This morning I took my usual walk to Milford on Sea and back. Above The Solent, a weak sun peeked through gaps in the clouds, while on the cliff top the ever-present hooded 
crows trotted about.
In the nature reserve squirrels avoided the muddy footpaths by leaping across them from 
tree to tree. Bracket fungus on a tree by the stream supplied a convenient stepladder for wild life, while orange mushrooms brightened the leafy carpet beneath.
As, at lunchtime, I tucked into lovely fresh bread, crusty on the outside, and soft on the inside, I marvelled at Jackie’s technique for keeping it in the condition in which it came off the supermarket shelf several days ago. She freezes it after each meal and defrosts it in readiness for the next. This is a method she learned as a carer of elderly women living alone in the 1970s. Most of her clients did have fridges and freezers, but they preferred their bread bins. The contents of these were invariably green with mould which was transferred to any new loaves that were added. Gradually, she managed to persuade some to use their modern technology.
Yesterday I wrote of the 1940s without washing machines. Life was hard for everyone in those post war days. Please do not imagine you can hear violins playing, that’s just how it was. Other white goods unavailable to the ordinary family at that time were fridges and freezers. My mother, however, had no need to preserve loaves that, with her growing family, stood no chance of surviving a day. In fact, she would send us to the baker’s to buy yesterday’s bread which was cheaper and, being less scrumptious, lasted longer. I seem to remember a figure of 4d. that we handed over for each purchase. That is four old 
pence, roughly equivalent, if my arithmetic is correct, to 2p. today.
The hot summer of 1947 was particularly problematic in keeping milk and butter from going off. Bottles of milk were kept in cold water in the kitchen sink. Butter simply became runny. I couldn’t bear that, so I would only eat Echo margarine, the single oily spread that was at all impervious to the heat. This, of course, is really only fit for cooking, and no way would I consider it today.
This evening Jackie drove us to The Red Lion at Milford on Sea where we dined with Giles and Jean. My meal was steak and ale pie followed by plum tart and custard. Jackie chose hunter’s chicken followed by treacle sponge and custard. She drank Peroni and I drank Spitfire. The food was good and the company easy and enjoyable.
It is still hit and miss whether or not we have internet access. Fortunately WordPress backs up and saves my work when the connection drops, otherwise I would be tearing my hair out when trying to produce and send my posts.
Month: November 2014
Boiling Hankies
Once again this morning we welcomed the company of an Openreach engineer. This is because we continue to have access problems with BT Infinity. In fairness to the service provider, they did follow up the previous visit with a phone call, and arranged this one.
He was mystified as to what was wrong, but replaced the socket provided by his predecessor, and disconnected extension lines we don’t use that reached most rooms in the house.
We were on line when he left, so I was able to send Paul some of the photographs I had taken at The First gallery. These will illustrate a newspaper article.
A couple of Environment Agency staff members were surveying a field at the bottom of 
Downton Lane when I took my Hordle Cliff walk. A card in a car parked alongside that I took to be theirs indicated that this task was something to do with water. Flies clustered on the vehicle provided evidence of the mildness of the day.
I still use cotton handkerchiefs. As I dropped one, with a thud, into the laundry basket this morning, I thought of certain saucepans, which Jackie and I had discussed recently. In order to clean them, in the 1940s, before she had any sort of washing machine, Mum had boiled up hankies in a large saucepan. In our early days Jackie, and her mother before her, had done the same thing, as had I during brief periods of living alone. Washing machines at that time were not as versatile as those of today. They probably only had one programme, with the result that, as Jackie observed, if you put the handkerchiefs in with other white items you were likely to find gobbets of snot that hadn’t been there before clinging to your clean white shirts.
A liberal sprinkling of washing powder was added to the pan of water, into which you stuffed the unsavoury items, and brought them to the boil. Keeping them bubbling and simmering until nicely cooked, it was best to give them an occasional stir with a wooden spoon, in order to dislodge the more stubborn mucus. This released a cloud of steam emitting the aroma of the detergent, which I can still smell as I write. It was best, if you could afford it, to reserve that particular pan for this process, and not be tempted to use it for porridge, otherwise coagulated residue mixed with milky oats might be imperceptible and prove rather unpleasant. Especially as you probably wouldn’t realise it.
