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Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 64)

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One that got away; enjoying Barry’s and Julian’s company before they leave the district; quiet reflections in Compton Church; goodbye Mary Robinson; news of a tragedy; another wedding, and a hedgehog knocks over a milk bottle.

Jane encourages Gran, dogged this day and regularly at fortnightly intervals, by her debilitating headaches, to accompany her on a walk along the Itchen, downstream from Brambridge, on the evening of August 16th 1954.  Few people are about, apart from a lone fisherman and a single dog-walker. A Kingfisher flashes past, and a family of Mute Swans is on the water.  Gran and Jane observe the fisherman, whom they saw:

…hook a really good-sized Trout, and stood to watch him land it.  As he reeled in his line, he unfolded a collapsible net and looked very business-like but I think he must have been quite inexperienced really, for both Jane and I could see that he was allowing the fish to get too close to the bank among the reeds.  The inevitable happened!  The line broke in the reeds and the fish became “the big one that got away” carrying the hook and part of the line with it.  The fisherman, much chagrined, particularly with an audience, muttered an obvious, though unheard, expletive and made no reply to my cheerful cry of “bad luck!”

Success this time – and the fish was quickly released.  Image by tigerburnie via Flickr.

“Good news awaited me when I reached home this evening”, she writes three days later:

Barry has secured a house in Bushey, overlooking the Common, and, whilst I know it means his going away finally and I shall hate it, I am glad for him and Jock, for it is good for them to have a home of their own. And Julian!  How I shall miss this charming baby, though I have had him near during his loveliest baby-days!  But this is life and the way it should be, and I must not be selfish enough to mind…

Joan Adelaide Goater - her journal about Chandler's Ford.

And because “his time here is growing short”, Barry and Gran decide to have a last visit together to the Hatchet Pond area of the New Forest on the following day. They take a bus to the Hythe Ferry, from where they watch the liner Scythia leave the docks and make her way down Southampton Water.  Three new plants at Hatchet Pond are added to their Hampshire list during the day: Floating Bur-reed, Marsh Clubmoss, and Pillwort.

Marsh Clubmoss.  Image by Alastair Rae via Flickr.

Homeward bound, they miss the last bus to Brockenhurst and walk most of the four miles there, getting soaked to the skin by “a positive deluge” and the splashing of passing cars (“while the occupants smiled indulgently”), but Gran, with positive attitude and buoyed up as ever by the natural world around her, happily lists what she sees: a young Cuckoo on a fence, a couple of Brown Hares, a party of Linnets, a cock Stonechat, a Wheatear and a single Teal.  Writing up her notes that night, she says:

Only when we were waiting for the Winchester bus at Southampton did we begin to feel cold.  We reached home at about seven o’clock, and after a hot bath and in dry clothes, we sat down to a meal which Barry prepared whilst I had my bath.

Book 46

Still making the most of the presence of her soon-to-be-departed son, Gran, Barry, Jock and Julian, on the afternoon of the 28th, visit Shawford Downs (less attractive to Gran than are the Downs at Compton owing to traffic noise and the presence of more people) and they take a packed tea.  Amongst the abundant items of natural history interest noted are a blue female Chalkhill Blue, Gran noting that “most females are brown”.  She adds, writing in her journal while there and minding the sleeping Julian, “I have just seen a female  Clouded Yellow – the first for two years, and the old joy which they always aroused, is as strong as ever”.  And then, “Julian has wakened and now we must move over the Downs to a point where he can see his precious trains pass by”.

This is a typically brown female Chalkhill Blue.  Image by Tony Morris via Flickr.

They return home along the Itchen, Gran referring to an earlier visit there:

The caravan on the other side of the river was still there, a real gypsy one, , green and yellow, but there was again no sign of life there.  I think it is probably occupied by a river bailiff or such.

Late summer sees Gran out and about frequently in her favourite haunts, sometimes alone but also with Barry or Jock, or both.  She is worried by the apparent absence of rabbits at Farley Mount, hoping that this not the result of Myxomatosis, and she is livid to find some hoped-for plants at Ashley have been removed:

…but here I was doomed to disappointment.  I had come all this way specially to see the Turk’s-head Lily (Lilium martagon) which I saw in leaf last year, in flower, but some vandal had dug up every one except two very small non-flowering ones, and left only one mutilated one and several holes in the ground.  It was heart-rending, particularly as this is the only station I know for this very rare plant.

I am struck by Gran’s lack of confidence in identifying many plants, and birds also, even after so many years of experience.  With Barry, at this time, she is adding many quite common plants to her County List but needs to defer to him most times when it comes to confirming their identities.

On September 3rd:

This afternoon I cycled to Portswood to buy a new drawing block, before I can paint my September flower, the Felwort, which I hope to do tomorrow.

And on the 4th:

Barry and I sat side by side and both painted the Felwort, and the result was most interesting, for, though they both looked like Felwort, they were totally different in style and treatment.

Felwort – Gran’s “September flower”, Image courtesy of the Dr Mary Gilliam Archive Project via Flickr.

Jane returns from a holiday with friends at Ilfracombe this day, and Gran meets her train:

She looked quite extraordinarily brown and well and had thoroughly enjoyed her holiday, but we had little time to talk then since she had her bicycle with her and was cycling home whilst I was going on the bus with her suitcase.  I passed her on Otterbourne Hill and waved to her from the bus, and she caught me again as I walked down Hiltingbury Road.  It is good to have her home again.

