David Chesworth, who understands the degrees of family relationships, and knows he is my second cousin once removed, this morning sent me his version of yesterday’s
sunset that he named Le Dragon.
I really do think I finished with the paperwork today as I emptied the second little cabinet that stood beside my desk, and Jackie and I carried it to the shed to await disposal.
After lunch I wandered around the garden, once more in a temperature warm enough for shirtsleeves, and photographed
the garden just as it is on this last afternoon of November. Each image in the gallery bears a title.
This evening we dined on more of Jackie’s tasty sausages in red wine with fresh vegetables. The Culinary Queen drank Hoegaarden and I finished the Merlot.
A fair was first held in Soho in 1883, and then intermittently, including a fair and market held in aid of the Soho Hospital for Women in 1939. When we lived in Horse and Dolphin Yard The Soho Festival as it was then, and is now, called had recently been reconstituted as an annual event organised by the Soho Society (currently each July) in the grounds of St Anne’s Garden.
In September 1976, then only 7 years old, Ondekoza the stunning Japanese band of timpanists entertained the Soho Festival. These images are from my original colour slides. ‘Founded in 1969 by Den Tagayasu, in Sado Island, Japan. Ondekoza was influential in the rise of the kumi-daiko (group taiko) style of taiko.[1] Not a taiko player himself, Tagayasu helped transform taiko from a festival-based music form to a virtuosic performance art performed on stage. Ondekoza’s performances in North America in 1975 was the first exposure for many and helped spread interest in taiko through North America. The now widely recognized style of wearing only a ‘shimekomi’ (‘fundoshi loincloth) was originally started by Ondekoza when Pierre Cardin suggested that the physique of the drummer be exposed. The traditional Japanese drummers do not play only in underwear.'(Wikipedia)
A Punch and Judy show in 1976 gave entertainment for all ages. One photograph I took of the audience featured on the cover of the Social Care Association’s monthly magazine.
Becky, on this occasion, was distracted from the puppets by the sight of my lens. A little boy nearby, was engaged in that familiar comforting exercise of thumb-sucking combined with ear-twiddling. Another had lost one of his front incisors.
The first family member to have the courage to enter a spaghetti eating competition was Michael.
As the dry spaghetti was ladled onto his plate, he looked as if he was about to bite off more that he could chew. The thin coating of tomato sauce, looking no more appetising than ketchup, didn’t seem to do much to improve the digestion. My son soon got stuck in. He and one of his rivals seemed to think the nearer the dish they got, the better their chances.
The booted Gypsy Joe was a very good professional photographer who befriended Michael and produced some excellent images of the boy and his dog, Piper.
An elderly gentleman, eating at a leisurely pace, had probably just come along for his dinner.
The large Romeo y Julieta samples for the cigar smoking contest had coincidentally been provided by a supplier called Knight. The idea was that you smoked one of these lengthy monsters for as long as you could without losing the ash. When I entered in 1977, I actually had the longest ash, but mine was bent. I therefore came second to a woman whose was straight. You can imagine the ribaldry that provoked. My vanquisher is seated on the right of the newspaper cutting above. I am prone on the floor.
This morning I emptied a small cabinet of drawers which stood beside my desk. Some of the contents needed shredding, some were binned, and some found homes in our new cupboards. I then tackled two public bodies who I can only reach on line. I won’t bore you with the details of these, save to say that after nearly an hour on the phone with BT I wound up learning that I must pay £7.50 a month to retain my e-mail address. VAT wasn’t mentioned, but I bet that will be added.
At the end of the afternoon we took a drive on which, over Beaulieu Road we noticed that
sunset was on its way.
Hatchet Pond rose up to meet it as we watched the gentle pink skies set ablaze reflecting on the surface among swans, gulls, and ducks, some of which each of us photographed
away from the the flaming areas. In mine gulls create ripples on the surface which Jackie’s sailing swans do not disturb. The Assistant Photographer has also captured reflecting gulls with wings raised and lowered in flight.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s succulent sausages in red wine; creamy mashed potatoes; crunchy carrots; firm broccoli; and tender red cabbage, with which she drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Merlot.
The Tokyo Diner at the corner of Newport Street now occupies the site of the laundrette featured in a television film, as far as I remember, about a search for accommodation by a young mother with two small children.
Back in the 1970s I had been sitting in my local Soho launderette watching our washing circulating when a film crew came in, ushered everyone else out, and asked me to remain to stay in shot for a particular sequence. On transmission evening we all sat in front of the telly eagerly awaiting my star performance. In the launderette scene it was momentarily possible, unless you blinked, to see an elbow which could just possibly have been mine.
Shortly afterwards, filling the screen, was my son Michael, with his dog Piper, striding down Dean Street with a huge grin on his face. I think you could say I had been upstaged.
The morning was spent completing the clearance of paperwork prompted by our refurbishment. The last to go was documentation from my Limited Company going back two decades. Two more general cabinets to be emptied and we will be done.
We dined tonight at Lal Quilla, where I enjoyed chicken Jaljala, but Jackie unfortunately found her Lal Quilla Special rather too hot for her liking. We shared a garlic naan, sag bhaji, and pilau rice, and both drank Kingfisher. The experience was as welcoming and friendly as always.
From our sitting room we could peer through two windows into a kitchen that appeared also to contain bunk beds.
I photographed the scene in November 1976. Chopping of food took place all through the night. This somewhat interfered with sleep. In the early hours of one morning Jessica lost patience and rather politely called out asking the choppers to desist. The reply was: ‘We’ve been here fifty years. If you don’t like it, move.’ We did so in 1980, but before then,
I used them as bookshelves. My collection was moved to our next home in Gracedale Road, SW16.
