February 2015 – Page 3 – derrickjknight

Christmas In Morden

Possibly because there was no sunshine until late afternoon, yesterday’s progress against the virus slowed up a bit today. The sluggish, heady, start didn’t really improve as it had then. We settled for an amble round the garden looking at snowdrops, camellias, hellebores, and new shoots on numerous other plants such as clematises.

This afternoon, after a doze, I scanned another sixteen colour negatives of Agfa film from December 1982. A Christmas tree and the ages of the children helped to date these, which was quite useful.

Four generations of the family enjoyed one of my mother’s plentiful teas in my parents’ home in Morden. For as long as they stayed in London one of Mum’s Sunday lunches, with high tea to follow later could always be obtained at Rougemont Avenue. Maybe that’s why they retired to Horndean, and we had to be determined to turn up there on spec from our various London homes. By December 1982 we all had partners, although not all children, all of whom were equally welcome. I was there with Jessica, Sam, and Louisa; Elizabeth brought Rob and Adam; and Joe was accompanied by his current girlfriend.

Mum and Dad stand by their festive tree.

Here, my son Sam poses with my maternal Grandmother in the same spot.My nephew Adam surveys the assembled company from the comfort of his Dad Rob’s lap.

Sam does the same from the sofa.

Back home in Gracedale Road Louisa had turned her bib into cardboard in the usual toddler manner, by coating it liberally with the soggy contents of her breakfast bowl.

She changed into a lovely dress for the tea party where she had a great time introducing her biscuit to the carpet.

A couple of days ago, my five year old brother Joseph was featured playing Pick up Sticks with Jackie. Sixteen years on, he was a young adult. With his full beard he would not look out of place on a modern rugby field.

This evening Jackie and I dined on pizza and salad. Neither of us desired a liquid accompaniment.

Communing With Ponies

Today we ventured out. Firstly, I made my way down the garden to admire Aaron’s work of yesterday. Perusal of the last two photographs featured on 26th June last year show what this now bare patch looked like then. For the rest of that summer I cleared most of what was growing there, and invading from next door. Anyone who has followed my summer posts will know what a task this was.

The piles of concrete and bricks seen in those two pictures show how much of this material I had dug out, not to mention the bath. The job still required completion, and I’d had enough, which is why I had engaged Aaron Parris of A.P. Maintenance. Aaron charges a very reasonably hourly rate, and works thoroughly throughout, having to be encouraged to take tea breaks. We now have a blank canvas on which to plan our rose garden.

Our next morning outing was by car. Jackie drove us around the Northern parts of the forest. Even driving through the splendid heathlands and the winding treelined roads in gorgeous sunshine I felt rather dozy, until I stepped out for a while to commune with a group of basking New Forest ponies whose somnolence made me feel as if I were positively frisky. Mostly, these animals were undisturbed by my presence. One grey, however, stirred itself enough to turn and see whether was anything to eat in my camera.

The shadows cast by this wonderful wintry light which sharpened the landscape were just what the doctor would have ordered for lifting the spirits, had he or she been asked. Many people have found swimming with dolphins to be soothingly curative for those suffering from depression. Unless you are unfortunate enough to be afraid of these silent ponies, I can recommend communing with these gentle creatures as a peaceful experience.

We dined this evening on chicken Kiev, chips, and baked beans, followed by Bakewell tart and custard.

This morning’s outing was initiated by Jackie, and required a certain amount of willpower. This evening, however, I really felt I was on the mend, and was grateful we had made the effort.

Concentration

I’ve not been quite so well today. Jackie, who is ahead of me in the process of this particular virus, tells me that that is to be expected.

Aaron, who is to finish digging over the rose garden, arrived early this morning and made a significant start. I haven’t ventured out to see his work, which is a shame.

I have mentioned before, how my younger brother Joseph was a constant companion of me and each of my first two wives. When Michael and I returned to Bernard Gardens after Vivien’s death, Joe had to share his Mum with his younger nephew. This meant we saw even more of him. Two of my October 1966 slides, scanned today, feature him playing Pick-up Sticks with Jackie.

There are various other names for this game of dexterity and concentration, one being Pick a Stick. It remains popular today.

