Money money money

When mum arrived in Sri Lanka, as well as the dogs replacing her plastic owl in her affection, she acquired a pig.  She arrived in Sri Lanka at the beginning of December and on Xmas day, after much persuasion on my part, she agreed to come to Xmas dinner at a friend’s house in Unawatuna.  There were about 15 people invited and instead of everyone buying everyone a present each, we agreed to do a pot luck: everyone brought one present and they were put into a pot and we all had to choose one.  When it came to my mum’s turn, she pulled out this huge brightly coloured present.  After fighting valiantly with the wrapping,  a rather large, brilliantly gold, pig was revealed. This made my mum’s day. I have no idea what she was expecting –she hadn’t quite grasped that it was Xmas! She was over the moon with the big gold pig. It was quite a sight and must have been the most in your face present in the pot. It was of course a piggy bank. And so after Xmas day it took pride of place on her bedroom shelves in the house in Unawatuna. I added some coins to it periodically.

She became quite fascinated by the fact that the pig had money in it and I eventually had to teach her how to open the bottom of it and get the money.  It did not actually have that much in it: about 150 rupees at any one time (under one pound sterling). I would find her at all hours sitting on her bed counting and recounting the money and putting it into a small purse I had also given her. The purse she kept inside a toilet bag which would then come everywhere with us. She was so attached to it that I had to ensure that it came everywhere because, if she was without it and realized it, then either doom and gloom would set in or someone in the vicinity would be accused of stealing it.

It is not only money that she counts. Lots of things she counts out loud. To give a few examples.  A logical one is cards. When dealing out cards for a game of rummy, she counts the cards. This is quite useful. While driving, she counts the tuk tuks sitting at the side of the street waiting for passengers.  She counts the sets of steps on the highway. She has just recently taken to counting the bridges on the highway; however since there is quite a lot of space between them, this has not been very successful, as by the time we get to another one she has forgotten that she is counting them.

Last Friday on our drive down south we were both counting buses. We were driving south. The buses were driving north to Colombo. Normally the only buses on the highway are the special highway buses which are ultra -modern buses for Sri Lanka. However we weren’t counting them. There were 60 (we counted them) traditional Colombo Transport Board buses travelling north to Colombo. I have no idea why. It was pretty easy to count them as they were clearly numbered on their front windscreen. Of course they had somehow gotten mixed up and instead of passing us in order, 1,2,3,4,5 etc they were passing us all jumbled up, 3,5,7,4,33,34,23 and so on. I would love to know where they were going and why there were so many of them.

To get back to money. She is continually bamboozled and shocked by the prices of things in Sri Lanka. Currently the rate is 208 Sri Lankan Rupees to the pound.  We go shopping to Arpico in Colombo every week. This is a big supermarket and department store. She pushes the trolley and follows me round. She continually remarks on the cost of things exclaiming “220 pounds for a tin of beans….. that’s expensive, 1,500 pounds for a pot, we cant afford that….., 150 pounds for milk…” and so on. It doesn’t matter how many times I explain that this is not pounds but rupees, she never remembers.   

This is the woman who brought up three teenagers on her own, managed her teacher’s salary to get us all through secondary school then into full time education and then into fairly decent jobs. She always said she would never borrow money as she never wanted to be in debt. Ironically it was when we discovered that she had gotten herself into massive amounts of debt that we realized that there was something wrong with her although even then we did not do much about it. Looking back, how idiotic her children were.  She got conned by spam mail promising her prizes of lots of money if she would just send 10 pounds, or 15.25 or some other small sum to the sender. This would put her into the running for the big prize.  She got about twenty of these letters every day  for years and must have replied to all of them. She bankrupted herself and ran up a huge bill on her credit card. She managed to hide it from her three children for years. It was only when on two occasions myself and my brother arrived and found no food in the house and the telephone cut off that we realized that there was something badly wrong.  We sorted her out and got her mail redirected to my brother. I am eternally thankful to the Post Office who, after I proved that I had Power of Attorney over her finances and health, bent their rules over the length of redirection and to this day continue to do so.

But back to the pig. The pig is now in Colombo. She decided to pack it (she loves packing her toilet bag – unfortunately the pig would not fit and therefore it had to sit in the back of the car) when we left Unawatuna one weekend and bring it with her. Its money has gone – it’s in her purse. The pig sits in pride of place on her chest of drawers in her bedroom there. I haven’t found anything to replace it on her shelves down south as of yet. However I am confident that something will turn up. 

