Penelope Porch is something of an oil painting!
Penny entered the world almost seven weeks too early but, just over a year later, you wouldn’t know it. She’s an avid reader, pianist, swimmer, ballerina, DJ, pop star, animal-lover and animal and fruit impersonator. However, my favourite painting of the year just happens to be a portrait of my darling granddaughter as herself!
Firstly, I must say that I really like babies and children in general. I love their innocence and the candid way they look at you, and suss you out, before they react. What joy when they like you and how disappointing when they don’t (and you mustn’t expect or press too hard for a good response). But however much I may love babies I certainly can’t stick their screaming in supermarkets – the shrill notes go right through me – and not just me and other shoppers; they must be the bane of many a shop-assistant’s life.
Recently I read on Facebook of a grandmother’s experience when her grandchild played up at the checkout while she, herself, was dealing with the cashier. Evidently, the guardian granny was extremely angry when the lady behind her tried to cajole the child and she even swore at the woman for touching the tot. Well, reading this I wondered what I would have done had I been in the same position as the lady behind the screaming baby. It’s quite likely that I, too, would have beseeched the screamer to stop. I might even have squeezed a toe to distract the child from her antics… or perhaps not, I can’t be sure but I could imagine doing so. I have definitely touched the arm or hand of a charming unknown child before now.
Last Saturday, whilst shopping at Trago Mills (one of my favourites stores) I found myself in a not dissimilar situation. One moment I was happily, and peacefully, looking at head-bands for baby girls… and then… suddenly, my ears were assailed by a terrible high-pitched screaming. With a finger in each ear I looked down into a pram at the young perpetrator – he was a blond, curly haired little angel with pink cheeks and red lips. I was about to complain about the terrible noise when the pretty mother got in first…
“Sorry about Phillip, he’s normally a good boy,” she said holding her own ears.
Phillip continued to scream.
“Calm down now and stop screaming,” she said firmly.
He howled.
“Oh what a gorgeous boy you are!” I said, turning from the mother to the vexed baby.
Young Phillip stopped screaming immediately and looked at me transfixed.
“He likes you!” she enthused.
“And what beautiful hair you have! Like an angel!” I continued with the compliments because he was really was that beautiful and also because he seemed to love them so much. It was calming.
“He had open-heart surgery not long ago and he’s still getting over it,” added his mum.
I was so glad that I’d taken the soft approach on this occasion.
There was another occasion a few years ago when I was in Tesco’s… I heard him long before I saw him. He was a dark-haired “Dennis the Menace” aged about three or four, too big for the trolley seat and therefore stood in the back of the shopping trolley, screaming his head off. Indeed, so awful and embarrassing was he that his mother or father had disowned him and gone off to shop in some other aisle (or store perhaps).
“Good,” I thought as I rounded the corner and saw Dennis alone, screaming at the top of his voice. I walked up to him calmly, bent my head close to his ear and gave him my best theatrical whisper:
“Shut up!”
Dennis stopped and looked nonplussed. Obviously no-one had ever told him to shut up until then. And while his mouth was still open with surprise a little old lady came zooming up the aisle from the opposite end and bent her head close to his other ear:
“Yeah, shut up!”
A double whammy. We ladies did a “thumbs up” and continued our shopping in peace.
Despite her years (not yet two) Miss Annalise Sanchez has already enjoyed some little fame as an “International art critic” (according to the Reuben Lenkiewicz Art Gallery, Teignmouth) and would be juggler (Mamhead Village Fete 2017). And she’s always been a bit of a food connoisseur as well…
Recently my great little niece has impressed again with her new skill at blowing bubbles…
I expect that you’re wondering if there is no end to her talents… No, there isn’t. Annalise continues to amaze with her brilliant intellect. Now I heard that only two mornings ago, when her parents were still in bed, she had awoken early with a tremendous appetite for crisps. Apparently she went downstairs to the kitchen and found the crisps she had set her heart on.
Have you noticed how hard it is to open goods nowadays? Lord only knows how old ladies manage! Well, the same applies to children, especially tiny tots like Annalise. Try as she might, she did not have the strength to pull open the bag of crisps.
“Oh dear!” she must have thought, “I’ll have to ‘come clean’ and take them up to Mummy and Daddy to open them.”
“Oh no!” said mummy Katie, “You can’t have crisps for breakfast. Have a banana…”
“Or an apple,” chimed in her dad.
“No, these,” pleaded Annalise with her most charming expression and she tried again to pull open the stubborn packet.
Katie took the packet and pulled, not too hard, against the seal.
“Well I can’t open them either,” said Katie with mock exasperation.
“Neither can I,” said her dad as he did the same.
“You’ll just have to settle for a banana,” added her mum.
“I find the scissors!” said Annalise.
I was small and the world was big.
