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Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford- a Journal (Part 143)

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Enough of football; a tame squirrel; the Wye Valley again; Ross’s Gull at Stanpit and rare terns at Dibden; conversion to natural gas; great tennis at Wimbledon; extraordinarily fit at 70; Ruth Hockridge gets married; sadness as the Kingstons depart, and Greaty is taken to hospital.

It’s May 4th 1974 and sixty-nine year old Gran is still playing tennis. With a friend, Lesley, that evening, she enjoys “a good knockup and two sets”, which, she says, “I won 6-1 6-3.  Shots were working well”.  She does not enjoy all sport though.  She writes later that night:

I stayed up late to see “The Pallisers” on Television which had, unfortunately, been postponed to the late hour because of the eternal time given to the Football Cup Final.  Thank goodness we shall now be spared football for a spell – we get such an overdose of it during the Winter.

She is at tennis again, at the private court in Merdon Avenue, three evenings later and she recounts the following, saying:

During play some boys brought in a baby squirrel and asked if the garden went right down to the wood because the squirrel would follow them and they could not get rid of it.  When they put it down it got through the netting onto the tennis court and I picked it up and carried it to the furthest corner of the garden.  The boys went down the road but re-appeared with it later.  It had evidently jumped over the fence and through the next garden to reach them again.  The baker told me this morning that a baby squirrel had been following people about the car park and a lady took it to the pinewood where it refused to leave her, and some workmen relieved her of it.  It is extraordinarily tame and, of course, is a pest but who, with any soul, could kill the little creature?  Certainly none of those so far in contact with it.

“Who, with any soul, could kill the little creature?”  Image by Katy Wrathall via Flickr.

Book 154

May 13th:

My dear Jane’s fortieth birthday.  Where on earth has the time gone?  I well remember the day on which she was born, and then, as this morning, a Song Thrush heralded the dawn with wonderful music.

And phoning Jane that evening to wish her a happy birthday, she is:

…given the glad news that Katherine has passed the 11+ and now has a place in the nearby Grammar School, so that is a great weight off everyone’s mind.  She has also won her bronze medal for swimming and Andrew has passed his Athletics badge in Cubs.  The family went to the Lake District for the day yesterday and climbed Scafell for Andrew, a five and half mile climb.

 

Scafell – the next hill on young Andy’s list.  Image by Bradley Howard via Flickr.

Gran and her Brother are planning another holiday together in the Wye Valley.  On June 5th Gran records that, “Mother gave us twenty-five pounds each towards our holiday, which was a pleasant surprise”, and a few days later, Brother’s neighbour, Doris, visits The Ridge in order to be “introduced to the various shopkeepers and our neighbours so that she will be known to them.  They have all offered help and support during my absence”.  Doris is going to look after Greaty during the holiday, and Gran and Norris depart on June 8th.  They return home on the 22nd having more or less repeated their experiences of previous times at Aberedw; the same scenery, flowers, birds and butterflies, but they clearly revel in the lovely familiarity of the place and the friends they have made there.  Arriving home, she writes:

Lottie, the proprietress of the baker’s shop ran to the car park to welcome us and we found Mother and Doris well and Mother quite happy.  Doris was delighted with her skirt length from the Cambrian Mills.  We all had tea and then Brother took Doris home.  I also received a great welcome from Ruth and she and her family were pleased with their gifts also.  In the evening Jenny ran in to ask me to go in and have strawberries and raspberries with them in their garden, and Ruth said she was so pleased to have me home again.  All the warmth and pleasure made it good to be back in spite of the sadness at leaving our lovely Wye Valley.

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

Book 155

Next day Gran receives news from Barry.  Rick has been re-taking A level exams and also, having been accepted for a Natural Resources and Rural Economy course at Seale-Hayne Agricultural College, trying to organise a compulsory pre-college year’s placement on a mixed farm.

I rang Barry this evening and was pleased to hear that Ricky has been accepted at a farm three miles from Exeter, subject to the college approval, and is fairly confident about the A levels he has just taken.  Julian, on Saturday, ran his best 1500 metres, equivalent to a four-minute mile, at Crystal Palace, so everyone was very pleased about them both, as I am.

The building near Newton Abbot that was Seale-Hayne Agricultural College.  Image by Alison Day via Flickr.

On the 24th, Gran says that she spent a “humbugged day” because she was up early to get things done before “the gas was turned off at eight o’clock owing to conversion to ‘natural’”.  And later in the day, Ruth, clearly the owner of an electric kettle, makes her coffee, “… as I was unable to use my gas stove”, and later, “… we had to have a cold lunch as conversion had not yet taken place.