The elusive big black tanker

I was never really aware that boats had played a role in my mum’s life until she came to stay.  But they certainly seemed to have done and still do.  The drive down south from Colombo to Galle touches the coast at the beginning and end of the journey.  That coastline is the major route for tankers and freight ships heading to the Colombo port. These huge vessels can be seen on the horizon dotted sporadically all along the south coast. Mum is fascinated by them, especially one huge black tanker she saw on her first trip south with me in the car. She has been looking for this particular boat ever since.  From time to time we catch glimpses of what might be ‘the black boat’. However she is never very sure that it is the same one. And of course it probably won’t be the same one as, whichever one it was, is more likely far gone by now to some distant part of the globe. 

I’ve been trying to track down the roots of this fascination with the big black boat. Her father was a diver and swimmer. He died when she was very young. She thinks it was something related to diving too much. She has always had a fear of water and despite my dad’s best endeavours, she only ever managed to swim a breadth of a pool. So water does not hold a fascination in and of itself.  In mum’s early life, there must have been trips to Dunoon, one of the traditional seaside resorts for Glasgow, supported by the busy Clyde steamers.  There must also have been the trip between the mainland and the Isle of Man for her honeymoon. She also told me about a very memorable Norwegian fjord cruise with her best friend at the time. And when she visited me in Naples, we had various trips on the hovercraft between Naples and Ischia and Capri and on the ferry between Pozzuoli and the islands.

When I think back to my childhood and early adulthood, boats played a sporadic but memorable role. There were the local Caledonian MacBrayne ferry rides between Gourock and Dunoon and Wemyss Bay and Rothesay for day trips or weekends away; there were the occasional international P and O ferry trips between Hull and Rotterdam to visit my brother in Holland, and between Dover and Calais for our one French and one Spanish holidays; there was a trip between Orkney and Thurso, during a visit to my other brother who was working in Dounreay, the nuclear power plant there, on something no larger than a fishing boat which was so rough it was unforgettable.  More recently mum followed the news reporting about the Costa Concordia in January this year with great concern and interest. Nothing however explains the fascination and search for the elusive big black tanker.

When we go shopping in Galle at the weekend the road is parallel to the sea though it is often hidden by buildings. Every time you can see the sea we watch for boats. Chaminda, our faithful tuk tuk driver, has obviously spotted this liking for boats and has noted it as a ‘mum’ thing as opposed to a ‘Lesley’ thing as prior to mum arriving I had never shown any interest in boats (except perhaps when the huge cruise liner comes, in which case it is more the incongruity of it in Galle Harbour alongside all the small fishing boats and the noticeably up market crowd in Seafair supermarket around the same time that sparks my interest). Yesterday Chaminda decided to pursue the liking for boats and, on route to Keels on the other side of Galle, he pulled up outside the Galle Harbour gates and asked if we wanted to go in. I have always assumed that since this is right beside the high security Navy camp that it was a no go area. However given the option we said yes and stopped at the security gate.

The navy guards looked at us rather suspiciously and I assumed Chaminda had got it wrong. This I often assume for some reason; however these days he does prove himself right about most things. They asked for my passport and I offered them my driving licence and British Council card (this has been known to open a few doors). After checking via a long telephone conversation and considerable frowning that this was acceptable, we got the nod to go ahead. They also asked for my mum’s passport to which Chaminda went into a long explanation about how she was my mum and I was working here and had been here forever. This they finally accepted and another man came with tickets. At 25 rupees each, this seemed very reasonable. So we went into somewhere I have driven past every weekend for years. The only time you got a peek inside was in the post tsunami days when all the walls everywhere came down and the coastline was fully exposed.

Mum loved the harbour. There was the big red and black cargo ship we had frequently seen on the horizon and from afar in the harbor. This turned out to be delivering raw materials and picking up cement from the Holcim plant on the outskirts of Unawatuna. Cranes could be seen lifting cargo off the ship. There was the ice plant which I had only heard about. We watched as the huge blocks of ice came out of the warehouse, were put into an ice crushing machine and the crushed ice was loaded into a truck to keep the fish fresh.  We watched the fishermen cleaning their multi-coloured boats which were about 6 deep in the harbor. A quick maths calculation produced about 300 small fishing boats.  There were the tugs, the navy patrols, the navy camp (from  a different angle). There was the fish being sold wholesale. The place was buzzing. Everyone was working, busy doing something – this in and of itself was a sight worth seeing.  Mum loved it and is still talking about “that busy place with the boats”.  As we left we both waved at the navy guards who waved back with big grins.

