"Lady"

Jane Cattell (photo: Gigi, album)

"We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. You  playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do."

 (Marianne Williamson)

I did finish my poem for Jane and was moved to find it included in the Order of Service for her funeral last Wednesday. Even thought the occasion was obviously a sad farewell to a much loved wife, mother, grandmother, sister and friend, the service and the gathering afterwards were particularly heart-warming and inclusive. It was abundantly obvious that "gathering" was one of the countless things that Jane excelled at. So many friends from all over and from across the years, some of them not really knowing any of the others that well, all gathered in by Jane's talent for friendship and nurturing. A gorgeous tribute to one who loved to entertain and whose essence really was "the life and soul". It doesn't dilute the spirit of a person to become many things to many different people: what a wonderful endorsement of the gift of life.
Jane's legacy is also so evident in the composure and closeness of her family. Her baby granddaughter looks uncannily like a miniature Jane, all flaxen hair, big brown eyes, expressive mouth and an early burgeoning love of shiny shoes and handbags. At eighteen months, she's already enchanting and obliviously determined to find out what's going on.
Jane's eulogy, crafted by her family, recalled Jane's longstanding love of rock group Status Quo. Beneath the perfectly tousled hair, pretty prints and crystal vowels beat the heart of a rock-chick.. I can so readily identify with this, although for me it's always been Springsteen. I wanted to include Debussy's "The Girl with the Flaxen Hair" with this post, which is achingly sad but also full of light. Then I realised I must include the skinny-jeaned wide boys. For me, one of their finest moments was when Status Quo opened  the Live Aid concert at the special request of another demure but ultimately ballsy blonde lady, called Diana. And so, sitting surprisingly comfortably together, they're both included here; because when one's toasting a Lady, more is more.

"Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim."
(Nora Ephron)

"Lady"
There are those who move between the days
with insistent grace and insouciant style,
gathering momentum
into a Hermes handbag;
and from year to year,
a timepiece of classic constancy,
all honey-glazed hair and generosity of smile;
ticking seamlessly from friend to parent to partner
and all the moments in-between.
There are those who fall
with inexorable subtlety,
an opiated ballet;
languid of limb and tirelessly elegant.
Length of years counts for little
in the passage of an enigma;
I wish I had known you better,
but like the dainty drawer fragrances you gave me,
glimpses of lavender amid my bargain colours,
your presence has been sleek
yet lingers like newness on gossamer,
defying gravity and grief.

 

                                                           Gigi

"We must never confuse elegance with snobbery.

Fashion fades, style is eternal.

The most beautiful make-up of a woman is passion."

(Yves Saint-Laurent)

From "The Girl with the Flaxen Hair"  by Claude Debussy...

   

...to Status Quo  at "Live Aid", 1985, and "Caroline"

 

The National Amyloidosis Centre: 

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/medicine/amyloidosis/

 

 x Thank you to Brian and Jane's family for making me feel so welcome x

Angelina Jolie

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."
(Anais Nin)

Courage, the force of mind, body and spirit that enables one to face difficulty, pain or danger, has many faces. In line with popular opinion, I've long considered Hollywood actress and celebrity mum Angelina Jolie to be one of this world's most beautiful women. Her face and figure have been globally feted and the fervent interest in her longstanding relationship with idolised actor Brad Pitt has given birth to the generic name "Brangelina". Angelina Jolie is a much publicised mother of a little rainbow tribe. Having adopted three babies from Cambodia, Ethiopia and Vietnam, she's also given birth to three children with Pitt.