For the fireworks party of 1st November Jackie made a delicious chilli con carne (recipe). Fortunately for us there was plenty left over with which to stock up the freezer. We dined on some of this, with superb savoury rice, this evening. Sticky toffee pudding and custard was to follow. Jackie drank Stella, and I finished the Marques de Carano.
Clapham Common
It was a bright and sunny day for my visit to old friends Wolf and Luci. Jackie, as usual 
drove me to and from New Milton Station for the train to Waterloo. From the terminal, I took the Northern Line to Clapham Common, along the South Side of which I walked, 
crossing over to Elms Road, right into Abbeville Road, and left into Hambalt Road to their home. I returned home by the same methods.
Maple leaves were falling on the common where work forces were engaged in clearing them up, mostly with extended ‘big hands’ to aid the process. 
Blue pigment on a particularly gnarled trunk produced an interesting abstract painting.
Pigeons, rooks, and Canada geese scratched about in well clawed soil, and Bullfrogs overlooked the redundant cattle trough, now planted with flowers.
Also apparently redundant, certainly unusable, is the drinking fountain provided by The United Kingdom Temperance and General Provident Association. This grand sculptured structure, even if it were functioning as it did in Victorian times, would probably be eschewed by the various gentlemen occupying the benches as they glugged alcoholic beverages straight from their cans. 
The lions embellishing each side would probably never again have their thirsts slaked by the blocked and rusting fountain.
When I lived or worked in London I had enjoyed a monthly lunch with my friends. Unfortunately this frequency is no longer possible but whenever Jackie and I see them it is equally pleasurable, as it was today. Today Luci produced a tender lamb casserole, wild rice, parsnips, and brussels sprouts, followed by her trademark flavoursome crustless pumpkin pie. She and I both drank Wolf Blass red wine, while Wolf drank his customary apple juice.
Luci wrapped up a helping of the dessert for Jackie, who enjoyed it as much as I did. After that superb lunch, I didn’t join my lady for dinner.
On my return home I was greeted by an e-mail from Luci containing very good photographs of Wolf and me taken with her Samsung mobile phone.
Where Are They Now?
Heavy rain descended from the leaden overhead canopy on my walk this morning. When I attempted to photograph the globules of water clinging to the fruits of the hedgerow on Downton Lane, and found I had left the battery on charge, especially as I was having to dodge the spray thrown up by vehicles speeding through the pools on the road, I decided to cut my losses, return home, and set about scanning more of my random negatives.
I unearthed another batch, on Kodak film, from the Covent Garden of 1982. It was a wet day then too. Even the Punch and Judy stand was empty, and I doubt that there were many ice creams sold.
The various eating places were doing well, possibly because most were under shelter. 
One young man seemed oblivious of the naked young lady behind him.
In those days you could drive up to the craft market and park, although it did become a bit crowded.
Fortunately the stalls were all inside a large hall, so the craftspeople could comfortably display their wares and potential customers could ponder purchases.
Where are they now, these hopeful stallholders, the potential purchasers, and the snacking diners? And how have they fared in the intervening years?
I don’t remember who it was, but some time before this a professional photographer 
produced a selection of rather abstract images created from layers of torn posters. Perhaps this person influenced my final shot.
This evening Becky came to steal her daughter back from us. We all four dined at the Rivaaz in New Milton. My choice of food was lamb naga with special rice. Becky and Flo drank coke and orange juice respectively. Jackie and I, because this restaurant does not serve alcohol, drank Kingfisher we had brought in. The meal was as enjoyable as usual.
Poo Scoopers
This morning’s Hordle Cliff top walk was a wet one. The pools on Downton Lane were reminiscent of our eighteen months in Minstead. A collapsed drain cover had been marked for attention.
By the time I reached the cliff top, there was a temporary lull in our rainfall, but The invisible Needles were catching it.
Each time I watch a dog walker, like the woman in this picture, struggling to scoop up poo I reflect on my Raynes Park childhood in the ’40s and ’50s. When I complimented one young woman on her action she was amazed to learn that in those days no-one did what she was doing, and we had to be very careful where we put our feet in order to avoid treading it into the house. She said she hated people not cleaning up after their pets. ‘It’s disgusting. I always pick it up and bin it. Always’. I am not sure when the law requiring this came in, but it was certainly after 1976 when I had the conversation with the newsagent recorded in my ‘Geoff Austin’s Shoes’ post.
