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Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 116)

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The car goes “clunk”; hello Katie; a plant search with little hope; Santana and Osuna – equally matched;  Soberton Mill for sale; Julian and Ricky – embarrassed; planning for Teesdale; another grand-child expected; Spring-fever brings depression, but the Royal Ballet is uplifting.

Gran has a good day’s botanising on June 8th 1963, with other members of Southampton Natural History Society, on Browndown Ranges, near Lee-on-Solent.  The group is led, she says, by Mr Westrup, who is compiling the new Flora of Hampshire.  Nottingham Catchfly is a particular goal, a new plant for Gran, and they find plenty of this as well as several attractive grass species, also new for her list, including Purple Small-reed and Bush Grass [now called Wood Small-reed].  She paints the Catchfly next day – the five-hundred and first in her collection.

Nottingham Catchfly – Gran’s goal for the day.  Image by Philip Goddard via Flickr.

“I went by road”, she writes of a journey to Nottingham two days later, “to see Jane and Stuart and the baby Katherine”.  The driver must have been Grampa, equally keen to see his new Grand-daughter for the first time, but sadly, he does not merit a mention.  Gran describes the roadside flowers that she identifies on the way, and after Leicester, says, “…we pulled off the main road to a quiet lane to have lunch.  It was extremely peaceful and Larks and Goldfinches were singing”.  I can imagine the tension though, as these two people, both lovely in their own right, but not really the best of friends, sit in the car, probably in silence, while they consume a simple packed lunch prepared by Gran.  Then:

After lunch we continued on our way thinking we had made very good time when, suddenly, there was a loud “clunk” in the car and it refused to proceed.  This right in the middle of a clearway!  Fortunately a kindly van driver pulled up and helped to push the car onto the verge and drove us to the nearest garage, where they sent out a car to tow ours in, whilst I cooled my heels in the office.  It was no good fuming but I did regret the delay.  We were only nine miles from Bulcote and later the garage owner motored us over.  Jane was in the garden and at once I saw my new grand-daughter – the dearest little scrap, with soft, dark hair, sound asleep in her pram.  She is a neat little thing with beautiful long-fingered hands… House Martins, Swifts and Swallows were flying round the house and a Cuckoo was calling.

Gran spends much time enjoying Katherine over the next few days.  She does not say what Grampa does, but he seems to have left her there, at Bulcote.  On the 13th she has the baby to herself for a while:

This year is the four hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Boys’ High School in Nottingham and this week is given over to celebrations.  This afternoon I looked after Katherine whilst Jane went with Stuart to a garden party at the school.  It did her good to get into some pretty clothes and go out with him on such an occasion.  Katherine was perfectly good…

Nottingham High School for Boys – 450 years old in 1963.  Image courtesy of Graham Woodward via Flickr.

A bus takes her into Nottingham on the 17th, and she catches a train home, reluctantly, “for I am going to miss this adorable baby more than I like to imagine”, she concedes.

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

Towards the end of June, Gran and Peg Eagle undertake a trip to the New Forest in the forlorn hope of finding an extinct plant.  She writes, with an unprecedented scatter of commas:

We went first to Gritnam Green, at Bank, to look, without much hope, for the long-lost Summer Lady’s-tresses, and, though we found the bog where they were last seen, there was, as expected, no sign of them again this year.  Perhaps they will reappear one day!

We came to a very squashy bog on our way back to the car and a cottager warned us not to cross it, but I must confess that we tried parts of it when we were out of his sight, just in case the Lady’s-tresses were there and he was just keeping us away from them!  We did not find any!

Summer Lady’s-tresses – searched for but never to be seen by Gran.  Image by Emiio Esteban-infantes via Flickr.

Nevertheless, they have a good day’s botanising, including finding the Wild Gladiolus in a new place, hidden under extensive Bracken, near Beaulieu Road Station.

Gran has been playing tennis again, during June, after a prolonged spell receiving treatment for an injured arm, and all now seems well with it.  She also, as usual, follows the Wimbledon Championships intently, enjoying on June 27th, the:

…magnificent Singles match televised from Wimbledon between two great tennis artists, Santana of Spain and Osuna, of Mexico.  Santana won in five sets, but the two opponents each scored the same number of games and points and a draw would certainly have been a fair result.

