Martha's Musings.
November 15th 2021
Edith Leigh
My mother, Edith Leigh, died in 1972 aged 58, when I was eighteen years old. The publication of Invisible Ink this year, has brought me into renewed contact with her, and now that the issues of adolescence which were pre-occupying me in her last years are long gone, I am free to see her in her own context. This has made the infinite sense of the loss of all that we have been unable to share even more poignant.
Superficially, Edith was the opposite of her brother, a war hero and extrovert, brimming with self-confidence. However, her courage during the war years showed that she was made of the same steely substance. But Edith was self-effacing to a fault. She did not want to be noticed except when she was at the piano, and then only as a vehicle to share music which was greater than herself. It was simply enough to have found safety in England, her fifth country: she left Czernowitz, her hometown in Central Europe at seventeen, then Vienna, shortly before Austria was annexed by the Nazis, and after that narrowly escaped deportation in France, only to be interned in Switzerland. As a survivor, she did not feel she deserved any more from life.
In the UK she made only a tiny number of new friends and very few other people could say that they really knew her. Unwittingly, she taught me to be fearful and careful, whilst ostensibly striving to make my world happy and safe. A fundamental part of her world-view was pessimism about human nature; she expressed this in one of her letters to my father in 1943: “Men have been fighting wars for more than seven thousand years and there is no reason why this should stop. Jealousy, greed, revenge and covetousness will always remain at the bottom of the human soul…”
Edith was not interested in material matters, and this indifference could often be misunderstood as naivety. Her internal life, however, was astonishing. Listening to her recordings is like entering another world — rather like the amazement one feels when snorkelling, on encountering the bright colours, extravagant patterns, shapes and habitats of sea life hidden beneath the waves.
Recently I have been looking at her concert programmes between 1943 and 1971. How sad, that the series of concerts she broadcast on the BBC Third Programme has not been preserved. Her taste was broad and adventurous, ranging from the Classics to music from the 17th Century which she discovered in manuscripts in the British Museum and the Fitzwilliam Museum, and to works by modern composers. Her great speciality was French music – Chopin, Fauré, Debussy, and Ravel, including some pieces signed for her by Poulenc.
One of the concert programmes I found was dated January 3rd,1943, from Münchwilen, a refugee camp in Switzerland, where Edith was interned. Her last concert also took place in Switzerland just four months before she died, when she was seriously ill. She had managed to persuade her doctors to extend the interval between her dialysis treatments to enable her to perform.
Nothing could come between Edith and her music.
Edith Leigh
My mother, Edith Leigh, died in 1972 aged 58, when I was eighteen years old. The publication of Invisible Ink this year, has brought me into renewed contact with her, and now that the issues of adolescence which were pre-occupying me in her last years are long gone, I am free to see her in her own context. This has made the infinite sense of the loss of all that we have been unable to share even more poignant.
Superficially, Edith was the opposite of her brother, a war hero and extrovert, brimming with self-confidence. However, her courage during the war years showed that she was made of the same steely substance. But Edith was self-effacing to a fault. She did not want to be noticed except when she was at the piano, and then only as a vehicle to share music which was greater than herself. It was simply enough to have found safety in England, her fifth country: she left Czernowitz, her hometown in Central Europe at seventeen, then Vienna, shortly before Austria was annexed by the Nazis, and after that narrowly escaped deportation in France, only to be interned in Switzerland. As a survivor, she did not feel she deserved any more from life.
In the UK she made only a tiny number of new friends and very few other people could say that they really knew her. Unwittingly, she taught me to be fearful and careful, whilst ostensibly striving to make my world happy and safe. A fundamental part of her world-view was pessimism about human nature; she expressed this in one of her letters to my father in 1943: “Men have been fighting wars for more than seven thousand years and there is no reason why this should stop. Jealousy, greed, revenge and covetousness will always remain at the bottom of the human soul…”
Edith was not interested in material matters, and this indifference could often be misunderstood as naivety. Her internal life, however, was astonishing. Listening to her recordings is like entering another world — rather like the amazement one feels when snorkelling, on encountering the bright colours, extravagant patterns, shapes and habitats of sea life hidden beneath the waves.
Recently I have been looking at her concert programmes between 1943 and 1971. How sad, that the series of concerts she broadcast on the BBC Third Programme has not been preserved. Her taste was broad and adventurous, ranging from the Classics to music from the 17th Century which she discovered in manuscripts in the British Museum and the Fitzwilliam Museum, and to works by modern composers. Her great speciality was French music – Chopin, Fauré, Debussy, and Ravel, including some pieces signed for her by Poulenc.
One of the concert programmes I found was dated January 3rd,1943, from Münchwilen, a refugee camp in Switzerland, where Edith was interned. Her last concert also took place in Switzerland just four months before she died, when she was seriously ill. She had managed to persuade her doctors to extend the interval between her dialysis treatments to enable her to perform.
