Love on the Number 9 (excerpt)

(In a previous blog post I said I would explain the link between rag rugs and bus transport. If buses sustain our social fabric and rag rugs are a sustainable use of materials...)

 

Love on the Number 9 (excerpt)

I’ve already lost my No. 17.

Former nurse and foster carer, our driver speaks of buses she has driven, solicitously; as if they’d been her charges.

With the threatened withdrawal of a service that has been running since 1924, I’ve taken occupancy of a seat on the Number 9 for a day and am travelling backwards and forwards between the alternate horizons of the Quantocks and the Blackdowns, as continuously as the timetable permits.

Who’s that? our driver calls out, as we approach the next stop.

The Stranger Presents His Bus Pass.

A few minutes later the Stranger alights, but not without promising to wash his bus pass at no more than 30c. in the future.

Calm even on bin days, the driver tells me about  the time she’d driven a passenger to hospital after he’d had a bad fall in town:

I've all my frozen stuff here  he'd said as he got off.                                                                                                                                                                                And here’s my keys and pension.

With the bus parked up outside his house, she had let herself in, had put his frozen stuff in the freezer and his pension in a drawer.

Drivers change over mid morning like two weavers passing the shuttle between them across the width of the loom. The archetypal imagery of shuttle, warp and weft has inherited texture in this part of West Somerset; this route connects three former weaving towns.

 

It was P... who made the service his own, our new driver  informs me.

He saw kids grow up on this bus.

What they have seen in the rear view mirror bestows upon them an enigmatic omniscience. There’s a sense of our driver assuming authorial control as he changes into first.

Eventually it’s the last passenger’s turn to bear witness:

I met my partner on the bus in July. He said; ‘Would you like to come for coffee in the “Garden Café”?’ And now I’m moving in with him.

There’s an uprooted rhododendron  in a pot by her feet.  Eight months after the seeds of love were sown in the Garden Café, this middle-aged woman started transplanting her garden,  plant by plant, via this bus, nudging her garden along a few stops.

Love may move mountains. The Number 9 moves gardens (of lovers it has introduced).

The Number 9  -  an agent of plant migration.

An 88 year old conversation on wheels.

It should be Listed.

crossing over the border

 

A clear indicator that I had crossed the border was when the driver of the bus in Devon said "alright maid?" (they don't call you that on Somerset buses).

During my brief sojourn in Devon in which I managed to play havoc with one gentleman's hearing aid (he said that the pitch of my voice set it off whistling Scotland the Brave) I visited The Walronds, a seventeenth century townhouse in Cullompton that has just undergone restoration and conservation. The plasterwork ceilings there are just incredible:

                                                 www.b2architects.com 

I went there primarily to see a length of Kersey cloth, woven by local weaver Louise Cottey. Kersey; the working man's cloth was softer, more supple and more felted than I had imagined it would be, but also more waterproof. With Cullompton researching and celebrating it's own history of textile manufacturing, so the links between other local centres of woollen cloth production: Uffculme, Tiverton, Culmstock and Wellington are brought into prominence.

 

Is it coincidence that as imaginative awareness of historic local trade connections strengthens, so local public transport connections are weakening? Or is that need to dig down and find the roots of a culture, a direct outcome of the pruning of the current twigs and branches of its physical connectedness  (as manifested in reduced transport links)?

 

 

On a related note, spoke with a friend today about how losing a relative can sometimes make you delve further back in the family tree for antecedents lost in time, not as replacements exactly - 'though there is a sense of trying to balance the books in a double entry book keeping type of way: So where was it we came from? And where is it we're going?

 

 A day ticket keeps those kind of questions open, I find.

waiting rooms and connectivity

Today, during my Mantle Street Memories on Mondays stint at The Old Sale Rooms, I met with an interesting man who recalled rag rug making with his parents as a boy growing up in Kent. 'Everybody did it' he said.

‘But not everybody wants to remember, there’s a stigma for some?’ I suggested.

'In those days’, he said, ‘people knew how to mend things and make things, it’s what people did, almost regardless of class'.  His father had been a solicitor’s clerk - but he could still mend their shoes for example.

