I am carrying on

I am London, Yorkshire and Crewe

I am British, Italian, and Jew

I am Catholic, Irish and Dutch

I am this and that, I am much

I am born from survivors and skivers

I was bred from majorettes and taxi drivers

I am sugar, bread and tea

I am all these things you see

I am bleach, smoke and dirt

I am cosy words and hurt

I am rock, rap and pop

I am everything and I won’t stop!

I am velvet, coir and leather

I am lavender, hollyhock and heather

I am heavy but my heart is light

I am everything in sight

I am a library, a kitchen, a spa

I am going places, far!

I am sunshine and the rain

I am humour though inane

I am dreaming and I am real

I am carrying on until…

Just Tina

That poem earlier today, yes, it was meant to be a little grating; it reflects every time I hear my name in the form of Teen or just hearing my name Tina makes me cringe.

I’ve always hated my name, because of two main reasons;

The first one is that my mother always referred to me as Teen when she wanted a cup of tea as she felt it was funny and cute to associate me as Tina the tea maker, cuppa tea Teen, go on?  She wasn’t offering, it was her way in telling me to go do it.  I wouldn’t mind, but it made me felt like she named me deliberately to become her tea slave from the age of 7yrs.

The second reason was because my name was deliberately chosen not to be an abbreviation of a larger more formal name because my mother didn’t want me being associated with my father’s aristocratic ancestral past.

Names the family suggested were Martina, Christina (a family name anyway), Valentina or Agustina, anything but not just Tina.  My mum was an inverted snob and deliberately called me Tina, it has been the bane of my life telling new people that no, I’m simply Tina, don’t press around for a formal name you won’t find one here, I wasn’t blessed with one – people tend not to believe me.

My mum wanted to call me Tina-Maria but my aunts said she couldn’t do that to me because that’s an alcoholic drink isn’t it? No Tia Maria, but she understood.  My dad’s side of the family are mostly teetotal devout Catholics and don’t do drinking outside of mass, so the idea of that name combination was horrifying to them!  They always thought my mum was a wild wayward woman! 

Then she said that if she didn’t get her way with calling me Tina then she’d call me Tracey or Denise – which soon shut my dad’s family up because they were the most common names she could think of to make them cringe enough to be a threat to them, so they stayed quiet!

Mum said if they hadn’t of shut up she’d have called me Tracey, my goodness I am glad they kept quiet!

I’ve always hated my name and since moving in with Paul I am either Tina-Victoria as a double barrel first name (combining my first name with the middle name) or I am just Victoria.  I know it makes me sound like a snob, but I am uncomfortable with my proper name, if you can call it a proper name that is!

Henry my son had a funny idea, which if my mother intended for me to be Just Tina, then why not call me Justina?

He said that could be my new name, lol.  I don’t think so!

But it did kind of cross my mind once or twice as a joke on my mum, if I did that!

Because throughout most of my life I was always given the awkward task of explaining “I’m just Tina”!

Thanks for reading! 

Lucky life

My mum was raised in a slum

My dad was a gentleman

Two different worlds they did collide

And I came from them

Two different sides of the coin

I was born and raised

Learned elocution and etiquette

And fought in the street half-crazed

I learned to talk in many tongues

Just to survive, you see

I’m adaptable in every way

Because I had to be

There are many layers to my life

Many people too

Some are good and wholesome

And others will make trouble for you

I have gypsy kin, Italian, Catholic and Jew

Irish, Greek, Dutch and more

But you don’t have a clue

I don’t say these things to seek approval or fill a need

I’m sharing my life story, my culture and my creed

I’m lady and that is true, but I’m also more than that

I can hold my own in any argument, fight or spat

I adjust to what is needed at any given time

I was bred from both pedigree and hardship

I’ve lived through luxury and grime

I’ve held my head above the water and drowned in all the muck

I can’t complain about my life, because it’s filled with luck

And yet there it is in the cold and raw

And you don’t give a fuck!

But I hope you listened and didn’t ignore

My life is genuinely filled with luck!

Memories of granddad

On Twitter today someone randomly asked that if I were fortunate to have known any of my grandfather’s what is the first thing that I would think of when I think about them!

I wanted to say a lot more than I did, because I doted on my granddad!

So I thought it would be a lovely post to share here and I can get to talk about him in more depths, these memories are happy memories, probably some of the few I had growing up – but there are only two things that I remember which were not so happy and none of them were my grandad’s fault at all!

Up until I was six years old I lived next door to my maternal grandparents, Granddad Leslie and nanny or nonna Dolly! 

Between the age of six and nine I never saw them, not once – because my mum moved us away due to a vicious argument which broke into a physical fight she had about my brother and aunt.  The physical fight was in their living room between my auntie Julie and her, it was quite a scary physical fight I never saw because I was at school at the time and honorary auntie Sheila (which is rumoured to really be a third or fourth cousin to us) had to pick me up from school because mum was in hospital over it. 

Both my mum and my aunt had scarring to their faces over that fight.

Before this fight my grandparents were part of my everyday life, I lived in an area in North London where I had a relative almost on every street and there were at least thirty households related to me within that small square mile, everyone else it seemed was some kind of family friend who looked out for everyone!

My granddad was an avid gardener and was always out in his garden talking to me about the flowers and nature and giving me updates on his breeding hobbies of tropical fishes, budgerigars and love birds!  He loved gardening so much he rented four plots at the local allotments (a gardening community) where he’d grow lots of food to share with the whole family. 

My granddad was a greengrocer once, before he lost his business to thugs and he met my grandmother when he was a farm worker on a farm her parents worked on in Enfield.

