Until now, I have spared my readers photographs of the more rancid receptacles in our fun-filled adventure.
Everything, in fact, but the kitchen sink. Having scoured the sink itself on numerous occasions, but being slightly perturbed by the unpleasant aromas emanating from the plug holes, Jackie decided to dismantle them and investigate. She was to regret it, but made a good job of speeding the water’s descent to the septic tank in the garden.
The tray at the bottom of the good quality shower in our en suite bathroom fills to paddling level during a shower. The water takes some considerable time to soak away and leaves a slippery scum. I hesitate to think what might be impeding its passage.
Given that it is Easter Sunday, and that we had Becky and Flo with us, number 50, the next picture in the ‘through the ages’ series, is serendipitous. 
The photograph of my daughter and me was taken by Jessica in no. 2 Horse & Dolphin Yard in July 1974. I have mentioned before that I have given each of my children stacks of albums of their childhood photographs. A print of this one is in Becky’s collection.
Some time during Jackie and my years apart, Becky was showing her mother the albums. On reaching this picture Jackie expressed a certain surprise at my appearance. ‘Didn’t you know Grandpa was Jesus?’ piped up our granddaughter.
I make no claim to deity, and have no wish to be sacrilegious, but think the story worth telling.
Rendering yesterday’s watering of plants in pots unnecessary, we experienced steady rain all day today. These epimedium leaves are probably feeling refreshed by it.
Becky and Ian came for the evening, to stay over, and to take Flo home tomorrow. Cooking a full roast dinner for the first time in her new, confusing, kitchen this evening, Jackie produced as tender lamb and as crisp vegetables, including roast potatoes and parsnips, as ever. We all five enjoyed it. Jackie and Ian drank Hoegaarden whilst I imbibed Campo de Borja Caliente Rojo 2012.
Month: April 2014
Downton
We are running out of storage space, so Jackie and I visited David Fergusson’s House Clearance shop in Highcliffe, where we bought three chests of drawers which will be delivered next week. There we met the fascinating proprietor who has an impressive knowledge of art. He is still waiting for that miraculous find, but clearly appreciates and values some of the items he collects. They do not all find their way into his shop. His home must be a treasure trove.
It is not now quite so scary a prospect to accommodate the belongings we then collected from Shelly and Ron’s afterwards. At their home we also met Anthony, their son, Jane their daughter, and her boyfriend Chris. Ron is recovering from his operation on his broken heel. We had an enjoyable chat with welcome mugs of coffee.
Our garden becomes more resplendent as the month proceeds.
Another Camellia is in bloom, as is a tree peony offering shelter to a bee. The elegant weeping birch flickers with dangling new leaves.
After lunch I walked down Downton Lane, taking the footpath off to the right. From the stubbled field alongside, I could see the original hamlet of Downton stretched out along Christchurch Road. Enlarging the picture offers a glimpse of our pale blue washed house centre right.
To the left The Solent sparkled in the distance, and the cloudy smoke from a bonfire blended well with the bulky form of the Isle of Wight.
A solitary rook vied with the seagulls for pickings from a recently ploughed field.
I took the left turn alongside the bluebell wood which also contained wood anemones among many other wild flowers.
After crossing the stream I optimistically diverged from the marked path, turned left through an opening in the barbed wire fence and circumperambulated
a steep grassy field with clumps of gorse at its summit, looking down on
a splendid bluebell bank beside the road.
It soon became apparent that there was no other egress, so I retraced my steps and returned home.
This evening Jackie fed Flo and me (and herself) on Pizza and penne bolognese sprinkled with parmesan cheese. Strawberry jelly and Kelly’s Cornish clotted cream ice cream. I finished the Isla Negra and Jackie drank a little more of her Hoegaarden.
As I post this, I am listening to the ticking of two clocks. One, keeping perfect time, is a battery operated modern one bought by Jackie in one of Morden’s ‘cheapie places’. The other, a splendid reproduction station waiting room clock was given to Jessica and me by Michael when he was seventeen. It still needs a little adjustment to its new environment as it loses a few minutes a day. This is the clock that survived being stolen with the rosewood wine table that stands beneath it.
