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Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 145)

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First prize – bath salts; farewell to Mother – sadness but a welcome freedom; loneliness and the importance of friends and Wednesdays with Norris; looking forward to a visit by Gilbert; birding at Stodmarsh, and back-garden wildlife.

On March 9th 1975, Gran is preparing flowers to take to Mary Harding for her birthday.  Mary, knowing this, invites her to tea, and we hear a little more of Mary’s family:

Frank came for me at a quarter to three and I had the extra pleasure of seeing Tim, Daphne and their little girls Judith and Joanne.  I had not seen Tim for years, and Joanne never.  A nice little family.  After tea I went to Church with Frank and Mary, at St Boniface and we were given little posies for Mothering Sunday.  Mine had a Daffodil, a spray each of Rosemary and Viburnum, and pink and white Heather.

Gran is shopping next day:

I went by bus as far as the Station to get bird sand and Budgie seed from Dean’s as our local shop is going out of business, and also to buy a pair of shoes.  Mine are getting beyond repair.

And a week later:

I went to the whist drive this afternoon… I won the first prize again and had the extraordinary score of one hundred in the first half but fell to eighty-five in the second.  I scored ten nines!  I chose bath salts.  Everyone was most kind again.

“Our visit to Mother was depressing”, she writes on March 19th:

… since she was once more demanding to come home and saying how much she hated the place.  It was difficult to convince her that we could not move her and she is lucky to be in such a good home.  I would not mind ending my days at Bishop’s Waltham House when I have to leave here; warmth, kindness and comfort – what more could one want in the twilight of life?

Nellie Sarah Adamson, née Wise, in earlier days – “Mother” to Gran, “Granny” to Barry and Jane, and “Greaty” to their children.

On the 21st:

… a knock on the door revealed Bill Kingston, over from America until next Friday.  It was good to see him and to hear more news of the family.  He brought me five First Day Covers from Ruth and a box of “After Eight” chocolates.

“I will be so glad when they all return for good”, adds Gran.

Barry, on his way to a field meeting in the New Forest on the 22nd, drops in at The Ridge, much to his Mother’s pleasure:

…and he brought me a copy of his book, “The Butterflies and Moths of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight”.  Tears were close when I read in the front, “To Mother, who started me on the way.  Love Barry. March 1975”.

He takes her to his Bushey home on the following day, where she stays for about a week, enjoying several birding trips to the local reservoir, evening table tennis, whist and games of “Lexicon”, one of which, she says on the 26th, “Barry won, ultimately going out in one with “Priestlike”!

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

Book 158

Gran returns to The Ridge on April 1st:

All was well at home but soon a phone call from Bishop’s Waltham House marred my homecoming.  Mother had a stroke yesterday and had been in a deep sleep ever since.

Norris is contacted and he, she writes:

…came out straight away and we went to see her this evening.  She could not be roused and we stayed only a few minutes talking to Matron who told us that Mother, whose face was slightly warped, had lost the use of her right arm and could not swallow.  She is not expected to be here much longer and we both wish she would slip away in her sleep without distress.  She could not be receiving more loving care anywhere.

Greaty’s condition does not change over the next few days, during each of which Norris and Gran make brief visits.  Whist drives, badminton (not playing), local outings with Norris, and interesting mail divert Gran during this unhappy time, and she is pleased to hear from her granddaughter:

… also came a card from Katherine from the farm in the Lake District where the family are enjoying an Easter holiday.  Only three lambs have been born so far.  Katherine also said that she hoped to climb Great Gable, the next day.

The farm at High Oxen Fell, near Coniston, where the Brenan family holidayed regularly.

It is April 11th when the expected news comes:

A phone message just before eight o’clock this morning from the Matron of Bishop’s Waltham House told me that Mother died peacefully without regaining consciousness at 3.15 this morning.

A message to Norris’s neighbour in his Lyndhurst Caravan Park  brings him straight to The Ridge, Gran writing: “not even stopping for breakfast, which I gave him here”.  Brother and sister go thence to Southampton, “… to see the Solicitor. This afternoon we went to Bishop’s Waltham House and to register Mother’s death at the office nearby”.  She continues:

We arranged to leave all her clothing for use at the Home and the cash due to her on her pension to the Comforts Fund for the Home.  We are so grateful for the care she has received and the kindness towards us.  The Bursar told us that just before Mother had her stroke he had told her he would bet she would reach the hundred years, and she retorted, “And how would you pay me when I died before I reached it?”  They all had a great admiration for her.  There was a swan on her nest in the pond at Bishop’s Waltham when we left.