Sometimes granddad would pass over step ladders for me to climb up high enough for him to reach me to carry me over into his garden to help him with the fish and the birds – mum knew if she couldn’t find me in the garden that I’d be with him or passed onto Sheila who lived on the other side of my grandparents to play with her daughter who was only a year younger than me!

In my street there were four other households of family and only thirty yards away from the house was a shopping complex of ten stores, which whenever we’d pop round the corner for milk you’d have to anticipate forty five minutes before you got home again because of the amount of people you’d meet and talk to on the way!

I remember sitting in the window waiting for people I knew to walk pass the house and telling mum who was there, especially if mum wanted to talk to someone, she’d rush out immediately and they’d talk.  Most of the time she had hoped my older teenage cousins would be passing so she could bribe them to take me to a park or go swimming with them at the community pool nearby!

All of this ended when I was six, from the time mum moved away from all of that I was in pure isolation and I didn’t cope well at all with that arrangement!

My mum was ostracized by most of our family when the fight happened, but there were still people who spoke to us and visited, but only a small margin from that point onwards!

It’s funny to think that because three households crammed together in a line became the forerunner of huge family Christmases – where everyone visited those three houses and kept swapping and changing dining rooms to socialise with as many people as possible on Christmas day, literally eighteen people per house and then going from that to just me, my parents and brothers and a cousin until I was twenty years old.

You can imagine the culture shock and to be honest… no, I have never recovered from the loss.

When I was nine years old I was thrilled to be back in my grandparents lives again, but I didn’t realise at the time it was only meant to have been temporary because my granddad was diagnosed with lung cancer. 

So I have got the horrible bits out of the way now, now it’s time for me to show you what my granddad was like as a person!

My granddad came from Greenwich and he had a very strong husky East End accent, he was a short stocky and muscular man who was half Jewish and half catholic and had tattoos all the way up both arms!  He had a widow’s peak hairline and silver white hair, when I was little I used to think my granddad looked like a mesh between grandpa Munster and Pop-eye! 

Because my granddad smoked a pipe, had muscles, ate spinach had a rough husky voice, and loads of tatts!

He was the most muscular man in the whole family and quite a formidable character too!

He was a true man’s man but he was a man who was out of his time really, because my nanny Dolly didn’t have a domestic bone in her body – he did all the laundry, all the cleaning and all the cooking!  My granddad always said it isn’t my Nan’s fault, she isn’t lazy cocker, he told me – she has had a hard life with her heart troubles so she got spoilt and I am mostly to fault for that he said.

I remember my granddad having two large 6ft fish tanks in the living room and he put them like an L shape to each other and he placed his armchair in the corner facing the TV directly in the opposite corner of the living room he had so he could watching every wrestling show on Sky TV he could!

I would always sit on his knee watching the TV with him, even when I was as old as ten, even when he was dying, I remember that.  Clung to him for dear life, I loved my granddad!  I couldn’t do that with anyone else, he was the only one who’d let me snuggle with him like that and so it was a novelty I relished every time I visited him!

I remember when we had to go home I was often kicking and screaming as I didn’t want to leave him.

My mum was a J-witness off and on growing up, so I didn’t learn much about the families catholic ways, so granddad always tried to put in lessons every now and again for me and got his rosary out and showed me that we moved the beads in prayer, look see…

I wondered how my granddad kept his faith with the Catholic Church when he experienced so much racism growing up – the nuns at the school he went to often gave him a hard time and caned him regularly because they said he was born in sin because his mother was Jewish! 

Growing up with him telling me things like that and he was making excuses for their behaviour and being generally nice about it all – surprised me.  He told me that it never bothered him you see, because Jesus was a Jew and he thought that those nuns were ridiculous for what they were saying about him.  I told mum what he said and she didn’t receive that very well!

But it always stuck in my mind; Jesus was a Jew… wasn’t he catholic then granddad?  That made him laugh so hard it bought on one of those deep dense and awful coughs of his!

My nan would look over and laugh too and then say “Out of the mouths of babes hey Les”?

My nan was in every way similar to Catherine Tate’s nan depiction, honestly, anyone who knew her said that they were sure that the character was based on her!

It still sticks in my mind today… Jesus was a Jew and it was only recently that I learned not only was he a Jew but he was also a fierce rabbi who tried hard to steer people back into the old faith of Judaism as he felt people were losing their way – food for thought I can tell you!

My granddad was a backstreet wrestler and boxer in his youth to earn extra rations and money for the family, he told me. 

My granddad and I had a very similar life to each other in some ways – both of us were into combat sports, both of us were stocky in comparison to the others in the family though only 5ft 4, both of us were deaf due to the same condition (mastoiditis) and both of us were discriminated against for our mixed religious heritage and deafness and both of us loved our gardens!

Granddad was the only person I strongly connected to in most things in the family.

He would often sing to me all kinds of traditional London songs, some for kids and others not!  Bouncing me on his knee and he always greeted me as “Cocker” whenever I visited him – “alright cocker”?  He’d ask as I walked into the room!

Cocker means many number of things to an East Ender – mostly “Mate” or “little cocky one” or “fellow cockney” or something you called your descendants, usually aimed at personal favourites rather than generic – well in my family it was!

He would regularly give me cash in hand money to go the local shops with so he could have private chats with my parents, knowing I’d be gone for up to an hour because the family and extended family would watch out if a kid was going to the shops alone!  There were lots of eyes in those streets and you always felt safe as you knew almost everybody down there!

There was one particular shop I used to love going to a lot and it was a health and safety nightmare for how the candies were stacked in piles around the whole store, but it was a great store with every kind of candy you can think of, chocolates, crisps, sodas and ice-creams – it was called Lucky Sweets and was run by a really lovely and elderly Hindu lady.

