April Manderson
One object that I’m holding in my portrait photograph is my mothers’ pestle and mortar. Made from lignum vitae – the sturdy fragrant wood favoured by carvers all over the island. In spite of the many dishes built on the spices in the bowl, you can still smell the wood – it’s a very reassuring smell that always takes me back to my first home.
When I was a child, Mum would be home grinding herbs and spices in the kitchen. I would tell her about my school day as she worked to prepare our evening meal before getting ready for her night shift at Crumpsall Hospital, which is now known as North Manchester General Hospital where she worked as an auxiliary nurse. I was a fussy eater as a child, sensitive to smells and textures and caused no end of headaches at home refusing to eat meals but I loved the aroma of the blended spices and claimed this from her kitchen when she passed away in 2015.
The other object I’m holding is a conch shell.
In the 70’s my parents had divorced and for the next 5/6 years we lived on a council estate in Lancashire. By then my mother, was still an auxiliary nurse and still working nights at Oldham General Hospital. I think she tried many times to change her working patterns to better support us to no avail. It’s interesting that although things have changed a little, the work/life balance for single parents in the NHS back then was pretty inflexible for low skilled staff. Subsequently we were latch-key kids, that had to look after each other the majority of the time.
After missing the night bus home one evening, she was pursued by a man in a car offering her a lift. She was terrified but managed to get to a phone box and call a friend, he gave up and left. She later saw him again on the TV, when he was arrested for a string of murders and had been dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper. By then she had already left the job and was training to be a social worker.
After that she saved enough for our first trip to Jamaica, captured in the photograph I’ve supplied, and this shell reminds me of that visit to see friends and family for the first time. I was 11 years old and still remember riding on the back of an uncles’ truck through streets and dusty roads to hilly expanses and flat concrete houses in technicolour and pastiche. I heard music everywhere inside and outside of my head.
Violet
She came on the wings of a hummingbird
Facing headwinds of uncertainty – BLAZING A TRAIL!!!
Yet, calm, serene and self – contained
In long white gloves, finished at the elbows
And horizontal with the heart, laid still
In longing contemplation
For all great and small – now left behind
And gazing on – Into her horizon
With love, hope and, regret
For what awaits
Colour me red, and the truest of blue
Swirled into a violet hue, that is the embodiment
Of gentle
In name and nature, she is – My Mother
And now we are here – in
The peeling cubicle
Pastors voice echoes – through well-worn corridors
Of grey and yellow
Willing her back to where life awaits
With us
Around the fire – warm and cosy
Eating toast as she – back from the night shift
Opens the sky-blue gossamer envelope
Newly landed on our doormat IN GLORIOUS 3 X PLY
With the flutter of a – lonely butter – fly
And out pour stories
and heat, and sand
and fireflies, and rum on ice
and the click, click clack of the Sunday cricket bat.
With uncle joes ice cream
And sepia toned pictures
Of family – that I’m told to love
So I do
Out flies the sizzle of frying fish,
And I picture the beach,
Where we sit – in its’ heady aroma
Tossing hot pieces between fingers before eating
Whilst squinting into – the orange evening sun.
Sometimes she pauses on a memory – or something else.
Here, by the fire
Emanating a faint whiff of tweed perfume
cut with disinfectant,
And I look up – searching her face
For some kind of clue
Colour me red and the truest of blue
Whilst all around a hummingbird flew
In the peeling cubicle, and I then knew
She was gone
The Ruling Class
I knew someone
Who left home on a Thursday
With her mind shredded to ribbons
And her heart, deflated
Like an old – party balloon
Flattened of hope, helium
And one too many hospital visits’
To fix a broken soul
With kind words and sticking plaster
So, the ruling class can kiss my ass!
Perhaps this calls for context,
You see
This kind soul
Toiled, in the service of others
Notching up c’air miles
Wiping away Tears
Making sense of troubles and fears
With the kind words and sticking plaster
Of the wounded healer
Scant service for the service provider
Resigned on a Sunday
To lie down, in a green field in this corner
That is, forever England
Whilst Britannia waives the rules
So pucker up – and tighten your belts
As they loosen theirs
To gorge, on great dollops
Of Eton Mess
Devoured with spoons
Quietly pocketed
From the family silver
Scant service
For the service provider
Who can find
No cushion
In the safety net of a 3% pay rise
A duty of care, that is not’ there
So rattle those pans and, pucker up
Cos our great wealth
Is in our health but, how can ours be rude
After cycles of nights and doubles
Create stresses, as
Enduring and weighted
As the wool – pulled over our eyes
By the patron saints of pathos
True madness is this
And a civil servant, I am not
So the ruling class
Can kiss this ass.
Illustration: Amber Carter