After lunch on a warmly sun-kissed day I poked my camera out of the upstairs windows to introduce it to
the garden views on the approach to September.
I then read more of Charles Dickens’s ‘Our Mutual Friend’, and scanned the next four of Charles Keeping’s memorable illustrations.
‘She sat on the ground, with her face leaning on her hand’
‘The bird of prey lay stretched upon the shore’
‘A gloomy house the Bower’
‘Hooked on the board by the armpits was a young gentleman of tender years’
Early this evening I posted https://derrickjknight.com/2021/08/25/a-knights-tale-21-the-summer-of-1947/
Later, we dined on Red Chilli excellent takeaway fare. We ordered enough for two days, consisting of Saag Chicken, Saag and Onion Bhajis, Tandoori King Prawn Naga, Paneer Tikka, Egg Fried Rice, and a plain Naan. Jackie drank more of the Greco di Tufo and I drank more of the Dao.
This photograph was taken in my grandparents’ garden in Durham in April 1947. Chris and I had just learned of our sister Jacqueline’s birth in Wimbledon. I didn’t think the pram in the background was for Jacqueline, because it belonged to my grandmother.
Our attire needs a little explanation. Chris’s footwear was a requirement imposed by his having broken his leg some weeks earlier. Hopefully it is our night wear that we are sporting. I hasten to add that our normal clothing was being preserved against accident by Grandma who was preparing for the journey for us to take possession of the new infant. Grandma Hunter had told us that Grandpa was very particular about always wearing clean underwear in case he had an accident. It seemed to me that if you had an accident it didn’t much matter what was the original state of your underpants. Maybe she had a different mishap in mind. Chris looks a little less sure than I do. He and I were enswathed in our grandmother’s pink silk petticoats.
It was on that stay that the incident of the caterpillars occurred, so maybe Grandma was as eager as we were for us to travel down south to meet the new arrival. My brother and I enjoyed trotting out with jam jars into which to entrap all kinds of poor creatures. We weren’t knowingly cruel, for we always included a lettuce leaf or other greenery for food, and pierced holes in the lids. On this occasion it had been caterpillars that had received the treatment. When we dropped the jar in one of the corridors of the house, Grandma wasn’t exactly overjoyed at the sight of a carpet of crawling grubs fleeing grasping little fingers.
Probably the very next day we were back home in Stanton Road, SW20; I was sitting proudly in the garden with our baby sister in my arms; and the above photograph was snapped. Chris doesn’t look any more certain about things.
In this age of global warming it is worth remembering that the months of the May and June after this were hot enough to send me inside coated with tar from the melted roads in which I was playing. I expect my poor mother could never clean them. We happily amused ourselves in the street, devoid of cars in those days.
The Royal Meteorological Society report of January 1948 describes the weather of Summer 1947 as ‘a memorable one in meteorological annals. The severity of the late winter, the rain and floods of March, and the drought and warmth of late summer and autumn were all outstanding over a very long period and their occurrence in a single year unique in meteorological history. The year also included the two longest periods of easterly wind for at least 66 years, one giving severe winter conditions and the other the warmth and sunshine of August’ (https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/j.1477-8696.1948.tb00856.x)
We are only a small island, yet the accents are so diverse that people from one end of the country may react to those at another as if they are speaking a foreign language. I discovered this on my return from Durham when many Londoners could not understand what I was saying. I have no doubt that this affected my start in school which is to follow.
This morning, while Jackie continued her general garden maintenance, including mowing the lawn, lulled by the gentle trill of birdsong and the tinkling trickle of water fountain, I enjoyed a dead heading session before wandering around with my camera.
Roses receiving attention included a peach climber; pink Mum in a Million at two of her stages of life; deep red centred For Your Eyes Only; lighter centred Summer Wine; golden yellow Absolutely Fabulous; pale pink Shropshire Lad and blushing Lady Emma Hamilton in their younger incarnations.
A Small White butterfly alighted on a verbena bonariensis between stems of Festive Jewel;
a comma stopped upon another;
a bee visited a salvia.
The first of these two white plants are hollyhocks grown from allegedly red seed; the second, Japanese anemones.
A pink version of the latter hides a lurking hoverfly.
Gauras, rudbeckia, and double lilies are all doing well.
The Lawn Bed and the Gazebo Path both sport splendid colour.
After lunch, we visited the Barbe Baker Museum shop in Lymington to buy some hand made birthday presents, then continued into the forest.
