I am in the prosses of sorting out another story for you all to read, but this one will not be about Malta, it's about the Far East, and what happened to a young sailor who joins his first ship, so my friends you have that to come as from hopefully Sunday or Monday, as I said, I do like to write, and having this blog sort of gives me the chance to put down all my thoughts and ideas. As I sit here at my tiny desk with my laptop, and it's not the most expensive, in fact, it is an H.P. and there cheapest model, which means I have to switch it on at least a good 15 minutes before I can use it, and even then it takes time to get it to find the blog site. But as I have said, the wife and I are old age pensioners, and we live life according to our means. I think I told you all that we live in a one bedroom flat, that for us is very comfortable and sat in my chair looking around, I can see everything. Maureen's grands glass cabinet from the war years, the Chinese whatnot that was given to me by my brother, when mother died, everything that was Chinese was split within the family, my sister had the chest, My brother had the bureau, which his wife hated, said it was a dust trap, and I had the whatnot and the coffee table, all these pieces of furniture are made of rosewood and each one is dated and stamped with the maker's name, and the wife just loves the whatnot, when we used to go to Malta for holidays, we would always come back with some Phoenician glass, we now have 7 pieces in our collection, each piece is unique can never be copied. One year we went to Malta flying out from Birmingham, and as I said, we came back with another piece of the glass, only this time it was a set of teardrop bottles, anyway they were both wrapped up in Malta and placed into a box that we placed on top of the suitcase amongst the black bag of dirty washing, the box, by the way, was sealed. anyway getting back into Birmingham after our 14 day holiday we were called over to the customs desk. The customs officer was Indian and demanded that I opened the box, I showed him the seal on the box, but he insisted that I open it, I refused saying. "If you want to open that box, you do it yourself, but I must advise you, if you break or damage the contents, I require a replacement exactly the same in every detail. After some time arguing, a British customs officer turned up, he looked at the seal on the box and the label and told me to close the suitcase and carry on. As the two customs officers walked away I heard the British officer say to the Indian, you fool, had you broken the contents of that box, that man could have demanded hundreds of thousands of pounds from us, each piece of Phoenician glass is hand blown, and each piece is different. Once the glass was safely at home, it was put with the other pieces we have onto the whatnot. The wife dusts the shelves every week, and the glass plus other things are carefully removed and then replaced. and the whatnot has remained in the same place for years, we did try putting it in a different part of the lounge, but it never really worked, so it always came back to its original resting place. It's like the two paintings we have on the wall, one is called sunset, and the other is morning sunrise, both paintings are of Chinese junks coming out of Hong Kong, mother always told me, they were worth £5.000 each, but looking back to the 60s when mother was given them as a present, I did a bit of mathematics, back in the 60s a Hong Kong dollar was worth 1 shilling and 3pence, 16 dollars to the pound in old English money, so I now believe that the 5,000 that mother was on about was Hong Kong dollars and not pounds sterling, but as the two paintings are now over 50 years old, I suppose when the wife and I depart this world, they will be worth something and help with funeral costs, unless of coarse someone in the family decides they like them and claims them for themselves. I won't really care, I won't be around to see the squabbling over a painted piece of canvass.
As I also look around the room, I can see pictures of my wife and I and my two step granddaughters who are fantastic, out of the wife family they are the ones who have always kept in contact, as for the two boys, well they had no wish that I married there mother, they both felt that Maureen should go back to her first husband and live under a life of him coming home, getting dressed up and going out with other women, making her work to keep food on the table for the whole family including him, he would spend his money on booze and gambling, £100 on a so called certainty that comes in unplaced. So Maureen refused, and instead married me, a man she could trust and one who was willing, at the supermarket checkout to toss her his wallet to pay for the food bill. And 33 years down the line, I still do it. Every year when I was working, we would go to Plymouth, and I would as I call it top and tail her, this meant, new underwear, a skirt dress or trousers, her choice, tights socks and shoes or boots again her choice, and then the main item, a topcoat, while out we would have a nice lunch, and if in most cases we left home early, we would have breakfast on route. and sometimes we would head to Plymouth twice a year.
So why would Maureen go back to what she had just to please her two sons, so now, they don't get in touch even though they live within 5 miles of her. But now she feels that to them she is a mother in name only and that is all, she has accepted my family as her own and must say, she loves them all because she is treated with respect and is shown love by them. I must admit, I am talking about my sister, not my brother, he is a different story that I would rather not talk about, except to say we see each other about once every 7 years, we don't talk on the phone, and the last time he came anywhere near me, was believe it or not during the pandemic and he stood on my patio grass and we spoke for 10 minutes before heading back to Bristol where he lives. Anyway, that's it for now, I will sort out the next story, and we will start that on Sunday or Monday. Stay safe, and take care.
Comments