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Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 177)

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Another wetting during a visit to the Brenans; an “extraordinary letter”; last show at the Gaumont; kindness at the V.G.; a 50th Anniversary; farewell to Joan Spurgin; Tom on the telly; Barry’s new book; news from Scotland; Katie’s new “bloke”; solitude at St Cross, and Pitcairn Island – “where Daddy used to have dealings with the Islanders”.

Christmas is looming and on breezy December 21st 1985 Gran, as always, has made presents for her great friends, the Hardings in Merdon Avenue.  She writes:

… I took Mary’s posy and other gift, and calendar for Granny Pickford [Mary’s Mother], and walked through the pinewood to avoid as much of the wind as possible.  Both recipients were delighted and especially Mary with her innovation.  I did not stay long but met Mary’s brother George, and Frank brought me home.  He is able to play some golf again, I was pleased to hear.

Christmas in is spent with daughter Jane and family at Longton, near Preston and close to the Ribble marshes. On arrival there, Gran is touched to find that Jane, “… has given me her room, to be convenient for my comfort just across the landing.  We were late retiring…”

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

Dec 24th provides an evening of television programmes, before they attend a local Church for Midnight Service – a new experience for Gran. Gran lists the programmes: The Slipper and the Rose; Benjamin Luxman and Aled Jones in a musical one; and Rush, the Fallow Deer, by John and Simon King.  This was followed by Charles and Diana, a Working Year, and then Val Doonigan [sic]. Gran notes that the Church they attend is where Judy usually goes and she adds, “I had earlier met Judy and found her very nice indeed”.

On Boxing Day Jane takes her Mother to the Lake District while Andy visits Judy and her family and Katie remains at home with a bad cold.  Gran is excited by the extensive rural views and the small villages: – russet bracken, snow on the tops and waterfalls, Staveley, Windermere, Troutbeck, and Near and Far Sawrey.  A great fan of Beatrix Potter, she writes with some disappointment:

We went to Beatrix Potter’s area hoping to see her Hilltop Farm but it was closed until March and the gate padlocked.  We could only see the path down which Tom Kitten walked… and the meadows across which Mrs Tiggy Winkle ran into the distance…

Hilltop Farm, at Sawrey in the Lake District – the scene of many of Beatrix Potter’s stories.  Image by PunkToad via Flickr.

And then, with some sad nostalgia, followed by hilarity:

… Jane took me to the Quarries at Yewdale… where she and Stuart often took the children when they were staying at “their” farm.  We walked up a steep, rough and stony path so that Jane could show me their favourite little tarn, and, stupidly I fell backwards in a bog when my left foot sank in.  I was soaked through with muddy water but how we laughed!!  Jane hurried me to the car where she divested me of my muddy coat and put her Macintosh on me.

She soon warms up and they drive home, where clothes are washed and dried ready for her journey home to Chandler’s Ford the next day.

1986

We are given very little news of Grampa’s declining health at this time but on January 2nd Gran writes, “Cousin Roy came and took Bill to Winchester Hospital”.  And on the following day: “Ruth came in this evening and I phoned the Hospital.  No progress as yet – Bill is under observation, comfortable and happy but no real news”.

His operation, not yet named or explained, takes place on January 10th and apparently goes well.  Gran writes that day that Beverly, Rick’s wife, goes to the Montrose area, in eastern Scotland, to look at a cottage to rent in advance of their move there from Gloucestershire.

Grampa is brought home from hospital at midday on the 15th and Gran expects life to be somewhat complicated by his presence in the foreseeable future.

“Post brought an extraordinary letter from Tommy (Fowler), which left me feeling very humble indeed”, she records on the 14th, and she explains:

She told me she once said to my Mother that she hoped one day to return to me and my family all the love, security and encouragement we gave her in her young days when she badly needed it, and she has not forgotten the welcome five of them received in 1940 and the safe billet she, Bob and the children enjoyed for sixteen months.

The Ridge had provided a home and shelter to the Southampton-based Fowler family during the period of heaviest bombing there during the Second World War.  There is more, which Gran (known as Bunnie or Bunney to her closest friends) relates in detail, but here is the letter in full:

 

The “extraordinary” letter from “Tommy” (nee Joan Tomlinson), which “humbled” Gran, her great and lifelong friend.

Gran, with characteristic modesty, ends with: “Of course I do not deserve this and I wrote to tell her so and that I felt very humble and will keep the letter until I die.  I wonder what made her tell me this now”.

