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Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 89)

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Christmas is hectic; Gran blesses the neighbours; the “opposite wood – now occupied; new furnishings for The Ridge; the Festival Ballet in Southampton; an awful lot of marmalade; “science never produced such wonders”; Mistle Thrush observations; a visit to London, and something to look forward to.

Christmas 1957 is approaching and Gran expects a full house, with Jane coming home from Nottingham, and the family also due to arrive from Mill Hill.  Arrangements are made with the Hockridges for Barry, Jock, Julian and Ricky to spend the nights next door.  Jane arrives on December 19th:

I expected Jane home late this evening but when I reached home at half-past six, there she was, cooking herself a meal!  She had been able to catch the through train after all.  It was raining slightly when she went back to Winchester for the rest of her luggage, and it was late when we eventually retired.

On the following day:

…as we were having tea, Barry and the family arrived.  It was grand to see them all again, and how the little boys have grown! Julian tells us he starts school on January 7th, and we all received Christmas cards today that he had coloured and in which he had written his name and Ricky’s.  It seems quite incredible.

Clear though it is that Gran loves the family’s presence, she writes the next day that it was somewhat nosy and hectic.  “If only I were not so deadly tired”, she says. “But everyone is being very helpful and Mother [recently unwell] is able to come downstairs for a little while each day now.  Julian and Ricky are delightful”.

There is no let up on Christmas Eve – “What a day”, Gran writes:

I scarcely sat down, even to eat and honestly cannot remember when I last ate a full meal. I am so tired I can only pray that I last out over Christmas… All day was spent cooking for tomorrow and, in the evening, dressing the Christmas Tree and putting up the decorations.  Barry iced the cake.  He had taken Julian to his precious Shawford Downs this morning [to watch trains], and Ricky had been to our Lake again [to feed swans]. During a rather late tea Ricky pointed out Winter Moths on the window and called them by name too.  And this at three years of age!

She also notes “Barry has decided, after much deliberation, not to accept the post at Canford.  I trust that this is the right decision, as I feel it is”.

On Christmas Day, Barry and Jane go with Gran to Early Service at Compton, while Julian and I, with Mum, investigate our full stockings at the Hockridges, where we had spent the night. Main presents are opened after breakfast at The Ridge, “amidst squeals of delight from Julian and Ricky”.  Only one present is described: “an Irish linen teacloth from Fin, with Irish scenes in colour all over it…” given to Gran.

I appear to have been quite talkative in a slightly cloying way, Gran recording that “Dr White, who is Julian’s Godfather, came in to see us all, and was followed later by Brother, of whom Ricky observed, “It was good to see Uncle Norris again!”” and, after the traditional Christmas dinner, “again Ricky expressed the sentiments of all, “What a lovely family we are”, for there were four generations represented at the table.

Christmas dinner was always a rather brown meal – but enlivened with these green items. Image by Richard Hemmer via Flickr.

Gran sums up the day:

The afternoon was cold, grey and misty but we enjoyed seeing the Queen (on the next door Television), deliver her Christmas message to her family of Commonwealth subjects… Two very happy but exceedingly tired little boys eventually went next door to bed, and how I blessed Ken and Jean Hockridge for making possible our wonderful family Christmas.  Everyone, especially Jane, helped me tremendously to make this day a happy and memorable one… I came upstairs eventually almost exhausted but as happy as possible and I think all the family enjoyed this Christmas Day as much as any we have known.

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

Life returns to a less hectic norm for Gran on December 28th, when the family departs, by train, for Mill Hill.  “But oh! how I shall miss them!”, she says.

I am left wondering why it was that the Hockridges, next door, “made possible our wonderful family Christmas” by making beds available, when the other grandparents, just around the corner in Kingsway could probably have put us up.

1958

As Gran completes her notes for the day, late on January 2nd, she is mentally transported back to the awful times witnessed by her generation: “A fire warning has just rent the air – the long, mournful wail as of the wartime air-raid siren, which still chills the heart and checks the breath.  May God grant that war never makes such necessary again”.

January 4th:

I did not go out during the hours of daylight today, except across the road to the Post Office, but Jane and I went for a walk after dark this evening.  We walked through our one-time opposite wood, which is now almost fully occupied by houses and bungalows, and discovered, to our surprise, that it was more silent than when it was woodland.  Nothing stirred and not even an owl called, and the only human beings we saw were a woman putting out milk bottles at her back door, who appeared to regard our approaching footsteps with both curiosity and apprehension, peering out at us in the darkness, not realizing that to us she was clearly visible in the light from her porch, and a man who emerged from his front door carrying a hurricane lamp.  It seemed as though our dear, familiar woods were a strange, rather alarming place to the people now residing in them.