My granddad would often talk about the wrestlers on TV and we are related to a wrestler who now has a wrestling family and that was my granddad’s pride and joy in pointing that out to me!

My granddad often bought dinner from the fish and chips shop as well when I visited him; it was always cheaper than it should be because there were rumours that the owner was a distant cousin from our Greek roots as we also have Greek in us.  In fact our Italian relatives from Naples are mostly Greco-Italians they say, but we have had family in Naples since 305BC on both sides of my family actually.

But I do know when I was growing up and visiting my nan a lot when granddad died, that the local teenagers who were not associated with my family in anyway were really nasty to me in the school I went to purely because of the knocked off price of our fish and chips dinner because of family discounts.

My granddad gifted me his budgerigars every couple of years and one of them I loved so much lasted for nearly three years called Bobby.  The other, funnily enough was called Henry.

But when I talk about Henry on my blog, be sure to know it is my son I am on about and not some record breaking old budgerigar – lol!

He is also the reason why I love tropical fish keeping, because to me a house isn’t a home without a tropical fish tank and a dog.  I don’t have a fish tank here… tell a lie… I do… but there is nothing in it because Paul won’t help me set it up.

I always felt safe with my granddad because nobody messed with my granddad and I could tell him anything my mum did to me and knew he would be the retribution she’d get!

When he died she got more cocky about things and wielded it like a power.

I moved in with my grandparents when I was ten years old, for a few months whilst granddad was dying of cancer, until his death.  Then my nan was required to come and stay with us whenever she felt lonely, which was about four times a week until she was hospitalised and died fourteen years later.

When I got the flu when we lived with him, granddad wanted to know how mum took care of me when I was at home and had the flu in the past and I was brutally honest with him about it.  He was not happy and he rang his bell which always sent mum into a panic running into the room to him.  He said, cocker over there isn’t well; she needs a drink of water, not Lucozade!  She went and made a drink, he then rang the bell again and told her that I was hungry and not to just pass me candies but to get some chicken soup into me!  She got angry at this point, but he kept ringing the bell for me and made sure I was cared for properly and not dumped with bags of candies and bottles of Lucozade and left for hours on end like normal!

He defended me even though he hardly had the breath to do it; he had a mischievous nature which I adored!

He got told off really bad by my nan when he used blackmail on my mum by switching his own oxygen off to cause a panic and stir when mum tried to tell him off!  As he did it he winked at me but it really scared me to see that!

I had a nightmare the day before granddad died, I woke up knowing that that day would be his last – even though the doctor said he would have four months at least before that stage came, I was right.

He died three days shy of his birthday and it was supposed to have been a huge family reunion party too – the party still happened but it was more morose than it should have been!

My granddad would be 100yrs old on August 15^th of this year.

Thanks for reading!

Some people kill for suppositions

Some people know what it’s like to be so multicultural that they call you fake

Call you a wannabe, call you a snake

Some people know what it is like to live in different classes, but mostly being poor

Some people call you a fake and they close their doors to you

Some people know what it is like to be fat then thin, then fat again and thin again

Body changing constantly like the tides of the sea

Some people know what it is like to be me

Some people think I can’t possibly be, all these things, that make me, me

A half gypsy grandma with Greco Italian roots who is a quarter cast to boot

Married a half jew that was raised catholic, a cockney with a Welsh grandmother

Clutching rosaries and cursing the church, what a sight, how absurd?

But that was them my maternal side

I have nothing bad to hide

I love my family and they love me

But still society picks on me

Because I am fake, didn’t you know?

I can’t possibly be all the things I know

Even fake still my paternal side

My grandpa who watched the genocides

Whilst smoking pipes in his wheelchair, writing letters like he didn’t care

Calling himself a Christian and a lord some spit at him and some applaud

Is he German or Austrian? I never knew, but my grandma said he could be the two

But she knew he was Italian too, wearing black shirts and doing poo

She was ashamed of him, I am too

She was different, the opposite, with her Dutch roots and Irish eyes smiling, though her hair was dyed, worshipping Jesus and the saints like a good catholic woman

Swimming in the seas of war saving sailors, now that I applaud and dancing with the majorettes, a descendant of the oldest aristocratic family of Europe, the most loving person I could ever know

Teaching me how to speak and grow

Won’t tell me about grandad you know?

I can’t blame her really, can you?

Not if he wore blackshirts supporting poo

But you call me fake, don’t you?

So you don’t believe a word

Because all this mixture is too absurd

My grandma hid a fact from her husband and it was simply this

Her great grandpa was from Vietnam, I imagine he’d be really pissed!

Fascists think they are pure and true and yet they are very wrong

Everyone is related yet they say it’s wrong

I know what it’s like to not be believed

I get it everyday

This is why I don’t talk that much, because I have nothing else to say

I am who I am and I am a mix

But you call me liar, so I’m in a fix

Because I tell the truth, yet you say I lie

But I do not and it makes me cry

My mother skipped from faith to faith

Trying to find her feet

Kept doing this and that, making things hard for me

I decided long ago that the only faith that’s real

Is the old testament and nothing else

Because the new one was written to steal

Steal God’s people away from him

By other liars true

If you think about it, you will see that what I say is true

Most religions stem from the Jews

Isn’t it a funny thing?

How the Jews are the smallest culture

Yet the liar’s faith grows and sings?

Yes the prophets were all good men

But why pray to them so?

Pray to the source, which is God and all the bad things will go

I feel blessed in my life, since I started to pray to source

But you are angry to hear this, I understand of course

A culture that lasted centuries can get set within their ways

I cry for all the lost children

I cry and pray each day

That you will return to God and see what the deceiver has done

Playing cousin against cousin, watching the chaotic fun!