A Rookery
It is not a good idea to venture into a Tesco superstore on Good Friday morning. We learned that today. When we carry out such a shop I usually trot off in search of some items and return to Jackie who is loading the trolley in some other part of the store. It is normally not difficult to spot her in a crowd, but this one rivalled Trafalgar Square on New Year’s Eve.
For those of you who think that I could not select the wrong kind of long-life milk or apple juice I have to disillusion you. It is even possible for me to fight my way back to the shopper-in-chief with unacceptable apple juice twice. It gets a bit wearing carting several cartons backwards and forwards when you haven’t bothered to pick up a basket.
The majority of people guiding their trolleys through such crowds steadfastly refuse to make eye contact as they thrust forward. Some of my bruises will never come off. I thanked the one gentleman who did catch my eye with a smile.
Back home there were the inevitable items either forgotten or sold out in the mega-store. I therefore walked down to try out the Spar shop who did have coleslaw and Hellmann’s mayonnaise.
Attracted by wallflowers growing by our back entrance I noticed we have a largely obscured sign designed to prevent uninquisitive parkers blocking our driveway. We may benefit from a little repositioning of this. There I met our neighbour Beverley who was painting her new fence. Unfortunately, as we introduced ourselves, and before I realised what she was engaged in, I rested my hand on top of the newly painted surface. She confirmed that the country park shop was a good resource.
The right hand side of Downton Lane offers extensive views across fields.
Raucous cries from the right hand side of Shorefield Road led me down a tarmacked track to a crowded rookery. Most nests had an attentive parent on guard, whilst other cawers flew noisily to and fro. Across a bridge over a stream lay timbered holiday homes to which a couple were making their way. They hoped to see chicks in the nests before they returned to their permanent abode.
Rhododendron time is coming to our garden. Erigeron also does well.
When we dined at The Elephant Walk in Highcliffe three days ago, the meals were so plentiful that Becky took away a doggy bag. Unfortunately for her, but fortunately for me, she left it in Jackie’s car. I had the benefit this evening, for its contents went down quite well with my Isla Negra cabernet sauvignon 2013. The feast Jackie had bought at the Hordle Chinese Takeaway two days ago was still able to provide her and Flo with their dinner tonight. Jackie’s choice of beverage was Hoegaarden.
The Triangle
I spent the morning clearing the garage. First I finished removing the IKEA wardrobes;
then garden tools went to the orange shed; then various other items went into the house. There are still a few tidy boxes of items from which younger homemakers may wish to take their pick.
Otherwise the room is ready for the books to be unpacked from storage boxes and settled on the IKEA Billy bookshelves. Probably about another dozen should suffice.
We now have two piles of debris for a skip.
This afternoon Jackie drove us to Milford on Sea. The haze leant an atmospheric quality to the beach.
Flo was unaware of the black-headed gull which I had panned as it flew towards her. She raised her head, across which blew her hair at the most opportune moment.
This evening all seemed right with the world. Jackie plucked up the courage to produce a full meal on the Neff hobs. This was her spaghetti bolognese, except for spaghetti read linguine. It was of her usual superb standard, and followed by microwaved lemon drizzle pudding courtesy of Waitrose, served with Jackie’s own custard. I finished the Isla Negra.
During the past fortnight I have learned a new meaning for the word ‘triangle’. Martin Taylor had observed that there was no triangle in the kitchen. Jackie had concurred, and has, at moments of stress since, mentioned the fact in her usual calm, collected, way.
I was a little bemused at this, for to me a triangle belonged in a primary school band. This was the instrument entrusted to me at St Mary’s on some auspicious occasion in my early years, possibly because it was considered I could do least damage to the performance with it, and they didn’t want me to suffer the ignominy of being left out. I remember being rather puzzled when I was told to bash it with a metal rod thingy at certain regular intervals. I’m not sure my sense of timing was particularly unerring.
Surely there was no place for one in a kitchen?