We were highly amused at the silhouetted picture, through obscure glass, of a couple, seemingly washing up in the kitchen, but the man was wearing a high-crowned hat, rather like a cowboy’s!

Gran has told us earlier that she was relieved when Jean Hockridge’s “woman” came to The Ridge to help clean it when Gran was ill.  We learn on January 5th that Gran too has a “woman”!  This is Mrs Hillier, in my memory from several years hence, always referred to as “Mrs Hilly”:

Just before darkness fell John Fowler came with some Anemones and Freesias, for me to make a posy for a little cripple child who died this week.  Mrs Hillier, who comes to help in the house, asked me to do it for her to send tomorrow, and to the flowers John brought, I later added Iris stylosa, yellow Jasmine and Laurustinus.  It looked very pretty and suitable for a child.  Poor little soul – life had given her little except for the devotion and care of parents for whom the heart aches in their loss.

In an apparently rare domestic activity on January 11th, Gran, with Jane, buys new wallpaper and carpet for The Ridge dining-room:

We went first to Portswood where we obtained the wallpaper, and then to Southampton, where we were very lucky and found just the carpet we wanted, deep blue, for half-price in the Sales!  We also found two mushroom coloured rugs, with a hint of blush-pink in them, matching the paint and wallpaper, for the hearth and French windows.

Book 70

On the afternoon of January 14th, Dad (Barry) arrives from Mill Hill to give his evening talk to the Natural History Society:

After a meal (he had had no dinner) he suggested that we should cycle down to the river at Brambridge and, of course, I needed no second invitation.  It was still sunny though the sun was low and its gleaming reflection on the water was too dazzling to be observed for long at a time. The rising sap in the Dogwoods and Sallows made them glow ruby red and the tawny reeds were golden in the sunshine. A mist rose like wisps of smoke over the dykes in the water meadows and the whole area drowsed in peaceful serenity.

They see their first Brambling of the Winter.

“Tawny Reeds golden in the sunshine” Image by nick ford via Flickr.

That evening, “Stars were bright” Gran writes, “when we went to the meeting”:

Barry’s talk was on “Some Aspects of the Flora and Fauna of the Bishop’s Dyke Area”, and was, of course, based on the ecological survey, which he and the boys from Haberdashers’ School have been carrying out for the past three years. It was most interesting and, with the help of diagrams shown on a screen, most enlightening, even to me, who has put in a lot of study in the area myself.   The talk ended at eight o’clock, since Barry had to return to London, and I went to the station with him and Brigadier Venning, who kindly took us in his car.

She visits Adrian’s mother in Kingston on the following day, recording that on the way home by train, at Alton, she:

…changed from the electric train to a Diesel.  This lumbered noisily to Medstead and Four Marks, and then stopped in the middle of the country for about fifteen minutes, with much talk and running to and fro with lanterns!

“This evening was memorable”, Gran writes on January 17th, “I went to the Gaumont Theatre in Southampton to see London’s Festival Ballet in Les Sylphides and Coppellia, and it was wonderful beyond description”.  She describes the dancers’ skills with great feeling – John Gilpin, Michael Hogan, Janet Overton and Natalie Krassovska being “outstanding” in Les Sylphides, and Coppelia, she says, “was colourful and most wonderfully presented, and Marylyn Burr and Louis Godfrey in the leading parts were unbelievably excellent”.  A press cutting is placed between the pages of her journal.

The press cutting.

After a day of marmalade-making on the 20th, she ends her journal entry, describing, as she often does, the sunset, with: “The last rays touched the Silver Birches opposite here to indescribable beauty and I wondered how long before they are hidden by the shops whose building is now pending”.

Gran leaves us in no doubt of her belief in a “Devine Creator” as opposed to the wonder of “evolution by natural selection”, the following day, when she describes one of Peter Scott’s Look programmes, which she watches while babysitting next door:

…a truly wonderful film by the German naturalist, Heinz Sielmann, entitled “A Summer Meadow”.  In this we saw the flowers unfolding on a dewy morning and the various insects associated with them.  We were also shown the marvellous phenomena of caterpillars actually pupating, and the perfect butterfly emerging.  How anyone can doubt the existence of a Supreme Creator I cannot imagine. Science alone never produced such wonders.

