Grandmotherly wisdom

Over on Bread and Roses, Dulce domum writes about the sound advice our grandmothers gave about food and nutrition. The wisdom that was passed from one generation to the next became a victim of modern living. Who wants to spend time preparing fresh vegetables when they can buy cheap processed food? Who lives close enough to their granny nowadays to listen to advice in the first place? However, as DD demonstrates, scientists keep proving that the old wisdom was sound and we would do very well to heed it.

A few weeks ago I decided to try to live on the wartime fare that my parents had to endure. I have been keeping to it for 4 or 5 days each week. Now that I have got into the habit of soaking beans overnight and preparing very large vegetable stews so that I don't have to spend hours in the kitchen every day, I am getting on quite well. Not only is it very economical but I am steadily losing weight without ever feeling hungry!

A recent study showed that half of the women prescribed the life-saving breast cancer drug Tamoxifen fail to take it. From my own experience and from talking to fellow patients, I think one of the main reasons for this is the associated weight gain. My oncologist used to say, 'It's only a pound' when I complained to him each month. 'Only a pound' a month for five years is an awful lot of weight. I did take my medication for the full 5 years - to the day - and it has been much more difficult to lose the weight than it was to put it on. But my wartime diet is helping and I am hoping to get back to my pre-Tamoxifen weight before too long.

I was asked for some grandmotherly advice myself today: Millie's Mum asked me for some fish recipes suitable for the baby, who is now 8 months old and happily eating everything she is offered. I made a simple fish pie with cod, mashed potato and steamed vegetables for her when I was visiting and froze lots of tiny portions, but I think they are running out. If anyone has any other suggestions, I'm sure Millie and her Mum would be grateful. My wisdom is a bit limited, I can't remember when I introduced other varieties of fish into my children's diet and the wartime book mentions only salt cod, not only hard to find these days but probably not suitable for babies.

Friendship

I haven't had the time or the inclination to add anything to Random Distractions in the last few days because I have been preoccupied by the sudden death of a dear friend. I am shocked and saddened but I have many happy memories from our long friendship and this unexpected event has made me stop and think about the importance of friends in my life. Whether they are long-established, newly-formed or even 'virtual', friendships are to be treasured.

Let us be thankful for the precious gift of friendship
for the people who accept us as we are
love us even in our least attractive moments
help us laugh at ourselves and laugh at life
encourage us, support us, believe in us, value us.
Let us never take friendship for granted
but tend it as a beautiful plant.
(adapted from a liturgy of the Iona Community)

Summer of '62

My sister has been sorting through some boxes belonging to our mother and found this 1962 cutting from the local newspaper, showing the country dance group I belonged to at school. I am in the front row, third girl from the right. I well remember those skirts with the petticoats that we used to stiffen by soaking in a mixture of sugar and water. I am not so hot on remembering the names of all the girls in my class. To think that we are all now drawing our pensions!

Racing for Life

Early in 1994, my parish priest asked me to call on a woman who had breast cancer. "She needs a friend but won't let anyone near her," he said, "perhaps she'll talk to you." That's how I came to meet the most beautiful, vivacious, intelligent and angry woman who was Angela. She had been treated for breast cancer ten years earlier but it had been secretly spreading through her body and now it was too late for further treatment. She was going to die but she wasn't going quietly!

The one thing I'm good at is listening; Angela ranted and threw me out but I kept going back for more and gradually we developed a friendship that is still painful in its loss. I would take her to stand at the top of Baggy Point and together we would scream out to sea, at the cruelty and injustice of this awful disease. This helped her and I recommend it as a way of releasing all that pent up anger and fear. We had several relatively calm months when we put together a book of memories for her daughter and any future grandchildren there might be. she never gave up her anger but some of the fears were addressed.

Then on, January 9th 1995, I was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of breast cancer. On the way to the hospital for surgery the next morning, I forced my husband to call at Angela's house so that I could tell her myself. Our roles were reversed, she now became the strong partner in our friendship; as her condition deteriorated she urged me to fight for her sake as well as mine. She died on 4th November 1995. I'm still here and not a day goes by without my thinking of her. She ensured that by giving me the jug pictured at the top of this post; she called it 'the ugliest jug in the world' but most precious to her because her parents had bought it on their honeymoon in Italy and now most precious to me.

I always wonder why I have survived and many women, like Angela, have not. The treatments available have improved but there is still much more to be discovered and understood. Everyone is touched by cancer at some point in their life, either personally or through family or friends. Everyone has a story to tell and some, like Juliet on the Muddy Island, get into action. She is preparing (in her inimitably amusing fashion) for the Race for Life, raising funds for research into cancer. If you would like to boost her morale during the last few days of her training, you might like to pop over to the Island and leave her an encouraging comment and maybe even boost her fund-raising. We survivors and all who follow will be forever in your debt.

