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Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 147)

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Obliterated stamps; good company; a rare bird at Keyhaven; Frank makes a bookcase; the Rectors of Compton Church; the Kingstons return; a bronze medal; George Green; news from the Masonic Hospital; memories of Father; a Turner Exhibition, and a lost glove.

On August 27th 1975, letters from Marjorie and Vera, Gilbert Whitley’s sisters, arrive at The Ridge, and Marjorie’s encloses a tribute to Gilbert from the Sydney Morning Herald.  “Vera told me”, Gran writes:

… that Gilbert had willed his stamp collection to her granddaughter Vicki, whom Gilbert had often mentioned in his letters.  Vera would like me to send her the First Day Covers and stamps, which I used to send to Gilbert and this I shall be pleased to do.

There is more stamp-related comment a few days later:

Post brought our latest stamps of August 13th, which I posted to myself in order to have them post-marked for my collection.  The envelope was posted in the box in Hursley Road and I noted that it had been franked in Southampton instead of at Eastleigh when posted here.  Characteristically it had been hand-stamped instead of horribly obliterated as happens in Eastleigh.  A tip for the future.

September 2nd:

September!  A most enjoyable, surprising and rewarding day!  It is Stuart’s birthday and I wish him many happy days to follow this one and bless him for the happiness he has brought my Jane.

Gran and Norris spend a pleasurable day together at Selborne, where a particular highlight, while visiting Anne Mallinson, proprietor of the much-loved shop there, is finding a glowing review of Barry’s book by John Arlott in the Hampshire Magazine.  Anne tears out three copies of the review for Gran.

Gran’s arthritic hip bothers her more and more, and plans are gradually put in place for a necessary operation in the future.  On September12th Norris phones her:

He told me to listen to Radio 4 just after midday to hear about the replacement of arthritic hips from people who have experienced these operations.  Very encouraging and Beverly [an orthopedically trained nurse] had also told Ricky that they are very successful these days.

“This afternoon was unexciting – I was reading until about four o’clock”:

… when I heard Barry’s familiar whistle from the back door.  He said he could not stay long as he had three Haberdashers and another birdwatcher outside in the car.  They were on their way home from Portland, where they had seen a Grey Phalarope and a Greenish Warbler (which I have not) so I told him to bring them in for some tea.  A most enjoyable influx, to which also came Ricky… they were all soon quite at home and their company was a joy to me.

Thus writes Gran, pleased by the diversion created by the visit, her outdoor activities at this time somewhat curtailed, owing to the difficulty she has in walking.  Much of her time is spent reading, writing letters, sticking in stamps and, more recently, re-writing in a new album, her most exciting and memorable outings of the past few decades.

September 17th, she writes, “proved to be an exciting and extremely enjoyable day.  Ricky and I left as soon after breakfast as we could, he taking me to Lyndhurst where we met Brother at his caravan park”.  Keyhaven is the party’s first port of call, where they walk along the sea wall and find a bird new to each of them, in scrub amongst sedges there:

The tide was up and it was very sunny and warm, the marshes and the sea looking most beautiful.  Suddenly we saw a warbler on a small gorse bush, very pale, and Ricky exclaimed, “Is that an Aquatic Warbler?”  Neither of us had seen this species before but we noted its outstanding features carefully…

At the end of the day, back at The Ridge, we check the bird in The Handbook and its identity is confirmed, “A good sighting”, says Gran – and she is right!

The Aquatic Warbler – an East European species, a very few individuals of which migrate west along the south coast of the UK in early Autumn.  Image by Eugene Archer via Flickr.

The bookcase housing Gran’s treasured volumes in her room is to be passed on to Barry in Bushey, so Gran is in need of a new replacement.  Frank Harding takes on the challenge: “Frank came to measure the bookcase which I hope he is going to replace for me and brought me some very nice tomatoes from Mary”, she writes on the 20th, and three days later, “Frank showed me the kind of wood he is getting for the bookcase and it should be fine”.

While birdwatching with Brother at Ashlett Creek, near Calshot, on the 24th, Gran’s comment reminds us of her time delivering flowers on board ship:

Hordes of people armed with binoculars and cameras arrived, but they were not bird-watchers!  At a quarter to one, the “Q.E.II” sailed by, and I must admit that she looked magnificent in the sunshine, and I wondered what the excited visitors from the midlands and the north (betrayed by their accents) would have thought if they had known that I had been all over this great ship delivering flowers.

