Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 67)

A letter from Mill Hill; a hectic train journey; those migraines will not cease; Mr Tod seeks food in the town – but when he is hunted, Gran will always side with the fox. Spring is coming – the garden tells her so.

Gran is still looking after the two-year-old Julian while Jock recovers from my birth, and she finds it a tiring business, “…in spite of Jane’s help”, she writes, on January 9th 1955.  She continues:

Jane took Julian for a long walk this afternoon whilst I did some cake-making.  They saw several Grey Squirrels, which ran up the trees and Julian gave me a graphic description on his return. He also stroked the nose of a horse but withdrew in alarm when it snuffled at him, and this, too, was described to me with much drama.

Three days later, it is the most significant date in Gran’s calendar:

…the eighth anniversary of my darling’s passing and Julian’s birthday.  What a strange trick of Fate to give me two such events on the same date.  All I can say is that my feelings remain the same concerning the loss of my dear one, but Julian has truly been a heaven-sent blessing to me.  How I shall miss him after this coming weekend.

A letter from Barry, in his new home, 71 Grant’s Close, Mill Hill East, NW7, relieves her feelings of sadness a little, and she quotes it in full, given that, she says:

…this is after all, a journal of beautiful things, and you would be the first to acknowledge my right to be proud of this letter, which has made me feel that all the toil and tears, which my struggle to give Barry his chance, brought me, have been most fully justified and proved more than worthwhile.

It is, indeed a lovely letter for a Mother to receive, Dad describing his happiness to be “fully fledged”, in a “cosy and bright little place”, with a cheerful fire, and “books and bugs surrounding him”.  “Peter Scott is over the mantelpiece”, he continues, “and Do’s horses on the opposite wall.  The old familiar armchairs, with their friendly dragons, are a comfort and already make this “home”…. I wish I could do something to make Julian’s room more cheerful for when he comes.  I must get him some cheery curtains and make a rug, perhaps – so many things.”

The Peter Scott was a well-known 1934 print of a group of Shovelers taking off, with two Garganey bringing up the rear, entitled, according to an on-line search, “Duck rising from weeds”, although it surely ought to be “reeds”, not “weeds”.

“What I really want you to know”, Dad says, ending his letter, “is that, wherever I am, it is you who, in the early days, helped me on to the bottom rung of the ladder, and encouraged me each time I started to slip.  I have not forgotten, nor ever will.”

Three inches of snow fall on the 13th, while Gran is “in the depths of Fowlers’ shop” in Southampton, packing flowers for the Andes and the Arundel Castle, and she writes:

It was snowing heavily when I left the shop to go and see Jock and Ricky [in Bassett] on my way home… I stayed only a quarter of an hour with Jock, making final arrangements for her departure on Saturday (weather permitting) for Mill Hill, with the little family, since I was anxious to get home and warm Julian’s bed thoroughly before fetching him from his other Granny’s home [99 Kingsway].

The wintry weather does prevent the family’s exodus as planned, and new travel arrangements must be made. On the 15th Gran tells us:

I was wakened from a deep sleep, soon after attending to Julian in the night, by a knock on the front door and, upon sleepily going down to open it, was amazed to see Barry there.  It was twenty minutes to two this morning and he had come to organise something for his family since the weather had made it impossible for Brother to come down from London to fetch them…. Barry had run and walked from Winchester, after reaching there by train and just ate a snack and tumbled into bed when he arrived here.

The young family are all together later in the day, Julian meeting his “Brudder Ricky” for the first time, and plans are made for Jock and the boys, with Gran, to travel to Waterloo by train in a day or two, following Barry, who must return sooner, where they will be met by Norris and driven thence to Grant’s Close.  When Barry does return to Mill Hill, he takes “the folding pram and most of Julian’s toys in a large toybox, thus relieving the pressure on Jock and me on Tuesday”, says Gran.