But that is something off my chest

I needed you to know

Because I love you no matter what

You are lost through all the woe

This poem was not meant to preach

But show you all my life

But things have a funny way to show

Who holds a candle and a knife?

I know what it’s like not to be loved

I know what it’s like to hurt

I know what it’s like to have a mother who pushes you away into the dirt

I know what it’s like to have a father who watches what she does

But sits afraid of losing her and sits with you in the mud

I know what its like to love and lose

I know what its like to be alone and bruised

I am tall but I am not strong

So many people have done me wrong

Yet I still love and care for them

Because I believe in Lord Hashem

He’d want me to look after them and show them another way

I know what it’s like not to be heard

But that’s Ok

I am sorry I got a bit carried away with this poem; this poem was the second task from the book “How to grow your own poem” by Kate Clanchy.

This was supposed to be my own version of “Some People” by Rita Ann Higgins.  https://www.lyrikline.org/sl/pesmi/some-people-5711  I must apologise in advance for the swearing that is quite strong in this poem.

But I really do know what it’s like to have such a mix heritage that almost everybody thinks I lie about it to impress them, but I really don’t.  It’s really hard not to talk about your family and their ways when your family has literally been your only life.

I really do feel for people who have got lost in lies.  But the thing is, I understand that the prophets etc that are included in religious rituals were good people too.  I understand that, but religion has deflected away from God so much because they prefer to pray through those prophets and then wonder why things aren’t as blessed as they should be. 

I honestly have known Christians who believe that Jesus is God, some of the more educated understand that he isn’t, but still they pray through him, not directly to God?  Can you imagine how God feels about that?  Especially as the supposed Messiah has not fulfilled their promise told in The Old Testament? 

Did you know when the true Messiah comes to Earth no one can doubt him, not even the tiniest bit?  That when he comes all will feel he is the genuine one and it will cause instant peace on Earth that lasts forever, then after people have seen the Messiah, God himself will come down from heaven and destroy heaven so that Earth becomes paradise?  The Torah says this.  It’s something to think about isn’t it?

It was Gods promise that he would do this.  Thing is, I am not jewish, my great grandmother was, but I was raised in three types of Christianity whenever my mother wanted the change – Anglican, Jehovah’s Witness and Catholic, I never knew what I was supposed to be growing up, that’s why I went and researched religion so much, to find out what the blazes the truth is!

I chose to be a non-participating Noahide until further notice, because I am confused. A Noahide is what Jews call a righteous gentile, a person who wasn’t raised in the Jewish faith properly and who believes in God and prays to him and sometimes they are converted fully into Judaism, some never are. I participate in private prayer to God, but I have not joined any communities yet.

Why? Because I find my relationship with God is a private one and I understand that this world is rife with hate and violence.

Studying every form of religion that stemmed from Judaism and then Judaism itself made things abundantly clear to me; it’s nonsense all these religious wars because everyone who stemmed from Judaism, should still be Jewish, not killing each other over what version of lies they love the best. 

Yes the deceiver is true and real, but I can’t help but think that billions of people can be wrong and duped. 

Even the Jews themselves have sort of lost their way a little, when the Sadducees and Pharisees started changing things, making the original seven laws of God into Ten and then all of a sudden six hundred and thirteen!  How did that happen?

Most Christians I know have no idea that Jesus was even a rabbi, they believe he was just a carpenter, but that is partly true, but also yes, he was a rabbi! 

Honestly I have been there and experienced all this myself and like you, I was astounded at what I found and I was deeply pained in the knowledge that all those who believe in the same God, still fight and kill each other, it’s utterly ludicrous!

A major part of my depression is knowing all of this and crying daily because I see cousin against cousin and for what?  For suppositions, that’s all!  Just mere suppositions!   

I became like my mother in my early adult years, skipping from faith to faith trying to find out why God ignores me and it wasn’t until I decided to connect with my spirit guides and ask them why he ignores me, that they told me one simple thing.

“Have you thought about talking directly to God without going through another entity, not even us, your guides”? 

To be perfectly honest – no I didn’t!

Because so often I was told that God is too busy to listen to all of us hence the angels and the prophets; but don’t you think that this disempowers him? 

Don’t you believe for one second that God has created all of this and he has the time to care for all of it, that he wouldn’t go beyond his own personal limits that he is limitless and will respond?

Because I believe he doesn’t take on more than he can chew personally.  I believe he has the time but the thing is, do you have the heart for it?  Do you have the inclination to respect his wishes from you and treat him with respect and talk to him respectfully like you would any monarch upon the earth?

Don’t talk to him like a beggar would, that’s disrespectful, humble yourself, but don’t beg.  Be mindful of his power, be mindful of his love and don’t try to abuse him in prayer.

You need to pray in a way where you ask him to teach you, ask him to show you things, so you can help yourself, because if there is one thing I have learned about God are that he despises laziness.  He made you in his image remember; would you dare to call God lazy?

He is there to help because he loves you, but he helps you only when you ask him to. 

He doesn’t give you things on a plate, you say “Oh I am so poor” give me some money please”.  No matter how polite you are, that is lazy prayer with no intention of helping yourself.

Instead say this; “Show me a way that I can raise my income without it being boring and affecting my health negatively”, he answers by dreams or synchronicities – signs.

If you are sick do not complain about it to him just ask him “Am I sick because here is something I haven’t learned yet?  Are you preventing something?  Are you trying to slow me down because you are worried that I may be reacting too fast I’d get into trouble?  Or are you trying to show me something else, please gives me signs why I am sick”.  He helps.

