December 2013 – Page 3 – derrickjknight

‘If It’s Worth A Photograph……’

Today’s advent picture is similar to the first, but has a different coloured central star. This seems to me to offer far more variation than one would see today. It is worthy of note that there are very few pedestrians admiring the window display and the vehicles on Regent Street in December 1963 are all taxis or buses.

As we set off for Southampton Parkway this morning, foraging ponies loomed out of a heavy mist weakly penetrated by a myopic sun resembling a haloed full moon shrouded by thick clouds. Visibility on the A31 was most meagre. There were some clear patches on the M27 giving layered views of the bordering forest trees. Foreground silhouettes would give way to a barely visible row followed by bright golden ones. The pattern would be repeated into the distance.

By the time my train had reached Waterloo the sun’s warmth had drawn most of the mist up into the ether. That which lingered over the Thames presented dreamy views of Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament. An oriental gentleman resting a super-long lens on the parapet of the Golden Jubilee Bridge told me what stunning sights he had just seen from the top of the London Eye. I apprised him of the reason I was unable to emulate him.

The Christmas fair on South Bank flourished. One of the stalls sold its own version of festive lighting. Like Catherine wheels they spun, expanded, and contracted. The timing of this photograph was a delicate matter of trial and error.

Crossing The Strand and walking through Trafalgar Square I was afforded a clearer view of the blue cockerel poised either to drink from the fountain or to peck at Nelson’s other eye. I now understand that the sculpture is not French after all. It is the work of German artist Katharina Fritsch who describes it as ‘feminist’.

On the piazza before the National Gallery a diminutive, motionless pirate perched on his own plinth. Dropping £1 into his hat I said: ‘If it’s worth a photograph, it’s worth a donation’. Silently, without moving any other, even facial, muscle, like a jointed puppet, he raised his glass in acknowledgement. I don’t know whether he had been aware I’d shot him.

From the square I walked up Haymarket to Piccadilly Circus and along Piccadilly itself to Green Park where I boarded a Jubilee Line train to Neasden and thence to Norman’s. Eros, presumably in preparation for the revelries to come, is now encased in a bubble.

A bagman I had seen over the years in numerous parts of London adjusted his load after having effected bicycle repairs.

Fortnum and Mason’s windows reflected the seasonal mood.

At Green Park I was to regret parting with my last coin. I needed a pee, which can now only be obtained by inserting 30p into a machine. So I had to ask the man at the ticket office to change a £10 note. The smallest coin he gave me was 50p. The machines don’t give change, so what once cost one old penny was subject to 120x inflation.

Norman fed us on a roast turkey and Christmas pudding lunch with which we shared an excellent bottle of Vacqueras 2011, after which I took my usual route to Carol’s and then on to Waterloo. Jackie collected me from Southampton.

Remembrance In The Stone

We have experienced no snow in the forest yet this year, but no advent season could be without anticipation, eager in the young, apprehensive in the elderly, of white flakes falling on Christmas Day. Where would we be were our television screens devoid of ‘The Snowman’, the 1982 adaptation of Raymond Briggs’s timeless and beautifully depicted 1978 cartoon story? It is always a snowman who appears on lawns throughout the land. Never, in my experience, except in Selfridge’s window in Oxford Street in December 1963, a snowwoman. She is my advent picture for today.

The two stores whose windows attracted Mike and me on our expeditions to see the lights, were the above-mentioned Selfridge’s and Liberty’s in Regent Street. It is just possible that after fifty years my memory has confused the two. If the snowwoman belonged to Liberty, I extend my sincere apologies to their inspired egalitarian dresser. My friend Paul Herbert yesterday wished for an application that would produce a small chocolate at the touch of a finger on these electronically produced advent pictures. I am afraid we still await the arrival of that facility, so the reward for opening the post must, for the moment, be virtual.

This morning I finished reading ‘Zadig’, Voltaire’s tale of a philosophical journey that manages to be reminiscent of both ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ and ‘The Thousand and one Arabian Nights’. I am not a fan of these stories, especially when they follow a formula. Voltaire is of course sending up the romantic geste, and we are meant to discern meaningful truths from his carefully crafted yet apparently light-hearted work. It is, however, simply written, and therefore an excellent vehicle for sharpening one’s French.

Before lunch I walked down to the village shop and back to buy some stamps. Perpetual motion in the form of a string of primary schoolchildren pulsated on the green.

