Forty Years in Chandler's Ford - a Journal (Part 174)

Rob wins a chess tournament; “nobody wants to go away with an old woman”; observations on a Rook; a last flower painting?; a lovely day; an outing with Ruth; a talk by Roy Lancaster; a memory of Italy; “life is difficult just now”, and the Mayor tells Gran she’s been busy.

March 2nd 1985 is not a pleasant day for Gran: there is some domestic conflict and she writes:

After an unpleasant morning of continual complaints, I spent the afternoon in my room, wishing to be alone in tranquil and quiet surroundings. I mostly read Arthur Marshall’s book. “Life’s Rich Pageant” and had a short nap. This evening more reading and listening to the radio and, later I stuck in today’s cutting about Julian.

The cutting is from The Daily Telegraph concerning Julian’s decision not to run in the National Cross Country Championships, owing to a heavy cold. But the following day, after the race is run, she is pleased to read in The Sunday Telgraph that the first eight home in yesterday’s National Cross Country have been chosen for the England team, “plus Julian Goater who has been so consistent always”.

Rob, Barry’s youngest, does not feature frequently in Gran’s diary – he is not an athlete, nor especially interested in Natural History, but he does, nevertheless, have his talents and interests. Gran has recently mentioned that he has leapt out of an aeroplane, with a parachute, to raise money for a charity, and she records, on February 28th, “Rob’s nineteenth birthday and I wish him many more and happy ones”. She has also received a pleasing Christmas present from him – “… a beautiful Impressionist Art Diary for 1985. I have never seen anything like it before”. And, on March 5th, “Post brought a letter from Jane Elizabeth in which she told me that Rob is in the Final of his College Chess Tournament”, and on the 8th, Gran hears that he won it.

March 9th:

This evening Barry phoned, bless him, to ask if I had made arrangements for a holiday and saying he would help pay for one. I explained that money was not the difficulty but that nobody wants to go away with an old woman – I need a single en suite room and transport. I cannot now walk around any distance alone. He told me to look around and he will do likewise and, if all else fails, he will take me somewhere early in the Summer holidays. Of course, I would prefer this to all else, but I do not expect my family to give up any of their own arrangements.

Three days later:

The new, beautiful insect stamps were issued today and, designed by Gordon Beningfield, are typical of his excellent work. Anne Mallinson and the Selborne Society are doing First Day Covers with special postmarks and I phoned Anne this morning and she is arranging for one to be sent to me.

“The new, beautiful insect stamps were issued today”.

After recording the weather on the morning of March 13th, she notes:

Sadly, the holes in the mossy front outside bank, which I thought were due to children scrambling up, now seem to be where someone has dug up many of the wild Daffodils which I planted there years ago before Chandler’s Ford was annexed by Eastleigh.

Noting, as usual, wildlife events in her garden a few days later, Gran records the behaviour of a Rook, which, “… again came to some pork fat I had hung out and, as once before, pulled up the string until the fat was under his feet when he enjoyed the fat for a long time”.

The intelligent Rook. Image by hedera.baltica via Flickr.

“This evening”, she writes on the20th:

… I went to Ruth’s Bring and Buy Sale, the proceeds for Ethiopian starving. I bought a nice chocolate sandwich, a little tartan kilt for one of the great grand-children, and some polished gemstones… The sale made £138 which was very good. Ruth gave me some of the goodies left from the refreshments and saw me home.

And news of Grand-daughter Katie, who has lately been applying for teaching jobs and enduring interviews, is that:

… she has got the job at the Private School in Tonbridge Wells. Her musical ability helped because the Head was pleased that she played the violin and piano, especially the latter as there was no-one who could play competently, and they want her to teach ballet also.

Book 218

Gran plans to create a picture, in secret, for her neighbour Ruth, depicting her favourite spring flowers. She intends to give it to Ruth when finished but briefly retrieve later to exhibit it at an Age Concern Competition in the summer. She starts it on March 22nd, but the necessary daylight fades after an hour and in the evening Gran watches television, especially enjoying Terry Wogan’s interview with Princess Anne. “She is very natural and at ease and has a lovely sense of humour”, she writes. She adds, on the following day:

… I added Ruth’s miniature Daffodils (not Cyclamineus) and purple Crocus to the picture, which I hope is going to be alright though my hand is not so steady and my eyesight less keen, so I think it will be my last full one. I had a notice from the Optician today to say that a new test is due so I shall try to go next week and hope for some improvement, though my eyesight is excellent for 80 years.

