September 2021 – Page 5 – derrickjknight

A Knight’s Tale (28: Three Monarchs In Quick Succession)

In our classroom on the morning of 6th February 1952 we witnessed the dragon’s tears. Miss Bryant was an extremely fearsome headmistress. Hitherto the only tears associated with her were those of pupils who were in for it. As I have previously indicated, being sent to Miss Bryant was to be avoided at all costs. This time, Miss Bryant came to us. That in itself was an event, as she toured the school with the dreadful news. This calm, contained, diminutive, yet terrifying woman burst into our classroom in tears to announce: ‘The king is dead!’.

I can assure you there is no more effective way to imprint an image for life on a child’s memory. It is a sobering thought that most people alive today have known no other UK monarch than Queen Elizabeth II; and that when she ascended the throne in 1953, most of her subjects did not have a television.

Mr. and Mrs. Brown lived next door. In sixteen years I don’t remember ever having seen either of them. I think there was a disability involved. Mr. Brown made Elizabeth a doll called Minnehaha. It was the Browns’ television, I believe, which was responsible for my teenage fantasies. No, not those fantasies. In the twilight moments between being awake and asleep, I would hear the three discordant notes which Mum said were coming from their television. I believe it was a closing down signal. This led me to thinking how wonderful it would be if you could have a picture frame on your wall and a gadget that could tune in to and display in this any of the films currently being shown on any of the four cinemas Wimbledon then boasted. We didn’t have a television and the only one I had ever seen was a small wooden cabinet bearing a postage stamp sized screen. This was for the occasion of the coronation on 2nd June 1953 when those of us at school who didn’t have a television were billeted with those who did. Being a tall lad I was seated at the back from whence I peered at a tiny black and white haze.

Photo from https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-Coronation-1953/

This digitally remastered image, in its wide format, sharper focus, and without parallel lines travelling up or down it, would not have been possible on the little square screen of that early TV; but I do remember a hazy something like the Queen’s head.

Little did I imagine, in that teenage dream world, what my grandchildren can now hold in the palms of their hands.

In July 2013 Hawes & Curtis in Jermyn Street, hoping to attract prospective customers to take advantage of their large reductions, featured King Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson. In his brief tenure this playboy king had provoked a constitutional crisis in 1936 by his determination to marry his twice divorced lover. In that bygone age this was acceptable neither to the Church nor the State – although 50 years on, their image was thought by this West End outfitters to be likely to draw buyers for goods past their sell-by date. Edward, as king, was not allowed to marry his Wallis, and therefore chose to abdicate, on December 11th, and thrust his younger brother onto centre stage. A reluctant and shy monarch, King George VI, despite a dreadful stutter, with his wife Elizabeth, saw us nobly through the war years and died at the age of 56, making way for our current long-serving queen. Colin Firth was awarded a well earned Oscar for his spellbinding performance in the 2010 film ‘The King’s Speech’ which follows King George’s struggles to find his voice.

Queen Elizabeth II was, at 25, even younger than had been her father when she found herself at the helm.

Greener Graveyard Grass

This morning we visited Shelly and Ron with a birthday present for our brother in law. We enjoyed a pleasant conversation over coffee and biscuits, then returned home for lunch, after which we took a forest drive.

Hightown Lane begins alongside a stream at ground level. Here, as in all the other lane verges

the wild plants are fading and turning to seed.

A pair of field horses, eyes protected by masks, stood nose to tail offering each other twitching tails as further insect deterrents.

Gradually the sinuous trail winds uphill,

cleaving its way through ever steeper dappled banks bearing mossy trees with exposed talon-roots.

Residents of the properties at the top of the slopes, like many others, have laid log barriers to prevent visitors parking on their

woodland.

While one grey pony stretched over Cross Lanes Chapel graveyard wall seeking greener grass at Mockbeggar, another ambled over the crossroads. Perhaps other such equines have tilted the railings over the years.

It was the turn of donkeys with foals to hold up traffic at Ibsley.

In vain a pair of hopeful hounds sped after a hare never to be overtaken on Blissford Hill.

This evening Jackie finished last night’s Red Chilli takeaway and I enjoyed a thin pepperoni pizza with fresh salad. My wife drank more of the Pinot Grigio and I drank Torre de Ferro Reserva Dao 2017.

The One-armed Wheelbarrow

On an overcast, more sultry, morning we cleared clippings and I dead headed.

With no change in the weather this afternoon, Jackie set about chopping up the cut foliage from the plants in the front garden corner

while I transported it to the compost bins and added the more woody sections to the ever increasing heap on the Back Drive.