This afternoon we drove to Ringwood for banking, sorting out documents at the solicitor’s, and collecting photographic inks. On our way home, Jackie, who has not before visited it, turned off the A31 to look at Rufus Stone. Until now, her only experience of it had been in reading my blog post.

There is a heavy metal grill forming the top of the iron casing that conceals the actual stone. Glancing down at the pebbles and oak leaves that occupy the space beneath it, Jackie spotted an item which she managed to extract and return undisturbed. This is a card of some plastic weatherproof material in remembrance of Michael Charles Daniels 1996 – 2010. May he rest in peace.

A beef and peppers casserole so tasty I have run out of superlatives; duchesse potatoes; and crisp carrots and brussels sprouts provided our dinner this evening. Well, actually Jackie provided it. She enjoyed a glass of Hoegaarden and I drank Campo de Borja Caliente Rojo 2012. The provenance of the wine is interesting. Jackie bought it because it was half price in Morrison’s and she thought they must be having to shift it because the label was so naff; thus indicating that it must be a good wine. There is a logic there. She was right.

Gladstone’s Landmark

Today’s advent photograph is a detail of yesterday’s, taken in December 1963. To me, it resembles a jewelled necklace with a pendant bauble.

On Saturday, from our solicitor, we received a batch of papers pertaining to our prospective house purchase. There were three problems with these. One document to be signed jointly before a witness was not enclosed; another was presented for a purpose to which it was irrelevant; and finally there was a discrepancy between the contents of the seller’s declaration about the property and a letter from his solicitor. I spent the morning trying to contact our man and finally discussing the issues with a colleague he had asked to phone me. She was very helpful. My points were all valid and I don’t smell any rats here. I guess it is just par for the course these days.

The slowly lowering sun lent a welcome glow to the now familiar landscape, somewhat offsetting the chill atmosphere lacking cloud cover, as I walked the Matthew and Oddie route this afternoon. Those trees still blessed with leaves upstaged their naked neighbours. Light does change a landscape dramatically.

Castle Malwood Lodge stands surrounded by the New Forest. Over the years the forest has been allowed to encroach upon the perimeter, so much so that some trees and shrubs such as the now massive and varied rhododendrons seem to belong outside. It was Mo who told me about Gladstone’s sequoia, and in particular that it stands so tall that local people use it as a landmark. This potential giant, planted in the garden, appears now to be part of the forest. From the garden to which it truly belongs, because the land slopes down towards the road from Upper Drive, it does not look that much higher than other trees nearby, so I have always been puzzled as to how it can been seen from so far off. Today, seeing the tree line from the Upper Drive road, for the first time I gazed across at our sequoia standing proud. I now know how this giant, presumably still in its infancy, is regarded as such a talisman.

On the approach to Rufuston, beech trees could still feel the sun’s rays, but, once I was high up on Forest Road, it was beginning to sink below the heathland’s horizon.

The moon then seemed impatient to replace its daytime cousin. It climbed into the blue sky waiting for the dark green of the pines to edge out the deep russet still high on the evergreens’ trunks.

Still early in this day approaching the shortest of the year, I returned home at dusk. Lingering any later along the unlit lanes of Minstead would not have been a good idea. The moon, by then, had despatched the sun to bed, and seemed poised to alight atop Gladstone’s Christmas tree.

Dinner this evening was a tender braised steak with mushrooms, onions, peppers, and butter beans; carrots, brussels, and anya potatoes; followed by apple pie and custard. I drank some more Saint Emilion, and Jackie a little Hoegaarden.

Anticipating The Shot (2)

Early this morning, Jackie read out extracts from a debate on the BBC News website on the subject of municipal Christmas decorations. Opinions concerned comparisons of the quality of those of today, when we are all strapped for cash, with those of yesteryear, when our memories are possibly coloured by the glow of childhood magic. Between now and 25th December I will feature a daily picture ‘I made earlier’, so my readers may judge for themselves. I did, admittedly, focus on London West End’s Oxford and Regent Streets, some of whose cast-offs seem to turn up later in our small towns. A little late in starting, and possibly finishing early if I don’t find enough subjects in my archives, let us think of it as my advent calendar.

This year’s Regent Street display, albeit in the dull light of late afternoon, was featured in my A Double Six post. It seems to me that it loses out to that same street’s decoration of December 1963.