I was, of course on the wrong track altogether. The triangle in a kitchen, you see, is composed of lines linking cooker, cupboards, and sink. You are meant to be able to stand in the middle and reach any one of these easily from the same spot. In our kitchen, by swivelling at will, you can just about reach cooker or hobs and a selection of cupboards rather too low for the elderly. Water is, however, a problem. To get to that from either of the other two sides of the triangle you must walk around the island. Jackie doesn’t appreciate the exercise. And refers to the fact. Quite often.
Spring
The gloriously sunny weather that has welcomed us to Downton continued today.
I took a walk up Hordle Lane alongside the extensive rape fields that glowed beneath the cloudless blue skies. A footpath on the left led around one field and through another. At first the fields were on my left. Horses lazed in a paddock on my right. Further footpaths put the rape on the right and woods on my left.
Bluebells enlivened the forest floor through which they had penetrated as they sprung from their hibernating bulbs.
Naturally I took a path through the woods where primroses were equally abundant. This wound around a bit, but I could hear the roar of what I hoped was Christchurch Road, distant on my left. Some of the time. Otherwise I heard the cawing of rooks, the humming of various insects, and cackling of hens and geese. A bleating and baaing led me along another track in the hope I might see some lambs.
I was not disappointed. They littered wide open grassland to my left. Farmland to the right contained Shetland ponies and black sheep, one of which was a magnificent three-horned ram that took to its heels at the sight of my camera. Maybe I’ll catch it next time.
The wide track through Peter’s farm took me to Lower Ashley Lane, where I turned left to the junction with Lymington Road, a section of Christchurch Road. I returned home along this undulating, winding busy thoroughfare lacking a footpath. I had to be rather vigilant.
This afternoon we took delivery of Flo’s wardrobe from Oakhaven Hospice Trust. The men took it upstairs and our granddaughter manoeuvred it into its alcove.
Flo took some rather lovely photographs of the garden. This one she entitled ‘Spring’.
My manly tasks today were helping Jackie to put up more curtain rails, then to add to the skip pile. Anyone from Globe Removals may wish to skip what follows. Their stalwart men moved four dismantled IKEA wardrobes, all carefully marked up by Michael, from his Wimbledon house to storage; out of storage; and into our garage ready for us to reassemble. They are too tall for our ceilings, which is why we bought another from Oakhaven Hospice Trust. We have been unable to give them away. This afternoon I began humping the extremely heavy sections from garage to garden heap. I didn’t finish the job. But there is a lot more room in the garage.
This evening Jackie drove to the Hordle Chinese Takeaway in Stopples Lane and returned with a plentiful feast on which we dined with Flo. I drank Spitfire ale.
Imperial Knob Screws
The garden was looking very inviting today, blossom, such as apple and ornamental cherry abounding, but the house itself remains a priority for our attention.
Flo is coming a day earlier, so we set out early to B & Q, the national DIY company originally set up by Messrs Block & Quayle in Southampton in 1969. Marks & Spencer’s, is of course, another large national outlet known by its founders’ initials. Our high streets are also graced by C & A and H & M stores; the first being the first name initials of the Dutch entrepreneurs who founded the store in 1841, and the second from the surnames of Swedes Hennes & Mauritz in 1947. C and A were Clemens and August Brenninkmeijer. As Michael Caine famously claims never to have said, ‘not a lot of people know that’.
Now, where was I? Ah, yes. B & Q.
We went in search of curtain rails and the missing screws from the door knobs that fell off on 31st March. Jackie found the curtain rails whilst I rummaged through rows and rows of screws, bolts and nuts seeking something that might possibly fit the bar I had in my pocket. I only found two fittings that might vaguely serve the purpose. Both were too long. I reported to one of the check-out desks to ask if they had any more. The helpful young lady put out an SOS on the tannoy asking someone from hardware to come and assist me.
Now there’s a word to conjure with. Tannoy.
Tannoy is a Scottish -based loud speaker and public address system manufacturing company. Never having any idea who has installed the particular system we are listening to, we always call such a facility ‘the tannoy’. Just as a vacuum cleaner is always a ‘hoover’ and a ball-point pen ‘a biro’. Even Google, the search engine that provided me with the information on Tannoy, is now a noun to be found in dictionaries.
Ah, yes. B & Q.
