My Firstborn

When we were knee high to grasshoppers, my friends and I would love to walk alongside the wildflower and grass verges of Cambridge Road in Bedford, past the cabins and boats down to our left on the Ouse, then up the sandy lane to Cardington Mill and Mill Meadows. We watched the growth of the cooling towers going up on the new power station across the fields. We discovered the huge round pipeline ready to be laid under the meadows and had great fun being brave enough to climb and crawl in it.

On August 15th 1962, I was nineteen and in Bedford having a sleepover with my Auntie Betty because my Uncle Vic was on nights at the power station. I was company for her. In the wee small hours of the morning I soaked the bed when my waters broke all over my beloved Auntie Betty. Loving and kind as always, she reassured me, helped me get dressed and I walked home in the early morning, where the streets were all empty and the birds were stirring. My Dad met me halfway and we phoned the midwife from the phone box near the shops, but she’d gone out on her bike.

It was me Mam who delivered the 6lb 2oz bundle of joy with lots of black hair. We called this treasure on earth, Maria. My Dad played Bing Crosby’s True Love loudly on his radiogram downstairs, then came up with a little tray of sherry glasses to toast Maria. He adored her. She made the final days of his life very happy.

Our lives were blessed with you Ria, from that dawning.

Sunday Birthday

I’m seventy-seven today. It’s Sunday and I went to online Mass at St Pat’s at ten. Fr. Phil wished Happy Birthday to everyone who has one today. I have flowers and cards and John’s making a modest chocolate cake, so I’ll get a wish. To be honest, I can’t believe I’m still alive. Eric and Ella stopped by on their way to the park to give me their card and my birthday book – called ‘A Monster Calls’.

St. Pat’s is Our Lady and St. Patrick Roman Catholic church in Oldham. It’s a ‘gem church’. And it is. Fr. Phil knows I hover over it as a closet Catholic.

When I was eleven, I asked me Mam and Dad if I could become a Catholic. My friends and primary school  playmates of many young days all went to the RC church on London Road and I used to wait at the entrance gate for them to come out – wondering about the mystery of Saturday evening confessions. My Dad didn’t mind one way or the other, but me Mam climbed up on to her Methodist wagon roots and said a firm No. So that was that. My first taste of anti-Catholic bigotry.

At fourteen, I was given permission to join the C of E and was duly confirmed in Blunham village church by the Bishop of St Albans. It’s amazing what ‘passing the scholarship’ can do for a mother.

And so it was that I stopped going to the C of E after my divorce years later, as divorcees were not welcome. Living on Langley Estate in North Manchester with my children Ria,  Dom and Chris, I took to going back to a C of E church – All Saints & Martyrs – where I was lucky enough to get to know the curate, Fr. Alan Cooke. I used to ask him to read through my essays – part of my induction to the Y.M.C.A., my employer – in Manchester. He was always helpful and positive. We’d have a coffee and a few fags and a good natter. He’d visit us at home and loved my children.

When I married John in 1982 and came to live in Oldham, I lost touch with him.  Yet lo and behold, some years later, glancing through church notices in the local paper, I found that St Mark’s C of E in Chadderton had a vicar called Fr. Alan Cooke!

I found the church, with vicarage alongside and walked up the path to the huge wooden front door – loving the climbing plants around the garden – and knocked. The door opened slowly and that  familiar face smiled at me. He asked me in for a cuppa and showed me his front room, with two sofas, bookshelves and fireplace. Then to his kitchen, a minimalist, simple area to cook and eat. I recognised again the monastic qualities in the man.

From 1990 and for twenty five years or so, St. Mark’s was where I went to pray and contribute to its small community. There will be many people, dear Reader, who have never known the blessing of a good priest. Fr. Alan was much loved by local people. He walked in streets whenever he could, rather than take transport and was not short of the abuse some wretched souls save for the clergy.

I discovered his lively interest in the Arts – a lover of music and poetry and a man who could write and deliver a sermon which meant things to those people lucky enough to hear it. A Mancunian, born and raised in Droylsden and familiar with Rome, where he trained as a Roman Catholic priest at the English College for some time. After this came a decision to work for C of E.

He prepared Dom and Chris and Hinnie for confirmation and was there for us all when Dom died. He and his friend Fr. Paul Plumpton, led Dom’s funeral in 2011 and stayed close to us throughout.

Like me, he is retired now. He lives in Sliema, Malta. We write to each other from time to time  and he probably meets up with old parishioners when their cruise ship docks in Valletta. He is happy there, with Fr. Paul and their adopted son Matthew.

I still miss his ministry. And I hover over St Pat’s and Fr. Phil because I still haven’t found the courage to become a Roman Catholic. It would be a treat to land in Malta, find Sliema and knock at his door again.