March 24th brings her her first summer migrant – a female Blackcap in the garden, and she says, “A Wren was singing but I had to chase away a pair of Muscovy Ducks before I had my breakfast”. And two days later, as usual on this date now, she remembers Norris, “with gratitude and great pleasure the many happy times I have spent with him”, always referred to by her as “dear old Brother”.

Her eye-test, in Southampton, she writes:

… was most satisfactory – no sign of any disease and no deterioration of excellent sight since the last test. I was amazed, on leaving the opticians, to see a beautiful Jay’s feather on the path in Southampton High Street! Needless to say I retrieved it.

And there it is, taped between the pages of her journal!

She continues, telling us that the Post that day is exciting – “An Easter card from Fin, a letter from Sue, thanking us for her birthday present, the thimble I sent her and the Easter eggs. She and Julian had been to a concert in Guildford in which Katie was playing the violin in the orchestra”. She notes too, as she has for more than fifty years, that “The Horse Chestnut tree, precocious as always, is in leaf on the corner of Brighton Road in Southampton”.

April 2nd brings unhappy news from one of her friends at the Club: “Mr Wright phoned early, very distressed, to tell me that Marjorie died on Sunday morning. I am very sorry for him but for Marjorie, after so many years of suffering, it can only be a merciful release”. At the Club on the following day, the members stand in silence for Mrs Wright before the draw, in which Gran wins a prize, having already won first prize for her entries in a display of Easter bonnets, posies, table decorations and Easter cards.

More television on the 7th brings Gran the:

… beautiful film of Henry Williamson’s “Tarka the Otter”, and this evening Simon King’s “Bird Brain”, which, after years of research, proclaimed the Blue Tit the winner, as it had solved the most complicated puzzles to obtain food and was said to be the only bird which had learned to pull up string to get food into its claws. I wonder if it would be worth writing to the programme to tell them of the Rook, which for two Winters has come to this garden and obtained fat or bacon rind in this manner when it has been hanging from a tree branch.

Three days later, there is a surprise visit:

Ricky and Beverly, with Tom and Elinor came in to see us. Elinor, at almost two, is no longer a baby, and a scamp with a mind of her own and apt to get annoyed if you touch her and she does not wish it. Tom did very well at school last term, winning a prize for the greatest number of merit marks.

In her eighty-first year, Gran walks less than she once did but sunny and breezy weather on the 14th tempts her out after an early morning spent in the garden. “I have had a lovely day”, she writes, and, “Being alone, I packed up some lunch and took it and myself to St Cross”. She catches the bus at the top of Hiltingbury Road and, arriving at St Cross, finds:

… the walls of the Hospital very prolifically covered at the top with Spring Whitlow-grass. I first walked along the path towards Winchester and heard Chiffchaffs and Willow Warblers singing. On the clear stream beside the path were Moorhens and Mallard whilst on the river were Coot and Little Grebes.

Gran has a lovely day at the Hospital of St Cross – a very familair place to her. Image by Neil Howard via Flickr.

She walks slowly, some distance, noting all the flowers and birds that she sees and then returns to the Hospital where, she says, “I sat on my usual seat by the wall to eat my lunch. It was sheltered from the wind and warm in the sun”. She catches the 1.40 bus home and rests for the remainder of the afternoon.

She is out again next day. Ruth, delighted with her now finished flower painting, entitled “Flowers from a Spring Garden”, invites Gran to accompany her to Alresford where the picture is to be framed. They drive, avoiding the main roads, and Gran lists the villages through which they pass, including Headbourne Worthy, “… where Rooks were building”, and Itchen Stoke, “… where the Wild Daffodils were massed all over the Churchyard – a lovely sight”.

At Alresford we went into the shop, Lawrence Oxley’s, that has framed all Ruth’s pictures and into the workshop, along an ancient alleyway, up some steps and into an amazing place which extended a very long way through several doors into the “back of beyond”.

Home later, she writes, “It had been a very enjoyable outing and had kept fine so the washing was dry”.

