stop to smell the roses...

when i started this blog my chosen names for a blog title were,nt available so i came upon the idea of a fairy name,
after finding a fairy name site my fairy name is
bracken ice shimmer,.. she,s a bone chilling bringer of justice,
she lives where bracken and curly ferns grow, she is only seen when the first flowers begin to blossom which is quite a coincidence and spooky, she dresses in leafy bracken green and has icy blue butterfly wings...
so the blog title was born...
i hope one day to be able to say.. i may have lost a lot of my life but "I just stopped for a while... to smell the roses"...
quote...the loss of the battle of waterloo became the salvation of france... thomas jefferson..

whatever life throws at you you musn,t give up keep on keeping on.
my gran a lovely woman florence ada was a spiritualist and could read tealeaves, i never ever saw her unhappy or in a bad temper although deaf in one ear which caused a lot of problems she never stopped saying.. " lets have a laugh gill" we played eye spy, she worked at a school for years and years, i too spent my childhood there, me and my cuz, well from age 3 to 15 really, until i started work,.

had a choice of the post office savings as it was in those days but opted for working with schoolfriends who didnt stay long leaving me alone and petrified,
feeling sick and just wishing for home time...
but i was put under the wing of 2 of the loveliest elderly ladies,
i was taken down onto the shop floor on my first day by the staff supervisor who told them"ive brought you your little girl " so i was adopted really,

but i spent breaktimes for the first few months in the upstairs loo looking out of the window over the Market, hiding, too shy to go into the dining room and join in, my life was blighted by it,
..everyone seemed full of confidence and this frightened the life out of me thinking how do they do it..?
i was talked about, the lady i worked with had been told by another worker that i stood in the toilets each break looking out of the window, pitied probably,.

the girl on the record counter played songs all day which i loved,
david essex gonna make you a star, barry white,......it was ages before i found my feet..

the days were so long and tiring until after a while they put me upstairs promoted..
a small office where handbags were kept,
working between the two,.. flitting about... i sat in awe, dreaming, while taking lunch money, giving out wages and just generally enjoying the change until i moved again into the large main office....so it turned out well in the end..

anyway we played while the women worked..but never in term time,.
the boys were never there when we were,

it was like summerland....another world..open spaces, freedom...
being on holiday every day plenty to do,
with the cathedral bells chiming out the hour in the distance,
walking down to the river over Prebends bridge a shortcut to the flicks Palladium,
to see sound of music or tom thumb,

or to buy a "floater" from boydells toy shop to use in the pool,
which terrified me, as i opened the door the utter quiet,
and sight of the still deep water was eerie, always afraid id fall in the deep end and the shallow end was about 4 ft and still seemed deep to me,
id swish the water about to make it seem less scary, we usd the schols own balsa wood flaoters which were good,

water was freezing too as the heating was turned off when the boys were,nt there,
i nearly drowned when the girl looking after us said, jump in i,ll catch you,
i trusted and found myself under water for what seemed like a life time,
i still cant swim ive no intention of learning either,

deep water scares me,..i never went in the baths at durham either,
but loved the hot soup from the vending machine,

I can remember every morning walking along the lane to the school noticing the utter peace and tranquillity of it,
and spying great big fungi that grew above a wall that hung over onto the path like massive toadstools, if it had been raining we had to duck to avoid being drenched,

as we walked into the schoolyard passing the porters lodge a nice smell would be the first thing to greet us, i,m sure it came from the drain as there was an iron grid laid there but it was still nice, how a drain can give off a nice smell ive no idea, maybe some kind of cleaning fluid was used.
up a little lane past the tuckshop (which sadly was always empty when we were there empty jars .) an army assault course with ropes we called them "tarzan ropes" and hung like monkeys having a whale of a time..
in winter when the snow was deep we,d sledge on the nearby hill, observatory,

or we,d go looking for the porter saying "please can we have the key to the gym".

we,d swing on the ropes in there all day then next day we couldnt walk cos our ribs were so sore..or play piano in the music rooms,

on chapel days on the hill with a million steps up, one for every boy that died in the war,
we,d help by collecting the kneelers then sit out front in the sun just taking in the view of the schoolyard below,
more often than not we,d roly poly down the chapel bank landing in the flower beds at the bottom then we,d have to hide until the gardener passed... or we sat by the pavillion in summer swinging our legs writing in our jotters.
.i remember the day the bushbabys arrived, we,d never ever seen one,.

i waved at the queen as her car went past no idea when that was,.60 summat,
we,d sing petula,s "downtown" as we walked down the bank to town,
autumn cos durham was lighting up below us,

as we got older we started to notice the boys that came periodically to work,
usually on the new buildings that seemed to be going up at a fast pace,
new science blocks ect,..
but thats all it was, watching, giggling.

remember laughing one day me and cuz, sitting on one of the benches on the rugby field watching as one of the masters tried to put up a badminton net we, unashamedly sat in
hysterics while he tried to put it up red faced. getting in a right old state,
eventually he said "why dont you come and help instead of laughing". we did.
but couldnt stop laughing.
.
my gran was ever a child at heart, sweet natured,interested in others folk,
ive never grown up...not really ..i dont intend to .. i,d rather be a kid at heart for ever..

my sons just popped into the kitchen from, ? well it seems like nowhere giving me a fright.so ive told him i,m going to hang a cowbell around his neck to alert me of his arrival... he,s over 18 so this won,t be deemed as cruelty...