Undoubtedly wealthy and often over exposed in many ways, her past holds shadows of depression, drug abuse and self harm. But in 2001, she began visiting refugee camps in regions such as Cambodia, Pakistan and Sierra Leone; she became a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees that year. More than a decade later, Jolie is now a Special Envoy for the UNHCR, noted for not shying away from war zones.
Widely known for her role as the improbably proportioned and impossibly athletic video game heroine Lara Croft in "Tomb Raider", I've often felt she's an under rated and affecting actress. If you've not yet seen "A Mighty Heart", based on the memoir of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl's widow, I would urge you to watch it. In spite of the documentary style and harrowing truth of it's story, the film is gracious and tender; Jolie's central performance is stripped of vanity.
On 16th February this year, Jolie underwent a preventative double mastectomy, at the age of thirty seven. Having undergone genetic testing due to her family health history, she'd learned that she's inherited a defective BRAC1 gene which hugely increased her chances of developing breast or ovarian cancers.
Jolie's mother, actress and socio-political activist Marcheline Bertrand, died at the age of fifty six after an eight year battle with ovarian cancer, following breast cancer. Bertrand's own mother Lois died at the age of forty five; she had also been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Jolie's inherited risk of breast cancer before the removal of her breasts was 87%; she still has a 50% chance of developing ovarian cancer and reportedly intends to undergo a preventative oophorectomy, the removal of both ovaries.
In the UK alone, ovarian cancer affects nearly seven thousand women each year; the fifth most common cancer among women. Difficult to recognise due to the vagueness or absence of early symptoms, it's become known as a silent killer. Breast cancer has been the most common cancer in the UK for the past fifteen years, accounting for a third of all cases of cancer among females by 2010. Current statistics show that one in eight of us will be diagnosed with breast cancer.
Jolie went through her three months of treatment and surgical procedures, including reconstructive surgery, discreetly and beyond the glare of the fame monster. She chose not to publicise her dreadful situation and huge decision: not for her the "celebrity diary of a private hell", plastered across entertainment and fashion mags. Instead, she published her own concise and calm piece in The New York Times last week. She encouraged other women with similar histories to make informed choices and highlighted their options. She also stressed that gene testing and preventative treatments should be the right of all women, whatever their background, location or means: the cost of BRAC testing remains largely prohibitive in the United States and unavailable in many other parts of the world.
She's explained that her priority has been her responsibility to her family, her life partner and children: "And they know that I love them and will do anything to be with them as long as I can." Jolie also confirmed that she feels no less of a woman after the surgery; she feels empowered and confident of her femininity.
When I was at school, I was horrified by the story of St Agatha, an early Christian martyr and now the patron saint of breast cancer sufferers and of all martyrs. Persecuted and finally killed for her Christian faith and chastity, her tortures included having both breasts cut off. Even in my skinny, pig-tailed pre-pubescence, I can remember shuddering when reading about this. In recent years, two very different but equally gorgeous female friends have opted to have breast reduction surgery for both health and cosmetic reasons. Hearing of the pain and discomfort they've endured made me thankful that I'm not more generously endowed.
Around ten thousand woman a year in the UK alone now opt to surgically alter or augment their breasts, sometimes to pneumatic proportions, even in the light of the risks of scarring, rupture, toxicity and systemic disease. As breast cancer is now the most common of cancers, breast augmentation has become the most common cosmetic surgery performed in the UK today.
I do believe that beauty shines in the eye of the beholder; if you have an eye to look for beauty, it will surely find you. Angelina Jolie has clearly been blessed by Mother Nature, yet her own genetic make-up may have held something of a curse. I've been very moved by the grace with which she's risen to a such personal challenge with very particular implications for one in the public gaze.

Real grown-up beauty, like courage, truly is more than skin deep.

 

 

"Life comes with many challenges. The ones that should not scare us are the ones we can take on and take control of."
(Angelina Jolie)

 
www.ovarian.org.uk

www.breastcancercare.org.uk

 

"In a Manner of Speaking" Nouvelle Vague (from the soundtrack of "A Mighty Heart")

"Sweet moderation, desert us not" (Billy Bragg)

"No-one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions; he had money as well."

"I owe nothing to Women's Lib."