Then somehow, I can't remember how, we veered into subject of transport. I told him that I didn’t drive, nor did I want to - I managed. 'Ah', he said, nodding his head, 'that’s what people who don’t drive do: they "manage".'

I didn't mean that I 'just' manage. I didn't mean to use the word 'manage' in a pejorative, passive sense. And I didn't mean 'manage' as in 'pain management'. Why, we bus users might even sometimes invest something of ourselves into our journeys and indeed - claim at least some sort of share in the ownership of our public transport experiences! For all the apparent re-appreciation of the value of slow travel, I think most non users of public transport would cite  lack of ‘connectivity’ as one of the reasons for opting out.

One bus driver has recently explained to me, that timetables are only meant to be a 'guide' to services. I think that once this is understood and accepted, full faith is pretty instantly restored. For any belief system worth credence, has parameters, qualified and substantiated by material experience. In my book, heavy traffic, bad weather are acceptable material reasons for the lateness of buses, why shouldn't they be? My faith in the service, demands that I should not be unreasonable.

And anyway, there are waiting rooms in which to wait together and there is something to be said for waiting on something.  
 

How about this for connectivity:-

In the waiting room at the bus station last week, a man with learning difficulties makes a call on his mobile. His voice is very loud and the details of his ‘private’ conversation are broadcast to all waiting passengers without discrimination.

But first a brief, sad preamble to this tale; I might mention that I once had to endure an interminably long bus ride on a crowded bus, sitting next to a young woman who was on the phone briefing her solicitor on the expenses she would like to claim for a cosmetic enlargement gone wrong. We shouldn’t have heard it and her lack of boundaries was saddening. I was shocked. Felt assaulted even, but also very sad for her.

However, last week was different. Picture (in the waiting room on the day I mention) all those present gathered together in a wholly different way. For this man's apparent lack of social inhibition is disarming and when he calls off and looks up and sees about him a room of slightly embarrassed smiling faces, he apologises, explaining that the background noise at the other end made it difficult to hear... Then he invites us for feedback on the particular predicament that his phone conversation has just brought to our attention! People are sympathetic, several offer their own take on his situation.  Soon he is standing in the centre of the waiting room, commanding it like a stage. He is humorous, he cracks jokes and we are laughing with him. And then - too suddenly - he leaves for his bus and the woman who exits after him announces to us before closing the door: ‘you have just been entertained by "our" H…..'

And if this is a room for waiting, this was worth waiting for.  For this was, is, ‘connectivity’. Shared humanity that can be experienced on a bus route, or at a bus station near you, any day of the week...



(Rag rugs and public transport? What's the connection? Answers in my next post. Or on a postcard please.)

 

 

recollection

                                             magnolia budding in the gardens of Toast

Went to The Thelma Hulbert Gallery in Honiton this afternoon with a friend for the private view of 'Recollection' an exhibition on the theme of memory and memory loss. Met with some of the volunteers from Honiton's Memory Café with whom I shall be working next week, on Rag Rug Memories and Making.

 

Loved Sophie Bower's car boot items presented as exhibits in a mini museum with their associated narratives of provenance and memory.

 

For more details of her work see her website:

http://www.axisweb.org/p/sophiebower

 

This put me in mind of Arthur and Martha's work with carers and museum objects at Warrington Museum:

 

http://arthur-and-martha.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/objects-of-our-affection-warrington.html

 

But the theme of recollection continued outside the gallery space, in the gardens of Toast where my friend and I had adjourned, to while away the afternoon in the warm spring sunshine.

 

Which books had we enjoyed as children? Turned out we shared quite a number of favourites.  Had those titles reflected, or moulded, our interests and inclinations? To what extent had the dreams and fictive worlds those books had fostered, been jettisoned in adult life? And are they worth re-visiting for further inspiration and for what they might teach us about who we still might be?

 

One of my personal favourites was 'My Side Of The Mountain' by Jean Craighead George. All Boys' Own stuff about survival, in the wild. I'm still drawn to exploring the phenomenology of place, just love singing along to Talking Heads' 'living on nuts and berries' lyrics, but haven't in 53 years managed to learn more than a few wild bird songs.