Now had the elusive big black tanker been there, it would have made both our days. However thankfully in a sense it wasn’t because, had it been, we would have had to stop there first on every shopping trip to Galle.

I must have stopped doing jigsaws at quite a young age. I remember though a period in my childhood when I spent a substantial amount of time doing them. I especially remember the ones that depicted different countries. I found them on Wikipedia recently. They were Waddington Jig-Map Puzzles which came out in the 60s and 70s. Over a period of a few years me and my brothers must have done lots of these, all depicting a different country. I remember making and remaking the jigsaws by fitting the Eiffel Tower piece into the correct part of France or Edinburgh Castle into the correct place in Scotland. After the country was finished, the oblong town names had to be slotted into the correct place on the map. I always felt a sense of accomplishment when the shape of the country and its innards labeled correctly were there laid out on the table. I imagine my parents thought this would help with geography at school; however the only thing I can remember from geography at school was the movement of flocks of sheep around Scotland – I remember wondering at the time how this could possibly be important knowledge to have and I’m still wondering. The jigsaws though may have made travel an early passion. Visiting those places was an early aspiration. I don’t think I have visited all the places I did jigsaws for but I must have been to quite a few.

Now after a gap of more years than I care to count, jigsaws are back with a vengeance. It was early on in my mum’s stay with me that I remember asking a friend who had just started working in a dementia care home in Scotland for ideas about how I could stimulate my mum and get her interested in doing things. She recommended a wonderful website www.active-minds.co.uk and the very patient and helpful Ben who runs it. He started it in 2009 after the time he had spent with his grandfather who had dementia highlighted the need for such products.  Its press is accurate : “It offers a range of award winning activity products specifically developed for people living with Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. …..[their] thoughtfully designed products provide an age appropriate activity resource for people with dementia, their families and carers.” The jigsaw puzzles were the first type of product that Ben developed. He then went onto develop memory cards (which help stimulate discussion), picture books (of the 50s and 60s), aquapaint (reusable water painting) and other products. I have tried a variety of them with my mum and we always come back to the jigsaws.

Not any jigsaw works though. Children’s ones don’t work - the images are too infantile and insulting to an adult. Adult ones don’t work either – they are much too challenging for someone with dementia. The Active Minds jigsaws are subtly different. The images are all of adult scenes – garden views, seaside scenes and sports amongst others. They also have a frame which depicts the border of the image making it much easier to see which bit goes where. They are sturdy – they need to be ‘cause they will be repeated. And they have large pieces and not too many. The first one I got was one depicting a mountain view. Both my mum and Himashi, our two year old next door neighbour, love doing it – over and over again.

You can also get personalized ones. Here, you can send the website a personal photograph and jigsaws will be made using your photo in 11, 24 or 35 pieces.  These are brilliant. They add a whole personal dimension to the actual puzzle. The first one I got done is of Sandy (my dog) sitting in the garden under the bird bath and bird feeder. This is the view you can see when sitting on the porch doing the jigsaw. You start with finding pieces to make Sandy, her body, tail, paws and a bit of her back. Then you go onto do the bird bath and feeder, then the tree behind that. Mum and Himashi love this one. It also comes up and down in the car to Colombo meaning that the Unawatuna garden view and Sandy (mum’s favourite dog) who are not normally a part of the Colombo scene have now been integrated into the Colombo living room.

We’re now awaiting the arrival of a jigsaw depicting the blue water lily or “Nil Mahanel” flower, botanically known as “Nympheae Stellata” which was declared the National Flower of Sri Lanka on 26th February 1986. As well as this claim to fame, it also lives in the pond next to the porch. Mum loves this flower (and I share her passion here) as it opens up in the morning to reveal the full lilac flower and then closes up again overnight. It does not last very long and I don’t have many in the pond so their appearance is always stunning and breakfast always includes a discussion about the possibility of one appearing that day or not. This jigsaw will be arriving hopefully with my brother and his wife and their two children at the end of the month. The fact that you can get personalised jigsaws made also adds another layer to the taking of photographs as these days any photographs become jigsaw possibilities. 