The game is begun by grasping the sticks in one or two hands (according to the size of the fingers) and letting them fall on the playing surface. They usually form a pyramidal stack. One stick is used to prod and prise the others free without disturbing the rest. Should you be successful you may take another turn. Should you set the wrong stick wobbling, you have to stop and hand over to your opponent. A tally is taken when all sticks have been loosed. The winner, of course, has the most in their accumulated pile. Given that it is well-nigh impossible for the most careful five-year old, successfully to dislodge the first stick in a stack, I suspect a little discreet placement on Jackie’s behalf, keeping at least some of the sticks discrete and flat on the floor, so her future brother in law could just flip a few away. .

This afternoon we settled down to watch two more Six Nations rugby matches. In the first, Ireland beat Italy 26-3 in Rome. Nothing much happened in the first three- quarters of the game, through which I dozed. The next contest, between Scotland and France in Paris, was rather more enthralling. France won 15-8.

This evening we dined on a Thai takeaway meal from Tesco. The bottle of Marques de Carano that I began on 31st January remains opened and uncontinued in the kitchen cupboard. It may be suitable for cooking now, but when I can next face alcohol with a meal it will be well past drinking.

Fundraising

Feeling a lot better today, I was able to get up early for a visit from a BT contracted engineer. I have to report an improvement in BT’s service. Despite the wait for an appointment for someone to check the Youview box, Spencer, the specialist, arrived on time, carrying a new box in case of necessity. In the event the problem was not in the box itself, but in one of the cables supplied with it. It was replaced and all is now working. The engineer used a tablet for the multitude of ‘paperwork’. This required three signatures from me, all to be made with my fingertip on the screens. All I could produce were disjointed, widely different, squiggles bearing scarcely any resemblance to anyone’s monicker, let alone mine. This is apparently quite normal.

Yesterday BT, the provider with the most complaints, bought EE, the one with the least. Maybe the new acquisition has worked a little magic.

Much as I have been drawn to venture out in the glorious sunny, yet cold, weather I have seen through the windows this week, I am still not up to it, so I undertook more scanning, this time moving forward a couple of decades to an event covered by Chris on 2nd July 1987. Having looked for one of Elizabeth’s ‘through the ages’ series, I discovered that number 69 was from Chris’s series:

As I have a portfolio of 37 prints my brother gave me after the event, I scanned a selection for this post. You may well ask where I am and what I am doing there. Well, I am in a side-street just off Oxford Street in Central London. So close were we to the main thoroughfare that the watchers in the window must have been in an outlet in Oxford Street.

During the morning notices fixed to the bath announced the event and the charity, Westminster Mencap, of which I was a Committee Member, for which donations were sought.

Volunteers poured in the various ingredients and stirred them into the consistency of porridge. It was a pleasantly warm viscous mixture into which the chosen victims lowered themselves for their allotted stints.

Two slang words for a prison sentence are in fact ‘stir’ and ‘porridge’, which fact you may or may not find interesting.

Most people dressed down for the performance. It was Chris’s brilliant idea that I should approach Moss Bros to ask them to donate an ex-hire morning suit, complete with topper, for the event. I therefore dressed up.

The system was two in a bath for, as far as I remember, each ten minute period. My companion was Jane Reynolds, the then Director of the Association. That wasn’t particularly arduous, now was it?

Tubs of rather colder water were provided for a clean up afterwards. There was no shirking that.

Finally, Fiona was on hand with a collecting box, hopefully relieving spectators of the money they had saved in the Selfridges sale on the other side of Oxford Street.

Fish, chips, and peas from the freezer was what we enjoyed for dinner this evening. We then watched the opening match of this year’s Six Nations rugby tournament. This was England v. Wales at Cardiff. England won 21 – 16.

Colour Slides From The Sixties

Despite the fact that dizziness, especially when coughing, is still a difficulty, I feel a great deal better today.

Never before have I been so acquainted with daytime television. Sometimes, when Jackie is watching TV, I am doing something else in my chair in the corner of the long sitting room, where the screen is not in view, and I quite like listening to it. Today, I joined her on the sofa. ‘The Link’ is a quiz game that I have often heard, but never seen the quizmaster, whose accent always puzzled me because I couldn’t place it, other than vaguely in the West Midlands.