Liverpool - city of culture

Martin Edwards' post about his visit to the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool unleashed a whole set of memories of the four very happy years I spent in Liverpool in the early 1970s. I taught and lived in the residential School for the Deaf at Childwall until my marriage in 1973, when we moved into a flat in the lovely riverside district of Grassendale.

After moving to Hampshire in 1974, I found it was impossible to convince anyone that Liverpool was a city full of magnificent buildings, beautiful parks, theatres, art galleries and concert halls; a place where the people were friendly, witty and welcoming. Apart from football teams and the Beatles, most people associated Liverpool with dockyard unrest and slums and the Toxteth riots of 1981 marked the end of my public admission of a past association with the city.

So, thanks to Martin, I've been back to my photograph albums and scrapbooks and I have spent a very happy weekend recalling some of the many historic buildings I used to visit: the Walker Art Gallery, St George's Hall, Speke Hall, the cathedrals and museums. We often saw plays at the Everyman Theatre in Hope Street before they went on to success in the West End and we saw some of the world's leading orchestras and guest conductors at the impressive art deco Philharmonic Hall.
In my scrapbook for 1973, I found a programme (price 5p) for a concert at 'the Phil' for 14 February. I can recall it very vividly because it was the first real 'date' I had with the man I have now been married to for 35 years. Sir Charles Groves was the principal conductor at the time and he conducted the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in Handel's Concerto Grosso in G, and Beethoven's Symphony No 7. The second half of the concert probably secured our relationship, revealing our shared appreciation of the absurd: Elgar Howarth conducted the London Sinfonietta, playing Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, with Mary Thomas as the reciter. Giant black moths, cranium drillers and 'cheeeeeeeeese cake' have become part of the vocabulary of our personal-history.

Here is a taste of Pierrot Lunaire for anyone who wants to know the basis of a long and lasting, frequently absurd marriage, which all began in that city of culture:

Breast cancer - trusting your instinct

Kylie Minogue has made a courageous statement about the initial misdiagnosis - perhaps more accurately, missed diagnosis - of her breast cancer. She tells how she was assured that she was 'fine' just weeks before being diagnosed with cancer.

It isn't easy to speak openly about one's personal encounter with cancer for a number of reasons: the story is never entirely personal because one's family and friends are affected; the successful survivor feels for those who were less fortunate so celebration is always tempered with sadness; most people experience tremendous support and care from their medical team and fear that speaking out about any negative aspects would make their gratitude seem false or would undermine the great work that they do.

Kylie's message should not be seen, therefore, as a criticism of the wonderful care she had but as a warning to women and to the medical profession that the diagnostic tools that are used are not foolproof. Instinct, intuition and fears should be taken seriously. Early-stage cancers do not always show up in mammograms but most of the women I have spoken to 'knew' they had breast cancer before the medics could detect it.

I went to see my doctor in December 1994 because I had found a breast lump. My doctor couldn't feel it and thought I was having empathetic symptoms because I was closely involved with a friend who was dying of breast cancer. He agreed to refer me to the hospital but he obviously didn't consider the case to be urgent because I didn't get an appointment until 10th January 1995. By the time I saw the surgeon, the tumour was the size of a tennis ball and urgent surgery was carried out the next day to remove it. Unfortunately the cancer had spread and two more lots of radical surgery followed and then a year of aggressive chemotherapy.

I don't normally speak about my experience because I am so grateful for the care I had from the surgeon and his specialist team, the Macmillan nurse and hospice staff who supported the whole family through a traumatic year and the continuing support they give me for the secondary lymphoedema that developed after the second operation. Had my GP acted more promptly things might have been different, we all know that early diagnosis and treatment offer the best chance of survival and usually involves less invasive treatment. I certainly don't blame him - I think doctors are wonderful and I know how difficult early diagnosis can be - also, he is a personal friend and I know how much he blames himself; but I know that he always errs on the side of caution now when patients suspect something might be wrong.

So well done, Kylie, for speaking out. I hope your honesty will encourage women to trust their instincts and to ask for further investigations if they are concerned.

For a bit of breast cancer awareness with an element of fun go and read Juliet's Tackled Pink post on Musings from a Muddy Island.

Easter meditation

I love this time of the solemn celebration of Easter. It is the most important period of the Christian year and, for me, a time for contemplation. I often use pieces of poetry, sometimes just a few lines or even a single image, when meditating. Among my favourite poets are T.S. Eliot, Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Donne.

Today, I have been thinking of these words from the end of Eliot's Little Gidding:

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

Happy Easter to everyone.