Early this evening we watched, on catch up TV, the two episodes of ‘Lewis: Beyond good and evil’. This was a gripping production in what is one of the best series on the box. It follows the marvellous ‘Morse’, based on the Colin Dexter novels. After John Thaw’s Morse was killed off, his sergeant, Lewis, played by Kevin Whately, took over both his job and the title of the Oxford based tales. His sergeant, James Hathaway was acted by Laurence Fox. In a novel twist, the current series has Lewis brought back from retirement to work under Hathaway. This gives the opportunity for added complexities to the all-important relationship between the two men. The composer Barrington Pheloung rightly gained awards for his music for ‘Morse’. He has provided an equally haunting score for ‘Lewis’.
For dinner this evening Jackie produced succulent roast pork with perfect crackling, which is of course difficult to achieve; roast potatoes; carrots, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, and broccoli. The gravy was superb. After this I couldn’t eat a sweet, so will refrain from reporting what the others had. J2O, Peroni, and Marques de Carano gran reserva 2008 were imbibed. Regular readers by now will know who drank what.
Emily’s Party
The Openreach/BT engineer came early this morning. He had established that there was nothing wrong with the cabinet mentioned yesterday, but that our screw terminals were incompatible with broadband. He clipped them and fitted a new phone socket with a built-in filter.
This delayed the start of our journey to Sanderstead for Emily’s 21st birthday lunch. Given that we also encountered a three car collision on the M3 Jackie did very well to drive Flo and me there in time to reach Michael and his family’s home before the birthday granddaughter’s arrival from Nottingham.
While we were waiting with the other party members Alice proudly showed us the excellent birthday cake, made by Heidi, of which she had shared in the decoration. It was good to catch up with them both, with Oliver; and with Heidi’s parents Joan and Werner, and her siblings Cath, Chris and John and their partners and children. John was also celebrating his fiftieth birthday, so he was later given a cake proclaiming that fact. Jackie and I were handed coffee soon after our arrival. Oblivious as to whether or not we had finished it Michael forcibly relieved us of our mugs so we could all drink a bubbly toast on Emily’s arrival with her boyfriend Sam. Splendid party buffet food was provided. After this, all we needed on our return home was a slice of pizza and salad.
Emily’s younger sister took equal delight in the present opening.
Item number 75 in Elizabeth’s ‘Derrick through the ages’ series features me holding Emily who is dressed appropriately for her first Christmas. Naturally I made her a card adorned with this photograph taken by Heidi in 1963. In this picture, her mother stands beside her as Emily holds up my creation. Yes, believe it or not it is the mother on the left.
We left in mid afternoon so the family could get ready for a trip to the theatre to watch ‘Phantom of The Opera’. A nostalgic drink was planned to take place in the De Hems pub on the corner of Macclesfield Street where fifteen year old Michael had been Space Invaders champion. No doubt they will also have a look at the exterior of our old flat at 2 Horse and Dolphin Yard. I suppose it was natural that, when all this was being discussed I was prevailed upon to recount various Soho stories such as ‘Rabbits on the Roof’ and the slashed football. Well, there were some people who hadn’t heard them before, and Emily, Oliver, and Alice never tire of them. Or, I suppose, they may just be humouring me.
On 30th June 2008 Becky sent me a photograph of Flo standing under the street name of our yard. She had taken her daughter on a similar visit back in time.
Mist rose from the fields on our way home, reminding me of the French dawn described in my ‘On The Road’ post.
P.S. The Horse and Dolphin Yard picture has been censored and therefore removed.
The First
On 29th October I responded to a letter from BT inviting a telephone call because they thought they could offer a cheaper broadband package. I was offered BT Infinity at a lower cost than the current one. This would be faster. We would require a new home hub. There would be some interruption for three days whilst the equipment sorted itself out. There was. We lived with it. That period was over yesterday. At 6.30 a.m. this morning we had no internet access at all. At 7.45 I rang the phone number I had been given. After fifteen minutes checking the line I was informed that the fault was in the cabinet. I asked what that was. It is the box out in the street somewhere. The earliest an engineer could come out to fix it was Monday, that is in three days time.
