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Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 79)

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A reduced evening chorus; Furzey Gardens; Jane’s last half-term; the Chelsea Flower Show – again; flowers from Hazel; migraine medication; five essays; St Mary’s re-dedicated, and a Blackbird builds a nest.

Book 58

On May 19th 1956 Gran tells us: “As always at Whitsun I recorded the evening chorus for the Glanton Bird Research Station, and, for the purpose, went down to the Lake.”  She notes the times of the day’s last songs and calls of a total of nineteen species, including Cuckoo and Wood Warbler, the only two species on her list unlikely to be heard there nowadays.  No Nightingale is heard, nor a Nightjar, so it appears that these summer visitors no longer find the habitats suitable in their old Hiltingbury haunts.

Wood Warbler – hanging on in Chandler’s Ford in 1956. Image by themadbirdlady via Flickr.

She sees that “Fish were leaping at the innumerable flies over the water and, after nine o’clock, notices that “small Pipistrelle Bats swooped low, also often after flies, sometimes brushing the water as they swept downwards”.  Given the behaviour of these bats, I suspect that they were actually Daubenton’s Bats, which typically hunt in this way, over water.

Usually Gran has been accompanied by Diana Fowler on this annual bird survey but her God-daughter is unwell on this occasion, and Gran regrets that she will also have to undertake the dawn chorus survey on her own.  For this, she rises at 3.15 a.m., remaining in the garden under starlight and in extreme cold, hearing first a Tawny Owl, followed almost immediately by Domestic Cocks. Cuckoos soon follow, and  “The last bird”, she writes, “to join what could reasonably be termed the Dawn Chorus, were the Goldcrests, their tiny voices in striking contrast to those of the Jackdaws who chose now to set up a tremendous clamour. This was at 5 a.m.”

It is clearly a long day for Gran, for not only does she follow this survey immediately with worship at Compton Church, noting, “The flowers in Church looked very beautiful for Whitsuntide”, but in the afternoon she is driven, with Jane, “…to see the garden at “Furzey” at Minstead, in the New Forest”.  She, several times over the summer, writes that she is taken by car on drives such as this through the Hampshire countryside, but never mentions the driver.

Furzey was most beautiful, the long, low house thatched, with pink Clematis and Wisteria clambering over it and the surrounding walls, and the garden, on a natural slope with a stream at the bottom, designed to provide banks of brilliant colour interspersed with drifts of blue from naturally sown Bluebells.

“Furzey was most beautiful”.  Image by Karen Roe via Flickr.

They have tea in the nearby “Honeysuckle Teas”, “a very nice tea room where all the china was a lovely shade of pale blue”.

Gran is invited on another country drive on the following day, Tommy Fowler phoning (presumably to next door’s telephone) to ask if she and Mother would like to accompany Bob and Diana to the Meon Valley.  They “gladly accepted and enjoyed one of the loveliest drives we have ever had.  We left about five o’clock”.

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

The journey and birds and flowers seen are recorded in detail, and it is striking to me, given the bird’s status in the UK today, that Turtle Dove is recorded in numbers on this and almost every similar outing she makes.  They were so much more abundant in those days.

Turtle Dove – still good numbers in Chandler’s Ford in 1956.  Image by Nick Borrow via Flickr.

May 22nd:

This afternoon Jane returned to Eastbourne, to Chelsea College for her last half-term. It does not seem possible that she has completed almost three years there.  I went to the station with her…. Oxford Ragwort was in full bloom and still beautifies Southampton’s remaining bombed sites, which, happily, are fast disappearing now.

Taking a pre-booked coach to the Chelsea Flower Show, with Mother, on the 24th, Gran records that they are “saddened to see so many miles of Surrey countryside blackened by fire, and, in one place, two fire engines in attendance where a fire was actually raging across dry heathland and birch copse”.

The Flower Show does not quite come up to Gran’s expectations this year.  She writes:

Perhaps in view of the shocking weather earlier in the year, it is not quite fair to say that the Show seemed a little less wonderful this time, but so it seemed to me, and, since I am so very receptive to the beauty of colour and form, I do not think it was because it is no longer a novelty to me.