The hydrangea will stay.

Later, Jackie tidied the area and took

hydrangea cuttings which will be covered with plastic bags and placed in the greenhouse

My post “Five Years On”, from October 14th, 2019 shows, not only the said drive as it was when we first arrived, but also some of the fires that dispensed with the vast amount of brushwood that we cleared from the jungle that was our garden.

It is now apparent that we will need some more bonfires that will call into service the one-armed wheelbarrow in the same way as one was employed before.

Later this afternoon I posted https://derrickjknight.com/2021/09/04/a-knights-tale-27-eventually-chris-twigged/

This afternoon Elizabeth came with baskets of dirty washing to avail herself of our washing machine because hers has died. This took some hours and she shared our takeaway meal from Red Chilli. She and I finished the Comté Tolosan Rouge while Jackie started on another bottle of the Pinot Grigio Bluch.

A Knight’s Tale (27: Eventually Chris Twigged)

Sometime around 1950 when Chris and I were still at primary school, if you were prepared to walk home, in the days of small High Street shops before the advance of supermarkets such as Tesco, you could spend your bus fare on a bag of broken biscuits from the old style family grocer in The Broadway,

or, in season, a pomegranate from a fruit and veg stall in Russell Road. You ate the pomegranate seeds with a pin carried for the purpose. If you wanted an ice cream from De Marco’s alongside the stall that meant walking home two days in a row and managing not to spend the first day’s fare on the first day.

In this picture of Russell Road from July 2012, Hawes Estate agent who collected rent from my mother throughout my childhood, is on the site of De Marco’s ice cream parlour and MoneyGram was once a shop selling holy pictures and other religious mementos. A sign of changing priorities, no doubt. Especially in Wimbledon, now land of Starbucks, Costa and Cafe Nero. Wimbledon, where, in my childhood, you could smell coffee roasted and being ground in a shop along the broadway. Wimbledon, where Whittard of Chelsea now offers taste guaranteed luxury tea and coffee in Centre Court shopping mall.

Wimbledon Theatre, on our left of the picture, after several refurbishments, now styled New Wimbledon Theatre, is where, still in primary school I saw my first Shakespeare Play, details of which I cannot remember.

One day Chris and I, whilst walking home, decided to investigate Spencer Hill.

Some way up the hill, in someone’s garden, stood a tree with an inviting hollow area at the top of the trunk. I climbed up to the gap to have a look. Chris followed. As I entered the bowl shape in the bole I heard a rather angry buzzing sound. In an instant I was covered in bees. I’d like to say I was out of there like a shot. Unfortunately Chris was bringing up the rear and seemed to have some difficulty in understanding either ‘bees’ or ‘get down’ or all of it. He didn’t seem to grasp that he was in my way. I yelled incessantly until Chris twigged and leapt from the bottom branch. I was then out of Spencer Hill and onto a bus like the shot. Having, of course, spent my fare I had no money. I recall the concern of the bus conductor for this snivelling wreck with his head in a swarm of bees occupying the first seat on his vehicle, and the kindness of the woman opposite who paid my fare. Chris must have made his own way home, but I was no caring elder brother at that point.

To this day I remember sitting on a stool with Mum picking bee stings and the dead creatures out of my head. I can still see them crawling dazedly inside my fair-isle jumper. If ever I lose my hair and there are pitted marks in the scalp I bet they’ll be from those bees.

Logistical Problems

Garden maintenance – mostly clearing up and dead heading – began early this morning for us both.

No doubt attracted by the redolent scent of roses released by the warm sunshine, bees buzzed and butterflies flittered around me as I wielded the secateurs.

Bees and Red Admirals both tried the fading Festive Jewel;

both also favoured verbena bonariensis,

as did Comma and Small White butterflies.

Worker bees were mostly partial to Summer Wine.

A little later we drove to Milford Pharmacy for a repeat prescription; to Tesco for E10 unleaded petrol; to Ferndene Farm shop for three bags of compost and various vegetables; and to the forest for a preprandial drive.

Heather beamed bright on the verges of Burley Road, while

a group of ponies were already sheltering under the trees at the corner of Burley Lawn, doing their best to switch off each other’s flies, by the head to tail method.

This presented some logistical problems arising from a certain size difference.

Later this afternoon I posted https://derrickjknight.com/2021/09/03/a-knights-tale-26-town-halls-trams-and-trolley-buses/

This evening we dined on oven fish and chips, onion rings, and peas, with which Jackie finished the Pinot Grigio and I drank more of the Comte Tolosan Rouge.

