Chandler's Ford Today

You are here: Home / Community / Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 97)

Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 97)

By 2 Comments

With cousin Fairlie in Kent; alley cricket in Mill Hill; amazing character studies at the W.I.; kissed by Joey; the Old Curiosity Shop and the wonders of Scotland.

Gran, at Fairlie’s house in Kent on May 27th 1959, walks the local countryside collecting flower specimens after “ Fairlie left for Chelsea Flower Show and while Norah had gone to her usual work in the Church”.  Gran witnesses for the first time, a bird “anting”:

…a practise said to be undertaken for cleaning purposes.  A Great Tit was moving rapidly round the rim of the well and assiduously picking up ants which he put beneath his wings, shook himself vigorously and then sprawled with spread wings, sunning himself.

I wonder what Norah Adamson’s “usual work” was in Elham Church. Image by Tony Morris via Flickr.

The gathered flowers are needed for a talk on her usual subject, which Gran has been asked to give locally that evening.  “The flower talk seemed to be found interesting”, she says, “and I was asked to judge the arrangements of wild flowers. Not an impressive array, I must confess, and the containers not really suitable”.

She spends a further two days at Elham, exploring the area on foot with Fairlie. Fairlie was born in 1903, with her twin brother Dennis, both of whom Gran spent time with in Wales as a child. Family history has it that Dennis, as an adult, was given a fire engine – something he’d wanted since childhood – by his wife, Rene. He was last seen driving it during the Blitz when the Wirral was being bombed.

On the walks, Gran records, among other things of natural history interest, Nightingales, a brood of newly hatched Lapwings, a hedgehog and quantities of Herb Paris in the downland woods. On departing, she writes:

I had spent a most enjoyable three days with two of the companions of my childhood holidays in Wales, and, though I had not seen Norah for so long, the years slipped away as we remembered the old days.  I was sorry to say “goodbye” and have promised to visit White Walls again.

Gran takes a train to Waterloo, and the Underground to Mill Hill, staying the night there and sleeping, she says, “on the camp bed in Jock’s room”.  As usual, she enjoys the company of her grandchildren, helping Julian with his stamp collection, which numbered seventy before Gran gives him some of her duplicates, and noting: “Ricky spent most of his time sitting on the shed roof telling himself about the book I had taken him!”  Cricket is played the next morning, with Julian, before she boards “that hateful Underground”, on the way to the Botanic Gardens at Kew, where she meets members of the Bassett Garden Club, including her aunt, Em.

71 Grants Close, Mill Hill East, today, where “Alley Cricket” was played between the two bungalows. The drainpipes, which sometimes “caught” a well-driven tennis ball, rendering the batsman “out”, can clearly be seen.

Home at The Ridge, late that night, Gran finds several letters awaiting her, “including one from my friend, Mrs Rowsell, containing stamps from Antigua, Barbados, Bermuda and Trinidad…they are all very beautiful”.

There is more judging of flower arrangements on June 3rd, when Gran visits the Chandler’s Ford Women’s Institute.  After the judging, and a little W.I business, she:

…thoroughly enjoyed a series of character studies by Miss Allan, from London, who was an absolute master of make-up, and, with the aid of home-made “separates” of clothing, transformed herself completely from one character to another.  During these changes she described the way in which she used her various cosmetics to disguise her own features and to give herself the appearance of others, and told us the story of her people up to the time of her portrayal of them.  First, she was Lady Bracknell, interviewing the unfortunate Mr Worthing, suitor for her daughter’s hand, and then she was Queen Elizabeth, delivering her “golden speech” in her old age to the Commons.  A swift and quite extraordinary change, and Miss Allan was Mrs Sarah Gamp to the life.  A change of sex next, and a more sinister and revolting Uriah Heap, from David Copperfield, it would have been difficult to find, but perhaps Miss Allan’s finest characterisation was that of the ancient Llama in Rudyard Kipling’s “Kim”. A naturally deep and beautiful voice had a tremendous range and power of expression and I could have listened to her for hours.

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

June 4th:

I played tennis this evening and then went to see the cards and flowers received by Mr and Mrs Pheby, old friends in Kingsway, who yesterday celebrated their Diamond Wedding.  A treasured reminder of this great day will be the telegram from Her Majesty, the Queen, and their daughter’s gift, a greenhouse, will, I am sure, give them many hours of pleasure.

A less happy event today was the passing of Compton’s grand old lady, Mrs Cremer, at the extraordinary age of one hundred and three!  It was raining steadily when I came home.

