Epilogue MAG

Epilogue for Mmm and Aaa (MAG)

Points I want to cover (see Journal 1st February 2025):

• Myself
• Aaa and Jjj
• Mmm 
• Ccc
• Shocks - Jjj
• Losses and Discoveries
• Points of view and start and end points

Writing a family history is a challenge intellectually and emotionally. I could compare it to detective work or as completing a jigsaw. Both of these convey something of my experience but completing a child's dot-to-dot puzzle gets closer to my emotional journey writing about Mmm Sss and Aaa Ggg. The clues for the overall picture were very limited. The "picture on the box" was at best indistinct. At the detailed level, ideally, each "dot" would associate person, place and time with an event and I would join the dots to construct the story. This turned out to be much harder than I imagined.

This was a puzzle where many of the dots were indistinct or missing altogether and the numbers which gave the sequence were sometimes muddled. Where there are two events, the natural, maybe the only thing to do is to join them with the equivalent of a straight line. Sometimes I could recognise a lacuna and make some allowance for it but often enough the discovery of a new fact, or the re-evaluation of a detail of existing evidence brought the realisation that there were events which I had not known about. Sometimes these discoveries were moments of epiphany, and just as often they were slow, extended periods of the realisation that something was not quite right.

My relationship with Jjj and especially Aaa Ggg has developed considerably. After the initial shock of discovery, Jjj has become a pleasant part of the story. I see his life, right up to the tragedy of his death, in a rosy glow. He was loved, he loved in return and he was happy.

My feelings about Aaa are more nuanced and ambivalent. His early life remains mysterious and it is impossible to tell if this is simply absence of evidence or concealment. There is a lot to admire about Aaa. He chose an adventurous path. There is no doubt in my mind that he and Mmm Sss were passionately in love. Sadly, in their case war and disease mean that passion led to anguish.

I wish that I could share what I have found with my sister Ccc. Looking back at the indistinct nature of my own early memories, I wonder how much she ever understood about the tragic circumstances surrounding her birth. I continue to believe that Ccc's early life on Islay was good and I would have liked the opportunity to tell me, as an adult, what she remembered. I like to think that knowing a more complete version of what happened to Mmm and Aaa would have been a comfort to her.

What I have learned during my research has rather changed my feelings about my mother, Mmm. I now know for certain that she had terrible experiences and did terrible things. The two sides balance but they do not cancel out. When she was alive I do not think she was able to tell me what happened and I'm not sure that as a young man I would have been able to receive the message. Now that I am old, I would like to hear her story from her point of view but of course her voice is silenced. I hope that I could listen with unconditional positive regard and sincere sympathy and that my listening would be helpful to her. Even after all these years I still grieve for Mmm.

Writing this tale has taught me some things about stories in general: the tone of a story depends on more than the content, the facts; it also depends on where the storyteller starts and ends their tale and what point of view they choose to use. If I had chosen to end in 1952 or 1953 then the tale would have been an unrelieved tragedy for Mmm but not for Ccc. By 1956 it becomes a triumph over adversity for Mmm but much complicated when you include Ccc and my father (). In 1957 I () add a further layer of complication.

And the story does not end there. There was more turmoil to come as together we all entered the Swinging Sixties and the age of the atom bomb and the space race.

[3rd February 2025] 

   

Start to 2025 was snow joke!

 Hi J, How are you keeping? Drop me a note (even if it's only a NAK) to reassure me that you are still functioning OK, because... I've had an interesting year so far. That would be "interesting" in the ancient Chinese sense, but not as interesting as the modern Californian sense. We're all fine and completely unharmed.

Christmas and the New Year themselves were the normal overeating and a little bit of drinking by me.

The problems were all caused by the New Year freeze. The first issue was that we had getting on for 6 inches of snow (btw I found a website called topographic-map.com from which I can say with a fair degree of confidence that my altitude is 97m and Halt Close is 217m). You probably had snow as well.

S was down in Cork and the rest of us were in K. S didn't fancy getting the bus back and neither N nor I fancied driving down to Cork in the snow, so everyone stayed where they were in the warm. Then we had a power cut which lasted 24 hours (not so unusual for me. Lots of overhead wires). We have an open fire so we could keep one room warm and we had plenty of bread etc for sarnies. We just reverted to the Dark Ages and went to bed early. The only thing I really missed was a hot drink. And after the power was restored the weather got colder and our water supply froze up. Not a burst pipe, but the supply branch from the main to the house is too shallow and it freezes sometimes (I don't know how deep it actually is, just "not deep enough"). The last time for me was 2010. Of course, while all this was happening, the roads weren't really driveable. First problem was me driveway. I cleared that and got both N's and my cars towards the front of the house. I only dug S's out yesterday (Saturday). She's still down in Cork. I walked to town on a couple of days to top up with essential-essentials: bread, marge, milk. It wasn't too bad a trip. I have proper equipment and a rucksack. One day I got a lift there and back!

Still the thaw is with us and we're getting back to normal.

How was it all for you?

And for your amusement, It seems that my idea of "The Vital Spark"/"The Electric Coaster" is not so mad after all. Behold the electric cruise ship:     

https://www.hurtigruten.com/en/about-us/sustainability/worlds-most-energy-efficient-cruise-ship

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/cruises/eco-conscious-cruise-ship-future/

I seem to be running one or two years ahead of the herd!

Redcar Coke Ovens - January 1980

I don't remember a saharan wind but I do remember the wind from another time.