Imagine my surprise when I realised that the programme host was Mark Williams who plays Father Brown which we had just watched. This narrowed down the accent, for Williams was born in Bromsgrove in Worcestershire.

This afternoon I rescanned a few more colour slides from the 1960s. After Vivien’s death in September 1965, Michael and I had spent that Christmas with my family in 18 Bernard Gardens, to which we had moved on the night she died. After Christmas, as I did every weekend for six months, I took our son to visit his maternal grandparents in Sidcup. This was a complicated journey on public transport from Wimbledon, with the pushchair and all the other paraphernalia required for a small child.

That particular December the weather was freezing and he had to be wrapped up well to see the magic of swans walking on ice.

The following Christmas I gave my mother a calendar, each month of which was illustrated by a suitable photograph. This was the one chosen for December. Now, of course, this is not particularly unusual, because there are number of computer applications, none of which I know how to use, which will help do the job. Both Louisa and Sam have produced such welcome presents. What I did in 1967 was to have a processing shop make the 7” x 5” prints, which I stuck to hand drawn pages for each month.

By March 1966, now almost two, Michael was well able to manage his own ice-cream. I have no idea why he needed the plaster on his chin, but I don’t expect it was anything too serious.

The following month I met Jackie and took a series of photographs of her on Wimbledon Common, a couple of which have been posted before.

This is one more.

By July, she and Michael were beginning to bond. I liked the soft natural colours produced by the Fujifilm of the time.

Shopping and cooking have not been happening for some days, but, especially as my appetite is returning, it is fortunate that our fridge and freezer are reasonably well stocked. Salad from the former adorned a meaty pizza for our evening meal.

Allotments: We Need Them Now More Than Ever

My first ever reblog, which shows what I think of it

Father Brown

I’m not feeling any better today. This is a little frustrating because yesterday I had been able to think, which hadn’t been possible the day before, so I hoped to be running around again by now. I always was an optimist. Crystal, another blogger, had commented on how difficult it is to be patient with illness. I imagine that is what she meant.

Jackie, however, improves by the day.

From the amount of coughing I have been engaged in, my stomach now feels as if I have done a few hundred sit-ups. This is not so fanciful when you consider that in my thirties I had a period of performing more than three hundred every morning, until I decided that eleven minutes was a bit too long and boring to spend on this rather excessive exercise.

My Folio Society edition of G.K.Chesterton’s Father Brown Stories consists of two volumes, each comprising two of the four books. Yesterday evening I finished the first book, called ‘The Innocence of Father Brown’, and containing a dozen superbly crafted short stories, in elegant, flowing, prose. The fact that the eponymous amateur sleuth is a Roman Catholic priest is really incidental. He is an entertaining little character.

Colin Dexter, the author of the Inspector Morse series of novels, has written an interesting and knowledgeable introduction, and Val Biro’s skillful illustrations enhance the 1996 publication.

Unfortunately my book now has some minor water staining on its front cover. I must have unwittingly spilt some from my bedside glass in the dark when I was rather dopey.

I have mentioned before that I was encouraged to read these books by watching the TV series. This is described as based on Chesterton’s characters. The only story I have now both read and watched, ‘The Invisible Man’, has developed some of the characters and radically changed the tale. Perhaps that is the only way the author’s little gems can be transferred to an hour long dramatic production.

The text illustration I have chosen to insert here is one to ‘The Invisible Man’. I won’t say how, but it ably demonstrates the point I make above.

This evening, for the first time for some days, Jackie felt able to drive out for a Chinese Takeaway meal, and I thought I could manage to sample some of it. In the event I couldn’t eat much, but there is always tomorrow.

A Dusting Of Snow

Hampshire, this morning, enjoyed its first what the BBC News called ‘a dusting of snow’. Unfortunately, although Jackie and I are both feeling a little better today, I am still not well enough to get dressed and go outside. I aimed my camera through the glass of the kitchen window. Small birds can be seen picking their way along the white coating.

The various avian visitors to the bird feeders normally disappear rapidly at the first sign of anyone inside, but this morning, either out of the goodness of their hearts, or from a desperate need to find food among the falling snowflakes, great and long-tailed tits swung on the peanut container, apparently oblivious of my presence.

