Monday, September 11, 2006

 
Pearl's 90th Birthday Party
 Pearl's 90th birthday celebration on Sunday Ocober 10th was a great success, although she said she was too tired to go out to lunch or dinner and simply wanted to stay at home for tea. I drove to Morrisons supermarket to look for a birthday cake. The only decorated cakes were footballs and kiddie cakes. But I was delighted to find a delicious Thorntons toffee cake topped by tiny dice-shaped pieces of fudge.
 I was talking on my mobile phone to my son Anthony who was in Tesco and he selected the largest traditonal iced fruit cake with marzipan, meant to be the lowest level of a wedding cake, with a nice flat surface to decorate. I purchased Happy Birthday to go on top, plus the numbers for ninety. I discovered and could not resist twisted candles and candles shaped like champagne bottles.
So that we did not overload on sugar, I stocked up with some savoury snacks: including falafel (fried chickpea balls), taramasalata and chopped herring.
   I drank orange juice. (Not enough vegetables for the five portions a day, which should be seven. Later when I got home I made freshly-squeezed orange juice and ate melon.)
On Saturday I had bought the best and most beautiful bunch of flowers, pinks and purples, containing perfect roses and cute carnations and dramatic giant lilies. We had enough flowers to fill two huge flower vases and the perfume wafted across the room creating heavenly aroma therapy.
Relatives from overseas (Steve and Tami) sent more flowers including cheerful yellow sunflowers.
Pearl brought out a box of photos, large wedding photos, hers, her mothers, family certificates, the barmitzvah certificate of Trevor, her younger son, the graduation of her older son, his first graduation. 'He was at Southampton and then Oxford, and then became a professor,' she said proudly.
'They wouldn't put him in for the eleven plus! So David sent him to a private tutor. Then he want to the poly and passed his exams and went to uni. Here's his exam certificate.
Anthony said, 'Lots of people succeed in life and business without passing school exams.'
After another think, Anthony asked, 'Why did you think pasing the eleven plus so important?'
Pearl explains, 'They didn't have Comprehensives in those days. You needed to get into grammar school, so you could take O level exams, and A levels, and go to University.'
  Pearl continues, 'We went to the parents evening and they said he knew the answers but he didn't put his hand up.'
   We hear this twice. I accept it unquestioningly. But Anthony puzzles over it.
'If he doesn't put his hand up, how do they know he knows the answers? From his written work? What does it matter whether he puts his hand up?'
Pearl tells the story again.
   Eventually Anthony queries, 'But the eleven plus is a written exam. Why does not putting your hand up affect going in for the exam?'
   I say, 'Because when you go to enter the eleven plus, even if you pass, they give you an oral. I think I was good at English and I was expected to pass so I had my interview at the Grammar school before I got the results. Or was it afterwards? Maybe there were two interviews. After the exam, the headmistress told my mother my maths result was low but the English mark was high and pulled me up, which is very common with girls. Maybe you get offered a conditional place. But if you are too shy to talk, and you don't get given a provisional place, there's no point in taking the exam.'
Anthony is still not convinced.
Now neither of us understand the logical leap between Pearl's stories.
Neither does Pearl.
   But as far as she is concerned, the point of the story is that despite that the school was unhelpful. They helped their son. He proved his parents were right to believe in him. The facts are, that they were told that their son Stephen would not succeed, but they got him coached and he took his exams at the Poly and became a professon and a prize-winning author and a great success.
However, we are all still puzzled.
   I took pictures of us and of old wedding photos to make up This Is Your Life for a big family party when relatives come from abroad later this month.
   I was disappointed not to go out for a meal. I had wanted to go to Friends Restaurant in Pinner which has a Michelin star and is our family's favourite but it is closed until Tuesday.
   However, Anthony's Granny did not feel up to going out and said several times that she had had a great time, 'I shall tell everybody I had the most wonderful tea party'. She insisted on giving me a couple of the flowers 'because you brought the tea'. And the next day she phoned to thank me.

Here's This Is Your Life
Pearl was born September 10th 1916, in the middle of The Great War. It was not known as WWI until WWII.
   Pearl thought she was named after her paternal grandmother (shown on the far left of the wedding photo of her mother Sarah Geduld to ... Houtman in 1915).
Pearl's grandmother died in 1916 before Pearl was born. But family records show the grandmother listed with a different name.
   Pearl shrugs and waves her hand, dismissing my objection: 'It doesn't matter.'
Pearl's sister Daphne was six years younger, so when Pearl was a teenager she had her mother's undivided attention on the day when their dress shop closed for the half day and they went out for tea to a glamorous hotel. They started with gateaux.
   Pearl remembers how when she was aged about fourteen, in about 1930, her mother took her shopping in Selfridges, bought a squirrel fur coat, and then said to the assistant, "Do you have one to fit my daughter?"
  Pearl was thrilled to receive such a grown-up costume. And to march proudly down the road with her mother in mother-and-daughter outfits.
  Pearl's mother had married in WWI. Pearl's wedding took place during the next world war, WWII. The date was March 25, 1940.
  Pearl had an ice cream wedding cake. Her mother ordered it from Cadby Hall. "She knew the manager. She probably served his wife in the shop."
   I dutifully write this down. Recording it for posterity. Before my memory can lose the information or change it.
I ask her whether Cadby Hall was in London.
'Yes,' she says, 'It's still there.'
A moment later she adds, 'They have premises all over England. Cadbury, the chocolate people.' I query, 'White chocolate, in the cake?'
'Yes.' A second later she says, 'The cake was made by the ice cream people. What's-it's name?'
'Walls?' I speculate. 'Lyons?'
'That was it. Lyons.'
Pen poised, I pause and I query this. 'I thought you said the cake was made by Cadbury's?'
'Whatever.'
Later, as my son Anthony drives me home, we try to pool our thoughts and sort out the facts, but come to no conclusion.
   He shakes his head, 'When I was trained at school and university to interview older people, no-one warned me about this. Nobody ever prepares you for this sort of confusion. You are told to expect that most of the public will tell you the truth but sometime they will tell you lies. One or the other. But nobody says that perfectly willing and honest interviewees will give you two completely conflicting accounts of events.'
   I added, 'Or that they often contradict themselves within the same sentence!'
We don't care. We have hysterics. We share the same sense of humour. The hilarity, the absurdity, of this family trip, or trip up, down memory lane, has been a major part of the day's entertainment.

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