She and Grampa appear to be together in the car again on the 29th:

This morning I went to Soberton Mill, a beautiful house which, with some of its contents, was on view today prior to an auction sale on Monday.  I hoped to find a carpet for the sitting-room but the only suitable one was far too large.  The visit was worthwhile, however, because the house and garden were so lovely and in such a glorious, unspoilt district.  We came home through Botley.  She includes a newspaper-cutting about the house and sale in the journal.

Soberton Mill – for sale.

Book 104

 1964

Two books of the journal are absent here.  We miss the second half of 1963 and are plunged, too soon, into winter 1964, learning on January 6th that Gran packs flowers for the Caronia but that “we do not deliver to the cabins on the Cunard ships, so I did not go down to the docks”.

On January 11th her entry stirs the earliest memory I have of suffering acute embarrassment!  “Another very uneventful day for me”, she records:

…though Julian and Ricky are going to the Lord Mayor’s Fancy Dress Party in London.  Haberdashers’ being a Merchant School, the children of the staff are invited to this party and both Barry’s boys come within the age group.  They are, I believe, going as Dick Whittington and his cat!  I hope they enjoy it.  I made fourteen and a half pounds of marmalade…

Well, we didn’t go as Dick Whittington and his cat.  Instead, we found ourselves dressed as military officers; Julian in RAF uniform, me in army khaki, and readers, I hope, will allow me the cathartic act of writing this brief diversion from the journal!

We travelled into Central London on the Northern Line from Mill Hill East, dressed thus, with Dad, who was surely, equally mortified.  At least once he had to explain to others on the ‘tube” the presence of two high-ranking officers who looked like children.

No doubt there was food and some sort of entertainment at The Mansion House but these pleasures are obliterated from my mind by the dreadful obligatory dancing, joyously undertaken by hordes of more “worldly” children, which included those utterly unfamiliar entities – girls, and who were already cognisant of a pop group called The Beatles.  There, in the centre of a floor crowded with noisy urchins, weaving, jumping and gyrating to the strains of Twist and Shout and Let’s Twist Again, stood “Air Vice-marshal Sir Julian Norris Goater” and “General Sir Rhoderick Dion Goater”, peaked caps in hand and upper lips stiff, but undergoing significant inner turmoil.  Their debilitating inhibition and shyness, they perhaps hoped, would be mistaken for dignity amongst the lower classes!  I remember the ecstasy of relief at getting home again, after enduring the homeward journey, late at night.

After an afternoon out with Peg Eagle at this time, birdwatching in the New Forest and at Sowley Pond, the two ladies return to Peg’s house to look at maps because, it appears, they have something exciting planned for the Summer, no doubt first introduced in the missing books.  Gran writes, “We spent an enjoyable evening poring over maps of Teesdale and noting the places in which Barry had mentioned special flowers growing”.  They are out together on the following day too, watching White-fronted Geese in the meadows at Ibsley, near Ringwood.

Indeed, outings with Peg are frequent at this time, sometimes combined with both of them working together at Fowlers’ and delivering flowers to the liners in port.  The services of Mary Harding are also sometimes required for this task, on one occasion, Gran recording that following deliveries to the Pendennis Castle, “Mary and I were allowed home after this and we caught the half-past two bus.  I had lunch with Mary and then Antony brought me home in his red “bubble-car””.  Antony is clearly growing up.

Something of a step down from the Chevrolet Impala in which she was transported recently! Image by Rob Mitchell via Flickr.

Early February sees Gran again visiting the Brenan family at Bulcote, where she loves the company of little Katherine, and is saddened to have to say goodbye when she leaves.  It appears that Jane no longer needs her record-player, left at The Ridge, as Gran writes that Tommy and Bob visit briefly on their way to London:

…and called in for Jane’s Gramophone, which I have handed on to Barry and Jane, since I am the only one in the house who appreciates music and I never get the opportunity to use the gramophone.  It would be a mean, dog-in-the-manger attitude to keep it here.