And that Springtime event, which always uplifts Gran, is nicely timed for this day, as they record their first Chiffchaff of the year while parked for a while, on their way home, by the River Itchen.  Phone-calls to family are made, and letters to friends written.

The Chiffchaff – Gran’s dearly loved harbinger of Spring.  Image by hedera.baltica via Flickr.

Funeral arrangements are made, and John Guningham phones on the 13th: “Poor John!”, writes Gran, “His mother had a stroke last night and died this morning, and he felt he must talk to me.  We expressed our mutual sympathy for each other in the circumstances”.

April 16th:

Early this afternoon we went to have Mother laid to rest in Daddy’s grave at Hollybrook Cemetery in Southampton.  Brother took Jane, Julian and [Gran’s neighbour] Francoise Griffin and I went with Barry to show him the way, and we went straight to the Chapel.  Mr Ovenden was already there, as was Daphne Mellor, and Mother’s friends, Doris Crisp and Tommy Veal also came.

The Chapel at Hollybrook Cemetery. Image by Michael Day via Flickr.

The hearse arrives, Mr Ovenden takes “the simple Service beautifully”, and there is another “moving little Service at the graveside, sunshine overhead and birds singing.”

“I had been fairly composed”, writes Gran, “until I saw Jane, who had been quite undone, but I derived much comfort from seeing how tenderly Julian comforted her, his Godmother, with his arm around her”.  She ends her record of the day with, ”I retired utterly worn out, but it had been so very comforting to have so many of my dear ones with me at this time”.

Greaty, Gran and Gran’s daughter Jane in the front garden of The Ridge in the mid-1930s.

Two days later:

I spent a delightful day with Enid Dennis in her lovely home and felt rested and at ease.  She is such a good companion for me.  I re-joined the Southampton Natural History Society now that I can hope for more free time.

And indeed, the very next day she is back “in the field” at Stoke Woods with the Hants and Isle of Wight Naturalists’ Trust, where, she writes:

I was deeply touched by the very warm welcome I received from the members of the Natural History Society who remembered me from former years, and Enid looked after me like a Mother!”

Gran appears to feel some guilt over the enjoyment of her new-found freedom, so soon after saying farewell to her Mother.  She says:

Brimstones and a Peacock were about the garden during the morning when I stole an hour to cut off the dead heads of the Hydrangeas.  Perhaps I was punished for this levity for as I grasped several of the dried heads, a queen Wasp, Bee, or some other creature with a “hot tail” severely stung the fleshy part of my left thumb!  Fortunately I had some Antazoline cream, which quickly reduced the pain but my hand has felt hot and itchy all day.

Brimstone butterflies – early Spring insects in the garden almost as important to Gran as the first Chiffchaff of the season.  Image by gailhampshire via Flickr.

Gran sees another of the Harding “children” after a gap of several years, on April 23rd.  She says:

…Antony Harding, home on leave from Australia, came to see me and brought me a little bag of almonds from one of his trees.  It was tied with pink ribbon and he said he had rescued them from the Parrots.  It was nice to see him again.

Gran admits to being lonely these days. The house is often empty apart from herself and her weekly outings, every Wednesday, with Norris are greatly valued.  Any other human contact, and she usually does have some each day, is much appreciated too.  On May 3rd:

I caught the 9.40 bus to Southampton today to have lunch with Enid before going to the theatre this afternoon… we went to the Gaumont Theatre to see Ivor Novello’s “Dancing Years” in which John Hanson played Rudi Kleibor, Susan Beagley, Grete Schone and Joyce Mandre, Maria Ziegler, with  splendid supporting cast.  It was very beautiful, the lovely voices of the stars and the dainty dancing of Grete, and Novello’s melodies all combined to make a perfect production and the underlying sadness… found an echo in my ever yearning heart.

On May 6th she writes with pleasurable anticipation of the expected arrival in England of her great friend from Australia, Gilbert Whitley, who, with his sister Marjorie, is due in Greece shortly, having toured widely, crossing the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, and sending stamps from many exotic locations – New Zealand and Fiji; the Panama Canal Zone and Mexico; the Nederland Antilles; Malta and others.  She does not yet know of his proposed arrival date in the UK.