Nothing could come between Edith and her music.
August 23rd 2021
My cat, Mungo.
My cat, Mungo.
Readers of my family memoir Invisible Ink will have noticed that cats were important to me throughout my childhood. And so, they have remained. Now I would like to tell you about my cat, Mungo. “Oh NO!” I hear you exclaim. But Mungo, one of millions of domestic short-haired black cats, is one in a million.
We first met him at Doreen’s pet shop in Hackney, with his sister, eighteen and a half years ago when they were a few weeks old. He was a scrawny runt. Both kittens immediately buried themselves in Huw’s jumper, so that was it. They chose us and we took them both home and named them ‘Mungo’ and ‘Mimi’. Initially, Mimi stole the limelight, with her elegance, extraordinarily long tail and exotic sable, biscuity and creamy markings. But Mungo soon claimed my attention with his loud meow, as if to say, “What about me!” and that was how our long love-affair began.
We first met him at Doreen’s pet shop in Hackney, with his sister, eighteen and a half years ago when they were a few weeks old. He was a scrawny runt. Both kittens immediately buried themselves in Huw’s jumper, so that was it. They chose us and we took them both home and named them ‘Mungo’ and ‘Mimi’. Initially, Mimi stole the limelight, with her elegance, extraordinarily long tail and exotic sable, biscuity and creamy markings. But Mungo soon claimed my attention with his loud meow, as if to say, “What about me!” and that was how our long love-affair began.
In kittenhood, Mungo looked like a tabby in disguise, with faintly striped markings. Soon they disappeared, to be replaced by a thick, lustrous, velvety black coat, which set off his fascinating green or sometimes yellow eyes to perfection— inscrutable eyes yet, at the same time, strangely vacant. Mungo was typically curious as a young cat. I would find him high up in the cherry tree, or on the bathroom windowsill, asking to come in. He could never resist a ladder and we once almost accidentally left him in the in the loft after he had shot up there, to emerge sometime later, covered in dust.
Now, like T.S. Eliot’s Old Deuteronomy, he is the oldest feline we have ever had. His age calculated in human years makes him impossibly ancient. As we grow older together, I sympathise with his infirmities. His claws need clipping regularly otherwise he gets stuck on all fabrics (especially my best trousers) and he appreciates it when I clean his weepy eye every morning. His once splendid coat is now, sadly, quite matted and it is a long time since he has been able to reach his hindquarters; however, he is feisty enough to biff me if I go too far in attempting to groom him.
Now very hard of hearing, he yells at the bottom of the stairs as if he can’t face the climb, so I take him up to one of his favourite places—my sofa, or on cold days, on top of the bedroom radiator, or on warm days, to a sunlit patch where he stretches himself out. He has always been a sunbather. Sometimes he howls for no obvious reason, sounding like a lone peacock in the jungle.
Recently I have been trying to face the fact that we will have to part; no cat is immortal. So, I make sure there is time for us to share special moments every day. And if I sit down, he will be sure to join me.
Now, like T.S. Eliot’s Old Deuteronomy, he is the oldest feline we have ever had. His age calculated in human years makes him impossibly ancient. As we grow older together, I sympathise with his infirmities. His claws need clipping regularly otherwise he gets stuck on all fabrics (especially my best trousers) and he appreciates it when I clean his weepy eye every morning. His once splendid coat is now, sadly, quite matted and it is a long time since he has been able to reach his hindquarters; however, he is feisty enough to biff me if I go too far in attempting to groom him.
Now very hard of hearing, he yells at the bottom of the stairs as if he can’t face the climb, so I take him up to one of his favourite places—my sofa, or on cold days, on top of the bedroom radiator, or on warm days, to a sunlit patch where he stretches himself out. He has always been a sunbather. Sometimes he howls for no obvious reason, sounding like a lone peacock in the jungle.
Recently I have been trying to face the fact that we will have to part; no cat is immortal. So, I make sure there is time for us to share special moments every day. And if I sit down, he will be sure to join me.
June 28th 2021
Journeys in Ukraine
Of our three trips to Ukraine, some of our most unforgettable experiences have been on trains and buses. There have been surprises: some pleasant, others less so.
Our hospitable and generous friends in Chernivtsi (formerly Czernowitz) gave us a wonderfully warm send-off to Lviv (Lvov) a journey of some 275 km; they even climbed into the train with us, unloading enough food to last for several days: pies, salad (lavishly garnished with large sprigs of dill, the taste of Russia and Ukraine) fruit, cake, chocolate and flowers. Having said our farewells, we felt exhilarated as the train chugged out of the station accompanied by the Ukrainian National Anthem (a march in a minor key) blasting over the loudspeakers.
