Now

10 seconds to Midnight 

In the secret hour between Midnight 2014 in Germany and the first minute of 2015 in England I began to collect my thoughts on the events of this year which has given me cause to pause and reflect: how fast turn the hands of the clock that measures my life. Once I was the youngest, always a child, but now I am grown up and soon will be grown old. I stand on the threshold and look both ways - back into the old year and forward to the new, forward to the rest of my life.

The first of 300 dusty boxes of paperwork

Like the Spirit of Christmas Future my big brother Peter shone a light on my future life. Seventeen years my senior, he reached a crisis and was forced to open the boxes he had been filling and storing throughout his long life. And as I watched him fall deeper into reverie with each paper he removed and page he turned I felt the leaden pull of my own treasure.

Others grew impatient because he would not, could not recognise his hoard as a pointless stash of worthless words, but he saw it as a process caught on paper, not the end result but the journey. And every journey was of interest.


I began to feel protective for my own mountain of paper, less organised than this, waiting to be sorted and stored for the day when, for the day when, for the day.  For Peter that day did not come.  The paper is still there and Peter is gone. And now another few, new, pages have been added, containing the extraordinary promise that his lifetime collection of the printed word in its many forms, the books, the notes, the posters that formed the basis of his career through the world of the practice and teaching of graphic design, would be packaged for transit halfway across the globe to a university in Beirut.  And so it would be saved and would be of benefit to others. But at what cost and by what effort and by whom.  Will Peter be loved the more for this generous gesture or will it prove to be a curse?

Before

For me it must be a prompt to change my ways. This is my big chance to turn my life round and become someone else. I must cast off my bad habits and become organised, methodical, adopt a routine and above all go to bed early, for surely in my night owl habits and chaotic lifestyle I am slipping down the slide into a Bohemian nightmare that can only lead to a future of boxes, of unfinished projects, artwork existing only in the imagination and a list of unachievable intentions that goes on and on and on and is never complete.

After

But no... I am the Penny Rea who comes up with the goods, meets deadlines, completes tasks because I know that the Show Must Go On and that All Things Are Possible.  I can get my act together and so I did. I transformed the disaster zone into a neat and tidy bedroom for my little Lizzy. But where did the paper go?  Did it reach the bin, the tip, the fire? No, it reached my kitchen where it stayed a while, before moving on into my bedroom where it waits to be sorted and stored for the future - maybe.

Welcome 2015

I am in Bonn this New Year, staying in the home of my second cousin Sue and her lovely husband Klaus.  Their life seems calm and well ordered. Their apartment is a tranquil haven, a fascinating gallery of books, artwork and souvenirs collected during a lifetime of work around the world.

 I have had a precious few days here hiding from the world, eating healthily and sleeping at the expected times, recovering from the past year. We raised a glass to the New Year as we looked out at the crackling fireworks shimmering over the Rhine. Forget the future, forget the past. Life is the best gift this Christmas. 2015. Now.

Packaged memories

We open a random package in my brother Peter's house and a stream of memories pour out. This one brings back Industrial Image - an exhibition of British Industrial Photography from 1843 to 1986.

I remember back nearly 20 years and I am walking round the Photographers' Gallery overwhelmed by the brooding images that captured the grandeur, the smell and the sweat, the toil of a nation. And I try to remember what exactly it was that he did - designed the layout, interpretation and catalogue for the exhibition,  I think, but do not exactly know.

There are stacks of carefully preserved images from the exhibitions he organised, that must be unwrapped and identified, then dispersed.  Nothing is of great value, but everything documents a moment or period in his life in a kind of complex visual diary.

Why do we do this?  Why do we keep all these memory prompts?  Why do we feel it so important to remember?  There is too much to remember,  And soon it will be forgotten.   So I look around my own house and realise that I am keeping other people's memories, in books, in furniture, letters and pictures. Second hand memories. Do I dare to release them?

Moving on

My big brother Peter had ginger hair, just like me.  He had a drum kit.  He played in a jazz band and he went to art school.  He gave me a straw hat for my fourth birthday.  This is the family photo taken on that occasion.

Peter was the oldest and I was the youngest.  He carried me home from the nursing home where I was born.  Dad was working so Peter went to collect Mum and we came home together in a taxi. Mum always talked about the journey home - it was a picture she kept in her mind's eye until the end.  Peter remembered it too and so from their shared memory I imagined it and from this a special bond grew.

I felt connected by this imagined memory to the art student brother who moved out into a new and unknown world.  He left our mundane life behind. That is what happens when birds fly from the nest.  This is the order of things. The door was open for me to follow but I did not accept the place at art school that was offered. I chose my own path but in the end it led to the same place.