In 1980 I was "doing the rounds" as a trainee engineer (Grade MM0, Middle Management Zero). It was three months here, and three months there and so on. "Here" moved about quite a bit, but in January 1980 it was the coke oven plant at Redcar. You can still find the remains of the Redcar blast furnace and coke ovens by selecting the birds' eye view on Google maps, just a little to the North West of Redcar town.

It should have been a good time (I'm perverse enough to have a soft spot for coke ovens), except that between January and April 1980 was the Steel Strike. It was not a good time. Each day started with 15 miles across the North Yorkshire Moors (which could be pleasant), then negotiating my way through a picket line and then a further mile through the sleeping works to the site. The works had been built on reclaimed salt marsh and there is nothing between it and the the North Sea but the dunes at Coatham. Fortunately it didn't really snow while I was there, but there was constantly snow on the wind. It was bitterly cold.

I can bore for 3 countries on coke ovens and blast furnaces, and I'll spare you the details. Both are strange things, like caged dragons or demons. One difference is that a blast furnace can be put to sleep and woken again. It is not a desireable thing to do, but in this case it was done for 3 whole months. Imagine waking a coke fire from the embers. Coke ovens are not like that - they cannot sleep. They can be "turned down" but if production stops then the ovens are quickly destroyed and have to be rebuilt. So, production continued on the ovens. Several times a shift an oven would discharge tens of tonnes of incandescent coke into the air. The inside of the ovens is extremely hot (up to 1400 deg C), and the outside is still hot enough to damage the soles of your boots if you stand still too long in one place. The atmosphere between workers and management was one of tension and resentment. To top it all, the ovens (which were almost new) were suffering from serious technical problems. The air stank and all the time the wind was blowing in from the sea, carrying snowflakes.

It was about then that I decided that, right or wrong, the politicians had decided that they didn't want a steel industry and that the best thing I could do was leave before everything came to a sad end.

On a brighter note, I enjoy my place down by the river. I wish I had found it years ago, but it wasn't the time. I don't expect to see kingfishers. I think the soil is wrong for them: clay rather than sand. On the other hand, I have found myself studying the water. I find the patterns formed by the eddys fascinating. They are both chaotic and predictable and they change from day to day with the state of the river. There is one place where a branch sheds little vortices and another where there is sometimes an area of turbulence like plaited hair. I'm pretty sure Da Vinci drew something like that in one of his notebooks.

On an even brighter note, Noreen and I are off for a couple of days in Bantry. Two nights in a fancy hotel. I'm looking forward to roasting myself in the sauna.

I've got another letter to write before I shut things down, so I'll end there.

Letter to Carol - Michael O'Conner

 Hello Carol, Happy New Year! I hope you and yours are keeping well.

As you can see, I've survived the festive season. I've eaten too much, drank too much (not too, too much) and not taken sufficient exercise, but I feel good. Siobhan and Margaret returned to base, so all four of us were there for an extended week. 

I cooked Christmas dinner. The frozen "three-bird-roast" took 3 hours to cook. That seems like a lot of work but actually it really wasn't; it was just a case of following the timetable I'd written out for myself, doing stuff and doing particular things when the alarm on my phone went off. There was plenty of time to do other things as well. 

As a family, we seem to have moved away from large expensive presents towards lots of small and sometimes silly things. There seems no point at all in exchanging vouchers. I do give Siobhan and Margaret (small) quantities of cash but that's different to me. There are lots of sweeties and biscuits as well! And chocolates!

I spent a fair amount of time over the holiday scanning photos and documents from the laundry box I told you about. Remember my brother James, the little boy I showed you some photos of? I've found another photo of him. I know I'm biased, and that the emotional associations will sway my judgement as well, but he was a handsome boy. 

One of the advantages of scanning things is that it makes it possible to zoom in on details and that can provide additional information: things like, two photos with the same background were probably taken at the same time. I've been constructing time-lines for the various characters in the story (My mother Margaret, her husband Alastair, James and my sister Catherine). Little details are coming to light and the story is taking on much more depth. The outline I told you was mostly correct, but even in a couple of months there is now so much more: some of it would suit a Boys' Own adventure, perhaps written by John Buchan, and some would suit a romance in a women's magazine, maybe by Barbara Cartland but honestly I've never read any of her work - maybe I should. I hope I can do the story, and my relatives justice.

Talking of stories, here's a sort-of "meta story". Cycling home from the surgery today, I stopped to exchange greetings with an acquaintence, Michael O'Conner. I am cycling home and Michael is walking home from tending to some horses he looks after. He walks the road twice a day, in the morning and in the evening, rain or shine. If I am cycling I stop and talk with him, if I am driving, heading in the right direction and especially if it is raining, I will give him a lift. Somehow, our meeting like this seems particularly Irish, or Scottish or "country". 

Michael will be a little younger than me, probably in his 50's. He is separated or divorced from a wife and has (at least) a daughter and one or two grandchildren. I know where he lives and where he is from (Castlemagner). His untidy hair is blonde which has turned to white and he's soft spoken. He wears heavy boots and a dirty black jacket. His face is weather-beaten and ruddy with a strawberry nose and hooded eyes. I would guess that he is a heavy drinker, quite possibly an alcoholic. I think he would be a handful if he was drunk. Honestly, if you saw him, I think you would avoid him (and in general, you might be right). Despite any of that, he is considered "reliable" and he looks after expensive horses. Once, when it was convenient for us both, he took be to see a mare who was in foal.

Michael and I are not friends but we are friendly to one another. We are an ill-matched pair. We would not meet socially but we meet on the road and exchange greetings and stories. I think our meetings serve some purpose but I do not know what it is: one for psychologists, sociologists and philosophers.

Must go. Got to have some sort of lunch before I collect my daughters from Cork.

Keep well!

Tom