Today was dank, dull, and overcast, in stark contrast to the glorious sunshine of yesterday. Jackie and I stayed at home. This morning was spent on domestic tasks, and after lunch we watched Stephen Spielberg’s fascinating film ‘Catch Me If You Can’ on BBC iPlayer.
We had some considerable frustration in actually finding iPlayer and subsequently the film on television. This is because the system of navigation has been changed and I, for one, hardly ever used the old one. Nevertheless we enjoyed the production enough for Jackie to read Wikipedia’s version of the story of a juvenile con-man who impersonated a series of professionals and defrauded numerous banks out of millions of dollars in the late 1960s.
The opening credits tell us that the film is ‘inspired by a true story’. Frank Abagnale Jr is the lead character, played brilliantly by Leonardo di Caprio, who as a rather older actor manages to be a quite creditable teenager who conducted his fraudster adventure before he reached the age of eighteen. In the process he impersonates a teacher; an airline pilot; a doctor; and a lawyer. The initial bravado and excitement, progressing through self-doubt and ultimate signs of panic are well portrayed. There are touchingly tragic elements to the story of this young man who set himself off on a roller-coaster ride and really rather wants to get off but doesn’t know how to do so. Tom Hanks is the FBI agent chasing his fugitive across half the world. He presents a clever mixture of haplessness and useful observation and intuition. Christopher Walken is convincing as the conman father on whom we are given to believe Frank has modelled himself. Wikipedia describes a very different Frank Abagnale Senior. But then, the film does not claim to be a biopic and dramatically this works very well.
Di Caprio’s character is finally caught and imprisoned. Through a developing friendship with Hanks’s FBI agent he is eventually released and works for the Investigation Bureau’s fraud squad. Wikipedia confirms and expands upon this.
Number 41 in the ‘through the ages’ series of photographs features Garrick House Cricket Club, which I joined as an opening bowler in 1957. This photograph was taken in the summer of 1958.
Garrick House in Southampton Street, Covent Garden was the home of theatrical publishers Samuel French Ltd. The cricket club was that of the firm. By 1957, no-one playing for the team worked for the publishers. They therefore handed over ownership and all the kit to the current body of men. The club was, a year or two later merged with Trinity (Battersea) Cricket club, for whom a number of the Garrick House players, including me, turned out. It was Stan Oxley, seated in the centre of the picture, who was one of the trio who formed the Battersea club, and spent his life as its Secretary, who recruited me, first for the team above, and the following year for the much stronger Trinity. There was then no conflict of interest because Garrick house played on Saturdays at Cottenham Park, and Trinity was a wandering Sunday side.
From left to right on the top row stand Peter Gwilliam, Ray Chard, Norman Vigor, Mike Vaughan, and me. Seated are John Baker, Jack Niblett, Stan, John O’Rourke, and Tony Woodward. Bob Mitchell sits on the grass.
Peter was a classy batsman and occasional wicketkeeper lacking similar class. Ray was a powerful all-rounder whose input was somewhat variable. Norman was a talented and stylish batsman and useful fast bowler, who married Eileen, an England off-spinner. Mike could turn a game with his powerful hitting, and was a good wicketkeeper. Modesty prevails for the next one.
John Baker didn’t play often, but was a strong batsman and fast bowler. Jack Niblett was the Alec Bedser of the side. He resembled the great Surrey and England medium paced bowler in size and delivery, but lacked his variation. Jack, very successfully, wore down the opposition by placing the ball, from a remarkably short run-up, exactly on the spot just outside the off stump, at an unexpectedly brisk pace. Every time. Ball after ball. If you wanted to score off him you had to take a risk. I often thought he bored them to death. 
He was definitely a number eleven batsman. Stan, I’ve mentioned above. He was the hub of the club, and after his death sometime in the 1980s the club was renamed Trinity (Oxley) Cricket Club. John O’Rourke was not happy. He was a less than successful pace bowler. Tony was a keen photographer. He once borrowed a couple of my slides to submit to a photographic competition. He didn’t pass them off as his own, but they did receive some commendation. One, unfortunately I’ve lost. The other, taken in September 1971, of Matthew peering through my sister Jacqueline’s back door window, he entitled ‘No Play Today’.
Bob has featured before. He was a fairly reasonable spin bowler and occasional batsman.