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

Gran is at the stage of life where several acquaintances of her own generation are ailing, and on September 26th, having finished making a batch of shortbread, she receives a phone call from her erstwhile and much-loved neighbour, now living in Camberley:

Jean Hockridge rang this afternoon to tell me the disturbing news that Ken has had a stroke and is paralysed down the left side, having no use at all in the hand and only just able to move the leg.  He has always driven himself to the limit and now has paid for it.  I hope and pray that he will recover.

Near the end of the month, those other neighbours, loved by Gran just as much as were the Hockridges, are due home after their year away in the U.S.A., during which another family has occupied the house.  Gran is delighted and expectant:

I bought a beautiful red Begonia to welcome home the Kingstons tomorrow afternoon and put it in their hall with a mirror behind it and a “Welcome Home” card beside it.  I have gifts for them also.  I was surprised at lunchtime by the arrival of Ruth’s Mother and Brother Roger, who had come from Linclonshire to welcome them, and they called here for the key, which I have not had since Lena and family moved in.  They have now moved out but Lena has been next door clearing up to leave all ready for Ruth’s return… I gave Roger and Mrs Walpole some coffee and shortbread…

That afternoon, Gran attends a Michaelmas Festival at Compton Church.   She meets good friends there and is intrigued by an exhibition of photographs and documents relating to the Church’s history, and a list of its incumbents from 1288 to 1973.  The festival programme and this list of Rectors are enclosed between the pages of her journal.

Gran knew well at least the last four Rectors on the list.

September 28th: “The afternoon brought the pleasure and excitement of the day!”  Ruth and her daughters Jenny and Helen come to The Ridge and there are kisses, hugs and delight all round – and extra excitement when the Kingstons, who have not tried their own door yet, discover from Gran that their relations are next door waiting for them.  There is a party, and Gran ends her record of the day with, “For me – well, I shall feel much better now that I have my dear neighbours back again.  The sun shone for them”.

“Our Geoffrey’s eleventh birthday and may God bless him always – my little mate and bird-watching rival!” she begins on October 2nd, followed by:

I found a letter from Ricky, comfortably settled in at Seale-Hayne College in Newton Abbot and he has been allocated a “superb room”, which, with all his books and things around him, feels a bit like home already.  I hope he gets on well.

The wool arrived for an Aran pullover which I want to knit for Frank for making the bookcase for me and I started it this evening.

Gran’s “little mate and bird-watching rival” sends her a thank-you letter on October 16th:

… enthusiastically telling me about, and describing the Killdeer he saw recently with Barry near Leicester.  My hip has been very painful today but there is a chance that I may be able to go to the Masonic Hospital in London for the operation as Dr Crozier said today that there is a waiting list locally for anything up to two years!

Kildeers are very rare waders in the U.K., and only ever turn up as singles.  They are common breeders in North American gravel parking lots and similar habitats and are named after their distinctive call.  Image by Robin Horn via Flickr.

Gran’s bookcase and Frank’s Aran are each completed at much the same time, and Gran writes on the last day of October:

During the evening Frank Harding, with Tim to assist, brought the bookcase he has made me, and very nice it is and just right for my special books.  Frank was overjoyed with his Aran and phoned soon after returning home to say it was a perfect fit so everyone is pleased.  I spent a very pleasant hour or so arranging my books and am delighted with the bookcase in every way.

We learn the next day how Julian did in the recent World Student Games, when he drops in on Gran, and she writes, “I was delighted when he asked me to look after, indefinitely, his bronze medal won in the World Student Games in Rome, and three of the team photographs taken whilst he was at Oxford”.

It is some time since we read anything of George Green, Gran’s young naturalist friend.  She records on November 8th that:

George Green came to see me and I was very pleased as I had not seen him for several years and he had been very helpful to me in showing me the whereabouts of birds and flowers which I wanted to see.  He always says that I started his interest in birds when he was a junior member of the Southampton Natural History Society, and he has met Barry several times and recently heard from him about my hip trouble and called to enquire.  A nice lad.

Post brought a letter from the Masonic Hospital and I have an appointment to see the Surgeon on December 19th, so things are moving, slowly.