It was then I went into what Jackie calls ‘honest to the point of ouch’ mode. Eventually we were given an appointment for tomorrow morning. Reluctantly I accepted that. Jackie then reminded me that we had to be in Croydon at midday. I rang the sales department seeking an improvement on this. I had apparently been given tomorrow as an exception. I was told 
that the engineers were Openreach, not BT. All Openreach vans bear the BT logo, as can be seen by clicking on it to enlarge this photograph taken at Minstead in January. How is the poor septuagenarian punter to comprehend that these are two different companies?
I took myself off for my Hordle Cliff walk in order to calm myself down. As I walked down the lane an Openreach van sped past me.
Internet access returned at midday. A miracle, or what?
This afternoon Jackie, Flo, and I travelled by car to visit Margery and Paul Clarke, and see their current exhibition at their home, The First Gallery at 1 Burnham Chase, Bitterne. This is the fortieth anniversary of their first such event. There is much of interest on the walls, tables, and chairs of what is probably the original Art-Gallery-in-a-Home. Paintings, ceramics, sculpture, jewellery, automatons. Most items are suitably priced for Christmas presents. Our friends offer a warm, genuine, personal welcome complete with cups of tea and Margery’s splendid mini mince pies.
Here are just a few of the items for sale, although there is absolutely no pressure to buy.
A visit to TheFirstGallery.com/xmas40 will provide more images and updates.
Back home, we dined on flavoursome mixed grill casserole, creamy mashed potato, crisp carrots, brussels sprouts, and runner beans. My choice of sweet was tiramisu. I drank sparkling water, and the others stayed dry.
The First Gothic Novel
Jackie, as usual, drove me to and from New Milton for my trip to London to visit Norman for lunch, and Carol afterwards. I took my usual routes from Waterloo to their respective homes.
A woman also being delivered to the home station this morning, left her driver with a farewell that had me chuckling. ‘What?’ she asked, addressing him through the still open passenger window……… Then ‘sod off’, followed by a cheery ‘see you later’. I hadn’t caught what had provoked the imprecation.
A short while later she and I had a good laugh about it on the crowded platform.
It was a gloomy day in London, which is probably why I focussed on some of the more seamy aspects of the capital’s suburbs. Littered around a bench in the recreation 
ground at the far end of Preston Waye (sic) were beer cans, fag ends, and other debris from a party, the attenders of which had eschewed the bin provided. The bicycle rack 
across the street from Preston Road tube station had not saved one owner from losing his wheels, and judging by the rusting condition of what was left of his transport he had decided to leave it where it was. Alongside this a pair of soiled underpants or panties lay on the floor of a telephone box. I didn’t investigate them closely enough to determine the gender of their erstwhile wearer.
Signal failures between Eastleigh and Basingstoke extended my outward journey by forty minutes and caused chaos at the end of the day when two train-loads left the terminus on one service, resulting in large numbers of passengers standing or sitting on the floors of the aisles. Squeezing past the standers and stepping over prone people on the way to the loo was rather embarrassing, especially as it was impossible not to touch them, and absolutely necessary to be careful where you did.
Horace Walpole’s ‘The Castle of Otranto’ dubbed by Andrew Graham-Dixon and others the first Gothic novel is a short book. I read it on the train. Published in the 1760s, the first edition rapidly sold out and has been in print ever since.
Harking back to the Middle Ages, as Gothic does, the book had all the necessary ingredients for evoking a romantic image of that period. There is a feudal tyrant, knights on a mission, damsels in distress, forbidding weather conditions, and a gloomy castle complete with dungeons, empty corridors, and a hidden passageway. The well-constructed plot, in five chapters, follows the form of Greek Tragedy, and the author borrows from Shakespeare devices such as his clown characters.
Walpole’s story was perfectly timed to engage the enthusiasm of his times for such tales, and spawned many others, such as Matthew Lewis’s ‘The Monk’, with which I continued whiling away my extended train journey.
My Folio Society edition of ‘The Castle of Otranto’ is illustrated by Charles Keeping, one of my all-time favourites. He has a distinctive style and remains faithful to the text, nicely capturing the required mood. Here we have Isabella, a young woman fleeing the tyrant Manfred. A gleam of light in the gloomy castle depths renders her visible and displays the frightening path with rippling pools she has to tread.