It was Mike Vaquer, a colleague in the Yorkshire Insurance Company for which I worked in 1963/4, who recommended the Kodak Retinette 1b, introduced me to the pleasures of colour slides as a medium, and took me with him for a year or so to photograph the West End decorations. The two of us eagerly awaited these annual trips, each descending on the capital from our respective suburban homes. Mike was a little older than me, didn’t have a family, and could therefore invest in a top of the range Pentax. Mind you, he still needed a rangefinder attachment. I photographed him on our 1964 expedition.

For those of my readers unfamiliar with them, an advent calendar consists of a scene printed on stiff cardboard containing 25 little doors, one of which is opened each day from 1st December until 25th. They enthral children, and adults who haven’t forgotten the eager anticipation that comes with them as the great day beckons.

We spent the morning making, writing, and addressing Christmas cards.

This afternoon Jackie drove us up to Abbotswell car park at Frogham. She stayed in the car whilst I wandered across the heathland. I walked in the opposite direction to my journey from Godshill, along a wide track behind the strip of mostly comparatively modern houses in the village. Eventually the path met the road and I took a narrow footpath down the flinty terrain to the left. This area was criss-crossed by such paths, generously signposted by cairns of pony droppings, and often leading to houses perched on the slopes and enjoying marvellous views across the forest.

During the period I was there, three different monoplanes chugged overhead across the clear blue sky with its smattering of clouds.

The acoustics in the scooped out valley were such that sounds carried across the bowl, and I could hear conversations before the speakers came into view. At one point, two voices belonging to a couple concealed by scrub above me descended in my direction at the same time as hidden others penetrated the branches of trees below. Something told me there was a potential photograph waiting by the bed of a stream. Poised, I focussed my lens on a gap in the trees and waited for the shot. Two riders, who eventually proved to be three, emerged and trotted, chatting, up the slope. Soon after I pressed the shutter, a young couple with a golden retriever appeared from the higher ground. During our ensuing chat they told me that a herd of deer were often to be seen where the riders were. They are identified by one which the young man called an albino.

Some time after my two conversationalists had left, they came into view by a house on the same level as the stream. Unfortunately, I hadn’t anticipated that, and, needing to be quick before losing sight of them, snatched at the camera, and took an out of focus picture.

Shortly before sunset we repaired to The Foresters Arms for a drink before returning home, ready for our evening meal which consisted of chicken marinaded in lemon and piri-piri sauce and roasted with red and yellow peppers; ratatouille; roast potatoes and parsnips; and brussel sprouts, followed by lemon meringue pie and cream. I drank a glass of Roc de Lussac Saint Emilion 2011.

An Inspirational Visit

Accompanied by a couple of friends we lunched on excellent fish and chips at The Trusty Servant. I drank a pint of Doom Bar. After our meal we attended Minstead Lodge where Noura met us for a tour of this huge building, probably a Victorian reproduction of an earlier manor house.

It was Noura’s day off, because the establishment, apart from the residential students and some staff, is closed at weekends. However, she came in from her home in Ringwood to accommodate us. Her husband and two year old daughter also gave generously of their time and wandered around with us. What was once a family home was bought with a generous legacy and turned into a Training Project for people with learning disabilities. Martin, whom I’d met soon after we arrived in Minstead, had set up and directed the place for twenty five years, until recently moving to a liaison role with Furzey Gardens.

I had had no idea what a thriving community it is, or how extensive the house and grounds are, so found the visit most informative and spiritually uplifting. One of our guides was a gentleman in transitional accommodation before a move to independent living in Totton. A delightful and courteous young man, he took pride in showing us round, telling us what the various activities were, and, I suspect, pulling Noura’s leg. He was clear that he would continue to come and work here after he had moved. After twenty years in residence I am sure he would need that continuity. His special area of expertise was feeding and caring for the animals. We were shown horses, donkeys, and goats all of which answered his call. The geese were less interested, possibly because their feeder passed us on his way to their field as we came away from it. Noura’s daughter was particularly fascinated by the chickens, and clutched a couple of what looked like pigeon feathers she had found earlier. Those preparing for independence in this way live on the upper floor of their current building. Our guides seemed very willing to give us all the time we needed, in taking us through the communal rooms and the gardens.

There are a number of finely crafted wooden tables and chairs made, seamlessly, out of single enormous trees. These were made by a local craftsman as payment in kind for professional services rendered by the owner. One held crib figures, behind which, clearly recently having descended from the chimney to the open fireplace in one of the panelled reception rooms, could be glimpsed a diminutive Father Christmas. Others stood by window seats from which views down the valley and across the forest could be enjoyed. The kitchen garden was impressive, and plants were on sale outside the reception area.

