My Mother the Knitting Narcissist

                                                   

                                                               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, tidy...' 

She slipped something over my upper body, then took off my blindfold. 'Stand up straight! Now, out you go again into the sitting room so everyone can see what I've made this year.’

This was the ceremony of the Christmas sweater. As ever, knit incognito. I was forbidden to look at what Eirwen was knitting all during Advent; and made to wear the blindfold during all fittings. 

In 1971, when I was six, Eirwen knitted the first ever (what she called) ‘virtually internationally beloved’ Christmas sweater. 

Acrylic. I was allergic to wool. 

The design was Noddy’s toadstool house. It was followed by Ivor the Engine, the Welsh flag, the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang car, a ukulele, Smarties. Sobering down as I got older: drafts boards, Jenga bricks, until – 1983 - plain navy blue. 

Eirwen was possibly going through the menopause that year. 

'Everybody, here it is...'

I stepped out into our sitting for the Christmas Eve sweater reveal. There waiting to coo and applaud (or else), would be my Nan Ak and/or Nan Silcox, Welsh Lill, Big Lil, Little Lill, Wrong Way Round the Balcony Lill, Mrs Lingwood and Connie 'Practically Bedridden' Presland.

It was Eirwen's big moment, standing beside me in my sweater each Christmas Eve looking like Da Vinci with the Mona Lisa; God beside Adam; the feted Gregg's product developer beside the sausage, cheese and bean melt. 

Jane Austen collated family and friends' opinions on Mansfield Park - 

'W.B.L. – Highly pleased with Fanny Price - & a warm admirer of the Portsmouth Scene. – Angry with Edmund for not being in love with her, & hating Mrs. Norris for teasing her'...

Eirwen did the same for the sweaters. 

'Connie 'Practically Bedridden' Presland said, almost in tears, "You've done it again, Irene!". Welsh Lill said she could almost hear the ukulele being plucked. Mrs Lingwood said my pearl stitches in the toadstool house roof were out of this world.'

In a plastic sack in the bottom of Eirwen's wardrobe are pairs of photographs. In the first of the pair, taken each Christmas Eve, I’m wearing that year’s sweater. In the second, taken in April, I’m again wearing the sweater and holding its matching birthday cake.  

Eirwen went by bus to Victoria to have these cakes made. 'Special. The bakers have come to be on tenterhooks as to what design I might think up in any particular year.' 

The year I was eight Eirwen would so over-shout me into tilting the cake to capture its best angle for her photograph, I dropped Ivor the Engine.  

She dislodged the handle from my toy broom and thrashed me. 

Fast forward through decades to a little after 8pm on May 27th 1984. Eirwen began ringing around her six sisters-in-law, the front desk of the Waterloo Action Centre, Inner Brother Iris from the White Eagle Lodge, the Wool Ply Advisory Bureau and ITV news.

I may possibly have invented those last two.

‘I just thought I would inform you,' Eirwen said, in a hollow voice, 'that after twenty odd years of it, I’ve tonight decided it’s once and for all been a fair whack. Yes, I know it will have come as quite a shock to you. But I am, yes, forthwith formally retiring from my knitting.’  

A knitting narcissist's take if ever there was one on Dame Nellie Melba's retirement speech from the stage of Covent Garden. 'A fond farewell to all my greatnesses...'

Though I doubt Dame Nellie ever went onstage as Mimi wearing a four-ply, crocheted slip stitched in the neck, raglan sleeved Jaws poster.

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