The Wimbledon Tennis Championships are followed with Gran’s usual interest.  Rain delays several of the matches but it is not these, but a strike by Television technicians that make her cross.  On July 2nd:

Drizzle and heavy showers interfered with Wimbledon tennis this afternoon and the industrial dispute again put an early stop to television transmission even when the rain had stopped.  Ugh, these so-called workers of today…!

“Another sensational happening at Wimbledon”, she writes on July 5th:

Play started at noon to catch up on yesterday’s lost matches and Rosewall played Stan Smith.  After being two sets down and match point down in the third, Rosewall won the tie-break and then the succeeding two sets, running out the final winner at 5-7 3-6 9-8 6-2 6-3.  Astonishing at 39 years of age, and twenty years after he appeared in his first final at Wimbledon.  He has been in the final three times but has never won it.  I am sure the whole tennis world would love to see him victor over Connors tomorrow.  How the crowd applauded today’s wonderful success.  Chris Evert at 19, won the Ladies’ Title…

And on the same day:

I had gone down to the mulch heap when I was sure I heard Barry call “Mother”.  I thought I must be dreaming, but, when I came up the garden, I saw him looking out the kitchen window!  He had Ricky with him and they were on their way to Stanpit Marshes, where a rare Ross’s Gull has been seen.  They only stopped for a cup of tea and cake but it was a joy to see them.

Gran completes the Wimbledon story on the following day, recounting:

A fine and beautiful afternoon for Wimbledon but a disappointing one, I am sure, for most of the tennis world, for its hero, Ken Rosewall, failed to win the Singles Trophy, losing in three sets to Jimmy Connors, who is eighteen years younger.  However, Connors played a splendid game, as Rosewall would be the first to agree, and it is romantically fitting, for he is to marry Chris Evert, the Lady Champion, towards the end of the year and this is the first time an engaged couple have won the two events at Wimbledon.

A couple of days later, Dad phones Gran to enthuse about the Stanpit Marshes Ross’s Gull, and to give her detailed instructions on how to find it for herself, when, in two days’ time, she plans to go to Stanpit with Norris.

They find the Gull on July 10th, Gran saying that, “despite the soaking rain, we had a splendid view of this extremely rare visitor to this country”.  She does not describe it but says, “… it continued preening in lonely state and we could see all but the wedge-shaped tail.  It is an immature”.  It is, by far, the rarest bird she has seen, and she looks it up in “The Handbook” that evening, quoting from it: “…it is an Arctic Species and breeds in North-east Siberia in river mouths and valleys.  Few Ornithologists have seen this bird alive”.

The Stanpit Ross’s Gull was an immature but I couldn’t resist this smart adult.  Image by Alaska Region U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via Flickr.

Gran writes enthusiastically to me following this ornithological “red-letter” day, also wishing me well in my new life on the farm.  The “Ross’s Gull day” was also the day on which I left home.

July 22nd, written on page number 20,702:

I am seventy today and I just cannot believe it though I know I was born in 1904!  Except for arthritis I am extraordinarily fit and seldom feel my age – only when I am very tired or depressed.  I have much for which to be thankful and I have wonderful memories.

Mundane things have to be done, even on one’s seventieth birthday so the washing was soon billowing in the wind.  This afternoon was spent in various ways, none very exciting but this evening I enjoyed reading some of my notes for 1953!  Years ago, and see how many pages and how many books I have filled now!

On the following day, she is given a lift to tennis, where she enjoyed “three good sets”, and “thus fulfilled a small ambition – to be playing tennis when I was seventy”.

“Brother was here today with Mother”, Gran tells us on August 31st, “whilst I went to Ruth Hockridge’s wedding at Camberley.  We left Chandler’s Ford, by car, at about a quarter to eleven…”.  As usual, Grampa does not qualify for a mention, but Gran’s “we” must have included him, the driver.  The wedding is described: it’s at the Baptist Hall; Ruth, “always beautiful”, is attended by her sisters Anne and Claire; the Reception is at the Pennyhill Park Hotel, Bagshot; the meal is nice but rather prolonged, and Gran only glimpses the couple as they leave for their honeymoon, the bride in a light green coat and beige straw hat.  Gran and Gramp are home by half-past six, but the weather is too wet for tennis, planned for that evening.

Wilson’s Phalarope, a rare American shorebird recorded at Dibden Bay in August, is probably the reason for Gran and Norris’ presence there on September 11th.  They do not see the wader but they do find an unusually high number of Black Terns – approximately 50 – and with them, three other terns of a different species, with “white shoulders” which, Gran records, “somewhat mystified us”.  It shows a surprising lack of “background ornithological homework” undertaken by both of them, because these are clearly White-winged Black Terns, much rarer than Black Terns, and only properly identified after describing them to Barry that evening and looking them up in a fieldguide.