On another journey, as we arrived at Lviv Station at the bleary-eyed time of 6am, we were greeted with uplifting classical music. The station was clean and stylish, with lovely wooden seats in the café. It knocked the spots off the Gare du Nord for elegance, friendliness and good organisation.
Travelling by train is a poor way of appreciating the landscape; the windows are generally so grimy that you can hardly see through them. However, you do learn quite a lot about the country from the inside of the train. Most Ukrainian (and Russian) trains have a steward for each carriage called the Provodnik, if it’s a man, or the Provodnitsa, if a woman. One of their
duties is to provide tea on request. When we were travelling from Kiev to Chernivtsi, our Provodnitsa was a sour-faced individual who, when we asked her if we could move to a compartment further away from the toilet, demanded chocolate as a bribe. As we did not have any, we gave her a packet of wafers; after that she was all smiles, and nothing was too much trouble. On that journey we were accosted by an orthodox priest who asked us for money for his church. We declined.
Long distance trains can be claustrophobic. We stepped into an overheated carriage at Ivano-Frankivsk (114kn from Chernivtsi) and were almost overwhelmed by the sickly body odours from passengers who had slept on the train overnight. However, crisp fresh sheets were provided, immaculately laundered, starched and ironed. We were disconcerted to find a well-dressed lady occupying our reserved seats. She had created a nest by surrounding herself with her belongings and had even placed a vase of flowers on the table. Something in her demeanour stopped us from challenging her, and luckily, there were some free seats for us nearby.
This is photo of a poster of Yulia Tymoshenko which I took from the inside of a bus. She was prime Minister of Ukraine in 2005 and again from 2007 to 2010. She co-led the Orange Revolution. The writing in Ukrainian says ”Ukraine will prevail.”
As for the buses—the local trolley buses in Chernivtsi give rise to considerable stress: since they are invariably packed to the gills, the only way to pay the driver is by handing money to fellow-passengers who hand it on forwards. One spends the whole journey worrying about being able to reach the door in time to get off at the right stop, which necessitates pushing and shoving in a thoroughly un-British way. Longer bus journeys have their irritations and hazards: cheery Ukrainian pop music starts to grate after several hours, not to mention cigarette smoke and potholes. The last straw is enduring a breakdown, when everyone gets off the bus in an obscure place, in the usually vain hope that the wait for a replacement won’t be too long.
Journeys in Ukraine
Of our three trips to Ukraine, some of our most unforgettable experiences have been on trains and buses. There have been surprises: some pleasant, others less so.
Our hospitable and generous friends in Chernivtsi (formerly Czernowitz) gave us a wonderfully warm send-off to Lviv (Lvov) a journey of some 275 km; they even climbed into the train with us, unloading enough food to last for several days: pies, salad (lavishly garnished with large sprigs of dill, the taste of Russia and Ukraine) fruit, cake, chocolate and flowers. Having said our farewells, we felt exhilarated as the train chugged out of the station accompanied by the Ukrainian National Anthem (a march in a minor key) blasting over the loudspeakers.
On another journey, as we arrived at Lviv Station at the bleary-eyed time of 6am, we were greeted with uplifting classical music. The station was clean and stylish, with lovely wooden seats in the café. It knocked the spots off the Gare du Nord for elegance, friendliness and good organisation.
Travelling by train is a poor way of appreciating the landscape; the windows are generally so grimy that you can hardly see through them. However, you do learn quite a lot about the country from the inside of the train. Most Ukrainian (and Russian) trains have a steward for each carriage called the Provodnik, if it’s a man, or the Provodnitsa, if a woman. One of their
duties is to provide tea on request. When we were travelling from Kiev to Chernivtsi, our Provodnitsa was a sour-faced individual who, when we asked her if we could move to a compartment further away from the toilet, demanded chocolate as a bribe. As we did not have any, we gave her a packet of wafers; after that she was all smiles, and nothing was too much trouble. On that journey we were accosted by an orthodox priest who asked us for money for his church. We declined.
Long distance trains can be claustrophobic. We stepped into an overheated carriage at Ivano-Frankivsk (114kn from Chernivtsi) and were almost overwhelmed by the sickly body odours from passengers who had slept on the train overnight. However, crisp fresh sheets were provided, immaculately laundered, starched and ironed. We were disconcerted to find a well-dressed lady occupying our reserved seats. She had created a nest by surrounding herself with her belongings and had even placed a vase of flowers on the table. Something in her demeanour stopped us from challenging her, and luckily, there were some free seats for us nearby.
This is photo of a poster of Yulia Tymoshenko which I took from the inside of a bus. She was prime Minister of Ukraine in 2005 and again from 2007 to 2010. She co-led the Orange Revolution. The writing in Ukrainian says ”Ukraine will prevail.”