“Today has been Remembrance Sunday once again”, she writes on November 9th:

… and I was as deeply moved as ever when watching the Service at the Cenotaph at Whitehall, beautifully presented on Television and introduced by Tom Fleming.  Scenes of Gallipoli and the Dardanelles, all peaceful now, were shown and I thought of my Father, engineer on his merchant ship turned troopship, who, in 1915, spent eighteen months carrying Australian and New Zealand troops, “Anzacs”, to this area and, without wireless, and letters not allowed, we at home had no idea where he was.  He came home safely at the end, though his ship, the “Afric”, was once torpedoed, though I thought today of the many who did not…Tomorrow, D.V. I go to Bushey for a few days.

On November 12th Gran and Jane Elizabeth spend the day in London together.  “We went first to the British Museum to see the exhibition of Turner watercolours”, she begins, then:

I was shaken to find that at the entrance to the Museum all handbags and other receptacles were searched, this because of the spate of disgusting bombs being left in strategic places by supporters of the I.R.A.  However, such unpleasant contingencies were quite forgotten as we went towards the rooms where the Exhibition was held.  We passed through the library where, amongst rare first editions in a glass case, was Gilbert White’s “Natural History of Selborne”… The Turner pictures are exquisite and, though over a hundred years old, are not faded at all.  An interesting point is the inclusion of many of Turner’s sketchbooks, in which were the pencil “rough” outlines which were later used in the production of these lovely masterpieces.  The delicate colours appealed to me tremendously.  Jane and I bought postcards of some of them before leaving.

“The delicate colours appealed to me tremendously” – One ofthe postcards bought by Gran.

The two ladies lunch at an Italian restaurant, visit St Martin-in-the-Fields, the Monument, and St James’ Park, where Gran is interested in the birds and feeds gulls by throwing pieces of bread into the air.  “Amid all this excitement”, she says:

… I lost one of my gloves, which Jane saw sailing before the wind away down the lake.  When it seemed that it might be close inshore by a fenced-off area, Jane spoke to the Park Attendants who were nearby and, when they could not reach the glove from the shore, they called a man with a rowing boat who rescued it for me.  Quite a hilarious diversion from feeding the birds!

The family needs to visit Jane Elizabeth’s brother, Charles, at Biggin Hill on the 16th.  They leave quite early in the morning, Gran remaining alone at 22 Reddings Avenue, where she, “… stayed until after lunch to await the car in which I came home.  It was raining”.  Grampa, undoubtedly the driver, again not mentioned.

Book 161

November 24th:

Jean Hockridge rang up to know if I still had a hair mattress and if so, could I let her have it for upholstery purposes.  I have, and she can, as I have another mattress to take its place.  Ken, mercifully, is still making good progress and Jean wants me to knit him a pullover.  Can do!

Gran wrote some years ago of attending a Methodist Church service with the Hockridge family, “out of politeness” but not really enjoying it.  Now, on December 7th, she has a similar experience with the Catholic Kingston family:

I went to Benediction at the Catholic Church this afternoon to please Ruth but I was somewhat embarrassed at not knowing the appropriate responses, and my inability to kneel, and general incapacity worried me.  In any event nothing would make me change my own Religion.

Gran is in the “Lower Village” next afternoon to finish Christmas shopping.  There she says, she “had a long chat with Roger”, the younger brother of “Jock”, Barry’s first wife, “whom I have known since he was a boy”.  And on returning home, Gran admits that:

I had stupidly locked myself out, but Ruth came to my rescue, brought in a ladder and climbed into my bedroom window and let me in.  I do not know what I would do without this very good friend.

Gran’s bedroom is at the top left, but in 1975 the windows were still wooden-framed and single-glazed.

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Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 65) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 66) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 129) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 134) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 138)
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  1. Thank you again, Rick, for the pleasure this journal brings me. I lived in the Hutments at Hook and Hursley Roads as a child. There was one occasion where Joan and I were at the same event, when the Royal family drove along the Romsey road and a group of people waited beside the road, at Hook and Romsey roads, to see them pass by. I was about three I think, but it stayed in my mind as it was such an unusual event. I remember it got dark and the Royal cars finally came, driving slowly with the interior lights on so we could see them. I like that Joan and my paths crossed, and have tried to find that particular journal again, but had no luck.

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