A Knight’s Tale (26: Town Halls, Trams, And Trolley Buses)

We were dependent in those days on trolley buses to take us to school or the first leg of the journey to Auntie Gwen’s. From Merton’s splendid Art Deco Town Hall we would take a tram to Latimer Road, and occasionally continue along Wimbledon Broadway by tram.

Years later I was to discover that the hand carved fitted furniture for the above-mentioned building had been removed when its inside was gutted to accommodate the current Tesco supermarket. Only the facade remains. The solid oak curved fittings were transferred to the mayor’s rooms in the ’60s tower block that now houses council offices. Needless to say they fitted in neither sense of the word.

It is perhaps no coincidence that I watched the removal of a splendid wood panelled staircase and its circular landing smashed up and removed from what had been my Social Services Area Office to make way for the aluminium and laminate structures of the Westminster Council Leader, Tesco heiress, Dame Shirley Porter’s “One Stop Shop” in the 1980s. This had been a Victorian Town Hall.

Now to return to the trolley buses.

(Photo: David Bradley Online)

Trolley buses were a post tram invention, utilising overhead wires providing the current which was fed to the buses through long connecting rods. These were much longer than the links used by today’s Intercity trains. Much delight was taken by all us children when the rods became dislodged. It was a major undertaking to reposition them, which was an entertainment in itself, and, of course, if it happened at the right time and in the right direction, the bus couldn’t take us to school. In modern football parlance I’d say that was a result.

These buses ran along Worple Road, providing a transport link between Wimbledon and Raynes Park. Until the early 1950s Wimbledon sported both trolley buses and trams.

(Photo by Norman Hurford, 1950, scanned by Peter Brabham on Flickr.)

I am proud of a story featuring my paternal grandfather, John Francis Cecil Knight, who was walking alongside one of these open-topped vehicles during the early 20th century. A man on the upstairs deck gobbed overboard. The phlegm landed on Grandpa’s sleeve. He jumped on the tram, ran upstairs, and made the offender wipe off his deposit.

These were the days when you could freely board public transport on the move.

Trams have been widely reintroduced in England. Those between Wimbledon and Croydon make use in part of disused railway tracks. They do not glide down Wimbledon Broadway as did the early trams of my boyhood.

In May 2012, whilst waiting on a red light at the ungated level crossing being approached by a tram in each direction I sensed that a young oriental jogger was going to continue on through the path of the trams. She didn’t look from side to side and ignored the light. I held up my hand indicating that she should stop. She took no apparent notice of me, glanced to her left, and ran on. The tram that was the most dangerous missed her. She was wearing specs with very thick lenses. Maybe she couldn’t see. Maybe she had confidence in her speed.

Behind The Scenes

I began another gloomy-looking day by printing a batch of photographs for my sister, Jacqueline, including

this one of her son, my nephew James and his son Shay at Michael and Heidi’s wedding on 5th October 1991.

Our blogging friend Carolyn began a comment on “Her Autumn Garden” with

a poem which I printed for Jackie to stick on her fridge. She photographed both it and a series of behind the scenes locations.

From the east front gate we see the Head Gardener’s Shed, greenhouse, and

potting up station where, perched on her kneeler she fills containers in the wheelbarrow from the fresh compost bags.

Behind the shed various implements are stored, and beside it potted items await their permanent homes.

Plants in need of more nurturing begin their lives in the greenhouse, also seen

beside the wisteria arbour.

Accessed from the west gates beside the house

the front garden contains a strengthened arch.

Later, we shopped at Otter Nurseries for Sharp Sand, pansies, and a hose attachment; posted Jacqueline’s photographs from Everton Post Office; and continued for a short forest drive.

Attracted by a fallen giant at Lucy Hill, I disembarked and scrambled into the

woodland where earlier casualties were in the process of being absorbed into last autumns leaves on the forest floor or draped in undergrowth to aid their decomposition and provide winter quarters for various insects and other small creatures;

and bracken was beginning to shrivel and turn golden brown.

Ever perverse, the sun waited for me to return to the Modus before sending weak streaks across the fallen leaves and silhouetting trees opposite.

Finally Jackie pointed out a door in a tree trunk behind which a Hobbit may have set up home.

This evening we enjoyed our second helpings of yesterday’s Chinese takeaway with which Jackie drank more of the Pinot Grigio and I drank Chevalier de Fauvert Comte Tolosan Rouge 2019.