As for the buses—the local trolley buses in Chernivtsi give rise to considerable stress: since they are invariably packed to the gills, the only way to pay the driver is by handing money to fellow-passengers who hand it on forwards. One spends the whole journey worrying about being able to reach the door in time to get off at the right stop, which necessitates pushing and shoving in a thoroughly un-British way. Longer bus journeys have their irritations and hazards: cheery Ukrainian pop music starts to grate after several hours, not to mention cigarette smoke and potholes. The last straw is enduring a breakdown, when everyone gets off the bus in an obscure place, in the usually vain hope that the wait for a replacement won’t be too long.
May 18th 2021
First visit to Czernowitz 2001.
I never thought I would visit Czernowitz, my mother’s birthplace. I say ‘Czernowitz’ because that’s what it was called in 1914, the year she was born, but now after being ruled by Romania, the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union (again) and finally Ukraine, the town is called ‘Chernivtsi.’ I didn’t think I could ever go there, because until 1991, it was firmly behind the Iron Curtain. It was only by chance that I found out that a German company was organising group tours. We set off from Berlin by night train to Krakow. Twenty-four hours later, after a bumpy, potholed coach ride including unmade roads, we finally arrived in Western Ukraine. My mission was to find my Jewish family roots.
A tour of the main buildings of the town told the story of its cruel and turbulent history. The main synagogue, right in the town centre, known as ‘The Temple’, once a magnificent place of worship, was still standing, despite attempts by both the Nazis and the Soviets in turn to explode it. It had now been converted into a cinema. The University Church, having been filled with computers for mathematics students during nearly five decades of the Soviet period, was now restored as an orthodox place of worship, with icons uncovered, candles lit and Rachmaninov Vespers playing in the background. I was moved to see Maria, our guide, lighting a candle and bowing to the altar.
Dire poverty was all around in the city: the closure of textile and electronics factories and heavy industry had emptied it of most of its young and able-bodied people, sending them en masse to Portugal, Greece and Italy. The streets were crowded with the unemployed, beggars and the elderly examining the contents of rubbish bins. Peasant women were selling small quantities of produce which they weighed out with handheld scales. Some had brought homemade curd cheese in plastic bags. Fashion conscious younger women in miniskirts expertly picked their way through the crumbling pavements in their high heels. Despite the food shortages and lack of shops, people were still buying bunches of flowers: according to custom, odd numbers of flowers are given as a present and even numbers are laid at the cemetery.
The Germans on the tour took pleasure in the success of my quest. We had arranged to meet 92-year-old Frau Zuckerman, a concentration camp survivor, who shared her memories of my family; she told us how to find my grandfather’s grave, which had not been visited since 1945. It was was very near to the plot in the cemetery that Frau Zuckerman had reserved for herself. Afterwards Nadja, her carer invited us back to her flat for a hearty Ukrainian meal (with vodka). We also visited my family’s flat, in a building now converted to a public library. The head librarian was thrilled to discover who had occupied the premises before, and even more pleased to learn that my grandmother had been an avid reader.
Our first visit led to friendships and further adventures in Ukraine.
First visit to Czernowitz 2001.
I never thought I would visit Czernowitz, my mother’s birthplace. I say ‘Czernowitz’ because that’s what it was called in 1914, the year she was born, but now after being ruled by Romania, the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union (again) and finally Ukraine, the town is called ‘Chernivtsi.’ I didn’t think I could ever go there, because until 1991, it was firmly behind the Iron Curtain. It was only by chance that I found out that a German company was organising group tours. We set off from Berlin by night train to Krakow. Twenty-four hours later, after a bumpy, potholed coach ride including unmade roads, we finally arrived in Western Ukraine. My mission was to find my Jewish family roots.
A tour of the main buildings of the town told the story of its cruel and turbulent history. The main synagogue, right in the town centre, known as ‘The Temple’, once a magnificent place of worship, was still standing, despite attempts by both the Nazis and the Soviets in turn to explode it. It had now been converted into a cinema. The University Church, having been filled with computers for mathematics students during nearly five decades of the Soviet period, was now restored as an orthodox place of worship, with icons uncovered, candles lit and Rachmaninov Vespers playing in the background. I was moved to see Maria, our guide, lighting a candle and bowing to the altar.
Dire poverty was all around in the city: the closure of textile and electronics factories and heavy industry had emptied it of most of its young and able-bodied people, sending them en masse to Portugal, Greece and Italy. The streets were crowded with the unemployed, beggars and the elderly examining the contents of rubbish bins. Peasant women were selling small quantities of produce which they weighed out with handheld scales. Some had brought homemade curd cheese in plastic bags. Fashion conscious younger women in miniskirts expertly picked their way through the crumbling pavements in their high heels. Despite the food shortages and lack of shops, people were still buying bunches of flowers: according to custom, odd numbers of flowers are given as a present and even numbers are laid at the cemetery.
