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Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 134)

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Brother on the mend; Gran still playing tennis; countryside outings resume; The Ridge gets a telephone; 100 miles a week for Julian; an extravagence not regretted; a Barn Owl is killed, and small family events.

Book 136

Feeling rather “down” owing to her anxiety over her brother Norris, Gran receives some welcome mail on August 5th 1971:

Post today brought a nice surprise which cheered my soul – a specimen of Grass of Parnassus from Jane, from, I should think, Windermere, where I know she is going to be for the holiday and a wedding…

She is correct; another letter from Jane some days later tells her that:

…the family is staying at a 300 year old farm which once belonged to Beatrix Potter and Jane says the very comfortable kitchen is just like Mrs Tiggy-Winkle’s, but the beds are more up to date!

She paints the flower on the day it arrives while Brother, still tending to be depressed after his hospitalisation, rests.

The Grass of Parnassus painted by Gran – slightly past its best, but Gran wanted an accurate record of the actual specimen sent by Jane.

The following day, their new friend, Joy Bailey, takes them on a countryside drive, stopping at Farley Mount on the way.  There, to Gran’s great excitement, they find a group of the largest Frog Orchids they have ever seen, one measuring a full eleven inches tall.

Frog Orchids are often green but some specimens take on a lovely reddish hue like this one. They are usually just a few inches tall. Image by Odd Wellies via Flickr.

By the 17th Norris has been convalescing at The Ridge for a month and is feeling much better after daily outings of increasing distance, including one, by bus, to Shawford Downs where they are delighted to find Chalkhill Blue butterflies on the wing – the first seen there for several years, Gran tells us. On that day, she struggles mentally to paint a recently collected flower and despondently reports that:

Doreen came this afternoon to take Brother back to his caravan at Lyndhurst.  She stayed awhile and then they departed.  I do not think Brother much wanted to go and, after putting so much effort into getting him on his feet again, I felt quite desolate.  I finished painting the Balsam, but unbidden tears made difficulty and later overcame me completely.  Life is going to be hard to bear without his help but I hope at least to get some outings with him again later on.

She clearly feels the need to keep busy, and gains some respite over several days by sorting things out in the house, including her stamp collection and various files.  Much is kept, but much is thrown out.  And on August 21st:

Some knitting this afternoon, and then… I started to clear out and sort the contents of an ottoman with a view to accommodating items of more recent interest.  So far I have only succeeded in making a horrible muddle and getting cramp in both feet, but I hope to clear it tomorrow.

She does.

On the 30th, a stream of welcome visitors keeps her occupied, and she says:

It has been an exciting day – Brother arrived first this morning, followed later by Jane and family and then, just before lunch, Ricky came… Rick wanted to come and see Jane and family, so wondered if he could have lunch here as well as tea!  Of course he could, and we had a lovely party.

This afternoon Stuart took Ricky and Brother to look for the Honey Buzzards [recently seen in the New Forest] but were unlucky not to see them… Later, a knock at the door, in pouring rain, revealed Barry and Jane Elizabeth on their way home from Portland, asking to stay the night here!  So I have them now, bless them.

“Fortunately the food held out!” she adds.

The Honey-buzzard – the New Forest is famous for them but these rare, secretive and largely insectivorous birds quietly breed in several other wooded parts of the UK.  Image by Sergey Yeliseev via Flickr.

Gran is still playing tennis – with as competitive a spirit as ever, and though worrying always that her playing days will shortly be over, she is happy with her performance on September 4th:

This evening I played tennis – singles as only Tony came to the court.  He is a games master so I was pleased to beat him 6-2, but was worn out in the effort and lost the next set 6-1.  Still, it was thoroughly enjoyable.

And later in the month, there is more evidence that her powers in this field are not yet waning significantly: “I played tennis this evening”, she writes, “and thoroughly enjoyed it, playing as well as I have done in recent years and feeling much cheered”.

