Iestyn Edwards is...what?

The idea was we would all have a daffodil of our own nurturing to wear on St David's Day. Miss Postelthwaite presented all Year Ones (seven and eight-year-olds) at Holy Trinity Juniors with a daffodil bulb to overwinter.  I overwatered mine.  The first morning of spring term my mother rang my headmaster. ‘Iestyn's father is at this very moment walking Iestyn to school via Lower Marsh market to buy a replacement daffodil, Mr Tonge,’ she said. ‘Iestyn overwatered the bulb the school very kindly gave him to rear as a Christmas holiday project and killed it.’ When I was eleven, at parents evening my mother told Mrs Spinoza, head of housecraft, that I hadn’t sifted the flour into my homework apple crumble. I was twelve when she buttonholed my choir master at Southwark Cathedral. 'Dr Bramma, now. Iestyn has been moonlighting, in a very low way.'  Performing the role of Sandy in a school assembly of Grease .  NB: this was in a mixed-sex school. But aged twelve, I was the o...

For six months in 1997 I lived in Haven House, Suffolk, as a safety-net for Lady Olive Simmonds: a seventy-nine year-old Bostonian suffering severely from alcoholism, leg ulcers and a lilac tinted backcombed afro. Suffering burnout, I had left full-time singing teaching. It was my dream to move to Deaven. Olive’s house in Lembton was only two miles along the coast.  When I had met her socially in Deaven itself the previous year, Olive had been very much, ‘Look at the women in this cafe. All failed schizophrenics. There’s Wendy Simons - so upper-lowbrow she thinks the Guggenheim is a song from Fiddler on the Roof.  Oh, God, here’s Daphne. Talk about self-pity for having lost her one husband. Some of us have got through a whole three.’ After I moved into her attic floor, however, she was far more: 'Iestyn, how about you give us all a treat and wear a different shirt for a change?' 'Iestyn, how about you visit the barber's, pronto?' 'Iestyn, how about you tread mor...

During various house-sitting stints I have been asked to comply with the following: ‘Can you please go next door and mix Lady Turner’s canary food first thing each morning? I do that for her. She’s practically blind and can’t see to get it the right consistency – dampish crumble mix.’ Righto. ‘Please let the cat watch as much as possible of The Horse of the Year Show . She’s also quite keen – but not so much – on the flat racing.’  Righto. ‘Just FYI, we have a Blessing Stone in the garden which is, by order of the council, open for the public to view. Pilgrimage, sort of idea. Marks Ley lines that run all the way to Glastonbury, it’s said. But then, when do Ley lines ever not run directly to Glastonbury? Either engage with the pilgrims or not, as you feel in the moment.'  Righto.  ‘Marian, opposite, tries to involve us in going over her silver inventory with her, witnessing. She keeps accusing her cleaner (with her for nearly twenty years, we think) of stealing. We think ...

Children were singing in Bungay library this morning. I remembered Cassie, in Saffron Walden library.  One early spring day she was sitting by the ‘Book of the Day’ display, spry in her eighties, immaculate in rust linen culottes, a burgundy short smock, leather bag at her hip. A twenty-something girl in pastel pink sackcloth and Gestapo boots was overseeing the children singing here.  Cassie told me, ‘It’s hardly encouraging children to use the library for silent and studious purposes. Today alone, the bus as sung about has had wheels on it, a horn on it, people on it, windscreen wipers on it, a conductor on it and a service dog on it.’ I asked, ‘What does the service dog go...do? She answered in song, ' The service dog on the bus goes snuffle wuffle calm, snuffle wuffle calm, snuffle wuffle calm. The service dog on the bus goes snuffle wuffle calm, all day long . Apparently.'  Moving like a tide, the children’s attention shifted from pastel sackcloth girl to Cassie. Twi...

                            A woman at the back end of middle age, with wiry, flicked hair, in a pink vinyl mac, and gingham pedal pushers came through from Thorpeness Meare, leaving her Jack Russell off the lead as she continued past the pond. Three pairs of nesting swans and the Egyptian geese were grazing there. The woman turned as people remonstrated with her, then stood in a bevelled pose, like the central figure in The Three Graces statue, and indicated that she was happy for her Jack Russell to run to and fro barking by the water's edge.  The goose nosed the tiny gosling into the pond and jumped in after it followed by the gander. The swans stood absolutely still, feathers up all around, guarding their cygnets.  Still the woman remained in her pose, smirking indulgently at the Jack Russell.  A man picked the dog up by the collar, walked over to her and thrust it into her arms. 'Take this ba...

                                                                                                                    The bakers were on tenterhooks... ‘Right. It's time. Terry - put his blindfold on again...' The following example of my mother's narcissism has stuck with me all these years - decades - because I was powerless. There could be no remedy. Nothing I could have done better. Nobody to reassure me.  It may seem trivial - possibly comic - but it was nevertheless symptomatic of Eirwen's condition as a whole.  So, here we go - Terry (my father) had put my blindfold on again, as instructed... 'Come into the bedroom, Iestyn,' Eirwen called. 'Right...keep your head still and shoulders down,...

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