 

'The Borrowers'  on the other hand is a book that I would credit as having instilled in me a life-long regard for the hand skills of making, for sideways appropriation and upcycling, and the belief that this extends to writing too; that there is 'always a story in there'. Somewhere.

 

On leaving the café, we passed chairs stacked up on the tables ready for the cleaner to sweep the floors and the sight triggered a memory of the lyrics I've been trying to retrieve for years - the daily prayer we sang at the end of each day as we stood behind our desks in primary school: "Now the day is over, evening's drawing nigh". We used to sing a shortened version of the prayer. One day, perhaps in another 45 years (if I'm lucky) the last two lines may come back to me!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

mantle street memories

Just to let you know that The Old Sale Rooms will be closed on Monday (17th) so if you have memories of Mantle Street to share, why not pop in another day during the week and write them in the book I have left for this purpose, or else come and have a chat with me the following Monday (24th) when I will be at The Old Sale Rooms again? I have begun a large 'scrap book' for people to have a look at. In it, I have pasted a list of the names of all the people living in Mantle Street in 1938, as detailed in an old Wellington directory (kindly lent to me by Mary Hunt) plus details of local businesses. The original directory has a few gaps though, which it would be good to fill. Were your relatives living in Mantle Street in 1938? Do have a look through the names and if you have some interesting memories to share, record them in the book or share them with me on a Monday!

rugs-in-the-making

Here are some photos of students' wonderful rag rugs-in-the-making (from my workshops @ Heidi's Sewing Room). Design inspiration so individual: owls, waves, geometry, butterfly and bird! Well done to all of you for taking the techniques of proddy, hooky (plus shearing and shirring in some cases) and running with them! New Rag Rug course starting @ Heidi's on 22nd March, contact Heidi for further info. (see workshop page of blog).

 

 

 

 

 

june flowers in Bridgwater

 

 

 

 

 

Really thrilled to have been invited to demonstrate and teach Rag Rugging techniques at the 20th Birthday celebration of Sedgemoor Housing Association (SHAL). The celebration will be in June and it'll be under a marquee. Nice to have reason to look ahead and be thinking of marquees and Summer! We'll "grow" some spectacular blooms I'm sure!

the cat sat on the mat

I met a lovely group of people at Margaret Allen House in Tiverton the other day when I went to do a Rag Rug Session there. Also met with Bubbles their cat. What was enchanting, was that the residents wanted Bubbles to be included in the activity. Their sheer warmth of feeling drew Bubbles in from her sunny spot in the conservatory, to join with us and she soon took up position on my 'bird' rug!

 

 

Apparently Bubbles chose to live at Margaret Allen House and made her own way there. I think Bubbles has chosen a lovely home with such a peaceful and warm atmosphere, and it's a real  compliment to those who live there.

the fabric of people's lives

 Write -up in Somerset County Gazette pasted below:

Mantle Street in focus - Sally wants your memories of famous Wellington street

9:00am Thursday 27th February 2014 in News

Sally Light wants your Mantle Street memories.

The history of a notable street in Wellington is being thrust into focus.
People with vivid memories of Mantle Street are being invited to share them with Sally Light, a craftswoman hoping to create a rag rug highlighting the best of days gone by.
Sally is holding weekly sessions to collate recollections of the street, in particular of the old chapel, the Old Sale Rooms and the Wellesley Theatre.
She said: “I recently had a residency at the Old Sale Rooms as a rag rug maker and it was such a massive success.
“I loved hearing customers’ memories and look forward to capturing more, as well as helping individuals add their pieces of fabric into the memory rag rug I’m making.”
Sally, who lives at Rockwell Green, is interested in people with a direct link to the street who have a story to share.
Were you married at the Old Sale Rooms there? Did you attend Sunday school there? Or perhaps you have an amusing anecdote of visiting the auctions when it was Wellington salerooms, not to mention memories of a night at the flicks at the Wellesley.

 

If so, head down to the Old Sale Rooms on a Monday between 10am and 5pm to share your stories with Sally and complete your own part of the memory rug puzzle.
Sally added: “Some of the stories I hear are fascinating and I hope they shine through in my latest piece of work.
“We are literally and symbolically making history from the fabric of people’s lives so I’d ask visitors to please bring a small scrap that can be added to the rug.”