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Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 83)

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A small boy at a Carol Service and a small world; nostalgia for Chandler’s Ford past; “Goater Bros” garage; petrol shortages; Gran buys trousers; waste oil – a menace to our birds; Mrs White has died; something called “Rock ‘n’ Roll”; a local link with top class ballet and farewell to Tom Jenkins.

“I promised last year”, Gran writes on December 20th 1956, “that I would take Mother to Haberdashers’ School Carol Service at St Martin-in-the-Fields this Christmas, if possible, and today was the day!”  The two ladies, together with Gran’s daughter Jane, travel by coach, meeting Jock and Julian in the Church.  There is less room for visitors than there was last Christmas because, Gran says, “…the school numbers had increased to eight hundred boys…” She writes much of Julian in her journals, including on this occasion, during the Service, that he:

…was remarkably good for one so small – he is not four yet, though one or two audible remarks made us smile a little,  “Hullo Daddy! Hullo!” sounded in the silence as Barry walked by, and, as the reading of the nine lessons had advanced from the small boy of the Junior School to the grey-haired Chairman, the little voice loudly proclaimed, “Those men get older and older!”  Apart from the announcement, “I use a knife and fork now!” addressed to Jane, all other conversation, was carried on in discreet whispers.

Gran writes after the Service:

It is truly a small world.  Barry introduced Jane to the Headmaster’s wife, and, believe it or not, she is an old pupil of Nottingham High School, where Jane is teaching, and her father, Mr Swinnerton, was, until this year, one of the Governers!

“Mr Swinnerton” was Dr H.H. Swinnerton, Professor Emeritus at the University of Nottingham, who, in 1960, produced Number 42 in the Collins New Naturalist Series, Fossils.

Collins New Naturalist No 42 Fossils, with its distinctive cover design by Clifford and Rosemary Ellis.

Christmas Day receives little attention in the journal, Gran merely relating that the weather was cold and overcast all day; that she attended early service at Compton, and that she had received a total of one hundred and thirty-eight cards.  Snow fell during the evening.  Boxing Day is blighted for her by a severe migraine, “but I was unable to nurse it”, she writes, “since my cousin Fairlie and my Aunt from Bassett were coming to tea”.  Jane “holds the fort”, providing some iced cakes made the day before, as well as the as yet, uncut, Christmas cake.

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

As we have discovered, Gran is often poor at recording people’s names.  The “Aunt from Bassett”, will have been Emilie, one of her mother’s sisters, known as “Aunt Em”.   Gran does, however, mention a name on the 29th, when Jane’s friend, Betty Hoskins, visits them at The Ridge:

Betty is now a State Registered Nurse, but when she was quite a small girl I helped her to find and identify wild flowers, and today we revived old memories as she looked at my paintings…

On accompanying her home late that evening, Gran learns that:

Betty’s family have long farmed in the Hursley area and are now close to the all-important woods at Standon, where grow the precious Epipactis leptochila. I have great hopes of obtaining their co-operation in the preservation of these and any other orchids on their land, since Mr Hoskins assured me that they would never deliberately harm any of them.

Another of Jane’s friends is mentioned on the following day, when Jane rides for two hours with Maureen Toole, returning home mud-splashed “through galloping over sodden fields, but…. who cared?”

The last day of the 1956 arrives, and Gran, as is her habit now, sums up the past year for Adrian.  She includes this:

This year has seen a marked change in the countryside surrounding my home, for much building has taken place, resulting in great devastation in our much-loved woods… Otterbourne is fast losing all its character by the straightening of the road and the building of houses in its fields and Poles Lane is now a straight, uninteresting highway.  Nevertheless, I have again been lucky in having some wonderful outings with Brother and Fin…

1957

January 2nd sees Gran’s new acquaintance from Winchester, Mrs Coxhead, visiting The Ridge, partly to see Gran’s albums of flower paintings, but also to walk around the local area.  The despoilation of the nearby countryside is still on Gran’s mind, as she notes:

We went for a short walk round The Lake before we gave our attention to the books, and my companion’s enthusiasm for the place made me wish she could have seen Chandler’s Ford as I knew it twenty years ago!

Thorold Road, not far from The Ridge. This is the Chandler’s Ford that Gran loved.

Barry, Jock and the two boys spend a few days in Chandler’s Ford a few days later; me, Ricky, just two years old, apparently “no longer a baby” and “much improved with his talking”. Barry and Julian stay at The Ridge, while Mum and I stay around the corner at 99 Kingsway, for reasons of space. What Gran writes on the 6th, triggers a vivid memory for me:

This morning great pleasure and excitement was caused by the gift of a model service station to Julian and Ricky – a gift upon which their Grandpa had been working for many days.  It was a joy to see Julian’s eager little face light up with pleasure.  Julian refused to go out all day and scarcely left it to eat his meals.  For so small a boy, only just four, it was amazing how instantly he knew its purpose, and the functions of all its parts.

I well remember that grey and white painted garage, with, in red lettering, “Goater Bros” on its short tower. But I was too young to understand that it was Grampa who had made it for us and the amount of work and care that would have gone into its production.  This is the first direct mention of him in ten years of Gran’s writing.

The family departs for Mill Hill on the 7th, and Gran returns to painting some anemones for a friend, Jean Hardwick, having to stop at one point, “to rush into the garden and rescue the washing, which was being smothered with smuts from a chimney on fire in Lake Road”.