Clive soon appeared and rummaged, equally unsuccessfully, with me. He announced that they didn’t do them, and suggested Castles, ‘an old-fashioned ironmongers’. Jackie and I didn’t know where Castles was, but she had googled ironmongers the night before, and knew there was one in Lymington. So off we drove to Lymington, which, incidentally is in the opposite direction to Christchurch. There Jackie, having done her usually successful google walk didn’t quite get a turning right in the car, and moreover wasn’t sure of the name. We ended up at Crystals at the far end of the High Street. It wasn’t possible to park there, so Jackie continued on round the one-way system to Waitrose, where she went shopping whilst I back-tracked to the hardware shop. There a very helpful young woman directed me to Central Southern Security just past the railway station at the other end of the street. I knew this because we had passed it earlier. So off I went on foot the way we had come in the car.
Another helpful individual, this time a man, hunted among his screws for something that might fit. He explained, as had the young woman earlier, that these screws normally came as a set with the knobs, and there wasn’t much call for them these days. Also they had an old kind of thread. He didn’t find anything suitable, but he did send me on to a real ironmongers called Knights, opposite the library.
And there I struck lucky and bought four imperial screws at 20p each. The old thread must be an imperial measure.
Then I had to find my way back to Waitrose car park. I realised that I was probably now in a direct line to the car park and should not have to retrace my steps back to and along the High Street. I had exchanged greetings with a traffic warden earlier, and suddenly spotted him again. Now, who else but an ambulant traffic warden would know the quickest way there?
He did, and directed me through a car park; along a couple of cuts, or back alleys; and across a cemetery, to Southampton Road where I would be ‘near enough there’. Miraculously, I followed the route and ended up at Waitrose just as Jackie was emerging with a loaded trolley. This was handy because I was beginning to think that a Modus in that forest of cars was like a needle in a haystack.
Jackie rather kicked herself for not remembering the ironmonger’s name.
Becky and Flo arrived early this evening and the four of us dined at Elephant Walk Indian restaurant in Highcliffe. A little more upmarket than others we have enjoyed, the food here was superb, but we had to wait for it. The service was friendly, but one had the feeling the two women on duty were rather overstretched.
Fifty Years Ago Today
This morning Jackie and I had a trip to Highcliffe, last home to so many people that it is full of shops with good quality second-hand goods from houses recently rendered unoccupied by infirmity or death.
We went in search of curtains, of which the Sue Ryder shop provided three good pairs, and the Oakhaven Hospice a fourth. A wardrobe was also a requirement, because Flo is coming to stay in a couple of days time, and we want her to have a choice of bedrooms. This we found in the hospice where, in November 2012, we had bought our serpentine table. It will be delivered on the relevant day. We brunched in the Star cafe.
Should our granddaughter choose one of the bedrooms at the front she will have a view across fields to a rape crop in the distance. The idyllic back garden was visited this afternoon, among other creatures,
by a cabbage white butterfly and a hover fly sharing the sunlight on a hellebore. And is that a caterpillar snaking up between them?
The tulips are now so full-blown that they have a kaleidoscopic quality.
For my fiftieth birthday in July 1992, my friend Giles made me a chequerboard in stained glass. It now enhances the window at the foot of our stairs.
Fifty years ago today Michael was born.
Here Vivien holds him when he was ten days old.
I have given each of my offspring a stack of albums containing photographs of their childhood. When I phoned Michael today, he told me that Alice had produced a slide show from his albums and they were watching it on their computer.
Early this evening I strolled down Downton Lane to investigate the caravan sites, and in particular the shop. Downton Holiday Park is alongside the lane. A larger and more salubrious establishment is the Shorefield Country Park on Shorefield Road. That has a very well stocked Spar, which will be our village shop.
This evening we dined on Tesco’s finest microwaveable curries; lamb rogon josh for me and chicken jalfrezi for Jackie, with Sainsbury’s vegetable samosas heated in the oven. The oven is definitely meant to be low level, because Jackie, who is herself tall, is not high enough to read the symbols on the control dial. I opened a bottle of Isla Negra reserva cabernet sauvignon 2013 and drank some of it.