The Germans on the tour took pleasure in the success of my quest. We had arranged to meet 92-year-old Frau Zuckerman, a concentration camp survivor, who shared her memories of my family; she told us how to find my grandfather’s grave, which had not been visited since 1945. It was was very near to the plot in the cemetery that Frau Zuckerman had reserved for herself. Afterwards Nadja, her carer invited us back to her flat for a hearty Ukrainian meal (with vodka). We also visited my family’s flat, in a building now converted to a public library. The head librarian was thrilled to discover who had occupied the premises before, and even more pleased to learn that my grandmother had been an avid reader.
Our first visit led to friendships and further adventures in Ukraine.
April 19th 2021
The Wedding Ring
One of my most precious possessions was my grandmother’s wedding ring. It was laden with family history and had undergone a chequered existence. Engraved on the inside was her name, Martha, and the date of her wedding, December 6th,1906. When she died, in 1947, it was bequeathed to my aunt Fa, my grandmother’s daughter in law, and on her death in 1985, it was passed down to me. As it was too large for my finger (and also somewhat squashed because it was made of soft, continental gold) I had it made smaller and wore it all the time for several years. When I married Huw, I gave it to him to wear as his wedding ring. The ring was enlarged to fit his finger and we added his name and the date of our wedding, 30th May 1992, to the engraving on the inside.
A few years went by until Huw injured his finger in his workshop with a sharp chisel. The ring had to be sawn off in Accident and Emergency. Once the finger had healed, the ring was soldered back together so that he was able to wear it again. This time we decided it should not be too tight so that it would never need to be sawn off again.
A few more years elapsed and then we went to Abruzzo in Italy for a summer holiday. We spent a day at a beach on the Adriatic coast. In the morning we had a lovely swim in a calm sea and decided to take a second dip in the afternoon. By this time, the wind was up, and the sea had become quite rough. I soon gave up trying to get beyond the breaking waves. As I turned towards the shore, I waved at Huw and yelled ‘Are you alright?’. ‘No, I’m not’ he replied, and I could see that he was close to tears. ‘I’ve lost my ring. It must have been knocked off my finger by a wave.’
We went through the motions of looking for the ring for about half an hour. The sea was getting wilder, and we knew that the search was hopeless. It was either stuck in
the seabed or was well on its way to the Croatian coast. Or it could even have been swallowed by a fish.
I was filled with sadness as I realised that the symbol of our love, our wedding ring, which had also survived two world wars and the ghetto in Czernowitz, was lost forever. One look at Huw’s distraught face told me that we must not dwell on this. I wondered how my grandmother would have reacted. I decided she would have said, ‘It’s only a thing -- let it go.’
Yes, we had to let go. After all, this is what so many millions of people are forced to do, when fleeing from war, persecution, floods or earthquakes. To derive a sense of security from objects is illusory. Ultimately, the things we preserve cannot preserve us.
As soon as Huw and I returned home we bought a second-hand ring, which looks identical to the original, and had it engraved as before. And now only we can know the difference.
27th March 2021
‘Couldn’t afford the Eels’ Memories of Wapping 1900 — 1960
Every now and then it is interesting to review the world portrayed by the characters in this book. Our view of the past changes continually in the light of the present — as if we are on a train and are leaving a city which gets smaller and smaller. In 2002/3 when I interviewed them, the ages of the thirty or so people in the book ranged from the late 70s to the early 90s. Now they are all dead. Their world has faded into history.
Since 2008, when the book was published, the gulf between the people of that generation and the modern world has been steadily widening. They would have felt lost trying to cope with the automation and depersonalisation of everyday life and would have been bewildered by social media, zoom, smart phones, robots and drones.
What would my Wappingites have made of the United Kingdom of 2021? When I first heard their stories in the relative comfort of their council flats, I was horrified by their recollections of the terror of illness, fear of hospitals and lack of food. Like them, I was outraged at the dire poverty many of them experienced as subjects of the British Empire.
Many of them remembered relations who had had the flu during the pandemic of 1918. There were so many patients in Wapping, that the aptly named Dr Saint had employed a maid just to open the door to them. They were only too familiar with TB and other infectious diseases for which there was no cure before sulphonamides and penicillin.
All this seemed very distant, at the time of writing, a few years before the Crash of 2008. But who would have foreseen that in the 21st century, children living in what is now said to be the fifth richest country in the world would be going hungry and that working families would be dependent on food banks? And now we have our own pandemic.
The Wedding Ring
One of my most precious possessions was my grandmother’s wedding ring. It was laden with family history and had undergone a chequered existence. Engraved on the inside was her name, Martha, and the date of her wedding, December 6th,1906. When she died, in 1947, it was bequeathed to my aunt Fa, my grandmother’s daughter in law, and on her death in 1985, it was passed down to me. As it was too large for my finger (and also somewhat squashed because it was made of soft, continental gold) I had it made smaller and wore it all the time for several years. When I married Huw, I gave it to him to wear as his wedding ring. The ring was enlarged to fit his finger and we added his name and the date of our wedding, 30th May 1992, to the engraving on the inside.