With Ruth again on the following evening:

… to the Community Centre to hear a talk about plant hunting in the Chinese Province of Yunnan by Roy Lancaster. I had not been able to get tickets in advance and when we arrived, we were told that they were sold out but, if we liked to wait awhile, there might be some tickets returned. We were lucky and obtained seats in the front row.

The presentation is illustrated by wonderful slides of plants and landscapes and, Gran adds, “the most interesting and wonderful people. Roy had brought some rare plants, which he had grown from seed, to be auctioned but the prices raised were far beyond my means”.

“In today’s Daily Telegraph there was a picture of the Prince of Wales admiring Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of The Last Supper on the wall of the Church of Santa Maria della Gratzie in Milan…”, she writes on April 23rd. The cutting is within the journal and Gran is reminded of an event more than sixty years ago:

I actually saw it myself on June 1st 1922 when Daddy’s ship, the “Arabic” was in Genoa and I spent six glorious weeks in Italy that year… I bought a picture of it at the Church and still have it. I showed it to Mr and Mrs Luffman of the VG Stores…

The newspaper cutting that triggers a distant memory for Gran.

In spite of the urbanisation of Chandler’s Ford and the loss of much of its interesting wildlife, Gran records with pleasure, a Cuckoo calling nearby on several very early mornings during May. But, she is rather unhappy at this time, writing that “Life is difficult just now and I am somewhat overwrought”. She is suffering from a long-standing cough and occasional faintness and nausea; her great friend Tommy Fowler, now eighty years old, is profoundly unwell, though cheerful, and a decline in Grampa’s health is giving the family concern. He has undergone medical tests but Gran is little wiser about his condition. She writes on May 16th:

Jane Elizabeth phoned to know the result of Dad’s appointment with the Doctor this morning but it was very unsatisfactory as he only said his heart is functioning well for his age and nothing about his mental vagueness, which is the main worry. She thinks, as Ruth and I do, that he should not drive his car. I may see the Doctor myself after Jane has been this weekend [to attend a school Old Girls’ reunion in Winchester].

Gran’s daughter Jane, leaving The Ridge after her weekend visit, promises: “… to come more often as she is anxious, as I am, about her Dad’s deterioration in health”.

Book 219

Although not learning much more detail about Grampa’s health after seeing the Doctor on May 23rd, Gran, after a long talk with him, “… about Bill’s condition… felt much better after I had given him details and thus shared responsibility”.

Weekly visits to the Club continue, Gran usually describing the entertainment provided there. On May 29th, “Mr Vince”, she says:

… talked about and showed slides of Eastleigh as it was at the beginning of the Century and as it is now. I was asked to give the vote of thanks, as I have known the area for about seventy years. I did not mention that Brother and I always knew it as ‘Beastly Eastleigh’.

June 6th. It is the Age Concern over 60’s Craft Exhibition at the Avenue Hall in Southampton. Gran says she meets Mrs Carrington on the bus and sums up the event thus:

Our Club did well, winning eight prizes out of the ten entries. Mrs Carrington won a first with a knitted jumper, my picture (Ruth’s!) won a first, my baby’s twin-set a third, and my dressed doll a third. When I went up to receive a prize for a third time, the Mayor of Southampton, who presented them, shook my hands and said, “You have been very busy”.

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Tags: Chandler's Ford, Chandler's Ford Today, family, Hiltingbury, Hiltingbury Road, history, Joan Adamson, Joan Adelaide Goater, Julian Goater, local interest, memory, nature, writing

Comments

Marny says

September 7, 2021 at 2:33 am

A very lovely read; thank you! I was particularly taken with the outing to St Cross on the bus, to a favourite spot for Gran, I gather. A place to contemplate and recharge.
Best wishes Marny (Robbie Sprague’s sister .. he shared Chandler’s Ford Today with me. Your posts have brought memories flooding back of our young lives, one in particular being the primary school that he mentioned and spurred him on to be a passionate lifelong believer in education).
Thank you again for these lovely stories from Gran and the memories they evoke!

- Rick Goater says
  
  September 14, 2021 at 1:34 pm
  
  Thank you Marny, There’s always something worth sharing from each book in her journal. Not many left for editing now though…
  
  - Marny says
    
    October 21, 2021 at 2:02 am
    
    They will make some lovely re reading on dark winter evenings Rick!
    You have done her proud and brought her beautiful work to others.