Tootles the taxi and other rhymes

Today is National Poetry Day,

so I bring you some excerpts from Tootles the Taxi

by Joyce B. Clegg

illustrations by John Kenney.

 A trip to the pillar box at the top of our road

was my first solo outing.

It felt as though I had walked miles.

The responsibility of posting that letter weighed heavily.

 The verse that is missing from my edition  goes:

I'm Billy the baker's van,

Painted bright red;

I carry the sugar buns,

Pastry and bread.

I take all the orders

Round to each door,

And all of my customers

Come back for more!

We had just such a van calling at my primary school,

and the baker, clad in a brown overall, carried

an enormous wicker basket full of loaves.

He called me Lucinda which I found

simultaneously flattering and worrying.

The bread at home, two white bloomers,

was delivered by Michael on his bike

from O'Brien's the grocer.
The sugar buns were collected from the corner shop 
at the bottom of the road.
That was my second solo destination
and I had a to buy a pot of strawberry jam.

 We didn't have a car so an inordinate amount of time

was spent waiting for trolley buses.

I have never had such cold feet again.

I remember the high banks of filthy snow at the kerbside

during the winter of 1963.

Our first milkman had to pull his trolley

which was a battery assisted cart.

I asked him to name a new doll and he said,

'Why not call her Mary Ann?' so I did.

 Learning to ride a bike was an all or nothing business.

No training wheels, no helmet, just

a swift push on the bumpy driveway

down a steepish slope and a messy crash

into a rhododendron bush.

Later I used to cycle round the block.

A girl called Pamela West waved from across the street

 and invited me to tea.

I said I would have to go home and ask.

When I got back, she had disappeared 

and I didn't have the nerve to knock at the door

of her large and silent house,

so I went home again.

A trip in a taxi was a rare event

and certainly not a casual jaunt for lone children.

A man called Wallace was sometimes booked 

to take us to the station when we went on our annual holiday.

The luggage had been packed in a huge tin trunk 

and sent ahead of us to one or other seaside hotel,

sometimes Cornwall, often Bournemouth.

This meant dressing in very odd clothes until we left.

Goodness that sounds antediluvian.

In fact we may well have stayed in school uniform

as the boys here and in Just William always seemed to do.

The shop with the yellow AGA

My candles and I had an outing last weekend.

Going Shopping has never been so much fun.

Luckily someone else was in charge of the cash register.

All I had to do was lean against the yellow AGA

and pass the time of day with the customers.

Short shelf life

I hope I sold a few of these today.

I've just had to buy a new washing machine.

Threads

This post brought to mind two moments from my day

and a hugely important chunk of my past.

I was talking with my friend Maddy about significant items of clothing -

things I wished I had kept, indeed, thought I had kept

and this jumper was one of them,

preserved only in this unfinished

oil on gesso painting from my art student days in Bristol.

The jumper was a brave purchase by my mother.

She laid it out on my bed as a surprise for me 

when I came home from school.

On first sight I hated it.

It was too loud, too brash, too different.

But I tried it on and it grew on me,

probably because people admired it

and then I wore it a lot...

Jane's post reminded me about 
all the Georgian windows that appeared

in my etchings and paintings and in my final year dissertation.

This one was in the freezing bathroom 

and the pink blobs

are part of an indestructible Bizzy Lizzy 

which I carted around with me from house to house.

The clogs were from Olaf's Daughters.

I longed to have some long green lace up boots like my friend Charlotte,

but could only afford these.

The mirror came from a skip,

and  still hangs in a bathroom.

And just to complete the circle,

the woodcut in the reflection

is by Judy Stevens

who started at  Art college with me

and became a very Fine Artist indeed.

Skyscape

unusual - but not as alarming as this one.


I haven't been out today and with more snow forecast
am glued to the windows looking for
Signs and Portents.

Maybe I should have been a meteorologist.

Today

I took the train to Brighton

 to keep my badges company,

at the Six Christmas Open House.

Had to keep an open mind about some of the exhibits,

Yes. It's a partially incinerated wooden pallet.

Yes. It's a bath.

Took a walk on the front.

Paused with this gull.

Thought about gullibility. 

Liked this lonely helter-skelter.

Popped into the Museum

and played my favourite game

What would I

borrow?

Settled on this day bed with screens

designed by Armand-Albert Rateau.

Did I buy anything in the shops?

Yes.

A sought after 1947 King Penguin book

from their eclectic list.

Wildflowers of the Chalk

by John Gilmour.

A present from Brighton.

Kitty Cotton's Diary

During 1955 Coats Cotton took half 

of the inside back page of Girl magazine,

for an 'advertiser's announcement'. 

They created a character called  Kitty Cotton 

who wrote about life at school in a blue ruled diary.

 She describes her teachers: 

Miss Trill, Miss Pumpkin, Miss Moosey, Miss Tinny, Miss Harty, Mamselle,

 lessons: 

chemistry, singing, maths, hockey, French, poetry, sewing (of course)

 and friends: 

Maribel Wiggins, Brenda, Tilly Tomkins, Mop, Olivia Pushcat, Fuffs .

The writing is looped and blotchy,

the spelling is dretful and full of crossings out.

There's a lot of trouble and strife:

 people are furious, sarky, ratty, jellous, foul, snooty, cross, silly, 

idiortic, stark staring mad,

but also prone to the giggles and full of cream buns and scrummy cake.

She is often nonplussed by the work that is set,

gets ticked off for not understanding decimals 

and in one rather poignant piece is told that her poem is all wrong 

and that she must try to be more sensitive to natural beauty.

'Still don't know what she means.'

In a separate box, readers are invited to enter the 

Coats Couplet competition 

on the theme of sewing with Coats threads.

Every fortnight a guinea was paid to the winning writer and the couplet illustrated.

That's nearly £20 in modern currency.

I've made some of the illustrations into badges for posterity because the comics are falling apart. 
They cost 5s 9d in old money.

Badgering

Getting my vintage Girl comic badges ready for the Christmas Fair.

Where did that year go?

Christmas Fair

Yesterday in Brighton

at 6 Clifton Street, opposite this white iced house

where even the cars look like cakes

I was invigilating at the Christmas Open House
run by Judy Stevens,

with Peter Archer's beautiful turned, engraved and stained sycamore bowls.

and Jenny Turtill's jewelery.
( This piece made from labradorite and sterling silver came home with me,
beautiful but impossible to photograph.)


And keeping an eye on my vintage Girl comic badges,
while drinking Glogg and eating pepparkakor.
This recipe for Swedish Glogg is in the indispensible Nigella Lawson's
How to Be a Domestic Goddess:

1 bottle red wine
150ml Swedish vodka
2 cinnamon sticks
8 cloves
12 cardamom seeds
25g caster sugar
25g blanched almonds
25g raisins

Combine all ingredients except for the raisins and almonds in a large pan and let steep, preferable overnight.
To serve, put a sprinkling of raisins and almonds in the bottom of everyone's mug, put the pan on the heat and slowly bring almost to the boil. Strain into a jug and pour over the raisins and almonds in the waiting mugs.

The question on so many people's lips

from a 1955 copy of Girl comic

one of a series of unique vintage comic badges being prepared for sale at the
Brighton Christmas Open Houses Festival.


Keep an eye on this space.