When I was a child, Easter was one of the few, very special and exciting events of the year. Although it didn’t have the raw excitement of Christmas, it seemed like a symbol of many enjoyable aspects all rolled into one. Although I wasn’t knowledgeable about botany, biology and the mechanics of the seasons, it was obvious that the world around me was awakening again after winter and seemed so much brighter and alive – a positive ‘buzz’ prevailed. It signalled the start of good times again. Spring heralded lighter nights, which meant we could ‘play out’ with our friends after school again. It preceded my birthday by a few weeks, another exciting event. Then there were all the chocolate eggs given to us by relatives and friends. Remember, in the 50s chocolate was a real luxury and not a regular indulgence like it is for young people now. My parents usually gave us a special egg. It was in two halves and when opened, revealed a bag of sweets inside. I was quite cautious with my egg consumption, unlike my friend Barry, who would have eaten all of his by the end of the week. I would always keep one back so that I could have more little treats when Easter was long past. I’d break off a tiny piece to eat every so often and sometimes that egg would last for months!
I must say that the actual meaning of Easter was a puzzle to me. It was all the uplifting, positive things I mentioned, symbolised by cute bunnies, chickens and yummy chocolate eggs but it was also a downbeat religious celebration. God, Jesus and Christian religion was something we were aware of from our Sunday school and normal school lessons, but I had no real understanding of it at all. It seemed to be a series of stories about foreign people and strange events and times long, long ago. Jesus was the hero, I knew that, but the Easter story was completely baffling and conflicting with the rest of the Easter mood in my world. The story started out well with a donkey ride and people throwing palm leaves. Jesus and his disciples seemed to be having a good time and even having a party but from there, things turned decidedly nasty. How could a man who was clearly a force for good, be treated like a nasty criminal and eventually nailed to a wooden cross? What had all this to do with bunnies, chickens and chocolate? And who was the man with the weird name - Pontius Pilate and why was he washing his hands. Why did Jesus have to die to save us from our sins? The saving grace to this horrendous story was the fact that he came back to life again. I clearly had a lot to learn about the world and the people in it.
As a last and serious note, it wasn’t until a few years ago that the whole story actually made sense to me. Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ is an incredibly brutal and graphic film and a very moving one for me. It did however, put the whole confusing jumble of Easter tales into perspective, which I had never really understood until I saw it. The saddest aspect is, that after 2000 years, the human race has not learned to live peacefully and is still capable of inflicting immense pain and suffering on it’s fellow men.
Saturday 11 April 2009
Monday 6 April 2009
The cinema
After the last two depressing posts I thought I’d write about something more fun – going to the cinema. We called it ‘the pictures’ or ‘the flicks’ when we got older and wanted to sound more cool. We had two cinemas in our small town and sometimes my parents took us to see the latest ‘blockbuster’ films. They were usually musicals or biblical films: South Pacific; The King and I; Seven Brides for Seven Brothers; Inn of the Seventh Happiness; Genevieve; ‘The Ten Commandments’; King of Kings; Spartacus; do you remember any of those? Better still were the Elvis and Cliff Richard films. Blue Hawaii; Jailhouse Rock; GI Blues; Summer Holiday etc. This was major entertainment for us and incredibly exciting.
My, how things have changed since then! You got two films – the main film preceded by a small production ‘B’ film usually in black and white. Virtually no adverts but sometimes you got some sort of short world-wide newsreel film about post war developments in Gibralter, Aden or somewhere I’d never heard of. Before the film started, there was a man sat at an organ in front of the curtain. He was playing to entertain us. He and organ would slowly disappear through a trapdoor when it started and emerge again at the interval. A lady then walked down the aisle with a tray (it had a small lamp attached so you could see the goods) full of ice-creams, iced lollies and crisps to buy. No bucketfuls of popcorn, Pepsi or burgers at inflated prices then. The ice-cream was usually in a small waxed cardboard tub and you got a flat wooden spoon to eat it. I’d scrape every last morsel of out of it and then chew the wood to get the last atom of flavour. Sometime we got a Jubbly, which was frozen orange juice in a weird triangular shaped waxed box. It was almost impossible to get into and you’d end up trying to bite the thing open.
People were allowed to smoke and there were small ashtrays on the backs of the seats. They swivelled around so they could be emptied. A lot of men wore trilby hats in the 50s and the worst thing for a child was getting one of them sitting in front of you. At the end of the film they played the National Anthem. People would already be getting up and making there way up the aisles but as soon as it started, everyone would freeze in their tracks and remain silent. I remember being totally puzzled by this weird behaviour and any communication with my parents was totally without a response until it had finished. It was like pressing the pause button on the DVD player. I was often amazed when we got out to find that either daylight had become night-time or it was still daylight and after the two or three hours of darkness inside I expected it to be dark.
My, how things have changed since then! You got two films – the main film preceded by a small production ‘B’ film usually in black and white. Virtually no adverts but sometimes you got some sort of short world-wide newsreel film about post war developments in Gibralter, Aden or somewhere I’d never heard of. Before the film started, there was a man sat at an organ in front of the curtain. He was playing to entertain us. He and organ would slowly disappear through a trapdoor when it started and emerge again at the interval. A lady then walked down the aisle with a tray (it had a small lamp attached so you could see the goods) full of ice-creams, iced lollies and crisps to buy. No bucketfuls of popcorn, Pepsi or burgers at inflated prices then. The ice-cream was usually in a small waxed cardboard tub and you got a flat wooden spoon to eat it. I’d scrape every last morsel of out of it and then chew the wood to get the last atom of flavour. Sometime we got a Jubbly, which was frozen orange juice in a weird triangular shaped waxed box. It was almost impossible to get into and you’d end up trying to bite the thing open.
