From Day 1 Brisbane

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14 February

Every year I look at the blokes poring over saccharine verses in card shops, embarrassedly carrying bouquets on buses and trains and handing over large sums of cash for chocolates, cakes, champagne, roses, candlelit dinners.........And I wonder how they all have been so taken in. What tyranny of advertising, media hype and sentiment is it that drives people to subscribe to an invention designed only to part us from our money and if we don't, to feel guilt.
Then - most years - something catches my eye; a pink pig one year, a heart shaped egg poacher another, and I buy it on impulse to give to my love. Ha. We have always agreed that Valentine's Day is a pointless con to which we won't subscribe, which is also why you will never see me lunching in a restaurant on Mother's Day.
I never receive a Valentine card or gift and have never felt I was missing out especially as I receive bouquets and blooms all year round. But this year while I wasn't tempted by any cutesy pinky piggy frippery, I received a Valentine card. Life and relationships are just like that aren't they. Later that day, having quite forgotten what day it was, I spotted the loveliest little Cinderella carriage being drawn by white plumed horses through Covent Garden. Funny time for a wedding I thought and peeking inside saw the glummest young couple imaginable. Maybe she had been expecting something from Tiffany.
As children we were told that the feast of St Valentine was to celebrate the day that the birds begin to find their mates, heralding the start of spring. I still subscribe to that belief and this year like every other I remember, was struck that precisely on the day of St Valentine, not a day earlier or later, the light changed. The winter shadow had gone and despite the bitter cold, you could just make out the tantalising scent of early spring.

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Drayton County Primary

Yes we really did. It was hardly ever used though.
One of the highlights of my year was the village fete which was held at The Grange, a grand red brick house in beautiful grounds. Villages used to have a squire and ours had lived in the Grange. The family was still looked up to and resented in equal measure and the older villagers were deferential to them. When I was about ten we had a vote in school for the Rose Queen. The favourite was the pony tailed and perfect Helen, the girl I sat next to at the top of the class. Surprisingly I won the vote, I supposed on popularity rather than prettiness. I think there was maypole dancing that year.

I was in the last year group to occupy the original village school - a church building comprising one classroom separated by a partition, windows in true 19th century tradition too high to look out of and different playgrounds for boys and girls. As they would have said back then: Woe betide you if you crossed into the wrong playground.
A new school that was still under construction and housed the younger children was where we had to go for our lunch - or dinner as it was called. In those days few children took packed lunch and those who did were left out and considered odd. Our daily walk to the new school and back was supervised by two dinner ladies, Mrs Church and Mrs Barrett.
After lunch we would have some playtime before walking back to the old school. The boys would set up a big game of British Bulldog and the girls would head for the climbing frame, where they could be told off for being too daring or showing their knickers.
Not that we cared of course.

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Pillow talk

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Leaving the country

On the flight to the Isle of Man (quietly intriguing place) I was thinking about the word "bovine" - not entirely in a good way, although I am quite fond of cows.

I had the knees of a very large young woman buttressing the back of my seat, making for quite an uncomfortable journey. At one point I turned to inform her politely that she was digging into my back, only to realise that she was simply too big for the allocated space, so to complain would have been pointless. I recognised my fellow passenger from the departure lounge where I had first perceived her inert cow-like form.

Most of my childhood was spent in Crabtree Lane, in the white house at the end, next to Mr Bomford's field. Cows and horses were our neighbours and the favoured route to most places in the village was right through the middle of them. Horses being the faster and more powerful beasts we treated with due deference, but the placid, patient, masticating cows we largely ignored. If one was approaching in a nosey way we would just stamp a foot to scare it off. But but but - every now and then you would get a rogue cow that would not be frightened off and gave you the sort of look you want to give to your parents when they have caught you out in something and where you want to brazen it out, knowing you will probably start blubbing instead.

We used to coax the horses and the cows over to our garden wall by tempting them with luscious long grass and occasionally apples. The cows had such wonderful mushy noses and hot breath, also the most beautiful trusting eyes.

All of which is a preamble. Working backwards, I drew the cartoonish cow just because I was thinking bovine and because I was dying to carry on playing with my new drawing app! Prior to that as I walked across the tarmac to board the plane, I looked at wintry England with its skeletal trees and leaden skies and thought that just three weeks ago you saw a similar scene, but your thoughts were very different as you took it all in for the last time.

And I wondered how that felt for you, with the rawness of goodbyes still stinging your insides and the final aurevoir to good old England. How long was it on that interminable journey before the aircraft window was lit with lapis lazuli in place of the dirty old pearl sky of home?

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