I have longstanding problems with my hearing and ear health, when I asked him to show me why this was, apparently in a dream I learned that it was because I was constantly telling people “I don’t want to hear about your problems, I don’t want to hear your criticisms” and I realised God was more or less granting me a wish.

Do you have leg problems or hip problems?  Have you ever flippantly said to other people you need to slow down?  Or you wished you could relax more?

Think about it.

I didn’t mean for this post to be preachy, but I am a water dog in Chinese astrology and I can’t help but flow to what I feel is right at the time… my apologies.

I better stop there.

Thanks for reading and much love to all of you!

Stop contributing to suppression

I am falling down a rabbit hole lately; I feel like I am chasing approval, because there are many issues being raised within the book review and writing community which state certain likes and dislikes regarding various ideologies or classic works of the past – that seem to clash with my own work.

What I mean to say is, I am discovering as time is going on that the Western World is becoming increasingly intolerant to many subjects that is severely stifling not only personal freedoms of speech, but creativity – society is going on a big ban of almost everything collective mind-set, which is dangerous because, intolerance is suffocating the world.

Yes, OK, I understand that certain subjects in literature can be triggering, but you can’t keep sweeping things under the carpet – these things go on in the world and did go on in the world, yes the world changed, but to lock it all away and forget it is dangerous – dangerous because history will repeat itself if it is forgotten.

Yes certain subjects like suicide, rape and violence are horrific and should never ever be glorified, but to ban literature for having those themes will simply make these things manifest further underground and we really don’t want to make things go more underground – these things need to be exposed and these things need to be remembered.

For me personally, my rape and sexual abuse was absolutely horrible and I don’t think I could ever have got over it, if I had not have read other people’s biographical accounts of what happened to them!  It made me feel less alone and understood, before I read those books, I felt like nobody really understands what it is like to be a rape victim.

Same with suicide, if the literary works that contained suicide scenes and biographies of those going through that dark mental state had been banned, I would never have learned to cope with my own dark thoughts – I would have literally have been left in the dark…

Books such as Mein Kampf have been banned in many countries over the years and I have read this book, because I wanted to know why he hated certain people so much.  It did not make me sympathise with him in anyway whatsoever, but it enlightened me to the true horrors of the war with its depths and behind the scene snippets.

There is another book I read called The Women of Hitler, which again, mentioned events that I had no idea went on during the war – it is an eye opener and the scariest thing I have ever read.  The idea that a woman could do the things that they did to babies, it goes against feminine nature.  Absolutely no words can describe how this book made me feel… more than just shocking… I really don’t know what word can describe more than shock for the description of how I felt reading this book!  It is more than horror, for no horror book could ever top what is mentioned and described in this book!

Having very close Jewish blood, it makes me understand why over half the members of my family in my great grandmothers generation decided to become Catholic and pretend that they were never Jewish – this startled many Jewish families into going into hiding on a permanent basis. 

My mother is still terrified about anti-Semitism still existing in the world today, that she begs that I never mention my ancestral past, but I won’t do that.  I am not ashamed of it, I defy the haters.  Paul my partner, is also scared about me getting too involved in my Jewish roots and teaching my son of them – but why?  Why has the world still not accepted a culture that has been around for millennia?

Why are some people still terrified to the extent they deny their roots and urge their friends of those cultures, to abandon those roots too for their own safety sake?

I did not enjoy reading what I read, but it helped me learn a lot about humanity.

It is vital that no area of life and events should ever be banned in literature – the world needs to know – it has a right to know!  And I for one will fight hard and true to ensure that nothing is swept under the carpet and hidden – for those who don’t like it, all I can say is… this shit happens, stop living in cloud cuckoo land!

I am learning more and more classical literature is becoming out of print because it upsets people.  The world shouldn’t be pandered to regarding this, they need to learn!  Future generations need to learn!

If we don’t get a handle on this soon, book burnings are going to be so commonplace, that it will revert society back to the dark ages!  That’s a scarier place to be than those offensive books!

Please, please, please… think about this!

You don’t have to like it, you don’t ever have to give the books a stunning review, in fact do the opposite if it upsets you – but never, ever vouch to hide it!

I said in a recent post – you can tell a lot about an author based on what they write… you don’t have to like them, but you need to know those people still exist, they need to be exposed and they need to be watched.

I don’t mean stalked – just watched, carefully… watch their fans more so… only then will the world stamp out such things.  But do it mindfully, carefully, never with hate and malice and certainly don’t try to supress it… because what happens when people try to suppress others?  It causes anger and anger causes violence and violence turns into bloodshed and war that is what we as a species are trying to prevent.  We are trying to bring peace to Earth; no negativity is going to do that, even if it is so-called positive negativity!  No negativity is ever positive!

So where was I going with this post?

I became a writer because I want to write mostly movies – my second motivation is healing from the crap I have experienced in my own life… so that does that mean?

It means in order for me to heal from what has happened to me, I need to write similar scenes in my stories to get it out there – off my chest, but also into the open to let people understand how certain people think and work…

I have a lot of very useful and needful information to share with the world through my fiction, but I feel as though I can’t do that anymore, because it might upset people.  It is actually damaging my mental health a lot more, because of this feeling of more suppression… a thing I have been fighting against most of my life!

Isolation and suppression!

I had hoped that my descriptions of scenes, though they will be horrible, will also help others who have experienced similar things.  Helped some isolated and supressed people learn how to get away from it and heal – but if my books are going to be rejected by agents and publishers because of awful and ban-able content, how can I do that?  How can I help those people?

How can I heal myself?