Ponies grazed on Hatchet Moor within sight of the eponymous pond and its waterlilies,
photographed by me,
and by Jackie,
who also captured the first of these cygnet images,
seen here with their parents.
I watched a wet dog return to the water where it attacked an inoffensive tree.
Its owner informed me that, like Becky’s Scooby, her animal would chase sticks thrown in the water, but never bring them back, so he resorted to replenishing the supply.
A pony foal wandered across the tarmac to the East Boldre end of St Leonard’s Road, and proceeded to accompany its mother in synchronised grazing.
Other members of the group did their best to block the road,
while another did her best to suck soup from the rapidly drying corner pool.
This evening we dined on roast chicken breasts; boiled new potatoes; and fresh salad, with which Jackie drank Greco di Tufo white wine and I drank Torre de Ferro Reserva Dao 2017.
‘A piñata (/pɪnˈjɑːtə/, Spanish pronunciation: [piˈɲata] (listen)) is a container, often made of papier-mâché, pottery, or cloth, that is decorated, filled with candy, and then broken as part of a celebration. Piñatas are commonly associated with Mexico. The idea of breaking a container filled with treats came to Europe in the 14th century, where the name, from the Italianpignatta, was introduced. The Spanish brought the European tradition to Mexico, although there were similar traditions in Mesoamerica, such as the Aztecs’ honoring the birthday of the god Huītzilōpōchtli in mid-December. According to local records, the Mexican piñata tradition began in the town of Acolman, just north of Mexico City, where piñatas were introduced for catechism purposes as well as to co-opt the Huitzilopochtli ceremony. Today, the piñata is still part of Mexican culture, the cultures of other countries in Latin America, as well as the United States, but it has mostly lost its religious character.’ (Wikipedia)
During her stay here, Tess, for an upcoming birthday party, has produced this unicorn piñata using balloons, capable of being burst by boys with sharp implements, as containers for the papier-maché body trimmed with castellated slices of scrap paper; coloured tissue strips; and a twisted card horn.
It was a delicate operation for Tess to place her creation safely in the car.
This afternoon we led the family on a pony and donkey hunt.
At the top of Holmsley Passage we stopped for a foal and other ponies among the bracken and the heather.
We did encounter one baby donkey trotting with its mother along the road at South Gorley, but by the time we managed to park the cars it was long gone.
In fact the traffic, especially along the narrow lanes, was so congested as to make the trip somewhat abortive, until it was rescued by a trip to Hockey’s Farm Shop for ice cream and fun with the livestock of this establishment, where Poppy was pleased to
stroke a donkey;
see lamas;
pigs at trough;
geese blending with buddleia;
a horse attending to pedicure;
and especially chickens.
We parted at Hockey’s and each made our ways home.
This evening Jackie and I dined on chicken marinaded in Nando’s lemon and lime sauce; her own savoury rice, and fresh salad, with which she drank more of the Sauvignon Blanc and I drank more of the Douro.
Ponies and foals were cropping the verges of Bisterne Close.
We lunched with Mat, Tess, and Poppy at The Rising Sun at Bashley. Despite the hundreds of customers in this extensive establishment, we were all impressed with the speed and efficiency of the service and the excellence of the meals. Mine consisted of steak and ale pie, chips, peas, carrots, and cabbage with thick, meaty gravy, followed by ginger sponge and custard. I drank Otter ale.
There were not quite as many ponies outside the pub as in this image from 2017, but enough to give credibility to my prediction that there would be a sighting.
Our granddaughter met another contemporary called Poppy and her sister Florence – the names of our Poppy and her cousin, Becky’s daughter.
Afterwards, Tess and Poppy drove off to a beach, while the rest of us returned home and flopped.
Among this morning’s reminiscences is the tale of the mis-sold cousin. Becky told us about the announcement that she had a new cousin who was a girl. This was Alex, a few years younger. Our daughter was very young herself, but old enough to look forward to having someone new to play with, because she was surrounded by boys in the form of her brother Mathew and various other cousins.
When introduced to the two week old baby, Becky was so disappointed and remembers thinking “what can I do with that?”. Today she expressed the humorous view that this was a case of mis-sold goods.