(Margaret Thatcher)

Few people will probably be as divisive in death as in life as Baroness Margaret Hilda Thatcher. Aside from the rather beautifully staged pomp of her funeral at St Paul's Cathedral last week, her recent death has also sparked demonstrations and even some parties, from the former mining communities of the north, down to our very own economically challenged Brighton. The latter is of course infamous for all Thatcherites after the Provisional IRA bombed the Conservative Conference at the Brighton Grand Hotel in 1984.

I feel such "celebrations" are pointless as much as they are in poor taste: the woman has died; berating her "I'm alright Jack" attitude by parading and parodying it after her demise seems grossly hypocritical. But do I feel Margaret Thatcher should have had a ceremonial service with military honours, one step down from a full state funeral? Do I feel that those of us who pay our dues to this country and live increasingly hand-to-mouth should foot the estimated bill of £10 million? Hell no.

I can remember my Mum referring to "Thatcher the Milk Snatcher". Much has been made of Margaret's rise to become the first and still only woman prime minister of these lands. Yet her womanhood was as far removed from my ideals of the protection and equality of femininity as her historical female premiership was from my mother's long widowhood on a pension compromised by motherhood. Margaret Thatcher wasn't unduly bothered about lighting the way for other women: her cabinet was famously a "wimmin-free" zone.
I respect and accept that other members of my own family and some friends remain true-blue Thatcherites. Mine is the socialism of my Mum and Dad; a welfare state with the emphasis on a hand up rather than stop-gap handouts. A grocer's daughter from Grantham, Lincolnshire, she was fortunate enough to marry a rather wealthy man who cushioned her climb up the political ladder. She was a shop keeper's daughter who, sadly, seemed to forget the price of a loaf of bread. 
I'm in agreement with such diverse talking heads as Ken Livingstone, Geoffrey Roberston QC and Gorgeous George Galloway who attribute many of the UK's socio-economic problems today to the destruction of industry and financial de-regulation which featured so heavily in the Thatcher administration. Human rights lawyer Roberson has described the era as one of "unalloyed greed", sold on the huge deception that, pretty much left to their own devices, bankers would allocate resources rationally and for the general good. Thus began a decline in saving and investment and an accumulation of private and public sector debts; a path where the cracks would eventually creep all the way to the banking crisis of 2008. 

The destruction of manufacturing jobs was temporarily masked by opportunism and get-rich-quick schemes; skilled work gave way to a welfare "class"; house-building was usurped by estate agency. It appears to many of us that the policies of Cameron's government have a chillingly familiar ring to them, but there will be no bonanza of new oil to come to the government's rescue, or the country's. 

So clearly, not a fan of Margaret Thatcher then. I admit that I cringed once more when I saw the reportage of her quoting St Francis of Assisi's prayer for unity and harmony as she took office in 1979. But I was even more uncomfortable and very sad watching reports from former industrial communities in South Yorkshire and Scotland of jeering and mocked-up funeral pyres, toasting Maggie's decline in hell. Whilst I object to paying for a song and dance about the death of this elderly lady, I don't wish to see anyone jig on someone else's grave. Margaret Thatcher may not have been for turning, but her death from cardio-vascular distress and stroke, following treatment for bladder cancer and dementia, confirms that the baroness is definitely not returning.

The Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, the Very Reverend Dr David Ison, played a central role in last Tuesday's very public funeral. He took up the deanery at St Paul's after his predecessor resigned over the "Occupy London" protest furore, when anti-capitalist protesters camped outside the Cathedral, close to the Bank of England. Dr Ison has also linked Mrs Thatcher's policies with those of today's coalition. He told CNN International that: 

"You have to ask yourself the question: why it is, 23 years after she left government, Margaret Thatcher is still such a controversial figure and I think part of the answer is we still haven't come to terms with the hurt and anger many parts of society have felt because of the legacy of her policies. And there is some real work to be done here about the relationship between the rich and the poor in our society and how we can work together, instead of being opposed to one another. That's a particular agenda that I think that this funeral will be throwing up and highlighting."