Nevertheless, she does enjoy the day, describing many of the exhibits, and ending the day as usual, with tea in the BOAC restaurant.  And also as usual, she notes the people, regarding many of them, I think, with some disdain:

…the cosmopolitan crowd of people moving to and fro – elegant, over-dressed ladies in most unsuitable high-heeled shoes, Malayan students, countrymen and women in comfortable, tweedy garments, gardening ladies and gentlemen, whose only thought was flowers, girls in pretty, colourful dresses, ladies in furs(!) which could only have been worn for effect on such a warm day, and one very elegant young man in a dark suit and bowler hat, carefully carrying a rolled umbrella.  Of course, there were also hundreds like ourselves, ordinary folk…to whom Chelsea Flower Show was an outstanding event… whose great and wonderful exhibitions… totally eclipsed all thought of ourselves.

Journeying home, and arriving at Winchester in time to catch the ten past nine bus to Chandler’s Ford:

There were several Winchester County High School girls in the queue, and, still retaining and interest in Jane’s old School, I asked one what the County High had been doing that evening.  She said it had been Open Day.  I told her my daughter had been at the School and added, “But I do not expect you knew her, she left three years ago – Jane Goater”.  Her face lit up and she said, “Of course I knew her. Everybody knows Jane Goater!”  She could only have been a Junior when Jane was there.

Returning home after a long cycle ride on the 25th, taking in Fishers Pond, Colden Common, Twyford, Bishop’s Waltham, Owslebury and Brambridge, Gran begins painting:

…the Sainfoin this evening, but I did not get very far.  It is late now dear, but I am going downstairs again to hear [Calvert] Noble Rollin, to whom I send my Chorus records, speaking on the wireless about the spread of the dawn chorus across England.

The following day she remarks on the interesting talk, which detailed the spread of the dawn chorus, more or less from east to west, writing, “The first bird note on Whit Sunday was that of a Snipe in the Farne Islands, at a quarter to three – over an hour earlier than the first Cuckoo here”.

Snipe are early risers.  These two are displaying. Image by Kentish Plumber via Flickr.

A visit by the postman on May 29th lifts Gran from a depressed mood.  Jane has sent her a Spider Orchid to paint, picked near Eastbourne from a colony of about forty specimens, and secondly;

…there was a postcard from Hazel Bidmead, who is on holiday at Kingussie, in Scotland – a beautiful coloured photograph of a loch near Aviemore, which she had recently visited – and she has promised to bring me some specimens of the Scottish mountain flowers.  Ah me! I am a creature of moods these days, descending to the depths one day and rising to the heights the next, but it is, perhaps, good to feel that a single flower can do much to uplift the soul.

The afternoon of the 30th is spent, after painting Lesser Butterfly Orchid, at Sherborne House School:

…to help open ninety-odd Barnardo Boxes, which yielded over forty pounds towards the upkeep of the School’s special charge – a baby named Carol.  It took three of us working continuously three and a half hours to complete the opening and checking the contents, but the result justified the efforts.  Wood Warblers were singing in the Pinewood…

June 1st:

This afternoon, unusual for me, was largely spent watching Television – tennis – the Davis Cup doubles match between Great Britain and Chile, which Great Britain won, and the semi-finals of the Men’s and Ladies’ singles in the Surbiton Tournament.

A female Cuckoo, calling from The Ridge garden at dawn, elicits responses from at least six males, “calling incessantly, one against the other”, Gran notes, and during the afternoon she is occupied with a B.E.N.A. meeting at Farley Mount, to which she cycles.

Her headaches, although less frequent than of late, remain troublesome, and on June 4th she tells us:

I had been taking some new tablets for my head – prescribed by the Doctor on Friday and now, certain that a migraine was coming, I commenced taking others as he had instructed me.  These made me feel so desperately ill that I retired to lie down for an hour, hoping to be better by the time visitors were expected.

After a short sleep, I did, indeed, wake feeling better and, amazingly, without the headache, and though I frequently had to sit down since my legs seemed to be oddly unattached to my body, I survived the rest of the day which, by evening, had become unbelievably full.