Her debilitating headaches continue at regular intervals and she suffers from one on January 17th, the day before they depart, and she confesses to making a request to her God:

Mercifully, after a very bad night, my head miraculously recovered from its migraine this morning – a much shorter time than usual – and I have to admit that during a bad spell in the night, I prayed, for the first time, that it might get better. I seem to have such tremendous requests to ask of God that I have never succumbed to the temptation to ask this for myself, but oh, how gratified I was when the pain left me.

Jock, Gran and the boys are packed and ready for a car to take them to Winchester station by noon on the 18th, and, “with the help of an obliging porter, we managed to get all our luggage aboard the train but only just in time”. She explains:

We had decided to travel first class in the hope of securing some privacy for Jock and the baby, and the only first class carriage pulled up many yards away from where we were standing so that, by the time I had seen Jock and the children safely installed, the train was about to pull out and our luggage still stood on the platform.

Once settled, they have a journey “negotiated in great comfort”, although Gran says, “I could make only a few observations since Julian took up much of my time and attention”.  Julian enjoys his first journey by train, however, and Gran notes considerable flooding, especially around Walton-on-Thames.

Brother meets them on the platform at Waterloo and Gran is concerned that his car will not accommodate all their stuff:

…since we had acquired a carpet, which a friend had given Barry, and had brought this with us, besides Julian’s cot, with all his bedding, two suitcases, a carrier (which had burst and threatened to deposit its contents on the platform) a bag and a basket full of last minute necessities. However, Brother somehow stowed it all in.

Julian, having first excitedly noted two London policemen on horses, sleeps all the way to Mill Hill.  Of her son’s new abode, she writes:

I was agreeably surprised at the bungalow and at Mill Hill.  I am afraid our love of Chandler’s Ford had made me regard all London suburbs with a jaundiced outlook, but the situation of Barry’s home, though not in the country as we know it, is pleasant and fairly secluded…

Brother drives Gran to Kingston upon Thames, her “second home” as she calls it, to stay with Adrian’s Mother after they “safely deliver the family into Barry’s care”.  There, the following day, she walks alone “to the Garden of Sleep to visit that little sacred spot which I have not seen for seven long months”.  She rearranges the evergreens there, “upset by wind and frost, but the ground was too hard even to do a little weeding”.

Today we are familiar with urban foxes, these adaptable creatures finding the living easy where the edible detritus of humanity is readily available.

1955 is still too early for abundant takeaway food litter, but foxes close to town are interesting enough for Gran to record in her journal:

There have been reports in the local paper lately of Foxes being seen on Southampton Common, two of them in the vicinity of the Cowherd’s Inn, near where poultry had been found with heir heads bitten off – sure evidence of the work of a Fox, and today I read another account of one being seen running across the lawn of Bassett School, which is at the top of the main Avenue near the Bournemouth turning.  It is my guess that this invasion is not so much due to the recent hard weather but to myxomatosis, which has so drastically reduced the rabbit population in outlying districts that the foxes are driven to seek food elsewhere.

During the summer of 1954, Gran had much to write about the finding and classification of some hard-to-identify orchids in Hampshire.  She receives a letter from Mr Roseweir of the Southampton Natural History Society, “and it contained the pleasing news”, she recounts:

…that Mr Summerhayes, of Kew Botanic Gardens, and Mr Young, the Epipactis specialist, are coming in the Summer to see the Man Orchids on Cheeseford Head (if I can locate any this year) and the controversial Epipactis which Barry and I found at Brambridge, also hoping it is there again this year.  We hope also to visit the E. leptochila at Hursley and I personally hope to lure them here to look at other Helleborines which, since last year’s controversy, have made me not so sure of their identity…. I am no botanist, when it comes to separating the closely related species, but I do like to know my “expert” before I bow to his superior knowledge.  This Summer should decide!

Gran has more to relate concerning foxes on January 25th, a very grey day, but mild, with Great Tits “saw-sharpening” early, and she wakes:

…with the beginnings of a very bad head, but, having read in the local press that the Hursley hounds were meeting  at Baddesley Church this morning, I hurried with necessary chores and went along.  I was glad that I had made the effort to go.  The meet was a colourful sight, with the scarlet coats of the Masters and the mixed pack of hounds milling about the feet of the horses.  About ten riders arrived by the time the hunt moved off, one or two on very beautiful well-groomed hunters, one or two not so well-kept nor so well-bred, and one smallish grey, carrying a gentleman far too large for him.  They made an odd pair as they followed the more elegant members.

