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Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 118)

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Tim Harding’s wedding; Gladioli in the Forest; Lizard Orchid at Downton; Andrew John – “like a hedgehog”; fifty years of tennis; Gran and Stuart “hold the fort”; an Icterine Warbler at Farlington; much knitting, and Geoff arrives.

Gran does love a wedding, and on June 20th 1964 she attends that of the eldest son of her great friend, Mary Harding. She describes the event in detail, as is her wont, including the flowers decorating the church, and also the clothes worn by the bride and her attendants thus:

This afternoon I went to Timothy Harding’s Wedding to Daphne Beare.  It was at Chandler’s Ford St Boniface Church, and the reception at Otterbourne Hall.  The bride wore a long lace gown, full-length veil and carried a small bouquet of pink rosebuds and Stephanotis.  She was attended by five charming child bridesmaids, the four older ones in two shades of blue, long dresses of spotted nylon, and the little one in white with blue piping at the waist.

Jill Harding [Timothy’s sister] sang a solo, “Guide us, Lord”, as the bride arrived.  The service was choral… Mary looked delightful in a black and pink figured dress and coat, and a black hat with shaded crimson and red roses across the front.  The sun shone, happily, but it really was cold.

Two days later Gran, with Peg Eagle and her recently ill son, “pay their respects” to the Wild Gladioli growing in the New Forest.  She writes:

This afternoon I went out with Peg – the first time since John came out of hospital.  I met her at Bassett and we took John with us, though when we arrived at Beaulieu Road, he remained in the car and did not walk with us.

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

They are successful with the Gladiolus, and Gran writes later, early in July after another visit there with John Guningham (now spelled without a double “n”), that:

…it really is a most flourishing colony.  We saw dozens without disturbing the protective bracken, and there must have been literally hundreds under this cover in the wide area so colonised.

A New Forest Wild Gladiolus, typically associated with Bracken. Image courtesy of Stuart Read via Flickr.

On June 28th, she is taken by car to Barford St Martin in Wiltshire to meet members of the Salisbury Field Club, and then on to Burcombe Ivens and Hoop Side, where she hears Quail for the first time, calling in the fields, and, she adds, “passing through a gate we came to a right of way across beautiful downland upon which we found six species of orchid”.

We then read of Gran’s first experience of a rare plant, which some twelve years later, I search for in the same place but without success.  Such is the unpredictability of orchids!  This is what she says: “A red-letter day today – one in which I realised one of my Life’s ambitions and this most unexpectedly”.

Book 106

Peg Eagle is also on the trip and she suggests a drive home via Downton, still in Wiltshire:

…to look for something very special which, she had been told, grows on the railway embankment there.  How glad I was that I went, for, unbelievably, there it was – a fine specimen of Lizard Orchid, to find one of which had been one of my dearest dreams.  It is Himantoglossum hircinum and one of the greatest rarities though, happily, said to be increasing.  This one’s buds were just bursting and we hope to visit it again and perhaps paint it, as the railway line is disused now.

Lizard Orchid in bud.  In spite of wanting to visit again, to paint it when fully in flower, Gran does not manage it in 1964.  Image by nz_willowherb via Flickr.

It is Wimbledon time again, Gran finding the tournament most exciting on television, and she watches much of it, including on July 3rd:

..the final of the Gents’ Singles tournament – a splendid all-Australian match in which Roy Emerson beat Fred Stolle in four sets, 6–4, 12–10, 4–6, 6–4.  Both played interesting and forceful tennis, the loser showing great courage.

Field trips continue over the summer, usually to places familiar to Gran, but on July 10th she joins an outing to a new area – Amberley Wild Brooks in Sussex – led by her friend from that county, Ceres Esplan, who lives at Amberley itself in a house called “Penny Hill”.  Gran records a very long list of plants, especially of the wetlands, several of which are new to her.

Amberley Wild Brooks, where Gran adds a number of new wetland plants to her life list. Image by Derek Winterburn via Flickr.

“No word from Jane yet though today was the expected date for the arrival of her baby”, Gran writes on July 20th.  She adds, “This evening I took time off to watch a few special programmes on Television before doing the ironing.  I want to keep everything up to date this week in case I suddenly get my call to Nottingham”.  She writes, “still no word from Jane” or similar, each day until the evening of the 25th, when, having completed her entry for the day, and retired to bed, she rises and adds this excited note:

11.10 P.M. Jane’s little Andrew John arrived at 10 P.M. and weighs 7lbs 12 oz.  Stuart phoned Fowlers, and they phoned Mrs Littlecot, who came down to tell me at 10.30.  I went up the road in nightdress and dressing-gown, to phone Stuart from Mrs Littlecot’s house.  All is well and I am going up on Monday.  God bless the dear wee man!

It’s about time The Ridge had a telephone of its own!