The link with Furzey Gardens and the Chelsea Garden was evident on the walls in the form of superb reportage paintings in the style of those decorating the sister project. We were told by staff member Andy that each resident and staff member of the Lodge made one of the stained glass leaves woven into the walls of the thatched building that features in the winner of Chelsea gold.

After our lunch a light supper of cheese on toast and apple pie and custard sufficed for our evening sustenance.

A Gift From Norway

We drove early this morning to Ringwood for a bit more shopping, then went on to visit Helen and Bill in Poulner, after which we meandered around the northern forest villages seeking a particular photographic subject for a card idea that Jackie had. We returned home along Roger Penny Way.

The plane trees around Ringwood car park are now mostly devoid of leaves, although many of the forest trees remain festooned with persistent clingers. Along Roger Penny Way, the rounded shapes of the oaks and beeches with their golden foliage are set off nicely by the pointed evergreen pines behind them. The gnarled and arthritic limbs of the oaks are beginning to reveal themselves.

Ponies, cattle, and donkeys were all motionless soon after midday. All these roamers seem to be growing winter coats. The equine varieties stood stock still, whereas the bovines lay basking in the sunshine glinting on their variously coloured ear tags.

High above the fields and chimney pots of Ibsley, a trio of helicopters, possibly military, glided silently across the skies. As Jackie brought the car to a standstill alongside someone’s house, and I leapt out to photograph the airborne vehicles, I rather alarmed a woman who stood quizzically shielding her eyes. I therefore felt obliged to explain what I was doing, by which time I had all but missed the shot.

Back in Minstead, where the horses of the Freshwater Stud were now wearing man made winter coats, we found the picture we had been looking for all along. This afternoon I worked on the prints required.

Yesterday, the Christmas season officially opened in Central London with the switching on of the lights to the Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree. Our annual gift from the people of Norway in recognition of Britain’s help during World War Two, the tree has been a feature of the capital since 1947. This is how I, with my Kodak Retinette 1b, recorded the scene fifty years ago:

The rows of people to the left of the picture are carol singers. Different groups still perform nightly carols raising funds for various charities.

This evening we dined at The Family House Chinese restaurant in Totton, on the excellent buffet meal. Although called a buffet this is rather different in that for £18 a head you do have all you can eat, but you actually select from a normal full menu , and are given all the time you need with breaks in between. If you over-order and cannot eat it all you pay normal prices for the uneaten portions. It seems to work rather well. Once again we remarked on the friendliness of the atmosphere, with the staff seeming to be on very good terms with all the customers. I always eat the decorative chillis and cucumber. When taking our first set of empty plates away, the waiter, seeing that I hadn’t eaten the lemon slice, from which I had at least squeezed the juice, suggested he should put it on my bill (as an uneaten portion). With our meal Jackie and I both drank T’sing Tao beer.

Two Rooms

The little golden birds that flitted about our windows in today’s glorious sunshine, whilst we enjoyed our super spicy mulligatawny lunch revealed themselves to be autumn leaves frolicking in the wind. They were still swirling around me as I set off in really blustery blasts to walk to Hazel Hill, where Jackie picked me up en route to Totton for another grand Christmas shop. Reminiscent of the bees some were trapped in my clothing as I folded myself up to fall into the passenger seat.

Falling foliage filled the skies like plumage bursting from a pillow fight; plummeted to the ground; paused when plucked by a cross-wind; sped on, and dropped again. Even when apparently safely landed they could be whisked up and transported elsewhere, skipping and falling over each other like children freed from school, or stampeding like lemmings across the tarmac.

Being stripped of their glorious garments as I write, the trees that so recently bore splendid autumnal robes will be bare in a day or two. Already the shapes of the forest survivors are changing as their skeletons are revealed.

Another of the posters I mentioned yesterday carries a more startling message, but you would still need to leave your car to read it, and especially to see the horse.

We had another successful shopping trip, discovering an excellent art materials outlet and finding some treasures in Lidl’s central aisles.

As mentioned a couple of days ago, Vivien and I began our married life in 18 Bernard Gardens. We had two rooms, one of which was a kitchen. Only later, when I returned alone with Michael, did I move into a flatlet at the top of the house recently vacated by Mr. and Mrs. Egan and their two children. In December 1963 John Egan had not been born. Frances was their first child and, for that Christmas, fifty years ago, they asked me to photograph each of them with their little girl who was a good playmate for Joseph. Those pictures are the next two in the ‘posterity’ collection.