Gran, up at six o’clock for Early Service, writes that:

I have had much stress of mind of late and now I appreciated to the full the quiet repose of the Church as I knelt in silence before the Service began… All the sounds of the countryside mingled with the quiet intonations of the Rector’s voice and God seemed very near and very real, and in the embodiment of Church and Nature the eternal verities were no longer shrouded in mystery.  I wish I could always keep such certainty and confidence that all is well with my beloved.

She writes on the 7th, “A lovely day, typically September, with early mist over the countryside and jewelled spiders’-webs glistening beneath the sun…” but she has little to record, saying:

…but perhaps I was less observant than usual, my perception a little blunted by Barry’s disappointment over the house which he had thought was to be his at Bushey.  His solicitor, Robin Mere, has discovered a snag – a serious subsidence, and Barry realized at once the folly of buying it but it is very disheartening for him and I cannot help but feel anxious.

September 14th:

I went to Farringdon today to say Goodbye to Mary Robinson [wife of Hugh], who sails for Singapore next month, and spent an enjoyable few hours with her… I found Mary amid great chaos, most of her furniture removed and packing cases everywhere, but she was pleased to see me and I was glad to be with her again before she goes.  I took Gaden [her son] for a walk early in the afternoon and found him most entertaining. After luring me to the wood he showed me the way to Miss Muffet’s house, and, a few wild raspberries safely disposed of, he remarked, “ and now, after a little smattering of something, like Pooh Bear, we will go on!”  Gaden is five.

The two links above show that Gaden was a gifted and interesting person, and the family’s move to Singapore set the course of his interesting life, sadly cut short at the age of 60.

Gran spends much time in the company of the Fowler family around this time.  She is regularly required by their business to pack and deliver flowers to the liners leaving Southampton.  She also maintains their garden in Bassett – weeding, planting, pruning, burning and grass-cutting, and she helps Diana to compile an impressive collection of pressed and mounted flowers for a school competition to be held later in the year.  On the 15th she does both of these things, and at nine o’clock in the evening Jill gives her a lift to the bus stop for her journey home.  She tells us then:

Jane was still out when I reached home but I left two letters for her when I came up to write.  She arrived home just as I was coming to bed and a sad shock came to us both. One of her letters was from Jane Eastwood, to tell her that Robin died on Sunday, accidentally shot whilst climbing a fence, with his gun.  We were so shocked that it was almost impossible to believe it and my poor little Jane was most dreadfully upset.  Just how deeply she felt for Robin I do not know, but she said she was fond of him, and I am afraid she will be badly hurt.  Poor Robin.  He was flying to Ban Hok [Laos] next week to take up a post there, but he did not much want to go.

There is little I can say, and I did not know him very well, but from what I did know of him, I can say this.  I am proud that he made Jane his friend and nothing but good will come to her from her association with him.  I am more sorry than words can tell that his life here should have been so tragically cut short, but I hope and believe, that the example that he gave Jane may give her a standard to uphold all her life.  I am glad I met him.  May God bless and receive him…

She continues on the 16th:

A sad awakening after a restless night… Fortunately Jane, with commendable courage, decided to go the North End School again today, as she has been doing this week to observe their methods, and I have promised to help Fowlers’ – definite work, was, I think, the best thing for us both today.

Returning home at the day’s end, Gran finds Jane in bed, “and Barry waiting downstairs to be in the house with her until I came, and he had carried her supper up to her on a tray.  Their devotion to each other is a grand thing…”.

Next day:

Robin’s funeral service was at ten o’clock this morning at Brighton…I spent a few moments in quiet remembrance for this very dear boy, whose charm, generosity and superb good manners, in an age when courtesy seems almost a thing of the past, will remain for ever imprinted on my mind.

And she quotes Chaucer as a fitting epitaph:

A Knyght there was, and that a worthy man,

That fro the tyme that he firste began

To riden out, he loved chivalrie,

Trouthe and honour, freedom and curteisie.

 

And evermoore he hadde a sovereyn prys:

And though that he were worthy, he was wys,

And of his port, as meeke as is a mayde.

He nevere yet no vileynye ne sayde

In al his lyf unto no maner wight.

He was a verray, parfit, gentil Knyght.

“Goodbye Robin”, she adds, “Robin de Crespigny Eastwood, age 21.”

A funeral one day, and a wedding the next, as Gran recounts:

Fortunately for Jane and me – we were both depressed and trying to hide it from each other – we had Julian for the day whilst Barry and Jock went to Caterham, in Surrey, to Jean Philippe’s wedding.  Jean was bridesmaid, with Jane, to Jock.  Julian was wonderfully good with us and Jane spent most of her time with him.

Jean Philippe married the lovely John (who died just a few weeks ago) and became Mrs Jean LeGassicke.  She is my Godmother.

Jock makes an “interesting discovery” described by Gran on September 20th:

She has been leaving a half-pint bottle of milk outside the back door at night because it was cooler than indoors, but two or three times lately it had been knocked over and the milk taken, as she thought, by a dog or cat.  Hearing a commotion last night, she got up to investigate and found that the culprit was a hedgehog, who knocked over the bottle and proceeded to drink the milk.

The culprit – neither a dog nor a cat. Image by James Woolley via Flickr.

She also writes:

Barry left early this evening for London, where, tomorrow, he takes up his post as Biology Master at Haberdashers’.  We shall miss him abominably, though he will still be home at weekends until he finds a house, which I sincerely hope will be soon, for it is time that he and Jock were able to build their own home together.

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