That same day, Gran had been in Southampton “helping” Fowler’s with flowers for the ships in port – a task that is almost daily for her at that time.  She invariably writes that she “goes to help at Fowlers”, never hinting that her work there is anything but voluntary. Nevertheless, even if not formally employed there, she surely receives some income for the hundreds of hours spent making boxes, packing flowers, de-thorning roses, arranging bouquets, designing displays and delivering on board ship.

She also notes that day, three days after her sixtieth birthday:

I realized with something of a shock that I have been playing tennis for fifty years, having started at the age of ten, in Wales with a partially homemade net on a court from which we had to drive the carthorses before we could begin to play!  From this humble beginning I reached the point where I was invited to play at Wimbledon in 1929, but I had a family instead.  Now I still enjoy the game and can, mostly, still hit a straight ball!

After a morning in Southampton and a bus ride home, on July 26th, she writes: “After a hurried lunch I made David’s twenty-first Birthday cake, and expect to be home again from Nottingham to ice it for August 14th”.  We read very little of David.  He is Gran’s brother Norris’s son.

Nottingham is her destination on the 27th, and met there at the railway station by Stuart and Katherine, she wonders “what my newest Grandson would really look like” because, she says, “Stuart and Jane told me that Andrew had looked like a little Hedgehog at birth”!  However:

I found a most attractive wee boy with lots of dark hair and a very proud Mummy and Daddy.  Jane was very happy but troubled with an unusual pain in her side.  I felt uneasy.

Andy does not look like this any more.  Image by Last Human Gateway via Flickr.

And she is right to be concerned:

Today was clouded for us because Jane was rushed into hospital with appendicitis and Stuart and I were left with the two babies.  I was, to be truthful, somewhat shattered at the idea of looking after a two-day old baby but Stuart is marvellous and we shall cope.  Poor Jane was very brave but we did have some tears when she realized that she would have to leave the babies behind and would be unable to feed Andrew herself… She had the operation tonight.

The following days are very busy for Gran and the new Dad. On August 5th, Gran writes in this journal dedicated to Adrian, “My dear, your birthday has slipped by without my realizing the date, but you would forgive in the circumstances, I know”.  Gran and Stuart share childcare and household duties for the next month, Jane being hospitalised for a fortnight owing to complications after her appendectomy, and needing much rest at home thereafter. There are visits to Jane; visits to the clinic, food and milk to buy and prepare, clothes and babies to wash, sleeps to encourage and the teething Katherine to console.

Good neighbours and Andrew’s Godparents rally round with all sorts of helpful tasks, and Gran gratefully writes, some four days before Jane comes home on the 11th:

This afternoon Mrs Thompson, from next door, brought Jane a huge box of fruit from the village people.  A most charming and kind gesture which is part of a scheme started in Coronation year and thought, quite rightly, too good to be dropped”.

It is not until August 20th that Gran returns home to Chandler’s Ford, reluctantly but no doubt exhausted.  Her life returns to normal.  While she has been at Nottingham, Barry and Jane Elizabeth have been moving house from Mill Hill to Bushey, near Watford.  A new stage of life is beginning for them, and “A letter from Barry today”, Gran records on August 24th, “came from his new address, 22 Reddings Avenue, Bushey, Herts, and told me that he and Jane Elizabeth are reasonably settled in now”.

September 1st – the neighbours on each side of The Ridge have persuaded Gran to look after their pets while they are away:

A dry and sunny beginning to a month which can be very beautiful.  I stupidly forgot to read my thermometer this morning, what with feeding the Rabbit on one side and the cat on the other. Cat, Ugh!!  What a concession to good neighbourliness on my part!

A couple of days later, after again forgetting the thermometer readings because of her Rabbit and Cat duties, she delivers flowers on the Stella Polaris, and particularly enjoys it:

I have been once before to this delightful Swedish ship and was pleased to visit it again.  It is small and unpretentious but extremely clean and homely, and the crew the acme of courtesy and helpfulness. Today the passengers were being welcomed aboard by a small orchestra of violin, cello and two accordions playing the kind of real music to which I can always listen and enjoy.

She also delivers on the Capetown Castle that day, then visits the General Post Office, where, she says, she:

…was successful in getting the 1/3d Botanical Congress stamps I wanted and then went to Swaythling to spend the evening with my old friends Joan Sheppard and Harry Leggett.  We spent an enjoyable time talking over the old days of Swaythling Tennis Club and Channels Farm, and the time sped away all too quickly.  Harry brought me home.

Fringed Water-lily is depicted on the stamp Gran wanted.  Image courtesy of Andy Brown via Flickr.