Gran and other members of her Club take a coach to Southampton on the afternoon of Feb 1st.  She writes:

We went to the Gaumont Theatre to see Helen Dyer’s production of “Carousel” with the local theatre company and it was a truly splendid show, the players with beautiful voices, all well trained and the dancing, by adults and children most excellent.

A press cutting between the pages of her journal tells us that this is the last musical production at the Gaumont before the Theatre closes.

The press report of the Gaumont’s last musical.

Gran records the lowest temperature ever in the garden of The Ridge on the night of the 9th/10th February, when the lowest minimum on her thermometer reads eleven and a half degrees Fahrenheit.  She feeds the birds twice that day and also records that she was:

… saddened to hear on the local news that there had been a gas explosion in the kitchen of Sherborne House School this morning and part, at least, of the house is unsafe.  The cook was injured but no children were in the area at the time and parents were contacted to take them home.  Half term starts on Wednesday so they will have two extra days.

Two days later she writes that, “Two kind gestures are worth recording today”:

When I went shopping at V.G. I remarked that it was a pity crumpets were done up in packets of eight, as only my husband could eat them, and another customer said she would share a packet with me as she could not eat them but her children would enjoy one each and her husband [sic].

And:

Chocolate hearts in red foil were displayed on the counter for St Valentine’s Day and I said I had never received a Valentine and it was too late now!  Whereupon Mrs Luffman dropped one of the hearts into my shopping basket!  We all agreed that such things would not occur in a supermarket!

At the Club a week later, Gran notes and passes comment, as she usually does, on the entertainment provided.  This time she is not impressed, writing, “I was bored with the talk about New Zealand, mainly because the speaker called it ‘God’s Own Country’, which I resented, being very pro-Britain!”

March 5th brings the surprising note that:

Today is the fiftieth Anniversary of the flight from Eastleigh of the first Spitfire, R. J. Mitchell’s wonderful fighter which did so much to win the Battle of Britain in the 1939-45 War.  Having known Mitchell and seen Spitfires in action, I hoped to see the Anniversary flight but did not do so.

“Roland Fraissinet flies a Spitfire over Southampton Airport as part of the 50th Anniversary of the first flight in 1936.”  Image courtesy of kitchener.lord via Flickr.

Relatively little of natural history interest catches Gran’s eye these days, as she is generally confined to the Hiltingbury area but a bird, rare in the garden, brightens her day on the 12th:

Looking out of the kitchen window, I was amazed to see a hen Pheasant eating a slice of toast, one side of which I had over-cooked.  She continued until she had demolished the whole slice and then walked along under the kitchen window… I later saw her by Griffin’s pond.

She is pleased to hear news at this time of Ricky and family, newly moved to a post for the Scottish Wildlife Trust at Montrose.  She hears that:

Tom [Rick’s son] will be on television on Monday 17th BBC 2 and Thursday 20th, filmed at Slimbridge.  Ricky and family are happy at Montrose and Tom at a little country school of twenty-five pupils.  All are well”.

And the following day she learns melancholy news from Ruth Kingston, who, she writes, “… told me that sadly, Joan Spurgin, friend of the Slimbridge Scotts and admirer of Ricky and Family, died early this morning”.

“I did see Tom on television”, she records on the 17th:

… in a programme entitled “Eggs” and he appeared clearly, at Slimbridge with two other children from his school, finding a Mallard nest from which some eggs were taken and placed in the school incubator to hatch.  Tom was the child asked to pour some water on them to keep them moist, and later saw the ducklings hatch and later released ay Slimbridge.  It was a delightful programme and lovely to see Tom so clearly.  Later, Mary phoned to say how much she had enjoyed it and what a lovely little boy is Tom!!

News of her own son also gives her pride at this time.  Barry, she learns during a phone call from him, “… has been asked to be President or Chairman – I forget which – [actually Vice-president] of the European Entomological Society and will be elected at the meeting in Budapest and will attend meetings on the Continent”.

Book 224

Her pleasure and pride receives yet another boost on March 28th:

Post brought my Countryside Magazine and in it, under the title, “Attractive new books from leading entomological publishers” is a review of Barry’s new book: “Just published – ‘British Pyralid Moths – A Guide to their identification’, by Barry Goater BSc. M.I. Biol.  In this long-awaited and much-needed work, all the 208 species on the British List are illustrated in colour, including the 104 or so native species, the accidentally introduced – many of them pest-species – and the rare vagrants that have turned up from time to time…”

Barry’s new book – which made Gran very proud of him.

