extra ordinary, part 2

 

Even in 1960 I was nascently aware of being surrounded by privilege in the suburb of Portsmouth where we lived. Particularly for those who lived further up the slopes. Beyond the hill the city could not be seen. Maybe this influenced a later preoccupation with ordinariness and the class system. Despite our father’s protestations of “nullifidianism”, my brother and I were sent to Sunday School every week. It was just to give our parents a break; perhaps even for an intimate interlude. I remember nothing of what they taught. Not a jot. But we both recall being asked about what we had done during the holidays.  Two other children said they had been to the South of France; surely in those days a destination out of the reach of most. We reported that the highlight of our summer had been playing with a bowl of water in the garden (“You had a garden?”, others might quip). Whether or not we were being knowingly sarcastic, I still take pride in our response.

Sain Ffagan Amgueddfa Werin Cymru (Saint Fagans National Museum of History) has a collection of buildings from across my recently adopted home.  I’m confident that I’m not alone in finding the greatest enjoyment in the most seemingly mundane of buildings. At Rhyd y Car terrace, tiny iron workers’ cottages, originally in Merthyr Tydfil, have been rebuilt as a timeline from across the centuries. A popular re-creation is of 1985. Many visitors enjoy the allotments, the Dansette record player, a formica kitchen worktop concealing a bath,  and the garden shed used as a living room. Younger people wistfully recall their grandparents having similar.

On the same site is a pre-fabricated bungalow from 1948 Cardiff. I hesitate to use the words “post-war”, not wishing to enter the hollow delusion that war ever ended. But every time I enter the prefab, I’m transported back to the Portsmouth of around 1960. We visited a family who lived in one. Even then I was impressed with its simplicity and symmetry. They seemed happy places. A community created in part by having to co-exist in such close proximity.

In 1983 I met social activist, artist and therapist Ken Sprague at a residential psychodrama weekend. Among many memories, the greatest resonance for me is from the refectory dining table shared with the guests. One of them remarked “I say Ken, I do like these apple and banana flapjack thingies. Do they have a name?”. “Yeah mate” he replied. “They’re apple and banana flapjacks”. I wanted to add “innit”, but don’t think he said that 42 years ago.

I lived variously in bedsits, student digs, the YMCA, a shared garden shack, a local authority caravan and hospital accommodation, all of them more grim than mundane, before happily sharing home ownership for the best part of forty years. Yet the lure of the imagined prefab remains, the grass greener across the tidy picket fence perhaps.

The appeal of the mundane may now just be a factor of living in a creaky old house whose maintenance is akin to painting the Forth Bridge.  Nevertheless the above themes enmesh more deeply with age. An inevitable product of experience; of having more memories embedded in the growing block of time. I could paraphrase Erikson and Shakespeare, pit integrity against despair and ponder oblivion and second childhood. Childhood? I’ve been told that I never really left the first one. 
 
LINKS

In Praise of the Ordinary — Deborah Cummins
Far away, over the hill
The Beauty of the Ordinary | Medium
In praise of ordinary buildings — Sans façon
Rhyd-y-Car cottages - Collections Online
Prefab Museum | Celebrating Britain’s post-war prefabs and their residents
Ken Sprague (cartoonist) - Wikipedia
Extra Ordinary
eyelift