George Green and his parents, and Gran, with Peg Eagle’s son Robert, visit Farlington Marshes on September 7th, Gran recording that it was, “a most enjoyable and exciting day, seeing sixty species of birds and among them several specially interesting ones”.  They find a large movement of migrant warblers among the hawthorns and brambles by the sea-wall and Gran records a new bird for her list:

Most exciting was an Icterine Warbler, which was new to us all.  We spent some time watching it as it was chiefly in a Hawthorn entwined with bright rose hips, flitting about, resting on the top or hawking insects in a flycatcher-like manner.  It had bright yellow breast and underparts, a conspicuous eye-stripe, stouter bill than that of a willow Warbler, and grey-blue legs.  It raised the feathers on its head at times and finally we heard the characteristic call, described in the “Collins’ Field Guide” and the “Handbook” as a musical “deederoid”.

An Icterine Warbler showing its distinctive head and bill-shape, and blue-grey legs.  Gran does not mention the pale wing-panel, also a good field characteristic. Image by Michael Sveikutis via Flickr.

Gran was much more of a botanist than she was an ornithologist.  This record of an Icterine Warbler, seen with George Green, today a skilled bird-watcher with long experience, but in those days “just a lad learning his trade”, was almost certainly a recently fledged Willow Warbler.  In a recent converstion with George, I learned that this is his view, and also that the Wryneck recorded by him and Gran in Hursley Forest is also not acceptable.  Nevertheless, these are birds that Gran believes she saw or heard and are therefore legitimately included in her journal.  Perhaps of more importance is what George, who lived in upper Kingsway in those days, told me of his experience of Joan Goater, which is that she was kindly and encouraging to him and other young naturalists, and a well-respected and enthusiastic mentor to them.

A few days later Gran is out again with Peg, at Beaulieu Road, enjoying that great love of hers, the colony of Marsh Gentians growing there.  Though trips into the countryside continue, most of Gran’s time, when not used for work at the Fowler’s, is taken up by knitting, which she does at a great rate.  Jackets, cardigans, pullovers, blankets, cot covers, headwear and mitts seem to fly off her needles and are posted to various recipients – cousin Fairlie, son-in-law Stuart, daughter Jane, son Barry, grandson Julian, the neighbour’s new baby, Claire, and the family’s new and expected infants.

On September 22nd, Barry and Jane Elizabeth’s baby is due, and Gran is once more counting the days as she did before Andrew’s arrival.  She tells us:

Ken Hockridge came in to order red roses for his wife for their wedding anniversary on Friday, and, for a moment, my heart leapt!  I felt sure he had come with a message from Barry about the baby whose expected day of arrival was today.  I am on tenterhooks once more and I do pray that all will be well.

There is still no news on the 29th, when Gran is, as usual, at the docks.  She delivers on the Chusan and says:

I enjoy this ship because she goes to the far east and one sees such interesting folk from these distant lands, the Indian and Singhalese women, chiefly in national dress.  I finished the afternoon making boxes.  A busy evening preparing the dining-room for the coming of the sweep early tomorrow.

These days, no chimney-sweep worth his salt would dream of making a mess in the house, let alone expect his client to prepare a room for his visit!  And, on the following day, after the sweep has made his mess, Gran gives a rare, but brief mention of Mrs Hillier, her weekly home-help for many years:

The morning was much occupied with cleaning the dining-room, with Mrs Hillier’s able help, but being able to have all the windows wide open helped very much, drying the carpet after shampooing besides giving us the chance to enjoy the sunshine and fresh air.

At the end of the first day of October in Southampton, Jean from next door receives a phone message from Barry and passes on to Gran the news that  “baby is on its way”, and, Gran wakes very early next morning expecting further news from Barry at any moment.  However, the morning phone call, when it does come, is merely to say that there is “still no news”.  It is not until nine o’clock that evening that Julian phones the Hockridges from Bushey, leaving a message that a baby boy has arrived safely.

From a public phone box, Gran calls Barry on the next morning for more information and learns that the new addition to the Goater family is to be called Geoffrey David.  And she adds:

I am going up to Bushey when Jane Elizabeth gets home from the hospital.  I spoke to Julian, mainly about ships, but the pips went before I could talk to Ricky.

She concludes her entry for the day with, “…it is a quiet and peaceful night, and, in spite of a headache, I feel at ease tonight also.  All is well with my dear children at present and I ask nothing more”.

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Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 52) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 87) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 102) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 107) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 116)
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Comments

  1. Hi
    I went to school with Jill and Tim Harding. I think they were twins. It was lovely to read about the wedding. I left England in 1956. Kept touch with Jill for a few years and actually had lunch with her in Vancouver. I was living in Calgary at the time. Lost touch in later years. Good memories.

    Reply

    • That’s nice little bit of the Harding family history – many thanks. I’m hoping that more details of the parents and children will come out as the journal progresses. Many thanks too, for reading it.

      Reply

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