An un-named Aunt with an Australian friend, Kit, arrives by bus, for tea, and following this, Gran takes Kit for a walk by the Lake and along Coronation Walk – a path to which Gran has often referred but never fully described, though it appears to be the route northwards through the damp woodland and past Hiltingbury Lake, from Kingsway.  No sooner do they arrive back at The Ridge, than Hazel Bidmead drops in with her promised flower specimens from the Scottish Mountains, and then, responding to a knock on the door while opening these, Gran admits two more visitors:

Mrs and Miss Wise from Sherborne House School, returning my flower paintings, which they had had for the weekend.  They too, came in to share the joy of unpacking the plants which, one by one, were uncovered from the Sphagnum moss to fill us with delight – little blue Mountain Pansies Viola lutea, Mountain Everlasting Antennaria dioica, both pink and white, tiny green and silver Alpine Lady’s Mantle Alchemilla alpina…

Mountain Everlasting – one of the flowers brought by Hazel.  Image by Claude Dopagne via Flickr.

And there are many others, and Gran thinks, “…how wonderfully kind of Hazel to bring them all this way and to bring them straight out to me at the earliest opportunity”.

After playing tennis in Eastleigh on June 9th, Gran, arriving home, finds Diana Fowler there:

She had come to discuss a series of articles on the flowers of Wessex, which she has been asked to write for a florists’ magazine.  After much thought, we divided them into five essays.  We agreed that our orchids deserve one to themselves, and the others were flowers of Woodland, Downland, and Sea-shore respectively, and flowers of the New Forest – this last so that the wonderful flora of Hatchet Pond and the heaths could be included.  Sunset was partially obscured and it was raining again when Diana left.

Diana writes the orchid essay the following day, and brings it that evening for Gran’s approval, together with a “very lovely photograph of Jill, which had been promised to me”, writes Gran, adding that, “In the limited number of words allowed her, I think she has given a good idea of their distribution in our area”.

Over the next month or so, Gran closely observes the progress of a pair of nesting Blackbirds, her first journal entry, on June 11th, as follows:

I watched a hen Blackbird who, throughout the day, has been busy building a nest in the Honeysuckle in the garden.  I saw her enter with almost the first leaf in her beak, and by this evening the shape of the nest was well-defined.  May she rear her brood successfully!

Busy in The Ridge garden. Image by hedera.baltica via Flickr.

And on the 12th:

The hen Blackbird has been exceedingly busy with her nest-building today and has shown little concern for us passing to and fro.  The nest is now well formed and I have watched her shuffling her body about to shape it to her satisfaction.

This day provides much of interest for Gran; the arrival in the post from Fin, in Ireland, of a couple of flowers, the painting of Ragged Robin before having tea, as usual on a Tuesday, with the Harding family, where she receives “the money for another album for my flowers – a birthday present in advance!” and from there, she says:

I came home earlier than usual to be with mother when listening to a broadcast of the re-dedication of St Mary’s Church, Southampton, which was almost totally destroyed by bombs during the last war.  In this church, many years ago (over sixty) Mother was confirmed, and, fifty-six years ago, was married.  As the service ended the bells pealed forth as in years gone by and it was an extremely moving moment.

The Sherborne House School Speech Day takes place on the 14th, Gran very much appreciating the entertainment, which includes scenes from Toad of Toad Hall, in spite of unsettled weather, and, she writes, “it was very pleasant to meet members of the Staff who had been at the School when Barry and Jane attended it.”

A single egg is suspected beneath the sitting hen Blackbird on the following day, and the bird is noted again, still sitting, on the 16th, “…so I did not disturb her but I expect there are now two eggs”.

On June 17th, Gran wakes with a severe migraine and writes that eleven years have passed, since she received her first letter from Adrian, to whom her journal is dedicated, “…that letter which was to be the beginning of our brief but wonderful friendship, and – yes, something infinitely more…” She remains in downcast mood the following day, sad for her Jane’s lost friend, noting, “Remembering Robin, who would have been twenty-three today.  Robin de Crespigny Eastwood, Requescat in pace”.

The Blackbird’s nest contains four eggs by June 20th, and Gran writes, with a touching tenderness “…when I gently put my hand in the nest to count them, they were warm to my touch”.

“Warm to the touch”. Image by decafdennis via Flickr.

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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 52) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 53) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 61)
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