Coming Home

It was my last week in Paris then I was coming home.

Paris had been my home for two years, and I was beginning to feel that Paris was my home, my real home. I had done all my growing up there, it had been my refuge.

I fled to Paris after a bad experience and it had become a place of adventure and new beginnings from which I emerged older, wiser and able to face the world of home.

Paris is a beautiful city, its architecture, skylines and the vibrant cultural undercurrents were, to me, an elixir which I drank in thirstily every day. Even the bad days were better lived in this atmosphere of upbeat celebration of the good life.

Everything was booked. Eurostar would take me to St Pancras; a night spent in a London bed and breakfast; then a train to Beeston, Nottinghamshire, would take me home to Granny, who had already taken delivery of a large crate containing most of my belongings which had been shipped by Norbert Dentressangle and paid for by my American employers.  

Some of the Americans’ friends were travelling back with me, so I would have company, very good company as it turned out to be, and my last days in Paris were spent enjoying the sights with them, including my first trip ever up the Eiffel Tower.

I had numerous memories, mostly good ones, and felt reluctant to leave Paris, but that time had come to shed my chrysalis and fly free in the sunlight.

Jean T

Grandma’s accessories

My gran was a Justice of the peace (JP) and a County Councillor (CC), also a District Councillor. And a mother of one. She was unable to have more children and so threw herself wholeheartedly into useful and public work.

She had never been a one for glitz and baubles – tatt she called it, but during her period of office she had to look good when she was being followed by a camera. This happened at least twice weekly.

Her big thing was hats. She had a good head for hats and most hats suited her. She mostly wore the round variety, like an upturned plant pot, wider at the brim, narrow across the crown, but she also favoured boater-style hats, dish shaped ones and the smaller round stand-up hats like the ones the Queen wears.

Her colours were never outlandish, always muted - shades of green, pink, black white and grey - to match the formal outfit for the occasion which was usually a suit or dress and coat.

Gran had numerous handbags and even more shoes. The formal shoes matched the handbags, and, even if it was an evening photocall, had to be put on when she got up in the morning. She suffered from swollen ankles

and would never have been able to squeeze her feet into the shoes after lunch. Her everyday shoes were infinitely more varied in size, shape and colour, so that she had shoes that would fit every stage of the swelling ankles.

Jewellery was not important to her, with the exception of her chain of office, and her taste in jewellery was, like her political stance, conservative. Nothing flashy for my Granny. She preferred marcasites to diamonds and silver to gold. The only rings she wore (and never took off) were her plain silver wedding ring and engagement ring with 5 marcasites in a line. Her very few brooches were elegant but unremarkable, as were the 2 necklaces she occasionally wore.

I have most of her jewellery, and wear it sometimes, especially a brooch which was her favourite.  As a small child I loved to entertain the grownups by dressing up as Granny, with her hats, handbags, shoes and jewellery, and I am sure that I looked just as silly in them as she looked elegant.

Jean Taylor, June 2021

All Bloody and Torn Apart

It was during 1984, when I was driving my mother to Hinckley Hospital (where my father was undergoing a small operation) that an unexplained event occurred.

It was a dark and wet night and the country road ahead was illuminated by the headlights of my then new Datsun 100A car.

Passing through a heavily wooded area, I was suddenly obliged to brake hard as a ‘brown shape’ loomed into view, impacted with the front offside wheel, and then struck the driver's door with a huge thump.

Having stopped and made reassuring comments to Mum, I walked back down the road to investigate the incident.

I was expecting to find a large dog in the centre of the road, dead, all bloody and torn apart.

To my amazement I found nothing at all, and after a few minutes I returned to my car quite puzzled.  The only evidence that anything had happened was a huge dent in the driver’s door.

As required by law, I filed the event with Loughborough Police the following day, but I heard no more.

David Taylor