A few years went by until Huw injured his finger in his workshop with a sharp chisel. The ring had to be sawn off in Accident and Emergency. Once the finger had healed, the ring was soldered back together so that he was able to wear it again. This time we decided it should not be too tight so that it would never need to be sawn off again.
A few more years elapsed and then we went to Abruzzo in Italy for a summer holiday. We spent a day at a beach on the Adriatic coast. In the morning we had a lovely swim in a calm sea and decided to take a second dip in the afternoon. By this time, the wind was up, and the sea had become quite rough. I soon gave up trying to get beyond the breaking waves. As I turned towards the shore, I waved at Huw and yelled ‘Are you alright?’. ‘No, I’m not’ he replied, and I could see that he was close to tears. ‘I’ve lost my ring. It must have been knocked off my finger by a wave.’
We went through the motions of looking for the ring for about half an hour. The sea was getting wilder, and we knew that the search was hopeless. It was either stuck in
the seabed or was well on its way to the Croatian coast. Or it could even have been swallowed by a fish.
I was filled with sadness as I realised that the symbol of our love, our wedding ring, which had also survived two world wars and the ghetto in Czernowitz, was lost forever. One look at Huw’s distraught face told me that we must not dwell on this. I wondered how my grandmother would have reacted. I decided she would have said, ‘It’s only a thing -- let it go.’
Yes, we had to let go. After all, this is what so many millions of people are forced to do, when fleeing from war, persecution, floods or earthquakes. To derive a sense of security from objects is illusory. Ultimately, the things we preserve cannot preserve us.
As soon as Huw and I returned home we bought a second-hand ring, which looks identical to the original, and had it engraved as before. And now only we can know the difference.
27th March 2021
‘Couldn’t afford the Eels’ Memories of Wapping 1900 — 1960
Every now and then it is interesting to review the world portrayed by the characters in this book. Our view of the past changes continually in the light of the present — as if we are on a train and are leaving a city which gets smaller and smaller. In 2002/3 when I interviewed them, the ages of the thirty or so people in the book ranged from the late 70s to the early 90s. Now they are all dead. Their world has faded into history.
Since 2008, when the book was published, the gulf between the people of that generation and the modern world has been steadily widening. They would have felt lost trying to cope with the automation and depersonalisation of everyday life and would have been bewildered by social media, zoom, smart phones, robots and drones.
What would my Wappingites have made of the United Kingdom of 2021? When I first heard their stories in the relative comfort of their council flats, I was horrified by their recollections of the terror of illness, fear of hospitals and lack of food. Like them, I was outraged at the dire poverty many of them experienced as subjects of the British Empire.
Many of them remembered relations who had had the flu during the pandemic of 1918. There were so many patients in Wapping, that the aptly named Dr Saint had employed a maid just to open the door to them. They were only too familiar with TB and other infectious diseases for which there was no cure before sulphonamides and penicillin.
All this seemed very distant, at the time of writing, a few years before the Crash of 2008. But who would have foreseen that in the 21st century, children living in what is now said to be the fifth richest country in the world would be going hungry and that working families would be dependent on food banks? And now we have our own pandemic.
9th March 2021
Back To the Coalface!
After five years of retirement from General Practice, I have returned to the coalface to help with vaccinations against COVID-19. The path to doing this has not been altogether straightforward: it has taken a good four months to arrange and complete the training and all the formalities, some of which, such as learning about the legalities about vaccinating babies, was hardly relevant. I must admit that when it came to it, I felt a little apprehensive. Having shed my persona as a doctor, I wondered how it would feel talking to patients after all this time?
I need not have worried—as the organiser of the clinic, who I recognised despite her mask as a well-loved colleague I had worked with many years previously, said breezily, “it’ll be like riding a bike, Martha.”
It was a typical Hackney experience—friendly and multicultural. The exchange of introductions of the team of the day revealed a wealth of language skills from Malay, Urdu and Gujarati, to Turkish and Mandarin. Among the patients I vaccinated there were at least eight different nationalities and ethnicities. It reminded me that I had often thought it would have been be fun to put a map of the world on the wall and stick in a pin for every new country a patient came from when I was working in Wapping.
The clinic got off to a slow start. This was unusual and colleagues felt that the younger patients coming now (who were below sixty years of age) were much less eager to be vaccinated than those aged seventy and above. Indeed, great efforts are being made by the Mayor and Director of Public Health in Hackney and specially funded Community Champions, to allay fears and suspicions and persuade people to come forward. It got busier later in the morning when the sensible decision was made to invite local teachers to fill the gaps in appointments; they were only too happy to take up the opportunity on the second day of the re-opening of schools.