I don't believe the gun carriage and the silencing of Big Ben were appropriate  but I do believe that respect and prayer for another person's passing are. May she rest in the peace we all eventually aspire to, no matter what our earthly advantages or failings. 

"Between the Wars" Billy Bragg

"I kept the faith and I kept voting, 

Not for the iron fist but for the helping hand; 

For theirs is a land with a wall around it 

And mine is a faith in my fellow man; 

Theirs is a land of hope and glory , 

Mine is the green field and the factory floor "

(Billy Bragg) 

"Make me a channel of your peace: 

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned, 

In giving of ourselves that we receive, 

And in dying that we are born to eternal life." 

(St Francis of Assisi) 

Little women

"Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim." 

(Nora Ephron)

(All photos: Gigi, album)

Mum before she married.

I was quite distressed today when my sister told me my Mother's Day card for Mum hadn't arrived in Hampshire. This will be our third Mothering Sunday without her. It may seem silly to send a card to be placed at your Mum's grave, but I've always sent her one; don't think I ever missed a year. Like her, I'm big on cards, giving as well as receiving. You can often write out what sticks in the throat and crushes the heart and the written word is a memorable testament to a feeling. Hopefully, my card will arrive on Monday.
I've been thinking I should post a little testament to my Mum as the beautiful, funny, vibrant woman that she was. Mum had a strong femininity that wrapped itself around her motherhood like a Harris Tweed cloak; reassuringly abrasive, irrefutably warm and seemingly indestructible. The photos here span most of Mum's adult life as a wife, mother and early widow, but she herself never stopped being her mother's daughter. 

I never knew Granny Barbara, but Mum talked about her a lot. Like Mum, she was a petite and coquettish woman who loved things with bows and trims, in spite of her harsh and sparse upbringing. A Glaswegian Presbyterian by birth, she left her clan to marry my grandfather; by all accounts a surly Norn Irish Catholic widower, a farmer with no land of his own. 

Barbara was initially ostracised by the other Catholic women in their part of rural Antrim. They threw eggs at her front door and refused to sit with her in church: very Christian. She won them over with a gentle nature that belied her resilience; and with her gift for "knowing": they would come to her to reveal their fortunes apparently; also, not strictly Christian! She must have said something right because the egg throwing stopped and she was embraced by the women and the parish.

Mum's feistiness seems to have been inherited from her father; her quiet determination from her mother. She often referred to her as "poor Mum", but Granny was rich in the admiration and respect she invoked in her own four daughters. There was a fifth, youngest child, a son called William; also his mother's boy, to the anxiety of his father. My grandfather was a commanding but demanding man. Barbara bore her son when she was fifty, which may seem an unthinkable age, but she was by then very much a Catholic Mother. 

Her health deteriorated after her last pregnancy, although she lived to see her girls bear their own children in England before she eventually succumbed to cancer. She encouraged all her children to fly the nest and make something of themselves, even though at the time this essentially meant leaving Antrim and leaving her on her own with a weary but volatile husband. She eventually came to England in her final illness: my Dad helped to nurse her. Practically disinherited by his own family in Belgium, she became a mum to him too.

My Mum often grieved that my sister and I are childless; for me, it hasn't been a choice and it's my one big regret in life. I like nurturing creatures: it feels empowering rather than compromising.  I often say that I felt orphaned when Mum followed my Dad two and a half years ago, but I will never feel motherless, whichever day my card is delivered.

It's funny how the circles turn: Mum always said that Granny loved the song "Que Sera, Sera" and would sing it while she did the family laundry. Mum loved it too; I look at photos of her before she became my mother and she reminds me of Doris Day, who I find adorable. The song features in the old Hitchcock film "The Man Who Knew Too Much", also starring my Jimmy Stewart. Somewhere I have the film on DVD; I warble this now, sometimes when hoovering. I hope I've inherited much from some strong minded, big hearted little women; I hope I don't waste it. What will be, will be.

