McCaw Media

Tag: memoir

  • Memoir: Living Under a Romany Blessing

    ‘Ye’re not scared of buying from a Romany are ye?’ said the old woman at the door one November night. ‘Of course not,’ I said. My granny was born to travelling horse-dealers so no, I wasn’t scared. ‘Blessings be upon ye,’ she said. She was seventy-five if she was a day; a lot younger than…

  • Memoir: Parcelwatching

    I was watching my phone to get some clue as to when my parcel would arrive. It was to come from Peterborough to just outside Cambridge, a distance of some 36 miles. It arrived, 277 miles later. That’s over seven and a half times the distance it should have gone. What had happened? Where had…

  • Memoir: Bikes

    Sometimes parents have to disappoint their children. And the younger you are when you are disappointed, the longer you have to brood about it and chew it over at family reunions. Take bikes. Dad would not let my brother and me have two-wheelers. Our terraced street which was a favourite haunt of driving instructors and…

  • Memoir poem: The Silence Of Saturday Teatime

    Every week my dad would write His Xs in the column: A ritual time-honoured, Almost sacred, always solemn. He diligently worked out – well, I say ‘worked out’, he guessed Which teams would win or lose or draw, Whose score would be the best. On Friday evening at the door The coupon man would be;…

  • Memoir: Windows

    The window I looked up to the sky through had a cracked pane, the result of my dad flailing a cardigan at an irritating bluebottle. The cardigan had a penny in the pocket – one of those big old heavy pre-decimalisation pennies, blackened and worn smooth through countless transactions in tills and endless jostling against…

  • Memoir: My First One in Real Life

    I was twenty-two years old, and about eight stone wet through. I was wearing a home-sewn wrap-over skirt – small brown and white flowers and green leaves on a black background, the hem finished off with cream broderie anglaise. The top half of my skinny frame was covered by a sleeveless v-necked t-shirt, over which…