People were allowed to smoke and there were small ashtrays on the backs of the seats. They swivelled around so they could be emptied. A lot of men wore trilby hats in the 50s and the worst thing for a child was getting one of them sitting in front of you. At the end of the film they played the National Anthem. People would already be getting up and making there way up the aisles but as soon as it started, everyone would freeze in their tracks and remain silent. I remember being totally puzzled by this weird behaviour and any communication with my parents was totally without a response until it had finished. It was like pressing the pause button on the DVD player. I was often amazed when we got out to find that either daylight had become night-time or it was still daylight and after the two or three hours of darkness inside I expected it to be dark.
Thursday 2 April 2009
Doctors, illness and death
I’ve told you about the dentist, so I might as well describe the other scary man – the doctor. In the 1950s there were no health centres and everyone was allocated a family doctor who always treated you each time. We had two doctors though, a father and son. Both seemed very tall, skinny, well dressed in suits and spoke with ‘posh’ accents. The father was ill-tempered, impatient and gave the impression that he detested having to deal with you and didn’t really believe you were ill in the first place. The son was the opposite, so I prayed that it was him who would treat me.
Home visits were easily arranged then. No dragon on reception to give you the third degree or a three-day delay for a visit. Sometimes we attended their surgery, which was a big old house similar to the dentist’s. It was their home but they had converted rooms for waiting and treatment. I seem to remember the waiting room had dark wooden panelling around the walls and similar battered old magazines and Rupert Bear annuals that the dentist had for entertainment.
Most childhood illnesses simply involved a few quick checks on your vital functions whilst the thermometer was slipped under your tongue. The urge to bite or chew it was almost irresistible. Doctors’ instruments were not as scary as the dentists. He had a round mirror with a hole in the middle, strapped to his head. I’ve no idea what function that had. Sometimes he’d shine a small torch into your mouth and eyes, poke a stick onto your tongue and of course, the cold stethoscope would be clapped onto your chest and back. It was an incredible relief when he finally declared you were going to live and informed mum that you had some weird sounding condition called measles, mumps, chicken pox or tonsillitis. The best part was hearing that you had to miss school for a week or two - yesssss.
As I write this, it doesn’t seem scary at all now. I guess it was the fear of illness and death that frightened me. As a young child, it seemed that these two scary monsters were always lurking around the corner. Although I didn’t experience a death until much older, I was often aware of it as a serious threat to my well-being! Death seemed like a sort of eternal, dreamless sleep – a blackness, a nothingness. The concept of non-existence or permanent loss of parents, family or friends was hard to accept. Promises of living in heaven with God were no less scary. He was an old man with a beard that I had never met before. No substitute for mum and dad.
I remember when very young, thinking about this ‘death’ state and becoming overwhelmingly sad and scared. One time I burst into floods of tears. When mum asked what was wrong, I told her ‘I didn’t want to die’ and sobbed uncontrollably. She must have been mystified by this outburst but consoled me with hugs and assurance and ‘Don’t be silly, you’re not going to die.’ Although I am in my 50s now, those two monsters (illness and death) occasionally stalk me. I don’t fear death or the possibility of oblivion much now, but I’ve seen so many friends and loved ones suffer illness and eventual death, that the thought of them and leaving or losing loved ones permanently, still causes some anguish. Mum’s hugs and assurances of eternal life don’t work anymore.
Home visits were easily arranged then. No dragon on reception to give you the third degree or a three-day delay for a visit. Sometimes we attended their surgery, which was a big old house similar to the dentist’s. It was their home but they had converted rooms for waiting and treatment. I seem to remember the waiting room had dark wooden panelling around the walls and similar battered old magazines and Rupert Bear annuals that the dentist had for entertainment.
Most childhood illnesses simply involved a few quick checks on your vital functions whilst the thermometer was slipped under your tongue. The urge to bite or chew it was almost irresistible. Doctors’ instruments were not as scary as the dentists. He had a round mirror with a hole in the middle, strapped to his head. I’ve no idea what function that had. Sometimes he’d shine a small torch into your mouth and eyes, poke a stick onto your tongue and of course, the cold stethoscope would be clapped onto your chest and back. It was an incredible relief when he finally declared you were going to live and informed mum that you had some weird sounding condition called measles, mumps, chicken pox or tonsillitis. The best part was hearing that you had to miss school for a week or two - yesssss.
As I write this, it doesn’t seem scary at all now. I guess it was the fear of illness and death that frightened me. As a young child, it seemed that these two scary monsters were always lurking around the corner. Although I didn’t experience a death until much older, I was often aware of it as a serious threat to my well-being! Death seemed like a sort of eternal, dreamless sleep – a blackness, a nothingness. The concept of non-existence or permanent loss of parents, family or friends was hard to accept. Promises of living in heaven with God were no less scary. He was an old man with a beard that I had never met before. No substitute for mum and dad.
I remember when very young, thinking about this ‘death’ state and becoming overwhelmingly sad and scared. One time I burst into floods of tears. When mum asked what was wrong, I told her ‘I didn’t want to die’ and sobbed uncontrollably. She must have been mystified by this outburst but consoled me with hugs and assurance and ‘Don’t be silly, you’re not going to die.’ Although I am in my 50s now, those two monsters (illness and death) occasionally stalk me. I don’t fear death or the possibility of oblivion much now, but I’ve seen so many friends and loved ones suffer illness and eventual death, that the thought of them and leaving or losing loved ones permanently, still causes some anguish. Mum’s hugs and assurances of eternal life don’t work anymore.
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