‘Did You Get Your Salary Cheque This Month?’
My friend Paul Herbert sent me an e-mail this morning containing a photograph from my Parents for Children consultancy days.
This would have been taken in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Paul’s delightful mother, Eve, stands, cuppa in hand, on the viewer’s far left. I am at the back.
One of the problems of a freelance life is late payments. Most agencies make you wait for money for work done. I would send out invoices at the end of the month and sometimes wait another two for settlement. Not so with Parents for Children. This is because Eve Herbert was the finance officer. She settled my accounts by return of post, for which I was always grateful. Eve’s parents were also a boon to the organisation. They cheerfully and regularly carried out voluntary tasks, like addressing envelopes.
My frustrated friend Michael Kindred, also self-employed, once chased up a finance officer with the question: ‘Did you get your salary cheque this month?’. The bemused gentleman said he had. Mike responded by telling him that the outstanding invoice was the equivalent of his salary. Such a conversation would never have been necessary with Eve.
What I find astounding about the image above is its method of delivery. There I was, playing a few turns at Lexulous, when up pops a message alerting me to Paul’s chat. The chat contained the photograph. I, of course, didn’t know what to do with it in that format, so asked Paul to e-mail it. He did. And all this was carried out from my friend’s mobile phone. I was then able to tweak it a bit on iPhoto.
Jackie and I, joined for lunch and afterwards by Elizabeth, concentrated on sorting out the living room.
Elizabeth cleaned the knobs from the doors she had scrubbed yesterday. She then proceeded upstairs to work on doors and skirting boards.
Early on this beautiful blue-skied evening, Elizabeth drove us down to Milford on Sea. She and I walked along Hurst Spit whilst Jackie worked on her puzzles in the car.
A huge squabble of black-headed gulls hovered on the air above the car park. They squealed vociferously from beaks which all pointed to the same spot on the sea wall. On the other side of the wall a family were enjoying a picnic. There were no pickings for the foraging birds.
On our way back along the spit, in the face of the lowering sun, we were surprised to see a group of young men backing towards us. Walking towards them was a slender red-haired young man wearing dark glasses.
We then saw that the man in the shades was being filmed. This, we were happily informed, was a rising young artiste named Lloyd Allen who hailed from High Wickham. Watch for the name, and remember you read about him here.
The three of us then dined at Bombay Night, on the excellent food we have come to expect from this restaurant. We all drank Kingfisher.
The Three Scrubbers
Jackie’s parents, Veronica and Donald Rivett, were great fans of the the theatre, and able amateur performers. My lady’s continuing rummage through her mother’s mementoes produced evidence of this interest that made my discovery of hidden treasures yesterday pale into insignificance.
Like many a teenager of any period, Mum Rivett kept an autograph book.
Her battered leather-bound collection contains great names from the early 1930s when she was twelve or thirteen. Here we have Fred Astaire, Ivor Novello, John Gielgud, Jack Hawkins, Laurence Olivier, and Robert Donat.
I have not scanned the entry of Claire Luce, one of Fred Astaire’s leading ladies, because I have shown her photograph, signed for Veronica’s sister Maureen, who, when adult, also always had a fag on. Maybe the two sisters saw the two stars performing together.
Among the many talents of Don Rivett was backstage work. In the 1950s he was the lighting man at the Penge Empire. Like many such old theatres this eventually became a cinema, and then a bingo hall.
There is a fascinating pile of signed photographs of performers of greater or lesser note. Apart from that of Miss Luce these are all inscribed for Don.
Matthew possesses a group photograph featuring both my father in law and Boris Karloff in a crowded Penge pub.
My own ’50s memories of Cardew Robinson are not of the theatre, but of the Beano comic, where Reg Parlett illustrated a strip called ‘Cardew the Cad’.
During our Soho years, Paul Raymond’s name was emblazoned in lights above his world famous Revue Bar. It did not close until 2004.
Representative of the lesser known acts was ‘The World’s Smallest Man’, Henry Behrens and his wife Emmie. An interesting aspect of the inscription here is ‘& Wife’.
The majority of those signatures not written in pencil were inscribed with fountain pens.