!8 Bernard Gardens had been bequeathed to my father by his Auntie Mabel. A very large house in Wimbledon, it had several tenants which my parents kept on. Joe Jasmy eventually accompanied them when they moved to Morden. It was his cousin who had moved out just before Vivien and I needed somewhere for a while. The Egans were the other residents.

This evening we enjoyed Jackie’s sausage and bacon casserole, crisp vegetables, and duchesse potatoes masquerading as browned macaroons. Here a plug for the bacon that enhances these casseroles is in order. It is Sainsbury’s cooking bacon, which comes in thick toothsome chunks. It is well recommended, but if you use it, no more salt will be needed. Our sweet was a lemon merangue pie my maternal grandmother would have been proud of. And that is saying something. Jackie had the last glass of Palastri and I finished the Roc des Chevaliers.

‘They Don’t Cook The Veg’

Last night I began reading ‘Her Brilliant Career – Ten Extraordinay Women of the Fifties’ by Rachel Cooke.

Early this morning I received an e-mail from Alex Schneideman attaching rebalanced copies of my two historic photos from yesterday. They were so pleasing that I substituted them for my own versions in that day’s post. The experience made me determined to crack a problem with my Epson V750 PRO scanner, which should have restored the colour balance, a facility which had mysteriously disappeared. After much trial and error I discovered that the auto exposure function, without which certain others would not come into play, had been disengaged. I can now sort out the colour again, but haven’t yet managed to resuscitate the dust removal feature. I have also found ‘levels’ to which Alex alerted me, in the iPhoto edit function.

Not that I particularly needed it, light rain refreshed me on my walk down to Football Green, up through the grounds of Minstead Lodge, and back home via Seamans Lane and Running Hill.

In and around the village and forest, no doubt as a response to the increase in animal deaths on the road, there have appeared a number of small laminated posters warning drivers not to kill ponies and horses carrying people. These, affixed to gateposts and wayside trees, are all no larger than A4 and cannot be read from moving vehicles. I don’t know how practical it would be, but it seems to me that we need something about the size, and in the simple, spare, language, of the yellow Animal Deaths warnings on such as Roger Penny Way.

A field beyond the village shop contains the only oak currently completely devoid of foliage. This one has been naked as long as we have lived here. Probably because it is dead. Further along, a shower of orange leaves from a live specimen descended like a shimmering macrame screen behind the deep green back of a double decker bus. The stout branch immediately above the cascade imitated the action of a seesaw. It had been clouted by the vehicle. Maybe the driver had lost his way.

A gaggle of geese could be discerned through a gap in a beach hedge bordering the track up to Minstead Lodge.

After lunch I changed the colour balance of those ‘posterity’ pictures I have already posted. We then produced a Christmas card which it would not be sensible to reproduce here, because I don’t expect the prospective recipients would really appreciate a preview.

This evening Jackie produced a succulent sausage casserole, with mashed potato and swede, and crisp, colourful vegetables of which my Uncle Ben would definitely disapprove. In 1983, when I first ran the Bolton Marathon, Matthew and I went up to stay with my uncle and Auntie Ellen. Ben bemoaned the catering firm that had just taken over his works canteen. He complained that, because they had been trained in nutrition the staff didn’t cook the veg. Now aged 92, my uncle is of the generation that believed vegetables were not palatable unless they had had the life, the colour, and the nutrients, boiled out of them and into the water which would then be thrown away..

Our cauliflower was white; our brussels green; and our carrots orange; not grey, brown, and yellow. With them Jackie drank a Palastri spritzer and I some Roc des Chevaliers bordeaux superieur 2011.

Cannizaro

The front cover of Iain Pears’ novel ‘An Instance Of The Fingerpost’ bears a quotation from P.D.James: ‘A fictional tour de force which combines erudition with mystery’. And she should know. I finished reading this book of Margery’s this morning. Four different narrators take it in turns to give their somewhat contradictory versions of a 17th Century tale that weaves into its rich tapestry genuine historical characters, both those with whose names we are familiar, and others more obscure. The element of mystery is so successful that I was unsure, until the last few of almost 700 pages, which of the strands we were actually meant to be unravelling. A clever book which I admired, I think an adherent of Umberto Eco may find it a little more entertaining than I did.

I then printed a copy of yesterday’s picture of Donna-Marie as a present for her that we delivered to the salon on our way to Ringwood, being the first of today’s Christmas shopping venues. From Ringwood we went on to Castlepoint, then to Highcliffe Castle’s gift shop. Incredibly we have nearly completed the task.