One morning recently I awoke early after a restless night of feeling hungry and shrinking. Yes shrinking! I was about half way through the “Catherine’s Cabbage Soup Diet” and I could feel changes (even if nobody else could see them). So I was awake and the first thing that came into my mind made me laugh…
Strangely, I was remembering back to a time when I really was small, three years old I guess, and Henry was a baby in the pram; my sister Mary must have just started school because she wasn’t with us as we were walking home down Molle Road. Now I happened to be an excruciatingly shy little girl who wouldn’t speak to strangers; I’d run away or hide, often under Mum’s skirts if there was nowhere else to hide. However, on this occasion I didn’t run away when we met a group of ladies coming out of Mrs Cottrell’s place… and one of them had a pram.
I didn’t speak of course but I stood by the pram, just as Mum did, and looked inside at the new baby. Young as I was, I knew what a beautiful baby looked like – my baby brother Henry was soft, round and bonny – so I hadn’t been prepared for the sight of the alien little creature in the pram. The baby was bald and pale with a face and skin so thin that all his veins showed through as blue as his sad watery eyes.
“Mum,” I whispered as I tugged on my mother’s gathered skirt to get her attention,”Isn’t that a funny looking baby?”
My mother wouldn’t answer so I tugged again.
“Mum,” I whispered slightly louder. “Isn’t that a funny looking baby?”
My mother reached down and pushed my hand from her skirt but said nothing. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t seem to hear me.
“Mummy!” I shouted whilst pulling at her dress. “Don’t you think it’s a funny looking baby?”
Silence. Oh dear! Everybody looked at me. Mum squirmed and I realised I had said the wrong thing. I was too young to make amends so I did the next best thing and disappeared inside Mum’s voluminous gathered skirt where no-one could see me. I knew my mother’s legs quite well in those days… when I small.
Nowadays the world doesn’t seem nearly so big and, after a week on “Catherine’s Cabbage Soup Diet”, neither am I. I’ve lost seven pounds. The tricky thing will be to keep it off, especially as we’re on holiday in Spain at this very moment. Actually, I’m hoping to shrink a bit more.
Is there anything more lovely than lying in bed of an early morning and looking across at the most beautiful creature you could wish to lay eyes upon? You watch her breathing – her little chest going up and down – and if you get close enough you can feel her breath exhaling. You want to kiss her but she might wake up. Instead, you stroke her hair gently and she makes a little noise like a kitten.
Your heart is bursting with love for her. She is not yet eleven weeks old… and she was six and a half weeks premature. Yet her arrival was long awaited. If it weren’t for you and your first real love she would not be here.
My tiny granddaughter, Penelope Sweet Pea Pitstop, came onto my bed after her first bottle of the day and I watched her as the sun gained strength and filled my bedroom.
My great little niece, Annalise, is like a “speeding bullet”; she started walking at ten months old and now, five months later, she tears around everywhere at a great pace, often making her hard to catch… and quite tiring for those about her. It seems she’s not unlike her famous great-grandma Betty (alias “Supergran”, who, in spite of being a nonagenarian, is still a force to be reckoned with!).
“Annalise is very energetic – isn’t she?” Chris spoke thoughtfully, having seen her only last evening at the house of my sister Mary (Grandma to Annalise).
I nodded. The “rocket” had kept five or six people on their toes for three hours or so.
“Do you think she’s hyper-active?” Chris asked, as if he was trying to remember what our girls were like at such a young age.
I had to stop and think myself, calling to mind what my son James was like as a toddler. My first thought was to say, “Well, Jim was quite placid”, but then I remembered an incident when he was around two…
We were out shopping in Exeter city centre, at least, I was shopping and Jim had to come along too. My young son didn’t much care for shopping for clothes, he preferred looking for toys or even food shopping. As it turned out, he especially disliked hunting for ladies swimming costumes.
“Mum, I’m bored. How much longer are you going to be?” he complained. (He had an excellent vocabulary for a two-year-old.)
I explained that Mummy had just another ten costumes to try on and that he must be a good boy and wait patiently, but he waited only until my back was turned… and he was off!
“Staff and customers, please look out for a two year old little boy called James. He has brown hair and brown eyes; he’s wearing navy and white striped dungarees and a white shirt. If you see him please catch him, hold him, and alert the manager. His mother is very anxious,” came the message (or something like it) over the Tannoy system throughout the multi-storey store.
Anxious! I was beside myself with worry. I flew around, and up and down every floor of the store to no avail; then, my heart racing, I went out onto the pavement of the busy main street and zig-zagged my way into every shop in the vicinity. I met a police constable (those were the days that policemen patrolled the streets) and he assisted me in my search. He had a walkie talkie and had soon alerted all the “Bobbies” and all the other shops in Exeter. Everyone in the city centre was on the hunt. After about ten or fifteen frantic minutes a call came through on the walkie talkie and the Bobby smiled.