From Erotic To Gothic
Having admired Mario Vargas Llosa’s epic tale , The War of The End of The World’, I decided to embark upon another of his works. This time I chose a slighter book, the elegant and gentle piece of erotica ‘In Praise of the Stepmother’. Very well written, the tale was ultimately a considerable disappointment. The first book had contained a few indications of the writer’s fascination with sexual love, but the more violent descriptions seemed the less remarkable in the context of a savage war.
The second book, cleverly links the narrative with famous paintings, such as Titian’s 
Venus with Cupid and Music’. The novel features an inappropriate relationship between a forty year old woman and her stepson, in which the small boy emerges as the scheming initiator. The disappointment is that the child is presented as possessing the control. In any such relationship it is the adult who is misusing power. Given the focus on historic child abuse in recent years in this country, I wonder how Faber’s 1991 publication would be received today.
I finished reading the book this morning, before taking my usual Hordle Cliff beach walk in reverse.
As the leaves fall from the trees, the rooks will soon be returning to their nesting area, but at the moment that is occupied by pigeons.
The chalet demolition in Shorefield Country Park continues apace.
Although the morning was drier and brighter than yesterday, strong winds roared across 
the Solent, bringing waves crashing on the shingle, and bending the ornamental grasses growing beside the steps descending from the cliff top. Sunlight set autumn leaves 
ablaze and threaded its way through The Needles.
Our winter flowering clematis Cirrhosa is displaying the freckles by which it is known.
I was fortunate to avoid much of the rain this morning. The afternoon was rather wetter. Having recently watched Andrew Graham-Dixon’s BBC4 programme, ‘The Art of Gothic’, I was inspired to read Horace Walpole’s ‘The Castle of Otranto’, described as the first Gothic novel. I read Devendra P. Varma’s introduction to my Folio Society edition this afternoon.
Jackie’s recent sausage casserole has, with the addition of slabs of beef and a little more bacon, has become a mixed grill stew. And delicious it was too, as we dined on it, with roast potatoes and boiled carrots and runner beans, this evening. My choice from the array of desserts was tiramisu. Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank Castillo san Lorenzo reserva rioja 2009. Flo just ate her dinner.
Favouritism?
During a brief lull in the wet and windy weather the forecasters tell us will worsen over the next two months, I met and spoke with Ralph, the owner of The Spinney, on my way to Hordle Cliff beach and back. He recounted the history of the once again closed Royal Oak pub on the corner of Downton Lane. Apparently a few years ago a family successfully ran it for nine years. They were always packed out. Having lost the country pub atmosphere under a series of successors, it has failed to survive since.
Despite the rain, men demolishing the older chalets in Shorefield Country Park were able to keep a bonfire going. The replacements, providing work for M. Doe, are being erected within a matter of days.
Jackie had bought a pomegranate for Flo, which enabled me to illustrate my post ‘The Bees’ of 29th May 2012 with a photograph. Our granddaughter eschewed the pin method favoured by Chris and me. She preferred to pick out the fleshy seeds with her fingers.
Some weeks ago, Jackie’s sister Helen had entrusted to her a tiny pair of ailing plants. Floppy little things, they seemed to be beyond being restored to health. Helen’s faith, however, has paid off. One was to be adopted by her sister, the other to be fostered in respite care.
What I thought was a dwarf passionflower has now flowered in its pot, and has the strength to climb up its supports. This is a clematis Sieboldii, appropriately nicknamed the passionflower clematis. Clearly a certain amount of favouritism has been employed, for this is the adopted twin, which has benefited from diluted tomato feed, and regular caresses and sweet nothings.
The other, the foster child, although beginning to show signs of viable life, remains in an incubator in the utility room.
Errol’s lilies still enliven our sitting room.
Our dinner this evening consisted of Jackie’s delicious sausage casserole (recipe); mashed potato and swede; carrots and runner beans followed by a variety of sweets, mine being scones and strawberry jam. I finished the malbec.
P.S. Jackie tells me I got the wrong end of the stick over the plants. It was only last week that Helen had handed over her clematis for resuscitation. As can be seen, it has already responded to her sister’s equally attentive tender loving care.