Category: family

Salford Pals

 

I have spent a considerable amount of time this weekend rebuilding the lives of my paternal Great-grandfather John Henry Mcclenan( McLanaghan) and my Great grandmother- his wife Frances Taylor/Skinner. It is a fascinating story of friendship, war, battles and lives lost, and love rising like a phoenix from the ashes to build what was to become a large and strong family. John Henry and his best friend George Skinner were to fight in the Boer War, George was killed and John Henry injured in the hip and returned to Salford to convalesce. On recovering he went to see George’s wife of 4 months Frances Skinner and over time they fell in love and were married on 14 December 1901.

Frances was 27 by this time but they went on to have 8 children, one of whom was my Grandfather Frank born in 1911(the one on the horse), and although getting on in years John Henry served with the Salford Pals 15th regiment from 1914-18, surviving a number of key battles including the Somme in 1916 and the siege of Thiepval July 1st 1916 and was awarded a number of medals. Frances and John’s fourth child was a daughter Hilda and her Great Grandson Christopher Finney went on to earn the George Cross for bravery in the Iraq war 2003. I think great things came from the broken fragments of John Henry’s Boer war broken-ness. He passed away in 1926 from amongst other things TB in the injured hip. I might not have fully complied with nature- but maybe war counts as the impact of human nature…

Bleak Boer War battle

John Henry lost George Skinner

Frail Fall brought Frances.

 

Alison Jean Hankinson

 

For d”verse our challenge is to write about finding beauty in the broken pieces or imperfection and/or the process of mending the broken pieces.- kintsugi. A “broken” object, cityscape or landscape, or personal experience of mending and embracing imperfections. Kintsugi means “golden rejoining,” and refers to the Zen philosophy of acknowleding flaws, embracing change, and restoring an object with a newfound beauty.

We cherish their footfalls

Geneology

we lived and died here

Names trickle by,

echoes of the past

Stories unfold

 

Startling revelations

In the stories we shared

Souls and mortal sins bared

 

We name our children in their honour

They will echo us forever

In their blood and bones.

 

Alison Jean Hankinson

 

This is for Quadrille with d’Verse.

Quadrille

They sing for him.

It is the community singing that does it for my Dad every time,

Every rugby and football match those anthems for the common man.

They capture heart and soul, and bridge dreams and memories

And he sings with them, they become one voice,

one song, one breath-taking moment

of shared understanding and surrender,

of solidarity, stoicism and strength.

His heart was broken

In that shared moment he saw it and claimed it.

His grief, his passion, his anger, his will to live

all in the community singing.

They sing for him.

 

Alison Jean Hankinson

 

poetics d’Verse

This is for Poetics and the evening is being hosted by Paul Scribbles and the theme was community.

IMG_1005

His heart was broken is a play on the words from The Proclaimers song Sunshine on Leith which is the anthem for Hibernian Football club. It has become one of my dad’s favourites even though he is a Turf Moor fan at heart.

Here is a link to a rendition of it:

Hibs 2016

Glasson Dock Revisited.

Glasson dock steeped in sunshine, the echo of the empty space that was the Babagee. Barges and boats and banter of family gatherings shimmers across the water beyond the broken hulls. The old stones of the lockgate still holds the memory of your footsteps.

 

Alison Jean Hankinson

This is for the Quadrille with d’Verse hosted by Grace tonight, Still is the prompt and it is on there somewhere. The image is from Wikimedia and is of the derelict Babagee before it was demolished.

d’Verse quadrille

 

Fear receding….

The transition to seaside life has been a total joy. However dark and difficult the long days of winter were with their obstacles barriers and uncertainties and the fears that we would somehow fail. There was always a small smattering of hope that things would eventually work out for the better. We have been able to rekindle our love for our own culture and connections, track back through pathways and places that were already part of our story and re-establish the significance of our own place in this wonderful landscape.

The move in springtime to Heysham has been a wonderful and welcome move into what promises to be a pleasant phase of our lives. The sea and scenery are endless sources of peace, calm and serenity. The joy to be able to walk and witness this place in all its beauty and glory for just a small part of each day is genuine food for the soul. There is a song by Groove Armada it is such a seaside song, it talks of sand-dunes and salty air and it is just the sentiment of this place, a seaside town resting on its laurels and trying to reinvent itself as the coastal jewel in the crown resting at the foothills of the Lake District. Mountains on the horizon, resplendent in a salmon sunset, windmills stretching out to sea as far as the eye can see,  ancient history carved into the headland and wilderness, wind and wavespray.