“They have him,” he assured, “a member of staff spotted him up in the car park at the back of the shop.”
So I guess that Annalise is quite normal and not hyper-active. I suspect that she has a busy nature and just gets rather bored.
“Anyone for shopping?”
And if you’re feeling a bit lost or out of step with this modern world you might like to listen on YouTube to Jordan Peterson, philosopher and Psychology professor at Toronto University. Just click on the links below.
”Self–regulation is the ability to act in your long-term best interest”. Dr. Jordan BPeterson talks about …
Dr. Jordan B Peterson shares valuable advice for people who seek to regain control of their lives. It’s a …
I was feeling unusually disconcerted yesterday when I went out shopping in Brighton, where I’m staying for a few days with my son James, his wife Jaimy, and three week old Penelope “Sweet Pea” Porch (who wasn’t due to arrive for another three and a half weeks!).
“That’s strange,” I thought to myself, “why do I feel so peculiar?”
Then I realised that the streets were full of young people, especially late teenage girls, and I had the unpleasant notion that I was the oldest person out and about in Brighton. It was most demoralising I can tell you. I can’t say that I’ve ever felt old before and the prospect seemed daunting. Now that I’m a grandma, will anyone notice? My sister, Mary, was just thirty-eight when she became “Granny” – and she still doesn’t look old.
Suddenly, I was scrutinising people passing by on the pavement. There were hordes of girls, some in laddered fishnet tights under miniskirts (must be all the rage), many in black leggings and multi-coloured tops; there were redheads, yellow-heads, black-heads, white-heads and blue-heads, and some with hats; there were tattooed girls, pierced girls, highly made up girls; they were tall and leggy, short and broad in the beam, hippy types and city types. I wondered why nobody was working at such an hour. How heartening it was to see a black man of around twenty-five – he had dreadlocks and a big smile. Hooray, there were a couple of bearded chaps with very neat hair, perhaps thirty years old and wearing checked trousers like Rupert Bear! A ginger-haired man of about forty-five disembarked from his bike and looked side-ways at me, without speaking (they don’t speak unless invited to in these parts but when you initiate a conversation they are inordinately pleased).
An old man in his sixties (an exception to the rule) approached and offered to recite a poem for a coin – “For a hostel” – and seemed disappointed at the sight of a paltry one pound coin; nevertheless, he honoured his promise with a poem about his foot, which was quite good (the poem, not the foot – he had a gammy foot!). I was pleased to meet the old man… until I conjectured that he was probably much younger than he appeared, considering his circumstances. It was with some excitement that I spotted a middle-aged woman walking towards me, not that I could see in detail from that point but she had a figure and walk that denoted a certain amount of age. As she neared I noticed that she was wearing face paint other than make-up – a curly yellow pattern painted on the bridge of her nose and ending in flourishes on her cheeks. Also, she wore a bright green and yellow silk scarf tied around her head and knotted at the front – rather like the “Mammy” in “Gone With the Wind”. It didn’t go with her harem trousers and I thought she might have been slightly bonkers. Then I laughed to myself… I was wearing royal blue harem pants myself!
To avoid being downhearted I took to photographing any, and every, person over forty in the streets of Brighton. I ended up with about ten. Incidentally, I was not walking aimlessly – I was looking for the “Waitrose” supermarket but I couldn’t find it. Well on the way to the next town of Hove, at last I decided to ask someone for directions. A couple of ladies, one quite old, had stopped to chat (how unusual!) and so I interrupted them.
“Excuse me,” I said (they were thrilled that I, too, had stopped), “I wonder if you could direct me to Waitrose?”
“Oh,” beamed the older lady, “it’s quite a way. Just jump on a bus and it’s the next stop. Do you see that bus up there? Waitrose is the building with the scaffolding on.”
She noticed the look on my face and added:
“No, you could walk.”
Thank goodness – the old lady recognised, rightly, that I was quite young enough to easily walk the hundred metres up the road to Waitrose!
There was a problem at the sorting office and a very old stork called Caesar was brought in for the extra-special delivery. Unusually, the tiny parcel, weighing in at 4lbs 12ozs, arrived seven and a half weeks early and is stopping over at the Royal Sussex for a bit of V.I.P. treatment before going home.
Penelope Zsa Zsa Kashmir Porch is exceedingly beautiful, as you can see, and has long slim legs and big feet (she has something of her grandmother about her – the big feet, not the slim legs!).
Both she and her mum are doing well and, in a couple of weeks, I shall be winging my way up to Brighton to lend a hand, and love and hug her. I’m so pleased that I shall be known as “Bebe” instead of Granny, and Chris will be called “Baba” (not to be confused with Baa Baa! Although he is a lamb.) And should Penelope ever become a film star she can easily drop a couple of her names…
Whilst talking about our gorgeous new-comer’s glamorous name my sister, Mary, was reminded of an interview between the beautiful actress Zsa Zsa Gabor and the Irish interviewer Terry Wogan many years ago, which she said went something like this…
– “So Zsa Zsa, how many times have you been married?