Post World War 11 UK must have been very different to what it is today.   My mum , when she talks of it, makes it sound an idealized picture of innocent pursuits and outside enjoyments. Now, we are talking about Scotland here, so although the way she talks about it sounds as if there was glorious sunshine all year round, I’m sure there wasn’t. I’m sure the memory has kept the good bits and jettisoned the bad.  That’s one positive of memory loss! Tennis is one innocent pursuit that took up a lot of her time when she was first married and before me and my two brothers entered the scene. It is one subject that once she starts, she can go off on a rambling monologue about the good old days. And it isn't just tennis – it is the whole social scene surrounding tennis in those post war years that her memory has captured.

She was a member of both the Larkhall Tennis Club and later the Hamilton Tennis Club.  My dad was too. They both must have spent a lot of time playing tennis. My mum remembers years of driving around Scotland visiting other clubs and playing in them. She remembers especially making the sandwiches and the cake for the men after the matches, the ladies clubbing together and each contributing something  -  a challenge due to the food shortages post war but also a delight as some food items had just become available again. She remembers the social events and the dances at the end of the season.  She remembers entertaining visitors from other clubs and being entertained by them - the entertainment often becoming as competitive as the tennis.  Strangely, she doesn’t remember much about the actual tennis. She still keeps in touch with her friends from her tennis days.  Flora and Annette, she talks about with special fondness.   

I played a bit of tennis when I was a teenager but it was never for me. Running around in the sun (again my memory must be playing up – sun in Scotland?? ) after a ball just seemed a bit pointless.  Mind you, these days, with the prizes up in the millions I can certainly see more point to it. Wimbledon though was watched by everyone in the house. My dad even travelled down regularly to London to attend it; I always planned on going there with him one year but never did.  I remember Bjorn Borg, the cool Swede, and John McEnroe, the fiery Yank, especially. The 1980 final where Borg (aiming for his fifth Wimbledon win) beat McEnroe (in his first Wimbledon final) was a major event in our household. It was exhausting!  Wimbledon was never rained off in those days (again memory loss perhaps.)

Tennis for my mum these days holds her interest in a funny sort of a way.  She cannot follow a match and tell you who is winning or losing; she doesn’t know the names of the players anymore although she does try to pronounce them when they come up on the screen; she can’t tell the difference between Wimbledon and the Dubai Open; and she doesn’t know a drop shot from a backhand.  But she still gets a huge kick out of it. She can still appreciate a well-played point though she doesn’t quite appreciate that it is a game, set or match point.  She can still gasp at an effective overhead smash and take a sharp intake of breath at a series of fast volleys. She can enter into a discussion about the ball being in or out. She has a huge issue with Serena Williams’ hair and worries about the person in the direct line of fire of the aces. She knows Andy Murray has a brother who also played tennis; she knows his mum will be watching him. But when she sees her in the audience she doesn’t know who she is.  She knows she was a coach.

She doesn’t quite get the excitement around Andy Murray being in the men’s final. But we will certainly be watching him tonight. My very Scottish tendency to avoid big sports events where Scotland is playing because it is too depressing has been overcome this once.  Win or lose, we will be cheering him on. And so will the rest of the family. John and Dorothy have already hung a huge Scottish flag outside their house in Holland. Robert and Julia will be watching somewhere in Scotland where they have gone for a week’s R and R. Carolyn and Sam will be glued to the screen on the outskirts of Edinburgh.  My dad will be there somewhere cheering him on. A Scot in the final of Wimbledon – such a pity he didn’t live to see that day. There will be both ecstatic and suicidal (the Scots are a dour lot!) text messages bouncing to and fro between Sri Lanka and Scotland depending on points won or lost.   In the end though, win or lose, he made it to the final.  

Both my mum and me enjoy driving. Always have. We were taught by my dad who ran a driving school outside of school hours (he was officially a PE teacher). Nearly caused their divorce – as it turned out that was only delayed.  We also share a liking for small blue cars. This stems from both a general lack of finances and an inability to parallel park. Why blue? Don’t know  - except I was raised in a house with 3 Glasgow Rangers fans so green was never an option.  Owning small cars though has never put us off driving long distances.