It’s fine to be all righteous about taboo subjects in literature when you have never experienced such horrors, but please learn to understand that the world isn’t all about you – it’s about all of us and the whole world! 

Some people need to read it – others don’t, so please don’t suppress those who need it, for your own selfish reasons! 

Because, ultimately, you will be contributing to a world where individualism and freedom becomes rarer and that’s terrifying!

Happy reading…

characterising real people

Sometimes people ask me about my past and what my family was like growing up and there are very simple ways to describe some of the people from that past.  The best way to describe people I have always found was to think of movies and TV series which might be familiar to the person and tell them exactly how I would portray that person based on characters from them, how in ways they are alike to that character and how in ways that they are not.  I have noticed that people relate better to the concept of using known characters rather than telling them about a fresh real person as their traits, it is a strange thing to me.

I am going to discuss today how I would portray my parents and myself and Paul as parents based on known television characters.  I will also tell you how Henry portrays me himself, because it is very interesting to look at other viewpoints rather than always concentrating on the bias opinion – mine.

First up is me, I like to think of myself as this kind of mother…

1. Daniel Hilliard from Mrs Doubtfire and yes, I know this first one is not a female character, it is male, but I don’t think the media portrays mums as fun and flimsy like they do some dad characters and there are mums like him in the world, I know, I believe I am one of them!  I believe it because I am the kind of mother who would throw a party for Henry just for the sake of it; For example, we are planning that the next time we get any spare money to throw an unbirthday Alice in Wonderland themed party for Henry around late autumn some time, not sure if it will be this year, but it is on the cards and we have been making lists for it! I throw caution to the wind if it means fun and making that child happy!  I would indeed hire a city zoo to come onto my property on his birthday if I had the money.  I am very well-known as well to forget the bedtime regime entirely by two hours because we are having too much fun together.  Some people will call this irresponsible; I call it creating happy memories!
2. Kirsty Allsop, I know she isn’t a character, she is a real life person herself, but to me that counts. I am a very creative person who loves nothing better than to just simply make things, just because.  Anything from homemade felt making to sugar craft animals, sewing, knitting and more.  I am also addicted to carboot sales, markets and country fairs.  Every special occasion deserves new handmade decorations and baked from scratch goods and this is something Henry and I try to do on my good days.  Any reason whatsoever to make crafts, bake cakes or trying new recipes and yes, my Henry will sit down and embroider and knit with me, he loves it and often insists we do it!  We often invent our own board games too.  We once created a Harry Potter board game based on the spells from the movies and made a good game out of it – Henry wants us to sell it, but I said we can’t because of copyright issues.  We also have a different version of beetle we play, it is teddy bears.
3. Third person I would consider myself to be perhaps, Aunt Adelaide from Nanny McPhee. I can be very (in some people’s opinions) too strict about certain rules of etiquette and traditions.  There is a certain manner people must uphold and if my child is slack there are usually ramifications and readjustments!  I am a stickler for pronunciation which is similar to Aunt Adelaide and I am also country hardy and so you can imagine how it drives me around the twist being in bed so much and ill.  I would never call myself posh and I am not too bothered by loose vowels as she would call it, but I do get rather irked if water and other mispronounced words are misused.  Henry deliberately mispronounced words because he likes riling me up a lot!  He will purposely over emphasise war-ah when he asks for water and if he is not doing that, then he is licking his knife and using the knife as a spoon.

Henry views me differently but not much.  He believes I am like these characters…

 

1. Mrs Mason from Grandpa in my pocket, a mother who is always starting a new hobby, a new language lesson, a new craft project and so forth and a mother who always smiles even when she is in pain and poorly.
2. He believes I am also like Mary Berry, a mother who bakes nice things occasionally, speaks well, dresses nicely and is glamorous and friendly.
3. He also thinks I am a lot like Rosemary Shrager, a country woman who cooks, talks nicely, a little on the large side and tolerates no funny business! He also believes she is a traditional lady who tries to uphold traditions as much as possible; he enjoys watching both her and Mary.  Upon reflection I suppose I am like Rosemary Shrager because I like countryside living, I am often abrupt and assertive and quite aggressive in the kitchen and just like Rosemary I will sometimes gesticulate with the knife I am using which often worries people!  Paul would even add I am a lot like Fanny Cradock in the kitchen too!  I am quite proud of that actually because I would love nothing better than to be an amalgam of Fanny Cradock, Penelope Keith and Rosemary Shrager. 

I can almost hear my grandmother saying “Hoity Toity” in the background at this confession.

How I view Paul as a father. 

1. A Ray Mears sort of person, he often takes Henry on long walks and discusses certain survival techniques and so forth, what wild things are to eat, such as identifying dock and complaining about the rubbish he finds in hedge groves, teaching (and rightfully so) about being environmentally aware, how rubbish harms nature and us and how it is all a big cycle.
2. He is also a lot like Gordon Ramsey; as much as he would hate me say it. No, Paul doesn’t swear at all, never heard him do it – but what is similar in my opinion is how he spends time teaching Henry how to cook and will often teach Henry how to complain about things when he is out and about to get things done or corrected.  He doesn’t like being taken advantage of when money is concerned and Paul is a very health and safety conscious person who will complain if he feels a company has something about them which is unsafe to the public, Paul has earned a lot of local respect for this.
3. Despite the walks and the cooking and moral lessons, there is also a lot of Abraham Simpson in him too. Grandpa Simpson from the Simpsons, I say this only because Paul can be overly critical with Henry, often ignores the best things about Henry and because he is too busy with chores and caring for me, Henry can sometimes get side-lined and doesn’t get to have too much personal time with Paul outside of the kitchen and walks.  He complains a lot about most things too. In general.