Now better known simply as White-winged Tern, this must be what Gran and Norris saw three examples of with Black Terns at Dibden.  Image by Frank Vassen via Flickr.

Book 156

It appears that the Kingston family, Gran’s much-loved neighbours, are soon to move away temporarily.  Ruth has been depressed about this.  After Norris stays the night following a day out together on September 18th,  Gran writes: “Brother returned to Lyndhurst this morning after saying “goodbye” to Ruth and Bill who will have left for their year’s stay in America before he comes again next week”.  Ruth brings Gran the last of her tomatoes to ripen off, and Gran was, “saddened to see Ruth so subdued”.  On the 23rd, Gran “… wrapped up some little gifts for Christmas for Ruth to take to America for Helen, Jenny and Jamie, and a little farewell gift for Ruth”, adding, “I hate to think that this is the last night that my very dear neighbours will be at home for at least a year”.

“I gave a talk on “Chandler’s Ford then and now” to the United Free Church Women’s Guild, and it was very agreeably received.  I quite enjoyed it after initial nervousness”, she says, on the 25th.  And on the following day:

Whilst shopping later I was accosted by one Mrs Paul who said how much she had enjoyed my talk last evening, and introduced me to her husband.  They are very keen on wild flowers and their daughter Alison goes to Reading University next month to read Botany.  They suggested we should get together and I said I would be pleased to do so.

Early in October, Brother “holds the fort” at The Ridge while Gran spends a few days in Bushey with Barry and family. She has a long and wonderful day on the Norfolk coast with Barry and Geoffrey, seeing Glaucous Gull and Arctic Skua for the first time in her life and also a seal, “and thus achieved another of my natural history ambitions”, she writes.

“What a day!”, she reports on October 29th:

About half past one this afternoon Mother fell in the dining-room. I heard the cutlery she was carrying fall to the floor and then her cry of pain and I knew at once when I ran in that her leg was in a most un-natural position and must be broken.  She was in agony.  I could not get the doctor on the phone at first and the ambulance would not come without his authority so it was half-past two before the ambulance finally came to take her to Winchester Hospital. Of course, I was alone with her when it happened and I could not find anybody to help me.  A bright spot was the sight of a Goldcrest bathing in the birdbath whilst I waited.

I must put on record here my appreciation of the great kindness and gentleness of the ambulance men as they lifted her, and the concern of the attendant during the journey, sitting by her and soothing her with the words “Alright my darling, you’ll soon be more comfortable”.  The long tedious wait in the hospital for X-rays, details being taken and Mother’s eventual arrival in the ward was again relieved by the nurses’ concern for her and the young doctor’s winning ways.  I left at about a quarter to six, secure in the knowledge that she was in good hands.

That evening, she phones Barry who plans to visit shortly, but she is unable to contact daughter Jane and brother Norris. Norris, however, is due at The Ridge next morning. Gran concludes her record of the day: “I went to play badminton as I could do no more for Mother and I enjoyed being with my friends”.

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Related posts:

Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 68) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 83) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 128) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 153) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 156)
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Comments

  1. Another interesting post. I once handled some squirrels and found that they were host to enormous fleas. They only bite humans once because they do not like the taste of us.
    Tennis and badminton at 70, that’s commendable.

    Reply

    • Thanks Mike – yes, reading ahead a little, I think Gran’s playing days are about to cease. Lots of talk about leg and back pain, torn ligaments etc, but given that she needed a hip replacement in 1976, I suspect it was all down to arthritis in the hip. Interesting about the fleas!

      Reply

  2. I remember seeing Ken Rosewall and Lew Hoad playing at Wimbledon in the 1960s, also the incomparable Rod Laver. It would be fascinating to match Rod Laver against Roger Federer – What a match that would be!! In those days we used to queue up two hours before the gates opened and stand in the Centre Court standing area. Those were the days; it was an amateur competition and they often played with Dunlop Maxply Fort wooden racquets strung with cat-gut.
    The best match we ever saw was our own Bobby Wilson beating the blond Australian Adonis, Neale Fraser in a four-setter. It was tennis’s answer to David and Goliath! Sadly, Bobby Wilson died recently having played tennis until about two years ago.

    Reply

    • Thanks for the comment Robbie. I guess Federer would have been the victor – but who knows? Rod Laver is the first great tennis player that I remember hearing of. Yes – those old racquets! – the sort Gran would have been familiar with.

      Reply

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