This somewhat relaxed first shift gave me the chance to have some interesting chats with local people, one of whom was a music teacher in a secondary school. When I told her I played the bassoon, she was keen to arrange for me to come into her school to demonstrate it to the children. I wonder who I’ll meet next time?
Back To the Coalface!
After five years of retirement from General Practice, I have returned to the coalface to help with vaccinations against COVID-19. The path to doing this has not been altogether straightforward: it has taken a good four months to arrange and complete the training and all the formalities, some of which, such as learning about the legalities about vaccinating babies, was hardly relevant. I must admit that when it came to it, I felt a little apprehensive. Having shed my persona as a doctor, I wondered how it would feel talking to patients after all this time?
I need not have worried—as the organiser of the clinic, who I recognised despite her mask as a well-loved colleague I had worked with many years previously, said breezily, “it’ll be like riding a bike, Martha.”
It was a typical Hackney experience—friendly and multicultural. The exchange of introductions of the team of the day revealed a wealth of language skills from Malay, Urdu and Gujarati, to Turkish and Mandarin. Among the patients I vaccinated there were at least eight different nationalities and ethnicities. It reminded me that I had often thought it would have been be fun to put a map of the world on the wall and stick in a pin for every new country a patient came from when I was working in Wapping.
The clinic got off to a slow start. This was unusual and colleagues felt that the younger patients coming now (who were below sixty years of age) were much less eager to be vaccinated than those aged seventy and above. Indeed, great efforts are being made by the Mayor and Director of Public Health in Hackney and specially funded Community Champions, to allay fears and suspicions and persuade people to come forward. It got busier later in the morning when the sensible decision was made to invite local teachers to fill the gaps in appointments; they were only too happy to take up the opportunity on the second day of the re-opening of schools.
This somewhat relaxed first shift gave me the chance to have some interesting chats with local people, one of whom was a music teacher in a secondary school. When I told her I played the bassoon, she was keen to arrange for me to come into her school to demonstrate it to the children. I wonder who I’ll meet next time?
March 2nd 2021
Granny Martha's Recipe Book.
This family heirloom is one of my most precious possessions. Actually, I share it with my cousin, Annie, who lives in Paris. My grandmother was her aunt, and although it was left to me, we share it because it is one of the few objects that has survived the holocaust, in which Annie’s parents perished.
It is a most tatty, unprepossessing object, a lined exercise book, falling to pieces, with food stains, cooking burns and ink blots, but Annie has tried to prolong its life by covering it in floral paper adding a label, ‘Livre de cuisine de Tante Martha’.
The book has been through hell and back. In the winter of 1941 a few months after the Nazis took Czernowitz, (an obscure town in Central Europe, now part of Western Ukraine) my grandmother survived the ghetto and the Nazi occupation, continuing to live there after the Soviet's took over, until she managed to escape to the West. There are stamps in the Cyrillic script at the beginning and end of the recipe book which show that it must have been inspected and passed by Soviet officialdom. When her son, my uncle, Reinhold, smuggled her out of Czernowitz in 1945 in an ambulance, he told her that on no account must she bring any written material with her. She took no notice and hid the book under her coat throughout the journey.
The recipes are all in alphabetical order, annotated with the name of a friend or the source — some from family members, especially her mother and sisters, some from the ladies who attended her literary salon and some from newspapers. Martha was always on the look-out for good recipes. There is of course, a strong Austro-Hungarian influence and there are traditional Jewish recipes, such as various versions of honey cake but, interestingly, there are some recipes using pork, which shows her attitude to religion. The pre-war recipes (when her servant would come into her bedroom every morning to ask what Madam would like her to cook that day) are rich and decadent with pages of chocolate recipes, cakes and puddings with a lot of eggs butter and cream. Many are enticing, but infuriatingly incomplete, as Martha was writing for herself and did not bother to write out what was obvious to her. However, nothing will induce me to try out brain pasty: it starts ‘mix together 3 spoons of butter with 4 egg yolks. Pass the brain through a sieve….’
Granny Martha's Recipe Book.
This family heirloom is one of my most precious possessions. Actually, I share it with my cousin, Annie, who lives in Paris. My grandmother was her aunt, and although it was left to me, we share it because it is one of the few objects that has survived the holocaust, in which Annie’s parents perished.
It is a most tatty, unprepossessing object, a lined exercise book, falling to pieces, with food stains, cooking burns and ink blots, but Annie has tried to prolong its life by covering it in floral paper adding a label, ‘Livre de cuisine de Tante Martha’.