How I view my own mother as characters.

1. She is very much like two similar characters in one, Carrie’s mother from the novel Carrie by Stephen King and The mother from The People under the Stairs. My mother uses religion to justify how she treats me.  She gets very aggressive about her religion a lot of the time and talking about her roots.  (I suppose it is because she really does believe she lives in sin because she is the result of a mixed religion marriage).  My mother’s ancestry on her side alone means she is born of three religions.  My grandfather was considered a sinner by the catholic school he went to, because his mother was Jewish and converted to Catholicism when she married my great grandfather.  My grandfather from this marriage married an Anglican Christian to make matters worse and my mother often spoke of how the church viewed the family.  Because of the mix of religions in my family, I often asked questions which apparently I shouldn’t have.  For example, why do you hate and blame the Jews for killing Jesus when Jesus himself was a Jew?  I never got a proper answer only that it is absolutely correct that they killed Jesus and my questions could send forth the wrath of God and I was told to shut up lest I curse the house we are in with Gods temper.  Social isolation was also another factor, though not as severe as Alice from People under the stairs, but it was still very difficult to live shut away a lot of the time.  Ironically in the past few months, I have shut myself away because of illness; I just can’t even get downstairs these days let alone go out and to think, I ran away from my mother aged 27yrs to get a life and socialise only for fate to be as cruel as her and make me bedbound.  She is also a closet/hypocritical racist, I say hypocritical because she will socialise with other races but behind closed doors she is vicious in her criticisms of them and their races.  Which again is hypocrisy as I found out last year that my great grandmothers, grandmother from 1840 was an American mixed race black/white lady from Boston from nans side of the family.  Nan had always said we aren’t all as white as we seem, I haven’t found the evidence of the Hindu great grandfather yet though, like Nan claimed we have. 
2. Second character she is like is Jane Fonda from Monster in Law.  She really does struggle giving any of her children, to another person that they may love.  She does everything in her power to stop them from creating and maintaining a relationship.  She isn’t like this with Robbie because when a relationship broke down when he was very young he was extremely distressed and Robbie being her favourite child, she couldn’t cope with that, but to hell with the rest of us.  Robbie has to be happy, us others however, well, not unless she agrees first and my mother has always let it be known to me, she will never agree to any relationship that I want and any grandchildren I may give her are unwanted because she feels that I am a foolish person to have children as they will ruin my life!  So that’s what she thinks about us deep down huh?  Yes, people have seen my mother supposedly dolt on Henry and spoil him when he was born, but it wasn’t without its venom behind closed doors with me.  The things she said were evil, such as when I said I am too sick to have more children she practically threw a party and said great, I don’t want you having more, I hope you do have that problem!  When I announced my pregnancy with Henry, my dad congratulated us happily and he was admonished by her and she turned to me and called me a stupid girl and gave me a long rant about how much I have damaged any future I may want.  She often opened cupboards to accidentally on purpose hurt Paul in the early days of our relationship and tried to scare him and several other boyfriends before him off by mentioning the time I was in a children’s asylum failing by the way, to tell them she was the reason I was in it.
3. The next character is another male character which really does represent my mother a lot and that is Robert De Niro in Meet the parents. She would stalk and investigate anyone in my life, she must approve of anyone in my life for any relationship to work and she will send spies (friends) to watch where I go occasionally.  She would also text me around 30 times a day if I am out all day.  She has even lied to people who regard her highly in order to bring me back into submission to her, by claiming all sorts of outlandish things about me in order to get them to go and do her dirty work and go and fetch me or watch me or have long discussions about how I am making her ill with worry.  She also will take anyone aside, a platonic friend or a boyfriend and talk in private with them without me hearing a thing.  Often I find out they are threats, warnings and so forth or little snippets of information she is passing to them about my mental problems as she would refer to them as.  She would also remind them of how many brothers and close male cousins I have and how they don’t like anyone upsetting the family.

How I view my father.

1. He is a very shy and quiet country sort of person. Very much like a more obedient and housebound Howard from Last of the Summer Wine.  He is despite how he comes across very nervous of my mother and displeasing her.  I remember times when he was sent on an errand to buy groceries or a take away without her accompanying him and I would go with him to help him as sometimes he would get nervous and forget things, that if the shop didn’t have what she wanted or the take away was closed at that specific time; my poor dad would literally be on the verge of tears and would often say to me he doesn’t know what to do as she will be upset if he doesn’t go home with it.  Paul has also witnessed this behaviour.  My dad cooks, gardens and cleans much more than is traditional for a man to do so and I remember often that if he didn’t do it on time, mum would remind him that she doesn’t have to keep him and he would get scared and get up and do it immediately.
2. Despite this my father is also a bit of a Victor Meldrew. He complains a lot about things but I often believe it is because it is something he thinks my mother would like to hear, she is an avid complainer.  Because when she isn’t around he is quite a cheerful tolerant person.  He is also extremely nosy about the neighbourhood and any gossip going around and often worries about anything negative he has heard that has gone on locally.
3. He also reminds me of Travers Goff from Saving Mr Banks. He was a daydreamer and often liked to play with me imaginatively, we would re-enact our favourite stories, rhymes and television shows and it would be very realistic.  My father loved comedy and often had a comical stance to most games we played.  He often recited funny limericks and songs which are mostly for an adult audience but it made me laugh none-the-less.  He could sometimes be over the top playful and often had to be calmed down by the energy sapping atmosphere of my mother and her harsh words.  He was also a betting man and a man who loved the countryside a lot that he often dreamt of going rural again someday, but my mother would never hear of it.

