Sisters

This autumn Big Sister and her husband were invited to a wedding in India and decided to make a holiday of it. Just before flying she rang me to ask if I wanted the book back as she wanted something to read that she could leave behind when it was finished, and so save weight coming home. I said fine, no doubt someone in India would pick it up and enjoy it too.

When she got back last weekend she rang to tell me all about the trip. Having exhausted India and how lavish the wedding had been and how upsetting she had found the poverty, babies begging, dirt etc. she said:-

"That Accidental Time Traveller book was really good, I've brought it home and I'm going to make it my book club book in January."

She lives in East Finchley, they do things like that there.

Big Sister (just turned 65) was particularly impressed at how evocative of life in the 1950s the book was. I agreed saying

"I don't really remember the 50s, but it sort of lived on in Cwmifor"

"Yes" she said "especially in our house - Mum kept the 50s going until well into the 80s"

We discussed how it was the little details that made all the difference. Like putting the kettle directly onto the coals on the fire; a kettle singing on the grate was the background music to my childhood. Or using the fire to make toast using the long toasting fork; toast under the grill or from a toaster just doesn't taste the same as "tost ar y tan".

"And there were things I'd forgotten all about" she said "like the Gibbs toothpaste in the little pink box you had to rub the brush on."
"Oh yes" I said "You had that - I thought it was so glamorous"
"Pardon?!"
"I thought it was glamorous. Mind you I thought everything you did was glamorous. You were glamorous"
"You thought I was glamorous!!"
"Yes"
"I never knew that. What did you think was glamorous about me?"
"Everything. The clothes you wore. The make up. The mascara in the little blue box with the tiny toothbrush - that was really glamorous"
"That I had to spit on - I must have got that from Mum - fancy you thinking I was glamorous"
"Well I didn't have many role models - you were all I'd got really - and I wasn't the only one. Mum told me Great Uncle Tom thought you dressed really smartly too, and he should have know because he was a tailor."
"I wish she'd told me that, I'd have felt a lot better about myself - I never thought I was glamorous"

Big Sister turned 12 about three weeks after I was born and she was just the right age to be besotted and make a huge fuss over a new baby sister. Middle Sister, was coming up to 7, too old to be babied, too young to mind a baby, and just right to feel put out at losing her position as The Baby. Big Brother was nearly 14 and into manly things like fishing, shooting and aeroplanes (although I do remember being pushed in a pram by him but that's another story).

I remember Big Sister singing to me in my cot; my favourite songs being The Ugly Duckling (she made a great squawk noise) and What do you want if you don't want money? (Adam Faith). She also read The Wind in the Willows and Black Beauty to me (I cried at both and still do) well before I was five and could read for myself.

But it took fifty years and talking about The Accidental Time Traveller for her to realise how much her baby sister had adored her.