Jackie and I both had a late breakfast of toast and croissants and mid-afternoon boiled eggs and soldiers. These soldiers, for anyone who does not know this practice, are strips of buttered bread that can be dipped into the egg. Jackie prepared something for herself later, but I, sated, had gone back to bed by then.

The Gallery

Jackie is slightly better today, but my turn at the chest infection is cooking nicely. My cough sounds like an endless piercing whistle, as it tears at my groin and reverberates around my aching head.

So I wasn’t up to much activity. I thought I could just manage to say something about number 59 in Elizabeth’s ‘through the ages’ series. This turned out to contain a number of other photographs. In April 1986 I finally left my employment as an Area Manager in Westminster Social Services Department. Jessica brought Sam and Louisa to the office on the day I was moving out. It may have been Pat Charnock who took the photograph.

In those days it was just still possible for the manager to have his own room, which was essential for confidential meetings. Mine, in an old Victorian town hall, was huge. I was able to decorate the walls with family photographs. At top left an eighteen year old Michael practices his golf shots. I took this one in 1982. To his right is one of Sam’s first school photographs, probably produced in 1985. The black and white shot was taken in the garden of a gite in France in 1984. Louisa herself, in about that same year, wears the faux leopard skin garment.

Dad is on the left of the bottom row in my parents’ home in Morden, probably in 1985. This is the photograph from which I produced the pastel painting featured in ‘Would You Believe It?’. Matthew, to his right, was, in about 1983, indulging in his usual activity of delighting his younger siblings. To Mat’s right, Auntie Gwen reads in the early 1980s. This image was the basis for one of my drawings illustrating ‘Not Lost After All’.

I’m not sure who is hiding behind Louisa’s head. Possibly Becky. The two other obscured photos are of me running in races. That with the yellow mount is of a twenty mile race around Wimbledon Common, perhaps in 1984. The man alongside me had accompanied me, chatting, all through the steeply undulating course. About a mile from the finish, he flagged. I completed the event, then back-tracked to find him and spur him to the end.

Shivering, and aching all over, I took myself back to bed this afternoon and dozed a bit.

A couple of times I briefly came downstairs, but didn’t eat anything.

He Thought It Fun To Push Me Over

Sightings of foxes have been discussed on Streetlife lately. One person reported six in a pack. Another pointed out that these creatures are loners, not pack animals. I have never seen more than one adult at a time, but have been acquainted with two families, one every spring in the garden of the Phyllis Holman Richards Adoption Society, and a single parent and her children in that of our flat in Morden. These posts were published before I was illustrating them with photographs.

Are the foxes responsible for the scattering of feathers that are often lining Downton Lane in the morning, or maybe birds of prey?

Does anyone have a view on the loners/packs debate, or on the likelihood of foxes or birds of prey committing the slaughter.

This afternoon I rescanned another batch of colour slides from 1964 and ’65, covering our year in Ashcombe Road, Wimbledon. This was the first house I ever bought.

Here are Vivien and Michael in our garden in March 1965:

The following month we celebrated our son’s first birthday. I caught him raiding the vegetable store in the kitchen. That cheeky grin was never far from his face.

In June, at least, we bathed him in the kitchen sink, where he loved sucking on the face flannel.

Like any other toddler, in July he fed himself, his face, and his high chair in more or less equal measure. In those days I did my own wallpapering, including what appears in the background of this picture. It is probably the only time I would ever have chosen such a geometric design as was then in vogue.

Michael and I laid turves in the garden during August, when, as I crouched to take this shot, he took great delight in pushing me over.

When in June, I had chosen to wait to snap a forsythia bush until Vivien and Michael had appeared in the corner of the frame, little did I know that this would be the last image of them together.

We didn’t eat this evening. Neither of us felt like either consuming or preparing anything. I had knocked up scrambled egg on toast for lunch, but that was it. Jackie remains in the grip of a virulent chest confection and I spent the afternoon unsuccessfully attempting to avoid succumbing myself. Between five and nine p..m. I flopped in front of the television watching consecutive episodes of Morse and Lewis, and slowly subsiding into somnolence. (No, BBC YouView has not been miraculously restored, so these were repeats on DTV). I then finished this post and went to bed.

Watch this space.