 

This is how I view myself, Paul and my parents by using character descriptions.  I know there will be a handful of people reading this which will not approve, but it is my opinion of what I believe these people are like and I don’t have to ask your permission to verbalise anything anymore.  It is my truth and that is all that matters.

 

My dragon & art

I drew this the other day

This is my attempt at drawing a dragon, it’s not 100% good because I am not an actual artist and I rarely practice drawing; in fact, I’ve only ever done about thirty pictures in the whole of my adult life, though many would dispute that I can draw like this given that fact.  Why?

Art is an innate talent in the family I was raised in and therefore I used to sit and watch many people draw, I am better at outlines than details.  I will be trying to do a lot more drawings in future because I am going insane with the images in my mind that I can’t put down on paper as accurately as I see them.  I want the world to see what’s in my mind as well as hear about it.  There’s fantastical landscapes I want to draw and many other things, unfortunately I am very unlucky in that all my best works have either been stolen, ripped up by angry people, had drinks spilled on them or accidentally left in the care of toddlers.  I am really angry about a piece of art I accomplished about twelve years ago, it was my personal project at a day center for home schooled kids, they specialized in art and creative writing and they let the kids choose what they do all the time, nothing structured and I worked on the same piece of art for six months, determined to make it look like  a black and white photograph; the picture was of Dracula’s castle (based on the supposed real castle) everyone commented how 3D it looked and in that whole time it was only about a third done, then I was put back into mainstream education without the chance in saying goodbye to the people and friends at the center or the opportunity to get my hands on all my hard-work, so it was left there unfinished.  I begged something rotten to get that piece of art, but Violet just wouldn’t give in, too far, don’t like Leila (the organizer of the center) etc.

Another example of lost art is I did a picture of Baphomet on the throne holding the world in one hand and a scepter in another, it was my attempt at a copy of an image at the back of a Nostradamus book, I was so proud but unfortunately my boyfriend at the time (a devout Catholic) got the wrong idea and got angry at me and ripped it up before my eyes and called me a witch, he shortly threw me out of his house after that.

Though the world craves for new talent in art, art isn’t still widely accepted as a talent, past time or job and that’s such a shame, it needs to change.

Family tree research

So I unwittingly took the week off from writing, this wasn’t planned; I tend to go into fazes of genealogical research.  I have a family tree which I take great care of; especially for my father’s side of the family, nan told me as much as she could before she died and it helped me very much but she focused on her side of the family and didn’t tell me anything at all of granddad’s family.  I’ve neither idea what granddad’s mother’s name was, nor how many siblings he had other than great auntie Florence.

I’ve discovered many things about my paternal grandmother’s ancestors though, such as we can date one part of the family down to 1450 and another side is supposedly an old Roman family, who have been aristocrats for nearly two thousand years in Europe; I say supposedly because there was an Italian migrant in my family in 1480 to the UK who had the surname Senex and was an aristocrat who married a barons daughter and he had to anglicize the name to Maude when he bought some land; Senex is supposed to be an off shoot of a Roman family name Caesilius who are directly linked to Scipii and Secundus (that means there’s a possibility I am related to Pliny), though I can’t be sure and I doubt there’s going to be much information on it, though there might be records in Rome about Roman families, unsure.

This is all pure speculation because I found a website that can follow Pliny’s line to the present day, but I am skeptical because a lot of people just add any old connection to their surname without being sure if they’re true blood or not.

My paternal grandmother’s side of the family are both Italian and Dutch migrants who were aristocratic right up until 1840 when a lot of them started to migrate to Australia, America or marry beneath themselves, there was also an incident where a member of the family was heavily fined because they owned cottages and his people were found to have poached on a neighboring lords lands and was a little too sentimental about evicting them – also he gave a lot of money to the society of friends as he was apparently, very pious and found money a detriment to society, which is quite odd.

There’s information I’ve researched about my mother’s family, though some of mum’s cousins demand that my lead is wrong, because there’s a lot of tales of grandeur on that side; but I’ve bought records directly linking mum’s lineage from Kew itself when I’ve had some spare money and they’re wrong, I have proper recorded proof.  Such as my grandmother was raised in Enfield in farm cottages and her grandmother originates from Crawley as a dairy maid to a manor house, in fact all her family does and they even have the surname Crawley as they didn’t move from the area for hundreds of years.  My granddad’s family are half Jewish who converted to Catholicism for love which in those days was apparently sinful to marry outside of your religion; they owned a dressmaking boarding school and a tailor business in Soho, they were the original Jewish tailor business migrants of Victorian England, these days they have a chain of restaurants and don’t communicate with this side much and some have kept to their Jewish roots.

Mum’s cousins are very upset with my findings that great granddad was a foundling child – that’s similar but not as horrible as being a workhouse child; they insist he wasn’t a foundling, though they admit they never knew of his past as he never told anyone anything and was always evasive about it. 

Foundling children are different to work house children because they don’t remain working in the foundling hospital all the time, like workhouse children – when the children are 14 the boys are expecting to join the navy or army and live their lives as soldiers that are their fate, nothing else.  Girls tend to be trained in all domestic work so that they can be literally, sold into servitude for manor houses and wealthier people from the age of 14, though they can choose to leave as soon as they were an adult though life for them would usually be hard and terrible if they left their positions.  But all in all it was much better being a foundling child than a workhouse child.

Anyway, now you know what’s been keeping me from you, I am still involved with doing my tree, almost 2000 people in there now, but it does tend to gobble my time up as I get so involved with it all.  I want to get things right for my kids to sit back and look at where they’re from and how we’re likely to progress or digress as a family in the future, how the wheels of fortune constantly turn.