Entries in the remainder of Book 136 reflect, somewhat, the quietening of her life at this period.  There is much knitting – gloves for Katherine, a green Aran pullover for Robin and then another for Geoffrey.  Afternoons and evenings are often filled with letter-writing, television-viewing and radio-listening, but she does manage some flower painting as well; a set of pictures, including one of Marjoram, for the old family friend, Tibby.  She writes, when he visits to collect them, that:

He was delighted with them and I did not want him to pay for them but he said he would not accept them under any other condition so I had to let him.  He seemed very well.

She undertakes some research for Gilbert Whitley in relation to his ancestral links with the Sillence family of Twyford and with New Barn Farm, near Compton, the home of his grandfather and where his father was born.

Gran’s niece by marriage, Angela Birch, is married on September 1st, and Gran reports on the wedding in some detail; Jill Harding, daughter of Mary, gives birth to a son (Neil Robert); Brenda Bowers, she records, who used to ride ponies with Jane, was home from Australia, whence she had emigrated, on a visit to her father, and was sorry not to have seen Jane.

On September 14th she is delighted when Norris arrives, having received a positive check-up at the hospital and that he “came unexpectedly and driving our own car”.

Four days later, “Ricky, who is down for the weekend with his girlfriend, Pat, brought her in to see us this morning, and, after having coffee, they went along the river… They called in again at lunchtime to see Greaty”.

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

Book 137

“Men from the telephone service arrived early this morning”, writes Gran on September 29th, “and fixed us up with a temporary line via our oak tree so at last I feel less isolated from my family and friends”.  A very brief comment, I think, for such an important and long-needed event at The Ridge!  There will be no more running to the neighbours on either side for urgent messages, nor trips to the nearby phone box.  That evening, she says that she phones her “two families to give them our number and they were delighted to know that we are now on the phone and in touch”.

“Brother came to lunch and was feeling stronger”, she reports on the same day, and the afternoon sees them back in the New Forest, “much to my delight”, she says.  They find about twelve flowering Marsh Gentians at Beaulieu Road – one of her favourite plants, searched for every late summer, and “a joy to see”, she writes.  And her comment on October 7th, revelling in one of many outings with Brother, this time at Keyhaven, shows her new-found serenity in enjoyment of the outdoors: “We ate our lunch to the caterwauling of Herring Gulls and the intermittent booming of the foghorn, and sat in the sunshine in perfect harmony and contentment for three hours”.

Keyhaven – A place to sit “in the sunshine in perfect harmony and contentment”. Image by Eva Powell via Flickr.

Observing, as usual, the goings-on of birds in the garden on October 12th, she notes that:

A Wren was furiously and systematically excavating a hole at the top of the dead birch trunk which carries the honeysuckle, disappearing completely within and throwing out pieces of rotten wood.  I wondered if he were preparing a Winter roost.  I must watch.

The UK’s most abundant bird these days – whose behaviour in the garden of The Ridge interested Gran. Image by camerashake via Flickr.

And later:

…this evening I went to Badminton.  Not many members came and I almost played myself to a standstill but I enjoyed it tremendously.  A hot bath and a teaspoonful of salt in my Bournvita to prevent cramp completely restored me.

Grandson Julian is training hard at this time, with the weekly aim of completing one hundred miles of targeted running, as well as competing.  It involves a lot of baths (there is no shower at The Ridge) and much kit to be washed!  On October 23rd Gran finds him at the front door:

A delightful surprise this morning!  Julian came in, being down here for the weekend, and after a chat, went for a run and came back for a bath before leaving again… Later Julian came again.  Another run completed his hundred miles training this week, and, after another bath, he had tea with us and he and I played Lexicon this evening.

October 30th:

An extra hour in bed tomorrow morning for, after three years of unpopular experiment with keeping Summer Time all the year round, we are reverting to Greenwich Mean Time from midnight until next March.  Hurrah!