News a few days later from Jane, as always, gives her pleasure: “Andrew (eleven in July) has passed the 11+ exam and will go to Hutton Grammar School, where Stuart is Assistant Headmaster, next term”.

Gran had sent them a parcel a few days earlier, “… one of Greaty’s brooches for Katherine and the little compass, which Great Grandpa used to wear on his watch-chain, for Andrew…”

One of Gran’s reasons for writing her journal, she has said, is to give her the pleasure of re-living treasured events in future years, and now, in the 1970s she often opens volumes from the 1950s.  On May 12th though, she reads her notes for 1970 and is reminded:  “… that I have had my budgie, Peter, for five years.  I found him half dead in the snow of March 2nd of that year”.

Brother’s Wednesday visit on the 14th is a short one: he has a reunion meeting with ex-Pirelli colleagues, and Gran, still in her mind far from being an “old person”:

… went to the first meeting of the Happy Bunch Club, which I have joined.  I met someone with whom I played badminton over fifty years ago!  We were entertained by the Fair Oak Choir which was very pleasant but I an not sure that the Club is much in my line but maybe some events will be.

A weekend in late May sees her visiting family in Bushey, where the main event is her joining of an outing of the Haberdasher’s School Ornithological Society, led by Dad, to Stodmarsh in Kent.  Many pages of the journal are filled with details of the day – “a truly wonderful one”, she says, but most of the highlights are contained in one paragraph:

… and suddenly a loud, quite outstanding song proclaimed my first ever Cetti’s Warbler.  Next I added Reed Warbler for this year and was, in the course of the day to have quite unbelievable views of innumerable and beautiful Bearded Tits, who were so indifferent to people walking along the path between the reed beds that they flew to and fro in front of us and even perched in full view on reed stems or picked up food or nesting material from the weed lying close to the shore of the water.  Next we heard, without doubt, a Savi’s Warbler in a field of sedges but it was very difficult to see… I count this as a new record for me as the one along the Itchen was never properly verified.

“… perched in full view on reed stems” – a fine male Bearded Tit.  Image by Sue Cro via Flickr.

The schoolboys, and one girl, are dropped off and picked up by parents at various locations on the way home, and one lad, Kevin, met at the Goater home by his father, says of the house, according to Gran, “that it was the most unusual house he had ever been in, with moth cabinets, caterpillars, newts and tadpoles, and books everywhere!”

Home again, Natural History in The Ridge’s back garden gives Gran some interest in the last days of May.  First, a not particularly welcome mammal:

A saucy Squirrel came up the garden and was sniffing about just outside the kitchen window and, when I opened it wider and leant out asking him what he thought he was doing, he just lifted one paw, looked full at me and seemed to be listening but he made no attempt to run away.

Then a pair of birds:

Later I was thrilled to see a pair of Spotted Flycatchers, one at first on the clothes line and then one on the edge of next door roof and the other on the fence.  This second one flew towards our roof several times… they were about the garden for a great part of the day.

And then, on the last day of the month: “Great excitement when I discovered that the Hebridean Orchid is going to bloom”.  This plant, sent to The Ridge by Barry, from the Hebrides as a tiny piece of root, had been potted-up by Gran a year or two earlier in the hope that it would survive.  It flowered in its pot for several consecutive years but by her description of it, it was unlikely to have been the true Hebridean Marsh-orchid Dactylorhiza ebudensis, rare and unique to the Isle of North Uist, but rather the much commoner Northern Marsh-orchid Dactylorhiza purpurella.

The Hebridean Marsh-orchid – the extensive black blotching on the leaves is characteristic.  Image courtesy of Andrew via Flickr.

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Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 46) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 55) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 75) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 84) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 95)
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  1. Thank-you again, Rick, for producing these. They are such a comfort to read, and make me feel connected to my gran and grandad (Mary and Frank Harding) once more. And now, thanks to you, my daughter, Anya, is going to be profiling ‘Aunty Bunney’ for her Brownies’ Local History badge!

    Reply

  2. Thank you for this site.. ! I am looking for Tim and Daphne Harding where I went as a student for 2 months in July aind August 1969. I had been so well received thre. Could you give me their address.. Maybe it has not changed ?
    Many many thanks.

    Reply

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