When Tony and Josie got married...

Mum with her own mother, my Scots-Irish Granny, and with her first baby; my sister.

With me when I was about eighteen years old. Please ignore floral jacket.

Mum in Paris with me and my sister, the year Princess Diana was killed there. Mum's in her favorite shade of red; my sister appears to be wearing a deceased animal with shoulder pads. I am honestly wearing a skirt, albeit a very short one, and black nail polish; Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

Mum went to Australia in her later years, when her health was already failing and she depended on a walking stick; she loved it there, later encouraging me to go and fall in love with the continent too.

My sister and I with Mum on her birthday, nine years ago.

This is one of the last photos taken of Mum, a few months before she died. It was taken on my birthday, almost exactly three years ago. Already very frail and ill here, she died little more than six months later.

"What would men be without women? Scarce, sir...mighty scarce." 

(Mark Twain)

"Que Sera Sera"  Doris Day

"Taking joy in living is a woman’s best cosmetic." 

(Rosalind Russell) 

"You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation." 

(Brigham Young) 

"I am a woman; my country is the whole world." 

(Virginia Woolf) 

Maiden born and made

"All that was mixed and reconciled in Thee 

Of mother's love with maiden purity" 

(from "The Virgin", William Wordsworth)

On 8th December, Christians respect the Solemnity of The Immaculate Conception; one misconception non-Christians may have of this feast day is that it's the celebration of the virgin conception of Christ. The feast is actually a recognition that Mary the Mother of God was born to St Anne in a state of grace, conceived and preserved from original sin: William Wordsworth beautifully depicted Mary as: "Our tainted nature's solitary boast".
While there is no suggestion in scripture that Mary was conceived in anything other than the usual manner, Anne herself is generally described as being childless until her later years: indeed she is Jesus' grandmother. Somewhat overlooked in Christian mythology, Anne, (from the Hebrew "Hannah", meaning "grace"), is also revered in Islam and mentioned in the Qu'ran as Mary's mother and a highly spiritual woman. Islamic legend holds that she prayed for a son after watching a bird nurturing her young. Against all odds, she conceived, bearing a daughter who would be blessed among women; and who would bear and nurture the Son of Man.
The patron saint of housewives and unmarried women: I like St Anne! (She's also the patron saint of grandmothers and women in labour; and, rather more randomly, of cabinet makers and miners...)

"The Immaculate Conception"

A dew-drop of the darkness born,

Wherein no shadow lies;

The blossom of a barren thorn,

Whereof no petal dies;

A rainbow beauty passion-free,

Wherewith was veiled divinity.

(John Banister Tabb)

"The Holly and the Ivy"  Annie Lennox

There's something about Mary: The Feast of The Assumption

"Mary is the safest, easiest, shortest and most perfect way of approaching Jesus"

(St Louis Marie de Montfort)

"Who Is She Ascends So High?"
(from the Roman Catholic Breviary)
Who is she ascends so high,
Next the heav'nly King,
Round about whom angels fly,
And her praises sing?
Who is she adorned with light;
Makes the sun her robe?
At whose feet the queen of night
Lays her changing globe?
This is she in whose pure womb
Heaven's Prince remained;
Wherefore in no earthly tomb
Could she be contained.
Heav'n she was, which held that fire,
Whence the world took light,
And to heav'n doth now as pire:
Flames with flames unite.
She that did so clearly shine,
Our day once begun,
See how bright her beams decline,
Sitting with the Sun.