Probably the best holiday in my childhood was spent at a caravan park near Frejus in the south of France.  I was 11 years old, making my brothers 9 and 8. My mum, having just split up from my dad, saw an ad in the paper for a caravan rental.  Never having driven anywhere longer than a Glasgow- Edinburgh round trip on her own, she decided to drive the 3 of us to the south of France in what must have been the smallest car available at the time – a Fiat 500. Being the oldest child, I was designated navigator, responsible for reading the map!  We got as far as Dover and, while looking for a place to pitch our tent before getting the morning ferry, we followed a sign we thought said ‘campsite’ only to find ourselves in a restricted security area with a rather unfriendly chap with a gun.  We settled for sleeping in the car in the ferry car park.  

Hitting Paris though is what I remember the most. My navigation skills did not improve.  We ended up on the Boulevard Périphérique, one of the busiest highways in Europe.  In my memory we went round and round for hours!   I googled it recently and discovered it takes 26 minutes to go round the whole circle driving at the speed limit. So we could easily have been on it or hours. We could not stay on it forever and so we got off it but given the options of west and east (no south), we got back on it again.  I think it was pot luck that we did manage to find a road going south because it certainly wasn’t the result of me reading a map.  We did eventually arrive in Frejus and had a wonderful holiday. 

Now, over 40 years later, I am driving the small blue car, this time a Maruti Suzuki  800. Our weekly round trip is from Colombo to Unawatuna on Friday afternoon and back again on Monday morning. It’s 120 kilometres along the south west coast of Sri Lanka - a good 2 hour drive.  My mum sits happily in the car commenting on the idiotic driving of others and reading as many of the signs around her as possible.  She likes the Singer signs especially and they can prompt a monologue on Singer in Glasgow. She reads aloud the brand names of the cars we are driving behind or alongside –  “Sunny,” “Tata”, “Caravan”, “Isuzu.”  She reads the road signs even when they are a bit of a challenge – “Thimbirigisiyaya”, “Bauudalokha Mawatha”. Her comments often surprise me.  “They all add up to 7!” she says out of the blue.  When asked,  “What add up to 7?” she states as if I am a complete idiot, “3 and 4 is 7; 6 and 1 is 7, see on the number plate,” pointing to the car in front of us.

Although we sit in the same car, our perception of the round trip could not be more different.  In my reality we drive from the centre of Colombo, south through the suburbs of Colombo (Dehiwala, Mount Lavinia, Moratuwa, Ratmalana) and over the bridge into Panadura. Then we turn inland heading for the highway.  This opened last November two weeks before mum arrived in the country. It has shortened the trip considerably.  One hour along the highway you end up in the outskirts of Galle. Turn left when you hit the coast and you are soon in Unawatuna and at my house.

 In my mum’s reality we start in Colombo (I think), the suburbs become Wishaw (for those not in the know Wishaw is in central Scotland) accompanied by indignant comments of “hasn’t this place been looked after”, “why is there so much wood lying around?” Then we reach the stretch past ‘Wishaw’ on the coast. Here mum looks for the big black tanker that is her favourite. If that is not available, other tankers will do. Luckily outside of Colombo loads of them queue up waiting to get into the harbor. Then when we hit the highway, we are in China with comments on “those Chinese men have been busy.”( I have a vague notion that I may have said the road was started by the Chinese as I can’t think of any other reason why she would associate China and the highway.)  Initially this stimulated a monologue about her uncle who had gone to China as a sailor. On the highway, we pass the rather incongruous signs for Macwoods Clyde and Macwoods Culloden and we’re back in Scotland.  It is a multi-national journey!

The many steps along the highway fascinate her. Bit of a mystery to me too actually. Along the sloping sides of the highway, the steps climb to the top. Some of them are in fact drainage tracks. Others though are definitely steps.  My brother came up with a plausible explanation – the landscape gardeners need to cut the plants and grass back. On her early highway trips, mum would spot and count the number of instances of steps.  After the highway you drive straight to the sea. All of a sudden there it is stretching across the horizon in front of you.  And with the sea we are back at spotting the tankers. It’s always a delight when there on the horizon is a big black tanker.  Makes both our days! It’s quite a journey from my mum’s point of view.  

France and Sri Lanka - very different journeys, same small blue cars.