Feeling My Age

From an inherited family book of nursery rhymes…

“What Are Little Girls Made Of ?” The answer always pleased Child K as a pre-school tot back in the day when we used to sing our way through the books together: “Sugar and Spice and all that’s nice – and that are little girls are made of…”

We found my dad’s lovingly restored copy of The Baby’s Opera again the other day and went through it together for old time’s sake. Inevitably, the songs had greater sentimental value for me than they do for her now she’s 13 and too grown up for all that. Perhaps she’ll appreciate them again when she’s older…

Postscript: since writing this have found both of Walter Crane’s beautifully illustrated volumes of nursery rhymes are free online – thanks to Project Gutenberg – with lovely scans of the original pages: The Baby’s Bouquet and The Baby’s Opera

Last Christmas my brother, sister and I headed back to village where our family lived in the late 60s, to take Dad’s ashes to the churchyard where Mum had been buried 39 years earlier. By bizarre chance we’d discovered that the back part of our old house was currently available for holiday lets and we were able to rent it for the weekend.

From this rear window the view hadn’t changed in four decades – it was like catching a sudden glimpse back into childhood. It’s also the window outside the door of Grandma’s bedroom where she died in the night of November 21st 1969 – three months after her beloved second husband. Their grave, too, is up in the village churchyard.