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.’ At parents' evening when I was eleven, my mother told Mrs Spinoza, head of housecraft, 'Iestyn failed to sieve the flour into his 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 twel...

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,...

     #journalism #thetimes #drag #mytutuwentawol

Something a house-sitter must absolutely do is continue the routines of the house-sittee.  Of course, this tends to mean sticking with the set times for, say, dog walks, feeds, wees, treats, bed and so on.  However, when I house-sat in Chichester - nice place, Chichester - house-sittee Laurel, said,  ‘If you see a blue tit with a white patch on its head looking in through the kitchen window, please remind her of her survival instinct, if at all possible, by making pecking movements at her.' Oh.  Laurel explained, ‘My husband Yan and I were coming back from Waitrose, and as we turned into the drive, there was Susan my neighbour right down on the gravel making 'stop' gestures at us. A young blue tit had been attacked by a cat - tail feathers all gone; and I looked everywhere, but there was no sign of its parents.  'I told Susan, of course she couldn't take it because she has a cat. I hoped she didn't think I was accusing her Bassinger. I took off my hat, and Yan a...

                                                         Bertram Nicholls 'Lambeth Bridge' 1949 Dressed in a woollen blue coat fastened with nappy pins and stained down the front with tinned ravioli. A straw bonnet during the summer, the top of a sawn-off kettle in winter. Support tights, no knickers, one blue shoe, one brown welly. Speckled with sticking plasters. This was Lill, in her early seventies, I imagine, going back and forth over Lambeth Bridge all day, day in, day out, pushing a supermarket trolley filled with china ornaments wrapped in newspaper, curtains with the hooks half off and a display halibut late of the fish shop in The Cut.  On his way to work at Myer's Beds each day Big Sid, who lived round the balcony from my family, took her a flask of tea. He collected the empty flask from her on his way home each evening, saying,...

The people on this side of the demised lane won't talk to the people on the other.  The story being that Tim, the previous owner of Blaine’s house, over on the other side, had put in a planning application to build sixty-two houses on the land between his back garden and Tesco Metro. Objections were strident, planning permission was denied, Tim in high dudgeon sold Eight Magpies to Blaine and moved away. Quite far. Suki, from this side, added, ‘Decrepit old George and Venetia, who were already living on the land behind Tim's house - so would presumably have been most impacted – to this day won’t speak to either mummy or the Bodings.’ 'But why?' I asked.  'Because of the objections to the planning permission.' 'But the planning permission was denied,' I said. 'Tim - developer - moved away. Blaine bought his house.' 'Exactly.’ Oh. Blaine himself told me, 'Actually, while all this with the planning permission was just getting a bit warm, at ...

A hiker stayed over in the hotel last night. He was from Bristol, late twenties, bearded, stocky in an olive green ribbed sweater and matching nylon trousers. He's on for thirty-five kilometres today.  He asked the breakfast room at large if anyone minded if he filled his water bottle from the jug - nobody did - meanwhile agreeing with me, 'No, there's not much to Bognor Regis, all said and done.' He also didn't think there was much to my friend, Pippa, who, on a walking holiday with her sister, got fed up with the walking part by the first morning, whining about how she just couldn't, she couldn't.  'Sarah would walk to the next B and B, getting through twenty miles or so a day,' I said, 'and - even in the wilds, middle of nowheresville - Pippa would somehow manage to arrive there by evening in a taxi. This was pre-Uber.' Hiker man looked disapproving. 'Bet she didn't sleep as well as he sister at night, though.'  Oh... #walking ...

I've just twigged about the lack of sound insulation in this once luxury, now faded to budget, hotel. (And in similar places.) 1) There would have been no motor vehicles in the 1820s, so no need to install triple glazing here in the Steyne when it was new.  2) Back then no sound-proofing would have been necessary between the rooms because the kind of loud, trashy person who came for this Valentine's weekend special* would have been far too poor to stay here. There. History and Science for your Sunday.  *At 7.20 am the woman in 337, for one example, was having riotous, multiple orgasms, all by herself; moaning in a Midlands accent.  #valentine #valentines #valentinesday #valentinesweekend 

'What a creaky lift that was. But, let's remember, the hotel is originally ever so old.' As she pushed the buggy down the hotel corridor, the woman reassured her toddler. 'But it does look cute.' Not sounding as though she really believed herself. 'Oh, we go this way. There will be lots of people here this weekend, with the date. We mustn't forget our exercises, so we can have ourselves a bit of a cheat-treat.' From her build and the sportswear, I assumed the woman was a PT. 'You'll enjoy yourself. Ooh, brace yourself, Rico, a bit of manoeuvring...' She turned at the end of the corridor.  Rico wasn't a toddler.  It was a pug.  In its buggy.  'This is Rico. I'm Jill. He's a rescue pug. Fawn.' 'Iestyn. Variety turn. Sitting in the hotel lobby, like Miss Marple, watching the comings and goings.' 'I'm a peripatetic masseuse for top sports teams.'  I felt there was a dichotomy between Jill's physical imp...

In Tesco's deli section a kid was shrieking. Ermina, at the till, said it was because the parents overfed it.  ‘Children never hear “No”, these days, and they get very screechy in here,' she clarified.  Ermina, coming from a Seychelles shanty town, had never had supermarkets full stop. ‘Stalls by the side of the road at best. But feeling gratitude for anything and everything is the Lord’s blessing on us. It is most certainly not on the way, this child’s attitude, to being the person who first thing Sunday in Sunday out gives up their time unquestioningly and with no need of thanks to sweep the church steps.’ I asked Ermina, was she talking about herself? I could see her with a triumphal, praising, blessed sweep parting the dust like God did the Red Sea.  She said, ‘No, not me. I still have things I can do with my Sundays, thanks be to God. I go swimming in Brockley, have an ice cream. Sometimes going overground to Clapham Common to see what the trees are up to. It’s Betti...

I've walked out of an Airbnb. I tried, I really tried. To put up with being there. On and off for eleven days. I don't know why.  Well, I do. Trying to make things work, fearing reprisals, not sticking up for myself.  The Hosts and I are now in dispute, with Airbnb as referee.  (In the Are you f-ing blind or what, ref? sense.) To kick off (no football pun intended) the agent told me, 'I can't pass on your comments. That would count as personal advice.'  So, I passed them on myself: 'Robin, I have some reality checks for you on your listing.' It is in a luxurious block and has just been fully renovated to a high end before being listed.  'The block is not luxurious, it's basic.' [Even the block's management company laughed at the descriptor luxurious .] 'Stained, damp smelling industrial carpet, faded, scuffed and spotted magnolia paint. Throughout the flat itself are botched paint and plaster touch-ups.' The space comprises a one-bedr...

This afternoon I went upstairs from my Airbnb to ask whoever lived there would they mind if I had a singing lesson at some point this week. The woman that opened the door was in her seventies, with a wryly amused look; deep turquoise woollen pyjamas and matching slippers. Her hair was grey, side parted and up-combed-over.  Here is the transcript of her monologue: I can’t believe it’s Airbnb downstairs. I’ve been here twenty years, since I divorced my husband and the housing association found me this place. I wouldn’t want to be here, otherwise. But I’m from round here. There’s good places, of course, but also bad places. Ore. The Old Town is so overrated. All those...what are they called...artin...oh, is that it? I’ll know for next time. All that type of shops but still nobody picks up the dog shit.  Do you hear my tele? Because I go deaf of an evening. I can’t believe it’s Airbnb downstairs. I did see a fat woman in there. And a bloke coming in and out I never saw without a c...