Barry and “his Jane” appear now to be married and living at 71 Grant’s Close, Mill Hill.   No doubt this important and joyful event would have been covered in one of Gran’s missing books. Having two “Janes” in the family was somewhat confusing, and at this time, because of the “new” Jane’s interests, she was dubbed “Botany Jane”.  She also had a fine collection of “seventy-eights” – Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, Acker Bilk and other jazz greats.

“This afternoon I went for a cycle-ride”, Gran reports on February 11th:

It is a pity the main roads are such a nightmare of noise and stench, for the nervous tension of cycling along them tires me before I reach the quieter haven of country roads, though even here, now, the ubiquitous motor-car has encroached.  I went first along the lane to the river.  I walked some way along the riverbank towards Otterbourne Waterworks, and found a large Salmon, all of four pounds, I would say, lying dead on the bank.  It looked undamaged except that its tail was shabby and I wondered how it came there.  It was very muddy.  I wondered if an Otter had dragged it out of the water and struggled with it on the bank, and then been disturbed before he could eat it.  I know that there are Otters in the vicinity.

I cycled all along Poles Lane and home along Hursley Road.  The Snowdrops were a wonderful sight on the cottage bank where Mrs White allowed me to pick them for over twenty years until she died.  I did not like to ask the same privilege from the new owner.

February 14th:

A letter from Barry’s Jane today tells me the glad news that I am to be a Granny again, in September.  I am so glad for them and hope that Barry will get the little daughter for whom he longs, but any baby in our family is assured of a loving welcome.

John Gunningham spends the night at The Ridge, prior to an early start the following morning with Gran and other members of the Natural History Society, to Slimbridge.  Peregrine Falcon is a new species for Gran that day, which, she says, “…was a mere speck on a distant post with the naked eye, but later we visited an observation tower and saw it more clearly through the large telescope therein”.  And she adds:

Walking about the pens again afterwards we saw Peter Scott himself walking with two of the wardens.  John, Diana [Fowler] and I had tea in the new restaurant by a window overlooking the Flamingo Pool and these lovely and fantastic birds kept us amused throughout our meal.

A fairly typical Slimbridge view of a Peregrine.  When Gran saw her first one, it would have been rare bird – at the height of the organochlorine pesticide problem which caused many of these birds to fail to breed successfully. Image by Gailhampshire via Flickr.

Before they leave, they watch the birds being fed on the Rushy Pen, outside Peter Scott’s studio window, and Gran sees Collared Doves again, for the third time in her life.  One day, before too long, all this will become very familiar to Diana Fowler; I’m sure Gran will record the time when she joins the staff of the Education Department at the Wildfowl Trust.

Out again the next day, on the heathland around Poole Harbour, Gran is cheered to find a Dartford Warbler – an unexpected survivor of the 62/63 winter.

The Dartford Warbler.  It’s been a long time now since severe weather in the UK pushed its population to the brink.  Image by James West via Flickr.

In spite of these days in the company of kindred spirits, loneliness dogs her:

I spent a quiet time finishing my embroidery and reading.  But I felt lonely, and restless, a feeling comparatively new to me, and one which I had hoped to avoid when the children left home, and which, until now, I have been able to do.  I am hoping it is “Spring fever”, and will go when I can get out more, but I have no companion and lone expeditions have lost their savour.  But it must be shaken off.  A letter from Jane helped, and in it she tells me that Katherine now walks quite well with her wheeled dog…

She feels somewhat better after a day out in the lanes on her bicycle, and better still by bed-time on February 26th, because, she tells us:

On the spur of the moment this afternoon I went to the Gaumont Theatre in Southampton to see the Royal Ballet, in a performance of “La Fille mal Gardée”, an extravagance I shall never regret.  It was beautiful, the dancing superb and the music by Ferdinand Herold, lovely… The rural setting and rustic dances just suited me, whilst the more romantic and graceful dancing of the two principals was a joy to watch.

The first page of Gran’s programme.

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