THE GOOD OVEN *Wattpad Featured* (aka 'Re Ply')

Afterwords

I am old enough to remember women and men who lived through two world wars, beginning their lives in the 1900's, and even the 1800's. Looking back, I can see my Victorian grandmothers and grandfathers passing on knowledge and ways to be that came to them from who knows when.

Remember the sound of knitting needles clicking? Replaced by the tapping of a keyboard, now. I was thinking of the wool, and how strands are twisted to make it, two-ply, or thee-ply, making it thicker. One strand of wool, made up of many strands.

And then I remembered how we used to pull the wool out of old jumpers for children who grew too big. Did you do this? You had to sit with your hands out in front of you, and the rows were unravelled and wound round your hands. They could wind it round the back of a wooden chair too, but it was easier to use a child in dalek pose.Then it was rewound into a round ball tightly, to be knitted up later into something bigger.

The mothers would ply their needles again, using old wool to make something familiar and cosy and new. Repackaging us.

We reinvent ourselves when we tell our stories. We deconstruct and reconstruct, unravel and rewind. The stories are always there, working their way in and out of our lives. Now I am older, I re-member, or re-collect, thoughts and stories that were planted in me to help me to become.

You probably do the same:)

That's is why I called this Re Ply in the beginning.

I tried and tried, and then had help and tried again with enormous help from @Jewel1307. to whom many many thanks again :) to work out how to 'package' this, how to give a sense of what I'm writing about on the cover. Its a difficult thing. But the clock, for the child and for all of us,  in the warm colours of love, is what came out.

Thanks to so many others for prompting and encouraging me to write these, and a special shout for @AndreaSamuel for asking why Re Ply!  

But maybe I should have called the book : The Good Oven? Ah, yes. In the end, the cosiness and  and hugge of the oven, warming heart and soul, that is what I have plumped for. Thank you for helping me choose.

What do you think?

                                                          'In my beginning is my end...

                                In my end is my beginning'

                                                                           Four Quartets, East Coker,  T. S. Eliot , 1888-1965