The book has been through hell and back. In the winter of 1941 a few months after the Nazis took Czernowitz, (an obscure town in Central Europe, now part of Western Ukraine) my grandmother survived the ghetto and the Nazi occupation, continuing to live there after the Soviet's took over, until she managed to escape to the West. There are stamps in the Cyrillic script at the beginning and end of the recipe book which show that it must have been inspected and passed by Soviet officialdom. When her son, my uncle, Reinhold, smuggled her out of Czernowitz in 1945 in an ambulance, he told her that on no account must she bring any written material with her. She took no notice and hid the book under her coat throughout the journey.
The recipes are all in alphabetical order, annotated with the name of a friend or the source — some from family members, especially her mother and sisters, some from the ladies who attended her literary salon and some from newspapers. Martha was always on the look-out for good recipes. There is of course, a strong Austro-Hungarian influence and there are traditional Jewish recipes, such as various versions of honey cake but, interestingly, there are some recipes using pork, which shows her attitude to religion. The pre-war recipes (when her servant would come into her bedroom every morning to ask what Madam would like her to cook that day) are rich and decadent with pages of chocolate recipes, cakes and puddings with a lot of eggs butter and cream. Many are enticing, but infuriatingly incomplete, as Martha was writing for herself and did not bother to write out what was obvious to her. However, nothing will induce me to try out brain pasty: it starts ‘mix together 3 spoons of butter with 4 egg yolks. Pass the brain through a sieve….’
December 20th 2020
invisible ink Unleashed.
Invisible Ink was unleashed into the world on December 1st. I was just about to get onto my bike to visit a friend, when my husband, Huw, called out, “there’s something here for you”. “I’ve gotta go NOW, I’m late”, I shouted back, crossly, but something in his tone stopped me in my tracks and I found myself looking at four boxes containing 100 books with my name on them. “Isn’t that great!”, he said.
It felt odd— a mixture of deflation and apprehension. Where was the excitement I should be feeling, I asked myself? There was no going back on this venture now, and I felt rather out of control.
I spent the next few weeks making up parcels to family and friends and trudging to and from the post office. I now have only a few copies left from the first batch. The response to my family story has been overwhelmingly positive and touching, making me so elated that I have been unable to sleep for the last two nights. Friends from all periods of my life have written such loving and thoughtful emails that I feel overcome.
My friends’ comments have made me think more about my motivation for writing the book. I had already realised that it enabled me to complete my grieving process, but more than this, it gave me a way as an adult of finding my mother again, whom I had only had in my life for my first eighteen years. Discovering her thoughts, emotions and ideas as she expressed them in her letters, was a joy.
A second important and not fully conscious driving force for writing the book was the urge to immortalise my family, especially my parents: since neither John nor I have had children, the Leighs have now come to the end of the line.
And so, my emotions are gradually giving way to a sense of peace. I have done it and it is what it is and no longer belongs just to me. I remember when I used to make stained glass panels, that sense of intense involvement with the process and then the abracadabra of my work transformed into a free-standing object that can hang on the wall for anybody to see and have an opinion about. It is like releasing a bird into flight, not knowing where it will go. Now my book is in print, what was previously invisible and unarticulated, has emerged from the recesses of my mind in a portable form. It could end up anywhere on the planet.
invisible ink Unleashed.
Invisible Ink was unleashed into the world on December 1st. I was just about to get onto my bike to visit a friend, when my husband, Huw, called out, “there’s something here for you”. “I’ve gotta go NOW, I’m late”, I shouted back, crossly, but something in his tone stopped me in my tracks and I found myself looking at four boxes containing 100 books with my name on them. “Isn’t that great!”, he said.
It felt odd— a mixture of deflation and apprehension. Where was the excitement I should be feeling, I asked myself? There was no going back on this venture now, and I felt rather out of control.
I spent the next few weeks making up parcels to family and friends and trudging to and from the post office. I now have only a few copies left from the first batch. The response to my family story has been overwhelmingly positive and touching, making me so elated that I have been unable to sleep for the last two nights. Friends from all periods of my life have written such loving and thoughtful emails that I feel overcome.
My friends’ comments have made me think more about my motivation for writing the book. I had already realised that it enabled me to complete my grieving process, but more than this, it gave me a way as an adult of finding my mother again, whom I had only had in my life for my first eighteen years. Discovering her thoughts, emotions and ideas as she expressed them in her letters, was a joy.
A second important and not fully conscious driving force for writing the book was the urge to immortalise my family, especially my parents: since neither John nor I have had children, the Leighs have now come to the end of the line.
And so, my emotions are gradually giving way to a sense of peace. I have done it and it is what it is and no longer belongs just to me. I remember when I used to make stained glass panels, that sense of intense involvement with the process and then the abracadabra of my work transformed into a free-standing object that can hang on the wall for anybody to see and have an opinion about. It is like releasing a bird into flight, not knowing where it will go. Now my book is in print, what was previously invisible and unarticulated, has emerged from the recesses of my mind in a portable form. It could end up anywhere on the planet.