There is more, which Gran quotes verbatim, and she ends with, “I am so proud of Barry, bless him”.

A letter from Rick, living temporarily in the cottage found by Beverly, on a rural estate near Brechin, gives her news of some Scottish birds, which Gran finds interesting and no doubt reminds her of past holidays in the north.  She quotes from it:

An Osprey flew over their garden at 2 o’clock with a fish and it went to a nearby tree and ate it for an hour and then just sat there until 4 o’clock.  Rick picked up Tom from school and he was able to see it also… after that they had Long-eared Owls hunting over the plantation just outside the garden.  They hope to move into their own house round June 30th and hope we can have a holiday with them.  The job is going well and he is now County Bird Recorder…

South Tillysole Cottage on the Kinnaird Estate near Brechin where Rick and family had an Osprey in the garden and Long-eared Owls hunting nearby.

She records more news of her grandchildren at this time: Julian, having earlier resigned his commission in the R.A.F. in order to pursue an athletics career, has re-joined the service and is to be posted to Scampton; Rob is due to start at Manchester Polytechnic; Geoff has moved to a bed-sit and his work in a café is going well; Andy has begun a career in international banking and Katie, with a new boyfriend, Gran learns in a letter from Jane, has Jane’s old car:

… nannying again in the Summer to help her pay for it.  She is still ‘going strong’ with her Paul, who spoils her utterly!  Jane is going down to London for Katie’s Degree Ceremony on 14 May”.

Indeed, a month later school-mistress Katie, in a belated but apologetic thank-you letter to Gran for a birthday present, writes that she:

… has little time for ‘social letter-writing’.  School has been going well and she ‘has met a bloke with whom she could settle down’ and with whom she has spent most weekends”.

“Bloke” – a word I never heard on Gran’s lips!

Although not fully detailed in her journal, 82-year old Gran now rarely finds herself alone at The Ridge, with Grampa’s presence there rather irksome to her, and most of her days becoming routine with little of interest with which to enliven her writing.  However, sometimes she can escape, as on May 2nd, when she says, “Being alone from 11.30 this morning, I took myself to St Cross by bus, with food to sustain me for as long as I wished”.  There she walks familiar paths and sits on familiar seats, noting the wildflowers as she used to and recording several summer birds for the first time that year: Swifts, Swallows, House Martins, Willow Warbler and Cuckoo.  At the end of the afternoon she writes of the gloriousness of the outing and her need to rest after her exertions.

On her walk at St Cross, she picks a sample of “… the rare Blue Anemone Anemone aperina palustris growing close to the river…”, and on the following day she writes:

Firstly this afternoon I painted the Blue Anemone and, after a somewhat shaky start, having done no painting of wild flowers since the Mountain Avens two years ago, I did manage it, making my total 720.

Almost daily, Gran notes the programmes that she watches on television, and one of those on May 11th triggers a memory for her.  She begins: “… an old film Roman Holiday, clean and pleasant; the International Road Race in Oxford, won by Steve Ovett”, and she continues:

… a programme in which the Great-great grandson of Christian of the “Bounty”, went to Pitcairn Island to find out more true facts about his forebear for a book he is writing.  I was extremely interested because my Daddy used to have dealings with the Islanders when they rowed out to his ships, which were too large to enter the harbour.  I did not realize that the Island is only one and a half miles by one in size.  I have a hand holding a vase, carved in wood by a Pitcairn Islander.

Pitcairn Island – a world away from Chandler’s Ford but familiar to Gran’s Father, Percy Adamson, Ship’s Engineer. Image by Polyrus via Flickr.

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Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 162) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 163) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 168) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 172) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 174)
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Comments

  1. I remember Mary and Frank Harding with great affection. They worshipped at St. Boniface which is where I met them in the 70’s. I used to visit them with my three daughters and they were always very kind and fun to talk to.

    Reply

    • Thank you Susan. They were clearly VERY good friends to my Gran and one of the great things about this blog is that it has put me in touch with Frank and Mary’s daughter Jill. Good neighbourliness seemed to be the norm in Gran’s time and she gave and received help, comfort and friendship from many, including the Harding family.

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