My avid attention to these treasures was interrupted by a trip to Tesco’s to buy some more household equipment. I couldn’t get back to the computer quick enough.
A further hiatus was prompted by Elizabeth who came, ‘ready to roll up [her] sleeves’, for the rest of the day.
She brought a magnificent hanging basket as a house-warming present.
Even the gentlest textured floor tiles can collect a considerable amount of ingrained grime that needs the attention of a scrubbing brush.
Now, when younger, keener, siblings come along and suggest a major cleaning operation, the problem that arrives with the gesture is that, when you would rather get on with your scanning, you feel obliged to join in. At least for a while. Until you can get away with making coffee and mopping the suds off the cleaned surfaces. After I’d managed to rise to my feet again and performed this task, I left the two young ladies to finish off and attended to Cardew Robinson and company.
When Jackie and I were all scrubbed out, Elizabeth started attacking woodwork, grimy and fur-coated, such as doors and wainscoting; or rancid such as floorboards in the downstairs loo. She rendered it all a pale version of its former self. She commented that the lavatory floor was reminiscent of mucking out rabbit hutches.
We all three dined at The Royal Oak just along the road. Elizabeth enjoyed sausage and mash, Jackie chose fusilli salad, and I had steak pie. My sister and I shared a bottle of Invenio South Eastern Australian shiraz 2013, and Jackie drank Stella. John was his usual attentive self.
Hidden Treasures
Apparently septic tanks need pumping out twice a year. For anyone fortunate enough to be ignorant of these sewage dispensing systems they are installed for houses which are not linked to water mains drainage. Without these you would have to dig your own hole as in primitive camping. Laraine, next door, had advised us to open up the lid of ours to inspect the level. We did. It was frighteningly high. A phone call will be required in the morning.
After this Jackie went back to her curtains and I set about planting.
The biggest problem of location is for the maidenhair or ginkgo tree. Although it is currently contained in a pot it can grow to 40 metres, which is quite high.
The only possible place for this is in the corner of our back drive. When inspecting the site I found a daunting number of brambles, nettles, old bits of wood and iron, and a good wooden compost bin completely obscured by the aforementioned plants. ‘Nah’, I thought, ‘I’ll do that another day.
As it was, in clearing spaces for the other items I did manage to put to bed, I probably cleared as much bramble, ivy, catch weed, and detritus as I would have done in the drive. But I did manage to re-home a peony, a fern, two hellebores, a weigela, three different succulents, and a rose.
I began with the rose. I thought. In fact I had to remove an enormous, no doubt ornamental thistle in order to replace it with this plant. Because every single new home for whatever species needed a similar clearance and more, the rose was actually the last planting I made at the end of the day. You could hardly see the little rose in the bed, but the maple that had been swamped by the spiky plant looked mightily relieved to have its space back.
I did have a break for lunch and sat in a chair by the window playing on-line Lexulous. A faint, intermittent, buzzing attracted my attention.
This proved to be a fly attempting to do back somersaults. I had noticed the sound earlier in the morning, but not identified its source. The creature had therefore spent some hours at this manoeuvre.
I took advice from the head gardener on positioning of specimens and placed them in their pots at the requisite sites. Unfortunately, I forgot two, which I will need to take care of tomorrow. Also unfortunately, this meant she came into the shrubbery under a large evergreen tree that I was clearing of brambles, and spotted a second shattered branch that had to come off. I then proceeded to teeter on top of a stepladder she held firmly, whilst I amputated the stricken arboreal limb.
The clearing of that particular area revealed some hidden treasures, such as a different camellia now in bloom,
and another splendid blue clematis that we think is ‘Beauty of Worcester’. Further along on that side of the garden lies a decking
platform close to which a magnificent red rose is now in bloom.
This evening Jackie provided a marvellous vegetable rice (recipe) to accompany her chilli con carne (recipe). She drank Hoegaarden and I finished the rioja.
I have no idea why the header picture is this one which rightly belongs on https://derrickjknight.com/2016/02/01/black-and-white-discoveries/
except that it was a hidden treasure. Although it is still on the Black and White Discoveries post I have left it here because of the comments below.