Amazing things happened today: I got an unexpected food parcel, an extremely generous amount towards my Mission Year fee, I found a fiver walking down the street and had two dinner option/invitation. People who`s done Mission year already keep saying the blessings are coming once you commit yourself to volunteering and work with the poor and the needy. Finally the internet is working in my room and I am over the moon!
Legging behind the blog by 1 day, I fall asleep last night with my hands on the keyboard and the lights on. London juts has this busy buzz constant noise and heavy polluted air comparing to The House with The Garden.
I haven’t managed to do my target with the thesis in the past 2 days. I find the days fling by without a trace. The closer to hand-in I get, the more excited I should be, but it all seems so pointless at the moment, the rush, the buzz, the falling asleep whilst trying to create academic sentences and orders of chapters to be pleasing to the passing by eyes. My life is in transition once again and the uncertainties swallow up precious minutes. I am very close to losing my privacy having to take on one of the unexpected sacrifices coming with Mission Year by sharing a room. I am hanging on to every minute of the present I can have in private and mourn the loss of space and beauty in The House with The Garden. We make choices and by making choices we make mistakes at the same. Only time will tell which way this transition goes.
As I was looking through my interviews I came across the synopsis of the one I made with my mum:
Mum was trained to become a village tailor as part of her family tradition. When she got married eventually she gave up sewing in the early 1990s, as second – hand and Chinese shops started to appear in Hungary, which had an unforeseen effect on village tailoring. Farming also was more profitable option to keep her family going. Her mother, my granny Veronika learnt her sewing skills from a local village tailor in her teenage years. She supported her parents and brothers and sister from the money she earned from sewing. She made every kind of garments from winter coats to bras and duvet covers. Later she got married to Jozsef, my granddad, who was trained to become a tailor in Transylvania, Romania. Later, because of the political situation, he escaped to Hungary carrying his sewing machine on his back. First he became an apprentice in Szeged, where he furthered his knowledge in suit making for the militia and the upper –middle class. Granny and granddad became very popular village tailors from the late 1940s in our home village up until granny`s early death in 1982. They made every kind of clothing and interior pieces. granny was also a talented “riseliő” machine embroiderer. She is still remembered 30 years after her death as the best dressmaker and “riseliő” embroiderer in the village. After mum finished her sewing school, she got married and had her children (me and my brother), she carried on the village tailoring, but in the 1980s the first boutique opened in the village, which was slowly followed by the opening of other shops. That led to the decline in the need for made – to – measure clothes. The closing of the local fabric shop in the 1990s, created a problem in fabric sourcing. Furthermore the appearance of cheap second – hand clothes from the west made it possible for people to buy clothes, they have never seen before. In the late 1990s with the growth of globalisation, the fast appearing Chinese shops took over the clothing market in Hungary, which put an end to an era, which was the heyday of village tailoring. From then on people only use village tailors for alterations, which does not produce enough income to keep a family going. (And that`s how my thesis comes to the picture. I wish things would settle as soon as possible and I could regain my enthusiasm about it.)
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