As a convent schoolgirl, I grew up with a fascination for the traditional Catholic devotion to Mary, the Virgin Mother of God. As a "Child of Mary", I joined with other bustling little girls to decorate the chapel with flowers during the month of May, all of us proudly wearing our blue sashes. I still have my little rosary from my First Communion; the cheapest, mass-produced plastic, but sugar-pink and precious. Family holidays to my Dad's homeland would always incorporate a trip to Our Lady's shrine at Banneux: I can still picture the rows of souvenir Blessed Virgins; a regiment of serenity with celestial blue cloaks and rose-cheeked inclined heads. These days, I belong to the Catholic Women's League, where each meeting starts with The Rosary. I now have a frieze of The Black Madonna in my living room: I managed to paint the alcoves there almost the exact same shade as her vivid red cloak; I only wish I had found my blue sash before the family home had to be sold...

Why do we so love Mary?

Yesterday, 15th August, was the feast of The Assumption, celebrated across the Christian churches; a Holy Day of Obligation and also a public holiday in Austria, Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Spain and many other countries. The word "assumption" is literally from the Latin for "taken up": we celebrate that Mary was assumed into heaven, body and soul. Many Catholics do believe that Mary died physically before she ascended to heaven, but this aspect of The Assumption is not fully defined in the theology of the Catholic Church. It's a beautiful and joyous feast: Mary's Assumption is seen as a divine gift to her as the mother of Jesus; but also serves as a reminder of the saving grace that awaits us all.

Christian "Mariology" (the study and theology of Mary), explores not only her life but also the veneration of her in our own daily lives. The Virgin Mary has been a divine muse for artists, musicians, composers of hymns, sculptors and architects throughout ancient and modern Christianity. Non-Catholics have often accused the Roman Church of "loving Mary too much": deifying her in fact. However, now that I'm no longer the awestruck child with an armful of unruly roses, I appreciate that most Catholics feel a strong personal relationship to Mary because of her essential humanity; she is effectively, mother to all. As a woman, I also feel that Mary is Eve redeemed; femininity and loveliness without treachery, artifice or blemish.
We feel that Mary is our intercessor, "Our Lady": when something seems too trivial to place directly before God, Mary is there to support us through our trials and irritations and small but poignant hurts. Just as a child might run to a mother for comfort with a grazed knee, we feel Mary is accessible in this way. The emphasis is actually on her being fully human rather than any notion of deity. She is a figure of warm hope, sympathy and compassion.

Mary's selflessness and compassion as a human being are seen as ultimate. She acceded to God's wishes; a bewildered and guileless young girl, at a time when being an unmarried mother could have catastrophic consequences. Later, this very real mother would willingly sacrifice her child for the fulfilment of the scriptures and, therefore, our own. In a very practical sense, Mary supports the role of women in what is all too often viewed as a patriarchal "firm". Although Mary obeyed the word of God without question, I've never thought of her as subservient. She may be a vessel without sin, but she is far from empty: "full of grace", she is the embodiment of God's love at work in us, she gives birth to Christianity and Catholicism. Far from dismissing her as a meek, blindly following virgin, I rather believe she was only too aware of the enormity of what was before her and what would come after. Her selflessness actually required courage and resolve: this combined with her immense tenderness makes her uniquely powerful and important within our faith.

The Catholic priest, Trappist monk and poet Thomas Merton wrote many devotional Marian poems, although he felt that her greatest glory was her "nothingness": I love that he compares her freedom from all egotism to the purest glass of the cleanest window, but I've always felt that Mary the woman and mother had a great deal of substance to her! I believe that our devotion to Our Lady is flamed by her innate preciousness, which she carried with utter humility: this is what makes her complete. Sadly, I don't have a daughter: if I did, I would be thrilled to see her set aside her magazines of teetering, collagen-tampered WAGS and wannabes to don a blue sash for a real Lady.

"Mare Mia"  Diana Navarro

"Because my will is as simple as a window

And knows no pride of original birth,

It is my life to die, like glass, by light:

Slain in the strong rays of the bridegroom sun."

("The Blessed Virgin Mary Compared to a Window"  Thomas Merton)