My grandmother was a very modern woman; stylish in her own
way though not a great beauty. She didn’t have a lot of money, but she earned
enough to be able to afford the occasional thing that pleased her. Now with the
shed-decluttering season under way I’m looking forward to re-finding a ginger
jar that has come down to me; not an antique, but she liked it and so do I.
When I packed it away last time I moved house the lid got broken. I shall mend
it, maybe in the time-honoured way the Japanese do, with gold foil to
accentuate the breakage, reminding us that there is beauty in things which have
been repaired.
Valerie McGlinchey [CC BY-SA 2.0 uk (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/uk/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons
She was 27 when she got the right to vote. I took her for granted of course, but looking back she was quite a remarkable woman. Her skills in needlework: dressmaking, pattern cutting, tailoring; and leatherwork in partnership with my grandfather; and her confident entrepreneurship made a huge difference to the family's life, particularly since my grandfather returned from the 1914-18 war minus one leg, and died too young, even for the early 1950s.
Many of my generation, born in the decade following World War II, grew up in a charmed countryside, or an equivalent magical townscape. Like Adam Young, a central character in “Good Omens” by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, we could wander where we liked and get into benign mischief our parents knew little about - though I dare say they suspected. Childcare was informal, and part of the social framework: at the age of three or four I was regularly at an elderly neighbour’s house to watch her small prized television while my mother had half an hour to herself. Milk - and orange juice - was still delivered by time-honoured horse and cart but babies were delivered by the still new NHS.
Growing up we were not unduly restricted but allowed to be children with the risks and responsibilities appropriate to our age and development. I’m certain that part of this was down to our parents’ refusal to allow the fear and uncertainty that had threatened their own wartime youth to dominate the rest of their lives. It formed a good pattern for us to follow.
The school teachers I had taught us not just to read and write but also to think, to question and to explore the world for ourselves. This reflects their freedom to teach in line with their enthusiasm, moral code and wisdom gained through life experience rather than by some hidebound bureaucratic formula. Public libraries were enchanted treasure-houses that rewarded the explorer with priceless riches - all free. Grants to cover tuition fees and living costs were mandatory in those golden years for students fortunate enough to gain access to further education. This was all of a piece with our prospects for work, which held out the opportunity to contribute to society. Luckily by the time we were told there was no such thing we had already proved to ourselves that there could be if only we believed in it.
Of the contemporary friends I’m still in touch with most seem to be growing old pretty self reliant and resilient on the whole. This is saying quite a lot since a number of my friendships have been formed among disabled people, particularly as my own ‘progressive’ impairment, inherited through that same grandfather, has left me more isolated, at the mercy of inaccessible ‘mainstream’ society.
We fear that the NHS that helped us with as little trauma as possible into the world will see us out of it in very different fashion, and before we’ve been as much use as we can be. We fear for the children, too many of whom we see deprived of the freedoms and emotional security which formed our characters. And we fear for their older siblings and their parents who seem bowed down with debt which can never be paid off, and economically stifled by zero hours contracts or part time jobs at breadline wages.
Among the disabled bunch I detect a familiar but understandable reluctance to acknowledge fear; I know it’s there, as despite government protestations we are too well acquainted with discrimination and lack of joined up services to be anything better than deeply uncertain about our future care. Every now and then I hear my grandmother’s voice telling me “worse things happen at sea.”
Valerie McGlinchey [CC BY-SA 2.0 uk (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/uk/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons
She was 27 when she got the right to vote. I took her for granted of course, but looking back she was quite a remarkable woman. Her skills in needlework: dressmaking, pattern cutting, tailoring; and leatherwork in partnership with my grandfather; and her confident entrepreneurship made a huge difference to the family's life, particularly since my grandfather returned from the 1914-18 war minus one leg, and died too young, even for the early 1950s.
Many of my generation, born in the decade following World War II, grew up in a charmed countryside, or an equivalent magical townscape. Like Adam Young, a central character in “Good Omens” by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, we could wander where we liked and get into benign mischief our parents knew little about - though I dare say they suspected. Childcare was informal, and part of the social framework: at the age of three or four I was regularly at an elderly neighbour’s house to watch her small prized television while my mother had half an hour to herself. Milk - and orange juice - was still delivered by time-honoured horse and cart but babies were delivered by the still new NHS.
Growing up we were not unduly restricted but allowed to be children with the risks and responsibilities appropriate to our age and development. I’m certain that part of this was down to our parents’ refusal to allow the fear and uncertainty that had threatened their own wartime youth to dominate the rest of their lives. It formed a good pattern for us to follow.
The school teachers I had taught us not just to read and write but also to think, to question and to explore the world for ourselves. This reflects their freedom to teach in line with their enthusiasm, moral code and wisdom gained through life experience rather than by some hidebound bureaucratic formula. Public libraries were enchanted treasure-houses that rewarded the explorer with priceless riches - all free. Grants to cover tuition fees and living costs were mandatory in those golden years for students fortunate enough to gain access to further education. This was all of a piece with our prospects for work, which held out the opportunity to contribute to society. Luckily by the time we were told there was no such thing we had already proved to ourselves that there could be if only we believed in it.
Of the contemporary friends I’m still in touch with most seem to be growing old pretty self reliant and resilient on the whole. This is saying quite a lot since a number of my friendships have been formed among disabled people, particularly as my own ‘progressive’ impairment, inherited through that same grandfather, has left me more isolated, at the mercy of inaccessible ‘mainstream’ society.
We fear that the NHS that helped us with as little trauma as possible into the world will see us out of it in very different fashion, and before we’ve been as much use as we can be. We fear for the children, too many of whom we see deprived of the freedoms and emotional security which formed our characters. And we fear for their older siblings and their parents who seem bowed down with debt which can never be paid off, and economically stifled by zero hours contracts or part time jobs at breadline wages.
Among the disabled bunch I detect a familiar but understandable reluctance to acknowledge fear; I know it’s there, as despite government protestations we are too well acquainted with discrimination and lack of joined up services to be anything better than deeply uncertain about our future care. Every now and then I hear my grandmother’s voice telling me “worse things happen at sea.”
Her store of wise old saws comes in handy; there
was one for just about any occasion. An observation that the food was too hot
was greeted with “it’s come from a hot place” and if it was noticed that
someone’s legs were particularly long, “yes, they go all the way up to his
b-t-m.”
We’ve had yet another go at putting a cross on another piece of paper to try to influence our future, and there’s a widespread sense that many things that ordinary people depend on are now broken. To any political types who might happen to read this I’d like to pass on another of my grandmother’s sayings. In my family the sound of alarmingly loud clattering of crockery would elicit the cry, "Save the pieces, we like the pattern!"
See showmetheaccess website for video links to practical ideas around impairment
We’ve had yet another go at putting a cross on another piece of paper to try to influence our future, and there’s a widespread sense that many things that ordinary people depend on are now broken. To any political types who might happen to read this I’d like to pass on another of my grandmother’s sayings. In my family the sound of alarmingly loud clattering of crockery would elicit the cry, "Save the pieces, we like the pattern!"
See showmetheaccess website for video links to practical ideas around impairment
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