January 25th brings to 50 pounds the amount of marmalade Gran has made this season and she is also busy knitting:

…a baby’s shawl for Jill Brewster.  Three weeks ago I started it, being without knitting to do, and was accused of being premature!  A letter from Jill herself yesterday, however, told me it would be needed in September.  I must be psychic!  It is an exquisite pattern and lovely to do.

On the following day, Gran observes the activity of birds at her feeder in the garden:

An unusual visitor to the bread and cheese put out for our birds today was a Mistle Thrush and I have never before been able to observe one, with the naked eye, at such close quarters.  He was just outside the kitchen window and I noted that, whilst he would allow none of the larger birds, such as Blackbirds and Song Thrushes, to approach whilst he fed, he paid no attention to the smaller fry, and a cheeky Coletit ate his fill without interference, almost under his great companion’s beak.

The Mistle Thrush – it’s often hard to get a good view of these flighty birds. Image by Mark Hope via Flickr.

Gran plans to attend the annual B.E.N.A. Exhibition in London on the first day of February, so the day before, she catches an early train to Waterloo, and thence to Mill Hill for the night, but not before making good use of her time in the City:

I went to Regent Street to meet a very old friend, my first in Chandler’s Ford, who had moved away many years ago now.  We had arranged to meet at the main entrance to Dickens and Jones, and here, being early as usual, I waited for about half an hour.  I did not find this tedious for I was most interested watching the cosmopolitan crowd… the self-conscious smartly dressed women and girls of all ages, the eccentric, sometimes unkempt and grubby-looking students, the Teddy-boys, belligerent and resentful, with exaggerated hair-dos, the businessmen, pompous and important, the foreigners and the tourists, country-folk, like me, up for the day, and the poorer city-dwellers, most of whom, even when not shabbily dressed, wore an unhealthy pallor and looked as though they needed a good dose of pure fresh air!

When Hylda Malcolm appeared she looked much as she always had, and we went up to the lounge in Dickens and Jones, where we chatted about our children and newly-acquired grand-children…  Later we walked through Liberty’s famous shop and then went to the Tea Centre for tea…

Hylda and I parted at about half-past five when she saw me onto the platform at Piccadilly Circus for the train to Russell Square, from whence, later, I walked to the St Martin’s Theatre in Cambridge Circus to see “Odd Man In”, a clever comedy with only three characters in it.  I enjoyed it immensely.

She reaches Mill Hill East station late, not far short of midnight, where she finds Barry waiting for her.  And she is up early, next morning, playing Snakes and Ladders with Julian before she and Barry take the Underground for central London, to meet brother Norris at Waterloo, and to attend the Exhibition.

This game and Ludo were the most popular board games of our childhoods. Image by antifixus21 via Flickr.

The Exhibition is described in some detail, and in glowing terms, but Gran is perhaps most excited there by the promise, given by Mr and Mrs Kimmins, to show her Lizard Orchids in Kent, next July, and also a promise by, Mr Cashmore, of some stamps for her collection, depicting flowers.  Afterwards, she catches the half-past six train from Waterloo to Southampton, there gets the bus to Chandler’s Ford, and arrives home tired.  She ends her notes for the day:

I was now nearing exhaustion and starting a bad head, but I called in next door for my key and Jean insisted on making me a cup of tea, whilst Ken relieved me of my coat and brought a footstool to rest my legs.  What good Samaritans they are to be sure, and how very pleasant it was to be looked after in this way after a tiring two days!

Something to look forward to in July. Image by Bjorn S… via Flickr.

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  1. The newspaper cutting is from the “Southern Evening Echo”, given the initials at the end are those of John Edgar Mann, a long time well respected journalist with the paper. His knowledge of the arts, and music in particular was legendary.

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  2. I guess the “fire warning” would be the siren used to summon the retained firefighters. I remember in the early 1970s we would hear it from the fire station in the next village, about 3 miles away, when the wind was in the right direction. Or, when staying at my uncle’s, my cousin and I ran to their local fire station to see the fire engine leave on hearing the siren.

    They still use these sirens in New Zealand – giving me a bit of a panicking wake-up call on my first morning on a trip a few years ago, until I reminded myself that this was normal; it wasn’t an air attack!

    I was told once, but have no idea whether or not it is true, that British emergency vehicles retained the 2-tone sirens for so long is because wailing ones would remind people of the air-raid warnings.

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