With the leaves on the trees still glowing warm in the gloom of a thoroughly cloud-covered day, we have observed that autumn seems to have come a little late this year. The next two photographs in my ‘posterity’ collection confirm that impression. They were taken in October fifty years ago when Cannizaro Park was resplendent in various shades of golden brown, and my brother Joseph sat gleefully tossing leaves. I have mentioned before how I, with first Vivien, then Jackie, took Joe around with us everywhere. It would have been Vivien accompanying me when I took the attached out of focus masterpiece.

Still public, this park on the edge of Wimbledon Common, is the remnants of the grounds of an 18th century country house, owned in the 1960s by Wimbledon Borough Council which became part of the London Borough of Merton. The house was sold in the 1980s, no doubt an example of Sir Harold MacMillan’s famous metaphor for privatisation, ‘selling off the family silver’. It is now an internationally patronised hotel in which Matthew once worked when Oliver Reed was in residence. When I had been not much older than my young sibling my parents had taken me and my brother and sisters to play in the gardens.

This evening we dined on haddock and chips, mushy peas, pickled onions and cornichons accompanied by Palastri pinot grigio 2012. Vanilla ice cream with strawberry jam and evaporated milk was to follow.

P.S. Alex Schneideman rebalanced my two historic photographs and e-mailed the results which I have substituted for my originals. Thank you Alex.

Pink Champagne

Jackie’s Chequerboard fuchsia is not hardy, so she has brought it into the bedroom for the winter, and it has flowered again. It struck me this morning as being in perfect harmony with its surroundings. It was to seem even more an appropriate colour match for today’s later encounter.

By 9.00 a.m. we were in Ringwood to deliver the car to Wells Garage for its M.O.T. test. Leaving the vehicle for its once-over, Jackie set off to the town for some shopping whilst I embarked upon the Avon Valley Path from Hurst Road, that I had last walked on 4th March. The Avon Valley Path is often very narrow and bordered by very high wire fencing, keeping us away from fields, woods, and lakes on private land; or simply by garden fences. The wire fencing as described occupies the start of this particular route, and is actually rather claustrophobic. It soon has a meandering stream running along the left hand side although the right retains the uninviting barrier. On my previous visit I left the stream because I took the path indicated by a green arrow as the Avon Valley one. Today I chose to stay with the rivulet, following the yellow arrows indicating the Countryside Path. This was far more pleasant. It widened out in parts and had the added attractions of continuing running water.

As I had noted in March, the path was criss-crossed by tree roots of varying forms and sizes. Given that they were now covered by fallen leaves, knowing they were there probably saved me from twisting an ankle or two. Recently fallen trees formed primitive bridges straddling the stream or new arches across the footpath. The only other person I met was a man doing his best to keep up with two terriers whilst ensuring he didn’t become entangled in their extending leads. He was hard put to answer my greeting.

Back in March, on the Avon Valley Path, I had been unable to get near most of the lakes on the route. Today, on the Countryside Path I had an excellent view of Linwood Lake, although it too, as a nature reserve of some importance, was fenced off. Stately swans sailed upon it.

After forty minutes I came to a road beneath which, with the benefit of a ford, continued the stream. It was signposted to Ringwood. As a circular route would always be preferable to me, I decided to take the road, which was later signed as Gorley Road. Turning right at The White Hart and along Southampton Road took me through Poulner and back to the town.

As I passed Donna-Marie’s hair salon, she was standing in her doorway, and I stopped and spoke with her for a minute or two. When Jackie and I have tried to describe everything that is pink about this beautiful and bubbly young lady and her establishment, mere words have not been able to do justice to it. Donna was more than happy to help me put her, and consequently you, in the picture.

Upon reaching Ringwood I walked through Kings Arms Lane to the riverside, round the Bickerley, up to and under the A31, and arrived back at Wells Garage just as they had phoned Jackie to say the car was ready. I waited for her to return from Sainsbury’s and we took the pretty route through Bransgore back home, once again marvelling at the stunning array of varying colours of the autumn leaves that dazzled even on such a dull day.

After a dozy afternoon we dined on tender pork fillet marinaded in plum sauce; vegetables roasted with sweet chilli sauce; and egg fried rice, cooked by Jackie in a manner which would have pleased any Chinese cook. Dessert was vanilla ice cream with strawberry jam and evaporated milk. I finished the Gran Familia.