After a tour of the garden on another drizzly day, Becky and Ian returned home this afternoon. These images include dahlias; a deep red gladiolus; three different views of the Pond Bed; hanging basket petunias alongside Japanese anemones; hanging basket lobelias, bidens, and petunias beside double lilies; hibiscus; roses; white sweet peas; mostly white planting on Dead End Path; yellow and orange crocosmias; raindrops on calibrachia and pelargoniums; and, finally, another lily.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s succulent cottage pie; crunchy carrots and cauliflower; and tender chopped cauliflower leaves, with which Jackie drank more of the Sauvignon Blanc and Tess and I drank Papa Figos Douro 2019 which she had brought with her.
On a visit to The Priest’s House Museum at Wimborne in November 2013 I entered the Victorian kitchen, laid out with all its accoutrements, complete with an elderly woman with a shawl round her shoulders and a book in her hands before a lighted kitchen range.
This truly was an authentic tableau, with just one figure of the period in situ. Then she spoke. I laughed wholeheartedly, and said I had thought she was a model. She told me that a small boy earlier had thought the same thing, and had been most surprised when she greeted him.
This was Margery Ryan who was clearly one of the museum’s volunteers, and a wealth of information, including that of the children’s activities. They were encouraged to make toast with one of the toasting forks hanging beside the kitchen range, just as I and my siblings had done by an open fire in our sitting room at Stanton Road. I remembered how, on a coal fire, you had to take your hand away every now and again because it got pretty hot. There were no electric toasters.
The range in this photograph is exactly the same as the one we used throughout my childhood. Although a gas cooker came later, Mum would have heated a kettle like that on this stove. She had no electric iron in 1944. An iron one was also heated on the stove and, a protective cloth wrapped around the handle, applied to the family washing she had undertaken by hand, using bowls, soap, scrubbing brush, and tub, such as those in this picture of a mangle into which
sheets, in particular, were placed between two rollers, and you turned a handle in order to squeeze and therefore rinse them. One day when we were very small Chris left his finger in as I turned the handle. Fortunately his bones must have still been soft enough to be re-inflated.
I have no idea how Mum dried our clothes when it was too wet to hang them out on the washing line in the garden. There was, of course, neither washing machine nor drier.
Mum was most inventive with very limited resources.
This photograph depicts the first trio of our parents’ offspring, namely me, Chris, and Jacqueline, taken, I imagine, in the summer of 1948, probably in Durham, and if so by our grandfather. We were very proud of those Fair Isle jumpers which were all the rage then, and continue to be made today. I don’t think they were available at that time from outlets such as Laura Ashley. They were, and still are, hand-knitted in the island in northern Scotland from which they take their name. The genuine article is no longer generally available for sale, the market having been swallowed by mass production. Their geometric patterns remain popular.
Ours were not from the Fair Isle. They were, like all our other clothes, made by our mother. A couple of years later, my grandmother taught me to knit. I made endless scarves. When I say endless, this is a literal statement. They had no endings because I didn’t know how to cast off and had to wait for Grandma Hunter to be in the mood to do it for me. They had usually got a bit straggly by then, and it wasn’t good for her temper.
I was, however, fascinated by the making of the patterns and progressed to designing, on squared paper, images for Mum to knit.
This, as far as I remember, involved different symbols for different stitches, with the use of appropriate colours. Joseph was to follow me in this, and I believe a Goofy design that Mum reproduced on a jumper for several family members was drawn on graph paper by him not so very long ago. He obviously shared his brother’s interest in going beyond the geometric.
My own early masterpieces, long before anyone thought of recycling, have most likely wound up in some landfill somewhere.
Alternatively, if, like Mum’s dressmaking patterns, cut into squares and threaded on a string, the material was thin enough to be used for toilet paper, they could have come in handy in the loo.
Our bedrooms, there being no central heating, and coal expensive, were unheated. This could become nose-tinglingly cold with icy sheets, especially if you had wet them. The beauty of it, however, was that you could wake in the morning to frost patterns,
like this from our car windscreen in January 2017, on the inside of your windows.
Dishes were washed and dried by hand.
There was no fridge. 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.
Many of today’s children carry their own mobile devices with which they may make and receive telephone calls; send and receive texts or e-mails; watch films; and goodness knows what else may be possible by the time this tale is published. Imagine an era, if you can, in which most people didn’t have a telephone in their home, and if they did it was rented from the Post Office, attached to a cable embedded in the wall, on a line shared with neighbours who, if so inclined, could listen in to each other’s conversation.
Personal Computers had not even been thought about.
Our family never had a telephone. I was eighteen when I first used one at work. It scared the life out of me every time it rang.
