then closing the eyelid, he took a small strip of tape and placed it on the lid to keep it closed, then cleaned up the cheek with a gauze swab.

‘If only all dead people would donate their eyes, their corneas would give sight to so many people,’ he stated.
They stood back and watched as the mortuary attendant pushed the trolley back into the fridge. Then all three, the Doctor, and nurses left, he carrying the precious eye now covered with a cloth. ‘It will be put in cold storage until that young man with the injured eye is in theatre,’ he explained. Laura walked behind him and still marvelled at the miracle she was about to observe when the cornea was transplanted onto a living eye to give back the sight that had been lost.
‘Yes eyes are most precious,’ she thought, 'but they look horrible when out of the socket!'
               ≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

The Paperweight: Magpie Tales#12

The dust motes danced in the sunlight streaming through the window as it reflected off the glass paperweight.

A whole year gone already she thought, time flies. It hadn’t ever occurred to her before, how irrevocable death was, the emptiness was still there, and it went on and on and on.  He had bought her the paperweight on one of their visits around the antique markets, it was so colourful and she had cried in delight when she saw it, and just like a child, she just had to have it.

It was only a week later that her mother’s cousin had flown home to the other side of the world and that’s when their love affair had really started. She watched him as he walked away and she knew she would never see him again. This man who had made her heart flutter and who had said, ’I love you’ in his soft accent which burned into her soul. ‘We will write,’ he said as he went through the barrier into that no man’s land to fly to another world.

And they did for three years, blue paper, white paper, tissue thin, filled with words of love and tenderness. Then they stopped, no letters no messages until that fateful phone call from his sister who had found the letters hidden in a box.

‘Both killed outright,’ she had said, ‘he and his wife. A head on crash, they didn’t have a chance.’

The sun made the bright colours seem as though they were dancing and she touched the paperweight letting her fingers caress the roundness of it.

‘Is that yours Mummy?’ asked Alicia as she watched her mother, stop with the duster still in her hand.

‘Yes, yes, it is and in it holds some happy memories.’ She answered her small daughter.

‘I can only a see a fish, where are the memories Mummy?’

They’re there, you just have to close your eyes, and then you can see them,’ she said, ‘just close your eyes and you’ll see.’

           ***************************************************

The Walking Stick Magpie Tale#11

After my knee operation last year it was several weeks before I progressed to a walking stick. The first few weeks I struggled with crutches and it was with great relief that I was able to use just a stick.

I say ‘just’ a stick but in fact it was a family heirloom with its real silver hand grip and it seems it was worth a several  hundred pounds. Imagine my horror when on a visit to a large London store I suddenly realised in the Ladies Undies department I didn’t have the stick.

Panic set in and I could imagine the look on my old mother’s face when I ‘fessed up’ to losing it. ‘It can’t be far,’ my patient hubby,’ said, ‘this is the first store we’ve been in since parking the car, let’s think where you have been in here.’

‘I did go to the Ladies loo when we first came in,’ I said, ‘and then when I came out you helped me into the lift and so I didn’t miss the stick.’
‘Right,’ he said, ‘you must have left it in there.’ And then I did remember putting it in the corner of the toilet cubical.
The lift to the third floor seemed to take forever and by this time without the walking stick to take the weight off my operated knee, it had begun to ache.
Of course wouldn’t you know it there was a queue outside the Ladies Toilets and I had to wait in line to check inside the cubical I had used. The stick wasn’t there, why I thought it would still be there I don’t know!

I went out and told Tony it had gone and we turned back to the lift to get back to the car park and home. My knee was much too painful now to do any more shopping withiout the stick. As we approached the front entrance several ‘flunkies’ were holding back the customers to make space for someone in a white fur tapping along with my walking stick. ‘Hey,’ I called ‘that’s my walking stick.’
The woman turned and stared at me and whispered something to her companion who was carrying a tower of parcels. The front Doorman opened the door of a Rolls Royce and the fur coat disappeared into it, stick as well.

I tried to push my way passed the store personnel but to no avail.. ‘that’s my stick,’ I said to one, who turned and looked me up and down and said with great clarity, ‘
‘That Modum is Lady Frobisher of the Frobisher’s of Leicester.’ And with that the car accelerated away,  leaving my husband and I standing there in astonishment watching it.

Mother gave me one of her exasperated looks when I told her that the stick had been stolen and the tale of how. ‘Whatever,’ she said.. ‘but don’t expect to borrow my three wheeler walker, no amount of strange tales will induce me to lend you anything again.’ And that was that, she never believed me and I hoped that Lady whatever her name was, fell over using that b----- stick!

: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :

Magpie Tales#10 A Watch...and.......

She turned the watch over in her hands and thought again of her elderly grandfather to whom it had belonged. The face shone and she imagined that he had held it in his hands just as she was doing now. She had found it at the back of the drawer when she was looking for a note pad. He had left the watch to her in his Will several years earlier, it had held no charm for her then, but now she looked at it with new eyes. The design on the face was quite pretty and it looked as though it could be of value. After all why would her grandfather leave her something if it had no value, she had been his favourite granddaughter?