– “Eight times Darlink. Do you know that all of my husbands accused me of being a bad housekeeper? But I proved them all wrong – I kept all of the houses!”
– “I’ve only been married once and I’m still with my wife.”
– “Really? Oh you poor man!”
Something very sweet happened to me last week. Chris and I were just coming home from a small shopping adventure at our local Sainsbury’s. Chris had rushed ahead of me and flew down the steps before I had even reached our gate. I was about to go through the open gateway when I turned and noticed a lady walking with a tiny tot wearing reins. The toddler caught my attention because she was rather tall but she had a nearly bald head like a much younger baby. Also, the dear little mite looked right at me in the unabashed way of an innocent who has not yet learned the social mores.
“Hello,” I said smiling.
Would you believe that the tot toddled over to me, put her arms around my legs and snuggled up to me? I was rather overwhelmed with the urge to pick her up and give her a big kiss but I wasn’t sure what her mum would think so, instead, I patted her little bald pate and, seeing that her mother was smiling, I bent down to kiss the scant hair above an ear.
“What’s her name?” I asked.
“Dot…Dotty,” she said.
I suddenly had a childhood memory of the cartoon character “Little Dot”; it took me back to the time when I was nine and had just had my appendix out. I could hardly move in my hospital bed for fear that my wound would open up and I was reading “Little Dot”. The cartoon Dot was dying of thirst in a desert when she saw a cactus and cut it open for the water… Cartoon Dot awoke with a start from her desert dream as she realised she was just about to eat the cactus pot plant on her bedside table! That had me in stitches! Isn’t it funny what strange things come back to us years later? Just because of a name…
The real little Dot didn’t have a red dress with black polka dots – she was wearing a pink baby dress over grey leggings and she wore pink shoes. Dotty was looking through the open gate at the view of the sea between the rooftops. I picked her up that she might see better the sunshine glittering on the water.
“She loves the sea,” said her mum.
“Well I must go Dotty,” I said, putting Dot down on her own two legs. (Yes, I know you might think I’m dotty already!)
The darling girl took me by the hand and told me, without the need for words, that she wanted to go for a walk with me. Ah, so sweet…
And in early July my son’s little girl is due to enter the world. James and Jaimy say they’ll be happy to let Penelope come down to Devon from Brighton and stay with Grandma and Grandpa when she is old enough. But I won’t be able to introduce Penelope to “Little Dot” from the comic – they finally stopped producing them in 1984.
I couldn’t resist putting in this image of Edvard Munch’s iconic painting, which pretty well sums up the way I felt earlier in the day when I was waiting at the doctors surgery.
As per usual I found a chair as remote from the waiting throng as possible (well you don’t want to pick up any germs – do you?). My chosen seat was in a niche at the top of the stairs leading down to the lower section, but still on the middle level and separated from the main waiting room by a wall above the stairwell; therefore I was protected not only from the germs, but also from the sight of most of the other patients. My spot afforded me a view of just two patients sat opposite on the far wall and I could see the comings and goings through the doorway to the doctors’ rooms. Before sitting down I picked up a bowel cancer screening leaflet.
Some minutes later I was thinking that perhaps I should ring and ask for a testing kit when I heard a nasty cough emitted by an elderly man behind the wall. After flinching somewhat at the sound of loose phlegm I recovered my composure and almost smiled to myself – how sensible I had been in choosing such a good spot; okay, the sound travelled rather too well through the waiting room wall but I was at least safe from those horrid germs. Bored with all the health warning brochures I went over and chose reading matter from a pile of magazines beside the bald young man directly opposite me (he didn’t look too ill).
Soon it was hard to concentrate on the “Woman” magazine, not only because I didn’t have my reading glasses with me and I had to squint, but mainly due to a loud and high-pitched scream behind the wall. My hands went instinctively to my ears to protect my eardrums from the piercing noise. The screaming persisted and no chiding or soothing sounds came from behind the wall. I surveyed the faces of the two men on the bench seats opposite me. Each kept his head down, perhaps in the hope that the noise would cease if they paid no heed. The older man (with plenty of hair) glanced momentarily my way and stifled a chuckle. I was still holding my ears like the subject in the painting of “The Scream”.
With my hands planted firmly beside my face I began to read the article on my lap. I was attracted by the large print in the title – “WHAT IS MISOPHONIA?” I laughed aloud (no-one could hear over the young child’s piercing screams anyway). The first sentence read:
“Misophonia is an intolerance of sound and sufferers have specific symptoms and triggers that can set them off.”
The stolen page…with a couple of extra photographs.