Although Dad was a driver in the Army we never had a car. Neither did others in our street.
Most people had no television, and those on the market possessed very small screens in grainy black and white, often with stripes rolling up and down the picture. They usually only worked if the aerial was in the correct position to receive the signal, often held in someone’s hand. If there was no available aeriaI a coat hanger would do. I was fifteen when my parents were first given a second-hand set.
We received our mail-ordered present for Matthew’s birthday during the December lockdown and consequently were unable to give it to him until this morning. It was a professional electric drill kit.
While waiting for the equipment to charge up, our son sat on the decking working on a puzzle book.
He decided to try out the drill on the decking boards. He tells us that most people who fit this facility assume that the ridged sides should be uppermost because they think that the crevices are to provide a grip, when in fact they become slippery.
When the power was operative he set about lifting a section of the existing boards
and turning them over.
Here is the completed job. Note that the step has received the treatment.
Jackie in the meantime, having completed her work on the West Bed clearance,
carried on pruning beneath the Cryptomeria and elsewhere. I transferred some clippings to the compost bins.
After recording others’ work in progress, I scanned the next five of Charles Keeping’s faithfully detailed illustrations to ‘Our Mutual Friend’.
‘Mr Boffin closely tracked and observed by a man of genteel appearance’ gives the artist the opportunity to pack a street scene with detailed perspective.
A double page spread offers adequate room for ‘Mrs Boffin’s equipage’
‘Mr and Mrs Lammle walked in a moody humour’ uses the wind to indicate the cooling of their ardour.
‘ ‘Alfred, my love, here is my friend Georgiana’ ‘, displays Charles Keeping’s mastery of expression.
‘An ill-looking visitor with a squinting leer’
This afternoon Becky and Ian joined us. We enjoyed more delayed birthday present giving and all dined this evening at Lal Quilla. My main meal choice was a hot, sweet, and sour Chicken Jaljala which was excellent; poppadoms, nans, onion bhajis, and rices were shared; Kingfisher, white wine, fizzy water, and Diet Coke were quaffed. Service, as always, was friendly and efficient.
I drizzling grey colander hung in the sky today while I worked on
clipping and transferring to compost the dogwood in the corner of the front drive which was obscuring the vision of anyone heading into Christchurch Road, either from our garden or from that of Mistletoe Cottage next door.
This is rather a dangerous daytime task as a steady stream of traffic whizzes past, often very close to the kerb. Particular care has to be taken not to step back and admire one’s work, and to sway heads out of the paths of wing mirrors of large trucks. Daytime traffic offers one advantage in that it is not so easy to exceed the 40 m.p.h. speed limit as it is at night, when the road is less populated.
This evening Mat, Tess, and Poppy joined us for a few days, and we dined on Mr Chan’s excellent Hordle Chinese Take Away fare, with which Tess and I drank more of the Comté Tolosan Rouge.
There had been great disappointment in Manchester on the rainswept 16th December 1929, when the huge airship the R101 was expected to fly above the city. In fact the R101 missed Manchester, but would not have been visible anyway in those weather conditions.
Seven year old Jean Hunter was, six months later, on that May day, lined up with the rest of the schoolchildren in the playground of the Jewish Board school in Waterloo Road. Mum attended this school because the prison officers’ quarters, to which her father was entitled, was nearby. There was much excitement and dazzling of juvenile eyes peering into the skies. No sound came from above. Mum thinks that had there been any noise they would have been scared.
Suddenly, slowly, silently, a huge sausage shaped balloon glided overhead. This was not the R101, but its sister ship the R100. The Manchester Evening Mail described the transport thus: ‘Imagine an object with an enormous length equal to that of two football pitches, shaped like a massively long and cigar-shaped dart; cruising at almost roof-top height, with its silvery outer-skin gleaming in the May mid-day sun, and moving so slowly it seemed to hover: Well! I put it to you such a sight would stop traffic even now; and to an age hardly used to air-flight, it must have appeared awesome’.
Three days after little Jean’s eighth birthday on 2nd October 1930, the R101, on its maiden passenger flight crashed in France and burst into flames. This effectively ended the British air industry’s airship adventure, and the R100, that had so awed Manchester’s thousands, was dismantled in its shed at Cardington in November 1931 and eventually sold as scrap for £450.
In July 1969, it was at my parents’ home that I was to heave their grandson Michael out of bed to watch “one giant leap for mankind” on their small black and white television..