She switched on her computer and started to search for fob watches. There was nothing pictured like the watch she had and any way it was too boring to be sitting there ‘googling’ watches. It was just like hundreds of others and she concluded it was of no real value at all. She threw it down onto the pile of papers and letters and unpaid bills that were constantly stacked beside her computer and suddenly there was a ticking which she hadn’t heard before. ‘Oh my gosh,’ she thought it works and she sat and watched as the golden coloured hands moved slowly.

My grandfather must have watched this she thought and her mind flooded with memories of him, his smile and wispy hair, the white bristles on his face where he never really shaved cleanly. Suddenly she was back in time walking along side him with sand blowing against the back of her legs. Her hand, in his was warm and as they strode out towards the sea, he with his long legs meant that she had to run to keep up with him. The wind lifted her hair off her shoulders and she was glad he had said to wear her knitted hat. He had his scarf wrapped round his neck but he had taken off his glove so as to feel her little hand in his. ‘How could such a wee child make his heart swell with such joy,’ he thought. Seagulls swirled around and squawked overhead and the sound of the winter sea roared as it pounded the rocks. She pulled away from him and ran ahead, shouting to him to come and catch up with her.

As she turned towards him, she saw he was looking at his pocket watch and knew he was going to say, ‘No time today we have to go back.’ And back she was in her tiny flat and the watch ticking in her hand.

It didn’t matter that it was just an old watch, it had been his and that was precious memories. Clare sat in her chair and held the watch close to her chest, it had been his and that was riches enough she thought; tears slowly spilled down her face, but she was smiling and the watch ticked on.

      :--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--

Lipstick. Magpie #9

Ben took the creased and now rather grubby envelope from his pocket and once again kissed the faint lipstick mark then pushed it back behind his body armour. The thought of Lily kept him going and that last letter had outlined her plans for their wedding when he got home. Home was green hills and quiet villages; there would be spring flowers there now. She had written that she wanted spring flowers for her bouquet and garlands of bright daffodils at the little village church.

He was part of a patrol in Helmand province, the task was to keep the Taliban out of the village of Kushal Kalay, so that another group could go in and clear the area of the Taliban's Improvised Explosive Devices or IEDs. Only one more he thought, this was to be his last tour. Suddenly they were under fire and his attention was back with his men. They had attracted quite a lot of attention from the insurgents when they moved into position, but the fact that they were concentrating their attacks on the patrol and not the engineers means that the plan was working - even if it was a bit hectic at times. For 72 hours they had remained in position and repulsed numerous insurgent attacks. The LAV (Light armoured vehicles) had inched towards their position following that first lonely man with a mine detector checking out the road. The hazards of the IEDs were so great that even when they were fired on, they still had to stick to the path and couldn’t run for cover. Ben thought of the carnage caused by deadly roadside explosives, the suicide bombers, and the constant threat of attack and hit the sandy bank when a ripping sound of a volley of bullets whipped up the sand on the ridge of the bank. Last week his own best friend had died along with 3 other soldiers in a fierce battle; they got you all ways if it wasn’t a bullet, it could be deadly IEDs that could be anywhere.

On the return journey, the patrol was contacted again and again by insurgent fire and on another two occasions, from a variety of weapons including mortars, Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPGs) and small arms. But they arrived safely back in the late hours of March 7th. Ben was relieved that this time no casualties were sustained during the course of the patrol. After one week and over 200km, the patrol returned to Camp Bastion, they had been out in the hills for just under a week.

Ben kissed the lipstick stained envelope one more time as he pushed in down into his backpack, he would be home in twenty-four hours, home and Lily. He had tried her mobile several times and listened to her voice as she said, ‘Please leave me a message.’ No doubt, he thought she was busy and anyway she would not be expecting him to phone then, as he had told her their mission could take up to nine days. He stood on the tarmac and looked for the last time at the hills of Afghanistan, he was safe and on his way home and to Lily.

There was just a single daffodil on the coffin in the small village church on that second day of March, it being much too early in the year to have the garlands that Lily had planned for her April wedding. There were the sounds of sobbing from Lily’s mother and friends as the coffin was carried down the aisle that Lily had planned to be decorated for her wedding. The lorry hadn’t seen Lily’s small car that had stopped for the horses, as it rounded the bend in the country lane and the police that had attended the accident said the girl driver didn’t have a chance to survive such a crash.

        ~~~...~~~...~~~...~~~...~~~...~~~...~~~...~~~...~~~

The Glass Egg.... Magpie Tales #8

The story inside the glass egg was one that my grandfather had told me so many times. The young man trying to catch the beautiful red bird, which he thought would give him the secret of eternal youth if he caught it. The egg had stood there on the shelf for all my childhood years and now it was mine. Grandfather had gone and now the egg with its secrets was standing and shining on my shelf.

I looked closely at it and as I did it seemed to fog up inside, and were the bird’s wings fluttering? Was that really happening or was I imagining it?

Suddenly I heard my name and on turning saw my grandfather smiling, come on he said and held out his hand to me, no longer knarled (gnarled) and age spotted. I felt the warmth of his hand curl round mine and I held on tight as he swung me up onto his shoulders, ‘ We’re off for our day out,’ he said and I knew I was going to have a great day with him, my grand dad.


ps Corrected knarled to gnarled with help from Peter!