Here Jessica, Louisa, and Sam are seen in front of them in 1984. When our son was about the age that Louisa is here, my Dad, concerned about having witnessed the toddler’s one attempt to scale the stacks, arrived with a drill and a set of screws with which he fixed the rather higgledy piggledy shelves to the wall. We learned later that our purchaser, when he sold the house some years afterwards, claimed to have constructed my library repository himself, and turned it into a selling point.
While the overnight gale continued to rant, rave, and spatter our windows we spent the morning continuing the decluttering prompted by our domestic refurbishment. I made considerable headway in dispensing with decades of paperwork.
Late this afternoon, when the wind and the rain desisted, we rewarded ourselves with a forest drive.
At the corner of Brock Hill Car Park serving the Rhinefield ornamental drive a victim of the recent winds, ripped from its rooting place and tossed onto picnic tables lay ready to join
others having earlier suffered similar fates to return to the soil from which they sprang.
A bitter wind made the temperature feel colder than the 3 degrees Centigrade that was recorded. The walkers lending scale to the giant redwoods around them were wrapped up well.
We have learned that robins abandon gardens for the forest during winter. They were much in evidence. This one dropped onto a fungus-bearing post.
From Rhinefield we progressed to pass Burley Manor where two groups of walkers caught the last of the sunlight as they crossed the lawn and its dying trees.
The skies were adopting gentle pastel shades, which strengthened by the time we reached
Picket Post, blessed with Jesus beams on the approach to sunset, more apparent across the moors alongside
Holmsley Passage.
This evening we dined on moist roast lamb; boiled new potatoes and the sweet variety roasted with parsnips; firm broccoli; tasty red cabbage; and tender runner beans; with mint sauce and meaty gravy. Jackie drank Hoegaarden while I drank Duck Point Merlot 2019.
After a full day of tidying and clearing we took a quick trip to catch the sunset at Mudeford.
Jackie managed to transport a carpet upstairs, one step and a time; we then moved a computing desk from the days when the devices all had towers downstairs to extend the long wooden desk I bought 34 years ago from the previous owner when I bought Lindum House. This enabled me to arrange iMac, scanner, and printer in a less cluttered manner, prompting me to tidy out the drawers on the basis that if anything inside them related to equipment I no longer used it was binned. I also continued disposing of ancient paperwork.
We drove though a dramatic shower and a range of moody skies which, by the time we reached our goal were quietly smouldering until
the flickering flames of a bonfire blew across the skies.
A stately cavalcade of swans and cygnets sailed past a row of mallards
A woman pushing a pram, and perching gulls provided picturesque silhouettes.
On the outside of a shop on the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and Macclefield Street, very close to our bedroom window, sat a burglar alarm constantly being set off by spiders and such. Once activated it would not desist from ringing. The police could never either trace a keyholder or get one to come out and turn off the noise. One of their problems was that the establishment often changed hands. On one occasion when it was doing my head in, and the police were unable to help, I decided to take it off the wall. Armed with a screwdriver and a hammer, I climbed a ladder, hoping no-one was looking up my dressing gown, and set about it. This was a very complicated procedure in which I had to completely dismantle the offending article and prise apart some wires before the shrill noise would stop. Fortunately I had no need of the hammer. When I returned to bed, hoping to sleep, Jessica suggested that I should tell the police what I had done. I did. Five minutes later I was arrested. On being escorted into the police station I was greeted with calls of ‘ ‘ere, that bloke rings a bell’, and ‘don’t get alarmed mate.’ I think it was the highlight of their evening. The sergeant informed me that they were not prepared to charge me with criminal damage, but they had to give the owner the opportunity to do so. And I hadn’t actually damaged anything. I’d carefully collected up all the bits. I’d have had more sleep if I’d stayed indoors. Unsurprisingly, the owner was not interested in pursuing the matter.
Some while later, intent on repeating my misdemeanour, I was halfway up the ladder when a policeman politely asked me what I was doing. When I told him, he said I wasn’t. ‘Oh, OK’, I replied, and went back to bed. Eventually I tried a more subtle solution. By this time the outlet was selling clothes. After a particularly bad three nights in succession, I persuaded a shop assistant to give me the phone number of the current owner. The next occasion on which our sleep was disturbed, I telephoned him. ‘Whoooaahr’, said I, with a sharp outlet of breath, ‘I think you’d better come out here’. Now he was alarmed. I went on to tell him that his shop had been burgled. In their haste to get away the perpetrators had strewn jeans all over Shaftesbury Avenue. Naturally, in telling this little white lie, I remained anonymous. We were never troubled again. Our neighbours were quite grateful.
Early this morning Richard and Al of Kitchen Makers visited to cut the bottom off the new inner door and return it to its position.
They brought a trestle in order to measure and cut the door in the front garden.
Before they put back the door, they carried the long case clock into the hall from the corner of the sitting room into which they had toted it before the flooring work began. There proved to be some difficulty with this on account of replacing the weights, which required generous patience and ingenuity considering that they had already fitted this in ahead of their planned day’s work. Jackie having reset it, the clock continues to keep the perfect time it has maintained for 200 years
Martin, from Fordingbridge, then visited to discuss and quote for rebuilding the wisteria arbour.
After lunch we posted the Probate Application, cheque, and supporting documentary evidence from Everton Post Office; followed on to Ferndean Farm Shop where Jackie purchased some provisions; and set out upon a forest drive.
The burnished landscape glowed along Holmsley Passage.
Ponies grazed and squirrels scampered about the dappled woodland and among autumn leaves nurturing mushrooms and sheltering solitary holly berries alongside
Bisterne Close, in a field on the opposite side of which basked
a lone deer in the sunshine that
backlit a pair of ponies beside Burley Road.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s wholesome winter stewp with which she drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Fleurie.