In the Garden – October 2011

He stamped his feet and looked down
At the unlaced familiar boots
And their soil. How he welcomed
Its clinging, its living, its smell
Of earth and its companionship
On this journey of dying.
Like that year in its autumnal grace
Of harvesting and planting, he was
Harvesting his loving kindness from
His midsummer field – and planting
Pale tulips of hope
To stand like sentinels at the door and
To gaze upon the silence of
This coming Infinity and
This long goodbye. I say hello.

Leigh Cook, Sliema, Malta, 8.11.2013

For the Brown Ones

Let this, then, be my object of obsession
my indiscreet fetish
my own Privy Counsel
my recurrent peccadillo:

lay out the leather
for the naked workers
to skilfully put together
by patched moonlight;

and trim and thimble-stitch their clothes,
lit by eyesight and attentive candle,
in return for the grace
of a mid-life insight:

to do the deeds done
for those who can never repay them
and admit the singing of the rule:
the rule of the love of the doing.

Dominic Mathews

Reasons to be Cheerful

Here’s a poem I used to read to my children. Ria loved it and always knew it by heart.

The Lamplighter

My tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky,
It’s time to take the window to see Leerie going by;
For every night at teatime and before you take your seat,
With lantern and with ladder he comes posting up the street.

Now Tom would be a driver and Maria go to sea,
And my papa’s a banker and as rich as he can be;
But I, when I am stronger and can choose what I’m to do,
O Leerie, I’ll go round at night and light the lamps with you!

For we are very lucky with a lamp before the door,
And Leerie stops to light it as he lights so many more;
And O! Before you hurry by with ladder and with light,
O Leerie, see a little child and nod to him tonight!

Robert Louis Stevenson

Reasons to be Cheerful in lock down times

Some people do things and say things which make the silence and sadness of lock down brighten up, full of sunbeams….Here’s a few of them…

Laura: is my beautiful granddaughter. She lives in Torpoint, Cornwall with her partner Luke and their children (my great-grandchildren), Amelie and Ray. Laura asks if I’m ok every week or so – and this week sent me a poem she’s written about her aunty Ria (my daughter Ria). She has given me permission to share it with you, dear Reader.

Aunty Ria

I miss your laugh, your love of flowers, music and fresh air,

I miss hearing you call me ‘Lovely Laura’

And I miss watching Amelie belly laugh by your side.

It always felt as if you knew, I know you knew me more than I know myself sometimes.

Your presence always brought such a reassurance and comfort,

Though much of each year was not spent together – your energy and interest made up for all just one cuppa shared.

Your love for simple pleasures made life feel so light when with you.

On my first day at University, you made sure I had the most important thing of all – a fluffy rug!

Who could wake up in a good mood, if their feet did not land on something comfy from bed?

Nana says her strongest memory of you is ‘Ria arriving’ – and I could not agree more.

You’d arrive with open arms and a beaming smile every time we saw you,

And it is that warmth that makes me miss you so much.

I wish you knew that no matter how often we saw you

We have all learned so very much from you…

To make the most of every day and to find happiness, even on the worst of days.

I’m so grateful for all the time I got to share with you

And I’m so proud to have had you as my Aunty

Although our time spent together was never long enough

You have left a forever-sized imprint on me.

I find so much comfort thinking of you wandering through fields with sunshine beaming down…

You are the first to see and enjoy each morning sky up there…

and that is pretty ‘Ace!’

Fixing a Hole

I’m fixing a hole where the rain gets in
And stops my mind from wandering
Where it will go

I’m filling the cracks that ran through the door
And kept my mind from wandering
Where it will go

And it really doesn’t matter if I’m
wrong I’m right
Where I belong I’m right
Where I belong

See the people standing there who
disagree and never win
And wonder why they don’t get in my door
I’m painting my room in the colourful
way

And when my mind is wandering
There I will go
And it really doesn’t matter if I’m
wrong I’m right
Where I belong I’m right
Where I belong

Silly people run around they worry me
And never ask me why they don’t get
past my door
I’m taking the time for a number of
things
That weren’t important yesterday
And I still go

I’m fixing a hole where the rain gets in
And stops my mind from wandering
Where it will go

John Lennon and Paul McCartney

On His Modest Stillness

Dear Reader, this is a poem I wrote for a dear friend and colleague, Mike Donohoe, who was one of the best teachers I ever met. Mike used Art to teach English Language to asylum seekers and refugees from many different backgrounds – Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Iran, Iraq, Kosovo, Georgia, Ukraine, Angola, to name but a few. His students loved him. He died suddenly with a heart attack on the street in Manchester on or around Twelfth Night.

Between Epiphany and Candlemas I shall remember
How a still and silent Love
Kept the dark watches of the night;
How you did not die alone, but with a host of angels
And the blessings of all whose lives you touched.
It is a wise man who scatters their darkness
And your Joanas and Joes will smile and shine you
All around us.

Now, stars from all the windows are taken down
And hang in this prayer.
Heav’n’s torn sheet unwinds and changes chime
Across the frosty glory
Of this bleak midwinter.
I shall remember too, how you saw His star in the east
And moved into the Mystery of
Love on earth.

Leigh Cook