Peg Eagle calls in on the last day of the month, and entices Gran out:

…we went down to the river.  We could not park the car in the usual place by the bridge – it was already fully occupied, so we returned to the area by the little Church in Poles Lane.  Sadly this has been demolished – how I wish they had restored it instead – but we took the path through the now overgrown churchyard and over the fields, where, to Peg’s delight, we found some mushrooms…

Gran wished it hadn’t been demolished.

And a couple of days later, Gran appears deliberately to go shopping for clothes; a rare and usually hated event.  She admits,  “After a mixed afternoon knitting and gardening” to:

… succumbing to temptation and buying slacks and tunic for high days and holidays, mainly because I could not resist the beautiful colours, a reddish plum for the slacks and the tunic patterned in the same colour and pinks to tone.  When I tried them on, I thought of what Beverly Nicholls wrote in one of his books, “One never regrets an extravagance but always regrets an economy”, and how well I agree with him.

She, with Norris, visits Farley Mount on November 3rd, recording, with approval for once, some changes there:

…we went to a favourite haunt, known to us as Pa’s Field. Now a recognised recreation area possessing a car park and knowing it have been somewhat cleared, we approached it with some trepidation but were most agreeably surprised to find that it had been very sensitively planned and beautifully maintained, with groups of lovely Spindle, Privet, Guelder and such, left amid grassy areas and a beechwood left quite untouched.  The best-planned area I have yet seen and still very beautiful.

And they are out together again on the 4th, where, along the Winchester to Alton Road, they see a saddening sight, and Gran is moved to write:

A beautiful Barn Owl was lying dead at the side of the road, no doubt killed by a fast-moving car.  We stopped and went back – I vaguely hoped that it was only stunned – but it was quite dead but oh, so very beautiful.  Its golden yellow back and head feathers were most exquisitely marked and its breast and underparts the purest white.

“… oh so very beautiful…” – Gran was deeply moved. Image by Chris Parker via Flickr.

Nov 7th finds her socialising, and delighted to see Diana Fowler, now working at the Wildfowl Trust, at Slimbridge:

I went to a small party at Fowler’s, where Old Tauntonians and their wives had gathered, and I was especially pleased to see Diana there.  Diana told me that about seventy Bewick’s Swans had arrived at Slimbridge at the end of October, and there is one Bean Goose among the Whitefronts that have already arrived also.

A single Bean Goose amongst European Whitefronts – a fairly regular occurrance at Slimbridge in those days. Image by ken via Flickr.

I remember Gran receiving with excitement, letters and first day covers from an acquaintance on the South Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha, but this is the first mention of it in her journal.  And possibly the last.  Nov 10th:

By post this morning I received, I expect, my last letter from Tristan da Cunha, posted on October 13th, and telling me that the Rev Welsh is due home in England about now.  I shall miss my Tristan stamps – he has been very good to me in respect of sending them as they were issued.

That evening: “We watched Television this evening, including the Miss World Competition in which Miss United Kingdom came second to Miss Brazil.  Peter Scott was one of the judges!!”

Times have changed!

Book 138

November passes with little of particular or unusual interest for Gran, except for family news: Julian wins the North London Cross-country and gets a “nice piece” in Athletics Weekly; grand-daughter Katherine has another asthma attack and misses a week of school, but is due to dance at the Royal Theatre in Wolverhampton in a fortnight’s time; her brother Andrew is pleased to receive Airfix models on a particular theme, including one of a Yeoman of the Guard, and he wants a Life Guard and a Guardsman; and, a letter from Jane Elizabeth tells her that Ricky’s basketball trial, mentioned earlier in the journal as a County trial, was in fact for the England team.

This was for the under 19’s.  I wasn’t selected, and though not particularly short in stature then at the age of 16, I was nevertheless dwarfed by most of the successful trialists!  Height is quite useful in basketball!

From December 1st, Gran and Norris have something to look forward to:

This evening Brother and I rashly booked rooms near Builth Wells, in Breconshire, for a holiday next June!  It sounds a glorious spot so here’s hoping nothing happens to spoil our chances.  It will be three years since we went to Wales together, to Corwen.

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