Peter became a performer, a designer, a teacher, a wanderer and a man of many homes.  I was a stage manager, an organiser, a teacher, I am a perpetual traveller with my heart in many homes. Like my big brother I don't know where I want to be.  But I am still in this world and once more he has moved on.

 

 

Penny Magazine 1832

Antony Oliver, Conservator from Sheffield Archives has fixed our Family Heirloom.  To be precise he has performed an extraordinarily delicate 21 stage repair procedure to replace the spine, repair the first eight pages with a fine Japanese tissue and replace a piece of black linen that had been used to repair a torn page with filmoplast tissue.  He has also made it a bespoke box with very smart label which read: Penny Magazine, 1832.

It is not Penny's Magazine.  It is, or was, my great, great Grandfather's book.   The inscription inside the front cover reads
"This book is the property of George William Rea, left to him by his Grandfather Thomas George, son of Squire Henery  (sic) George of Blaenavon, April 5th 1937.  Signed M. T. Rea, mother of G.W. Rea."

With Love from Me to You

In the summer of 1965 my sister's Canadian penfriend visited us in our London home on her way home from a year in Paris. Beth doesn't recall the visit, the memory blocked out maybe by the bereavement that was to follow, but I remember it. I was ten years old.  Beth was tall, slim, elegant with stylish short hair and she was a Beatlemaniac. How do I know this fact?  Because she signed my autograph book and for years and years I tried to imagine this quiet polite girl whom I literally looked up to, amongst the screaming hoards of teenagers I saw on the TV.  My mother would muse from time to time "I wonder what became of that nice Canadian girl".

My sister Barbara, or Babs as we called her, died the following summer after a long battle with congenital heart disease, and Beth's letters remained sealed in a brown paper bag labelled Beth's letters to me.  They were precious gifts that brought the outside world to the bedside of a child who had been in and out of hospital for years.  When Beth tracked us down over forty years later she sent me more than a hundred pages of my sister's handwritten letters and I was so pleased to dispatch the brown paper bag with its treasured contents in return.  I expect I have already told this story, but it is worth telling twice.

Now, in 2914, Beth has published a captivating memoir of that life-changing year in Paris - memorable not least because she saw the Beatles play live not once, but twice.  Unlike most of us, Beth has kept her teenage diaries and is not afraid to share her secret thoughts including the early days of her passionate and life-long love affair with Paul McCartney - if only he knew what he has missed.

Now a seasoned actress, a teacher of memoir writing, mother and glamorous grandma, she is a penfriend to all who care to share in her daily thoughts, family life and adventures. She has written a fascinating book about her great grandfather and published a book of the blog covering the last few years including a trip around 21st century Liverpool with my own children.

So proud am I to have sat in Beth's Toronto garden and taken part in an inspiring writing class.  Now, back in England, we are setting up our own writing group - Writing History.  If you were ever a teenager, if you adored the Beatles and loved France then please borrow my copy of her brilliant book.  Or better still buy your own copy:  http://bethkaplan.ca/book.html

Catching up with Christmas

Okay,  so I am only just catching up with Christmas.  But it is still January, the snow hasn't yet arrived and the Poinsetta still survives - so I'm not doing that badly.  I can even just about remember my new year's resolutions  - something about being organised, motivated, solvent and getting educated.

Lots of exciting stuff ahead - Tour de France is coming up and over Wincobank Hill in July so we are cooking up a fun weekend. I am writing a funding bid for the Chapel Heritage Centre and planning a joint project with Sheffield Cathedral in November.  That's just in my spare time.  To pay the bills I am going to be spending time out in the woods with children and in the countryside with families.

Then - there is family stuff - Friday is still Granny Day and I often get to see my little family together as they are conveniently all now in Liverpool although not normally in the same house.  It looks like I will be also paying a few visits to my big bro's new Kentish abode. My amazing big sister, who nearly died 15 years ago, is celebrating a special birthday ending in 0 and next month we are going away together for a little weekend in Norfolk. As for that other brother,  the fit one that keeps cycling up mountains - well he has already booked in for TdF in July. So what with a few trips up north, over west and down south, it should be another interesting year.  So if you want to keep up with just enter your email address in the box at the top of this page and you will get a message in your inbox when I update.  Think of it as a supplementary postcard - you might even get one with a stamp as well - I still do those.  And by the way - thanks for all the Christmas cards and emailed greetings.  I will be in touch to try and see people this year.