The Suez crisis continues, resulting in fuel shortages and reduced bus services, which cause Gran to walk longer distances locally than usual, when she would normally take the bus, but she appreciates the positive side:

This afternoon I went for a long cycle ride and I must say that, whilst petrol rationing is annoying, and even disastrous, to some people, it has certainly made cycling more pleasant and enjoyable.  I met little traffic.

On the 21st she takes a small but practical step towards modernity:

I went to Winchester later to do some necessary shopping, which included some corduroy slacks for bird-watching in Winter on the marshes.  I never imagined I should ever take to trousers, but they are the only thing in which to face the cold wind from the sea in wintry conditions, and little will be seen since they will be tucked into Wellington boots and mainly covered by a coat!

Near the end of the month, after recording the making of huge quantities of marmalade, Gran is saddened to read a piece in “tonight’s Echo”:

…a Great Northern Diver had been picked up, badly oiled, at Redbridge today.  It was seen by the Guard of a train, who went back later to look for it, but it was badly distressed and died before anything could be done for it.  This waste oil is a menace to our birds.

A winter Great Northern Diver – not yet on Gran’s Hampshire list.  Image by Smudge9000 via Flickr.

On February 3rd, Gran undertakes her usual visit to the garden in Ladwell, near Hursley, to gather Snowdrops:

I saw as soon as I reached the cottage that they were in perfection, but I was much saddened, when the door was opened in response to my knock, to hear that Mrs White had died just before Christmas.  Her son and daughter are there until next month, after which a new, unknown tenant will take possession.  Mrs White had told her daughter that I went for Snowdrops every year – this is the nineteenth – and she was expecting me, and asked me to take them as usual since she knew her mother would like me to have them.  So I gathered as many as I wanted, thinking sadly the while that this would be the last time.  But I shall remember Mrs White with gratitude for the rest of my life.

Book 63

The Snowdrops are packed in boxes next day and sent:

…to Kingston for Mum [Adrian’s mother] and to Eric and Doris [more relatives of Adrian], one to Mill Hill for Barry and Jock, one to Nottingham for Jane and the fifth to Basingstoke, whence my invalid friend, Lucy Lowman, has recently moved.

More are taken next day to her friend Mrs Durst, in Compton, recovering from a broken wrist. Others go to Mary Harding, and yet more, together with catkins and Sallow buds, are prepared for Gran’s new neighbours, the Hockridges, with whom she has become very friendly. Gran writes that she thinks Mrs White would be pleased to know how much pleasure her Snowdrops have given.

She closely avoids another scrape with modernity on the 7th:

This morning I went to Southampton to book seats at the Gaumont Theatre for the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, which is coming for the week commencing on 25th. It was not as I expected for, when I reached the theatre, there was a queue extending right round the corner down to the car park, and it took me an hour and a half to arrive at the booking office!  However, the sun was warm and the sky a beautiful blue, with an occasional Gull flying over, and the crowd, orderly but chatting amiably with all and sundry, were far removed from the fighting, hysterical mob who had yesterday welcomed from America, the latest exponent of “Rock n’ Roll”, a person of whom I had never heard until I read his name under a photograph taken when he arrived on the “Queen Elizabeth”.

This “person” was Bill Hayley, of the group Bill Haley and the Comets, and Gran’s journal, being primarily “a record of beautiful things”, would not warrant the mention of anything so vulgar to Gran as a Rock and Roll star!  That evening, though, she mentions somebody of whom she would truly approve:

I went next door to see, on television, Philip Chatfield, who went to a local Dancing Class with Jane, when she was three, and won a Scholarship to the Sadler’s Wells School of Ballet.  Tonight he was dancing with Svetlana Beriosova and I could see that he had abundantly fulfilled his early promise, for his every movement was a poem of delightful motion.

A letter from Barry at this time tells that he has found, at Scratch Wood, “twelve Spring Ushers, four Pale Brindled Beauties and an Early Grey moth, this last very early indeed!”. I relate this for my own nostalgic reasons,  Scratch Wood being one of the first tracts of countryside that I truly remember – within a short distance of Mill Hill, north-west London – where there were fields with ponies; a railway line, with exciting smoking steam trains passing and emerging from a tunnel; gorse bushes, and picnics with that great treat, Smith’s crisps, with a little twist of salt hidden in each packet.  Today it is probably best known as the site of an M1 Service Station.

Arranging to meet Mrs Coxhead again on the 13th, Gran cycles into Winchester to await her friend’s appearance after work at half past twelve.  She is concerned:

I was sorry to see, on entering the neighbourhood of Winchester, a large red Police notice, giving warning that the area was infected with the dread Foot and Mouth disease, and I noted throughout our ride that all uninfected cattle were carefully collected into one field, and farms provided a bucket of disinfectant at their gates with the notice “Please dip your feet before entering”. Let us hope the infection does not spread.

Gran describes a lovely day cycling with her friend to many interesting local natural history spots, but the next day she is in different mood:

After yesterday’s gladness, I was saddened this morning to read in the newspaper of the untimely death, at only forty-six, of Tom Jenkins, the violinist and leader of the Palm Court Orchestra.  That such an artist should be lost to the world at this early age, and to die from such a cause as cancer, seems beyond belief and certainly beyond our comprehension. He had been ill since July, but had recently, with great courage and tenacity, been playing anonymously with the B.B.C Orchestra, but as an ordinary member and not as leader, for he was too weak and ill for this.  I feel that I have lost a personal friend, for I have so enjoyed his lovely playing, and it is so sad to think that he will never again enchant us with his beloved Stradivarius.

She saves this newspaper cutting between pages 9710 and 9711 of her journal:

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