“Later this morning”, Gran writes on June 8th:

…I took a twin-set, which I had knitted for her, to Jock’s mother, and was very interested and amused by her blue Budgerigar, which is a great talker.  He flew immediately to my shoulder (his cage door is always open) and chattered continually.  Among his repertoire is “nice kiss”, and he turns his face towards one, gently touches the lips with his bill and makes a kissing sound.  This he did several times with me this morning and I found it a very pleasing experience.  He is so very gentle and his little face so soft!  I do not wonder that Mrs MacNoe finds him a great time-waster.

Joey was a great kisser – and he would put his head in your mouth if you made a purring sound! Image by Steve p2008 v ia Flickr.

Later, she gathers flowers locally, noting, “Corn Spurrey has taken possession of the bank which was cut back to make the new reservoir on Otterbourne Hill, and the small white flowers massed upon it today made a very dainty and pretty sight”.  The flowers gathered are for a picture that Gran has “promised to paint for a sale in aid of the Lepers”.

Gran is in London again on June 20th, on a group outing to the Masonic Temple near Lincoln’s Inn.  She records Evening Primrose in flower, “near the new flyover which is being built at Chiswick”.  She visits The Old Curiosity Shop, immortalised by Dickens.  “It is”, she says:

…still an old curiosity shop but much of what is sold is modern reproduction.  But among old books I saw one very shabby edition of Grimm’s “Little Brother and Little Sister”, illustrated by Arthur Rackham, priced at more than the original which I paid for my still perfect copy.

The Old Curiosity Shop, London. Image by OZinOH via Flickr.

The party has:

…dinner at The House of Commons in the room of John Howard, our member for Southampton, who was unable to join us until late since he was broadcasting in “The Week in Westminster”.  He came in time for a drink and some sandwiches at the corner of our table and to bid us farewell.

June 23rd:  Gran is on her way to Scotland! “The writing of this entry will be rather wiggly”, she confesses, ” as I am doing it on my knee in the train just beyond Stafford”.  She has risen early, rendezvoused with Fairlie in London (it’s the first time we have heard that they are to holiday in Aviemore together) travelled to Mill Hill to break the long journey, and then caught the 7.15 p.m. “Royal Highlander” at Euston for the journey north, due to arrive in Aviemore, in Speyside, at 7.00 a.m.  Gran is beside herself with excitement, but things do not go well at first. She explains:

We reached Crewe at about half-past ten, just as we were preparing for bed, and here a nasty shock awaited me.  A silly mistake had been made at the reservation office at Euston and I had been listed as Mr Goater, and put to share a two-berth compartment with a man.

Another lady had been booked to share with Fairlie, and Gran continues:

She joined the train a few minutes ago at Crewe but [the attendant] refused to do anything but turn me out into an ordinary compartment.  So here I am, rather hot, very sleepy and with the prospect ahead of an uncomfortable and pretty sleepless night.  Barry will be furious, for he had thought of everything for my comfort for this holiday.  But I do not care!  I am on my way to Scotland.

She sleeps fitfully for a couple of hours.  Then:

All the discomfort of the night was forgotten when I opened a sleepy eye at half-past two this morning!  I saw… mountains!  Mountains all around.  I knew then that I should not want to sleep again while there was such a view to be seen… We passed Lanark Junction at 3.35 and then entered a thoroughly industrial and hideously ugly area, though, whilst the train was taking up water just outside Motherwell twenty minutes later, I saw clusters of Meadow Pea Lathyrus pratensis hanging over a very dirty wall.

She looks out of the window all the way to Aviemore, delighting in the scenery and the names of the places they pass: Gleneagles, Dunkeld, Dalguise, Balinluig, Pitlochry, Killiecrankie, Blair Atholl, Dalnaspidal, the Drumochter Pass… She is astounded to see Oystercatcher, such a coastal species in Hampshire, in numbers, amongst gulls in the fields.

An inland Oystercatcher. Image by UncleBucko via Flickr.

Arriving at Aviemore, the two ladies are met by Barry’s friend, and fellow entomologist, Philip le Mesurier, the proprietor of the Alt na Craig Hotel, where they are to stay for some sixteen days.  “ A wash soon refreshed us and a quarter of an hour later, we enjoyed a good breakfast of porridge and bacon and eggs.  It was not yet nine o’clock!” Gran writes.

