{"id":541,"date":"2010-02-06T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-06T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=541"},"modified":"2010-02-06T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-06T13:00:00","slug":"mandy-pannett-has-some-snaps-to-share-with-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/mandy-pannett-has-some-snaps-to-share-with-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Mandy Pannett has some snaps to share with us"},"content":{"rendered":"

SNAPS<\/span>

\u2022    I\u2019m at Uni in Wales.  Joan puts rollers in her hair and lies on the rug in front of the one bar fire to dry it. It takes forever and there\u2019s a scorching smell.  Elizabeth\u2019s mother has sent her homemade Cornish pasties but they\u2019re all broken up in the box. She\u2019s in tears but we still eat them.<\/span>

\u2022    We go camping. My baby is 6 weeks old. I change her nappy in the dark and tread on it. Yuk squeezes up through my toes.<\/span>

\u2022    I catch my mother reading <\/span>Lady Chatterley\u2019s Lover<\/span> in a brown paper wrapper.<\/span>

\u2022    In Hall we talk about heavy petting. We know which couples go all the way. There are rumours about bromide in the coffee.<\/span>

\u2022    My daughter\u2019s friend comes to stay. We are told it\u2019s either that or she\u2019ll be taken into care. A few weeks later I get a phone call from the school saying the girl is truanting \u2013 and my daughter with her.<\/span>

\u2022    I collect for Amnesty and hand out leaflets. One man shouts at me \u2018I was in the war. I\u2019ve done my bit!\u2019<\/span>

\u2022    My mother\u2019s father, aged 19, goes home to find his own mother has had a baby during the day.  He leaves home in disgust and never goes back.<\/span>

\u2022    I play \u2018I don\u2019t like Mondays\u2019 with the volume full up.<\/span>

\u2022    A newspaper cutting of my mother\u2019s mother shows her driving a tram during World War 1.<\/span>

\u2022    My second baby cries all night. It goes on for months. He tells me to put her in another room and shut the door. I go in with her.<\/span>

\u2022    In one week I read <\/span>The Famous Five, The Secret Seven, The Land of Far Beyond<\/span> and my mother\u2019s copy of <\/span>Forever Amber<\/span>.<\/span>

\u2022    I go to lots of parties. They all have the Bee Gees belting out <\/span>More than a Woman<\/span>. Floorboards shake with the stomping.<\/span>

\u2022    My daughter kidnaps a cat that eats from bins outside the Chinese Take Away and smuggles him into my house. I love him lots but he won\u2019t eat cat food, only rice and peanuts.<\/span>

\u2022    Aged 10, I sit on the beach at Dymchurch and think I shall remember this moment for the rest of my life.<\/span>


<\/font>* Mandy Pannett<\/span> is a<\/font> regular contributor to IS&T. She teaches creative writing in West Sussex, helps to run an arts cafe and supports local writing groups. She has two poetry collections from Oversteps Books \u2013 Bee Purple<\/span> and Frost Hollow<\/span> \u2013 and a recent one \u2013 Allotments in the Orbital<\/span> \u2013 from Searle Publishing. <\/font>
<\/font> <\/span>
<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SNAPS\u2022    I\u2019m at Uni in Wales.  Joan puts rollers in her hair and lies on the rug in front of the one bar fire to dry it. It takes forever and there\u2019s a scorching smell.  Elizabeth\u2019s mother has sent her homemade Cornish pasties but they\u2019re all broken up in the box. She\u2019s in tears but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}