Mid tide Glasson Dock

In sprightly spring-time sunshine

Fear and dark thoughts ebb

 

Alison Jean Hankinson

 

This is my late offering for Haibun Monday and is about fear receding.

d”verse Haibun

 

oops just missed the link by 35 minutes…

Sunset on Mount Tiger

A house is not a home if it isn’t in your heart.

A house is not a home if it isn’t the place that lifts your dreams

And makes you smile and puts the gladness in your eyes

When the sun sinks in the west and the summer lingers on.

 

Our Mount Tiger home was filled with love and kindness

They all belonged, the children laughing, the turbid teens,

The thieving possums, lonely pheasants and quirky quails,

The irritating huhu bugs, mesmerising puriri moths and startled skinks.

 

Our house was small but wore a warm place in our  hearts

Our lives were kneaded and fashioned and left to prove in the sun.

Going home at the end of the day was like a long slow sigh

As the work was left behind and we were back where we belonged.

 

Alison Jean Hankinson

 

d’Verse poetics

The challenge for poetics was to write about a building and we were really supposed to create it. This was our home on Mount Tiger, a small rectangular box atop a hill with a steep acre of bush, and we were the visitors the custodians of the land, we shared our home and landscape with all who had come before us and thrived around us. We had lavender for the bees, wildflowers for the butterflies, cabbages for the caterpillars, and I think the birds and rabbits lived off my vegetable garden. It was a beautiful home for my family to grow up in. We didn’t build it but we did grow it.

 

Re-integration

We are treated as vagrants

worthless souls with no right to belong

It feels like someone is playing with our lives

having a giggle at our expense

One step forward ten steps back

and even though we were born here there is no recompense.

 

Alison Jean Hankinson

This is for Monday Quadrille at d’Verse

d’Verse quadrille

Childhood Haunt.

 

The promenade bathed in winter sunshine,

Seagulls, chips and gravy, Blackpool rock

Then the Winter Gardens in all her splendour

bringing memories and echoes of a bygone era.

Reminiscing on a lifetime of cherished holidays

Whispers of childhood wishes and ghosts of summers past.

 

Alison Jean Hankinson

 

The challenge for tonight’s quadrille was Ghost. Today we revisited many ghosts as we took a road trip to Blackpool a place that will always hold a special place in my heart.

d’Verse quadrille #26

Nostalgia

And so we came home to Eden

But Eden wasn’t home anymore

And we had grown out of it.

Seedlings nurtured by parental love

Branching out reaching out towards a world

Where Eden wasn’t familiar

And we had no place to call home.

 

Just an intimation an emotion

A security which represents home.

And then we asked the question

From the sudden realisation

Is home synonymous with kindred love

Is kindred love home?

 

Alison Jean Hankinson

many-paths

This post/poem was added in response to d’Verse Poetics which took a closer look at the work of Ally Saunders.

d’Verse Poetics

The image that I responded to was this one, which is entitled Many Paths. I believe that I have travelled along many paths and have stumbled many times and however hard it is to journey down -my latest path is leading towards my kindred home.

#d'Verse-Poetics: Ally Saunders – A Closer Look

The Nature of Leaving

Colossal mountain

And you know it is hard to climb

Sitting in the starlight,

Carboniferous days

And love turned to stone

When you left the valleys behind

And all that you can do

Is smile at the moon

And start the climb

 

Alison Jean Hankinson

This is for d’Verse open link night.

d’Verse open link

So today on Friday 13th of January our furniture is scheduled to leave Whangarei exactly 11 years to the day we arrived. We drove over the Brynderwyns on Friday 13 Jan 2006 and saw the vista of Whangarei and Mount Manaia for the very first time. I actually began to write this poem many years ago when it became clear to me that when leaving to pursue our dreams we inevitably leave behind places and people that we have grown to love and cherish.

Arohanui. Great love to all. XXXXXX