Book 80

The following days are clearly wonderful for Gran, and engender in her a great love for Scotland, its wildlife and scenery.  She and Fairlie explore Speyside, usually on foot, sometimes with other, car-owning naturalists also staying at Alt na Craig, and, when travelling further afield to Elgin and to Fort William, by public transport.  They revel in their solitude in the tranquillity and grandeur of the mountains, where they hunt for plants, birds and Red Deer; they investigate the rivers and  lochs – Morlich, Alvie and Pityoulish, and they are driven to Loch Ruthven where they watch “…at least half a dozen Slavonian Grebes, one with two very young chicks… The adults were a most beautiful colour, shining bronze with almost orange ear-tufts, and we watched them for ages”.

Slavonian Grebe – Gran had seen them in Winter plumage in Hampshire, but they are hard to beat for beauty in Summer. Image by Ekaterina Chernetsova via Flickr.

Twite, Goosander and Hooded Crow are new birds for them, and they often watch Crested Tits, also new, in the Caledonian Pines of Rothiemurchus Forest.  They are taken to Loch Garten, where, to their great excitement, they see the U.K.’s only pair of Ospreys, the female on the huge nest structure itself; the male perched nearby on a pine, in full view.  The birds have young – the first time since they re-colonised Scotland, the pair’s eggs having been stolen in previous years.  On the last day of the holiday, they find an Osprey for themselves – a bird they see low over the Spey, showing its white underside, and making off in the direction of the nest.  They hear a Corncrake, “…the first since I was a child in Wales”, says Gran.

Crested Tit – one of Gran’s goals achieved. Image by Tony Armstrong-Sly via Flickr.

Gran is up very early every morning, writing that it’s the only time she can find in which to paint the many new plants she finds: Alpine Meadow-Rue, Intermediate Wintergreen, Creeping Ladies-tresses, Dwarf Cornel, Mountain Everlasting and many others.

Intermediate Wintergreen – one of many new species painted by Gran while staying at Alt na Craig.

The weather is indifferent and it appears that the tops of the Cairngorms, shrouded in cloud, are never fully in view.  Gran and Fairlie are often rained on, and their clothes and footwear soaked, but in their unbridled carefreeness they do not mind. They climb above 3000 feet near Dalwhinnie with Mike Harper, a great friend of Barry’s, and they ascend the Lairig Ghru pass through the Cairngorms to its highest point, being invited on the way to share with some young lads, tea, brewed in a saucepan on a faulty Primus stove.  They climb high above Craigellachie, the hill and crag above Aviemore, famous for its breeding Peregrines, where they see Red Grouse and Mountain Hare.

Mealtimes in the hotel are convivial, the clientele seeming to be primarily naturalists – Mr Wightman, Bernard West, the Folletts – all of whom include the ladies in their conversations and activities, and who generously transport them to points of natural history interest.  Gran mentions “a very elderly “bug-hunter”:

…who asked where I lived and then convulsed us by telling us that he passed through Chandler’s Ford in a horse-drawn caravan in 1905, on the way to the New Forest to collect butterflies and moths.

And on one of the days:

Bernard West, who had climbed the mountain behind Loch an Eilean, had seen a Golden Eagle in the distance and a Wild Cat and two kittens somewhat uncomfortably close.  He had climbed over a rock and almost trodden upon them!  The cat turned and hissed at him while the kittens fled, and then followed them. Lucky, lucky fellow…

Scottish Wild Cat kitten. We know how much she hated domestic cats, but Gran would have loved to see this native one. Image by hehaden via Flickr.

July 9th is their last day and they watch sadly from the train window as they leave:

It was a beautiful evening and we looked back longingly to the receding purple mountains, which, heaven knows, we may well never see again… There were Swifts flying over Perth and we passed Gleneagles… the mountains were lost to sight. We settled ourselves in our very comfortable sleepers – we were together this time – and prepared for the long night journey.

Tea and biscuits are brought to them by an attendant an hour before their ealy morning arrival in Euston.  Barry meets them there and sees them into a taxi for Waterloo, where, “Fairlie and I parted after a fortnight together in complete harmony and tremendous enjoyment”.  Gran is home just after half-past eleven.

Article series

^

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.


Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Related posts:

Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 87) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 99) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 101) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 110) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 120)
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. I have lived in Hiltingbury since 1968 and used to shop at the butcher’s and greengrocer’s opposite your grandmother’s home. She was to be seen quite frequently pushing her bicycle on her way out.

    Apparently she played tennis at my late parents in law’s home in Merdon Avenue.I remember her because she resembled my great aunt Olive, an artist, who lived at Ashurst in the Forest.

    I am enjoying the extracts from her diary.

    Reply

    • Many thanks for this interesting comment. Gran loved playing on a grass court, and I’m dying to know how long she kept playing for. So far, she’s 55 and still going strong – and she’s about to take up Badminton for the winters

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.