One old gentleman – and I mean “old” for he looked about seventy and gave me the impression that he would ride to hounds until he died in the stirrup – wore an ancient top hat and very correct riding kit, and seemed to be a person of some note.  All sorts had assembled to see the hunt move off, and one close to me remarked, “Well! I’m disappointed.  I did want to hear him blow the trumpet thing!”  Shades of John Peel!

Now, from this and my appreciation of the colour and beauty of this sight, please do not imagine that I approve of fox-hunting.  I do not, and, whilst I like to see a meet, nothing would induce me to follow the hunt and all my sympathy is with the fox.

By that night, having managed to have tea with the Harding family, and then gone to bed, she wakes in the small hours, and her “head”, she writes, is the worst she has ever known it and she fears she has developed, “pneumonia, or, at least bronchitis, for I was wheezing away and no amount of coughing would ease the congestion”. She is weak and unwell for several days.

Better though, on January 30th, she is in the garden, raking leaves and lighting a bonfire.  She is delighted that her work reveals a great many of her much-loved Cyclamineus already in bud, and Spring is on its way.

That evening, the wireless’s Third Programme presents a talk on one of Gran’s favourite subjects – orchids, and the Lizard Orchid in particular – and she writes of this species:

No one denies the rarity of the Lizard Orchid, and, I confess that it is one of my life’s ambitions to find one, but I was pleased to hear tonight that a colony of some two-hundred had been found in Kent, though it is thought that the seeds of these might conceivably have come from France, since the seed of all orchids… is little more than dust and therefore easily carried on the wind.

How telling it is of Gran’s attitude to the “foreign” that she uses the word “though” as an adverb here, hinting I think, that the potential French source of the seed rendered the colony in Kent less English and therefore less legitimate!

The first day of February sees her at tea with the Hardings, after which she goes to a Southampton Natural History Society meeting, calling for Diana Fowler on the way, to hear a lecture by Brigadier Findlay on the work of the Public Health Investigation Service – “more closely allied to Natural History than one would think, for they are largely concerned with the detection of germ carriers and water pollution and such… I found the lecture most intriguing”, she writes.

The 2nd is a lovely day, and one which brings her great pleasure, she tells us, as she makes her way by bicycle to the Hursley garden where, for the last seventeen Winters she has picked all the snowdrops she needs for herself and as presents for others.  The plants are flowering in profusion but Mrs White, the garden’s owner, is not at home so Gran, in spite of having tacit permission, feels a little uneasy while picking and is relieved to meet the lady just as she has finished collecting the flowers. She plans to give some to Mary Harding and to post some to Kingston and some to Mill Hill.

Next day she cycles into Southampton to give yet more to her “Aunt at Bassett” (never named, but presumably Aunt Em, one of her Mother’s sisters) and to “my gallant invalid friend, Lucy Lowman” (named at last, for the first time) at Highfield. As she pedals up Hut Hill, she records with pleasure that, “ a Lark rose, in full song, from the field opposite the Trinidad Asphalt Company”.
Article series

• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 1)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 2)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 3)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 4)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 5)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 6)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 7)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 8)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 9)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 10)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 11)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 12)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 13)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 14)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 15)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 16)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 17)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 18)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 19)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 20)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 21)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 22)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 23)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 24)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 25)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 26)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 27)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 28)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 29)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 30)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 31)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 32)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 33)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 34)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 35)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 36)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 37)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 38)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 39)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 40)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 41)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 42)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 43)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 44)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 45)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 46)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 47)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 48)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 49)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 50)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 51)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 52)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 53)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 54)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 55)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 56)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 57)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 58)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 59)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 60)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 61)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 62)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 63)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 64)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 65)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 66)
• Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 67)