This evening we dined on battered haddock and chips, mushy peas and pickled onions. Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I enjoyed Les 3 Lys Crozes Hermitages 2010.
Author: admin
Birthday Greetings
This morning I worked some more on the old negatives. There were another dozen of Sam, and three of my friend Giles. These latter would have been taken when I was living with him in Claverton Street, Pimlico, in 1973. 
We were playing chess on his glass board set into a coffee table. The shot was taken from the viewpoint of me, his opponent. Just for the record, he usually won. Maybe that’s why I wanted to stand him on his head. If it makes you feel disoriented to look at it, it may be helpful to stand your computer on its head in order to admire my friend’s face.
Whilst searching my old albums for help to date the Giles pictures, I found a newspaper cutting of a photograph of contestants in the Soho Festival cigar smoking competition and inserted it into the post featuring that event. For anyone wishing to see it, I’m the one with the dirty feet and clean armpits.
The weather today was splendid. Although the temperature reflected the fact that there was no cloud cover, the sun shone from a clear blue sky throughout the day. It brought all human life to the beach at Bournemouth where Jackie drove me this afternoon. She remained on the top of East Cliff whilst I walked along the top for a while, descended to the beach, and walked to the pier and along the length of it and back.
On the way to Bournemouth, I received a photograph on my Blackberry, of a birth that took place early this morning. It is only a few days ago that I wrote about running a race in aid of my nephew Adam Keenan’s day nursery. Now, he and his wife, Thea, have made me a great uncle for the sixth time; and, more importantly, my sister Elizabeth and his father Rob grandparents for the first time. Since it is the prerogative of his proud parents to display their infant to the world themselves, I will publish neither further details nor the delightfully peaceful picture.
In the top left hand corner of the beach scene above, stands the Red Arrows memorial sculpture. When I first photographed it last year the accompanying plaque was not in situ.
Eschewing the East Cliff Lift, which I would probably find more frightening than the steps down, although even they didn’t look too appetising,
I took the spiral footpath down to the beach. Slaloming among the other pedestrians, a jogger made a number of runs up and down the steep inclines.
Before descending, I noticed that another birthday was being celebrated in greetings in the sand.
A gentleman paddled a surfboard up and down. 
Up and down in more ways than one, 
since he occasionally disappeared beneath the gentle waves that ended their journey sliding up and down the sand in the ebbing tide, only to reform and reform and, like the surfer, repeat the process interminably.
Small families, groups of young people, lovers, dog walkers, and elderly gents occupied themselves in various ways along the sands.
People lined the railings on the end of the pier enjoying watching the sun subside beneath the waves.
During the waning afternoon the vibrant yellow horizon metamorphosed into a pretty pastel pink.
Once we had returned home, Jackie set about preparing a superb chicken and egg curry with savoury rice and parotas for us and Elizabeth, Danni and Andy, with which the rest of us drank Les Courlandes Chateauneuf-du-Pape 2012. Elizabeth said this meal would beat Eastern Nights, which is praise indeed. And true.
Is This Orlaigh?
Last night I finished reading ‘No Cloak, No Dagger’, by Benjamin Cowburn. 
Geoff Grandfield’s dramatic illustrations perfectly enhance the pages of this Folio Society edition of the author’s reminiscences of ‘Allied Spycraft in Occupied France’ during the Second World War.
The book is well written and without exaggeration records Cowburn’s experiences including being one of the first undercover agents parachuted into unoccupied France progressing to recruiting and organising people and projects. It reads like an adventure, although fraught with danger, carrying a surprising lack of the menace that is captured by the illustrator. Grandfield’s spare style with use of strong silhouettes, blocks of colour, and distorted perspective, manages to be rather more emotional. Not that that is in any way criticism of the writer whose fine detail certainly takes us into wartime France and the lives of those who endured it.
Perhaps it was the description of airborne drops in the book that kept my attention on the skies as I walked this morning down to the Village Green, up the footpath to Bull Lane, and back via Seamans Lane. Or if that’s too fanciful, maybe it was just the threat of further rain that caused me to peer aloft..
‘Little Thatch’ cottage is losing its straw. Even the family of decoy ducks has been stripped. I imagine that when the house was given its name that referred to the size of the building rather than the quantity of its covering.
Lowering storm clouds threatened to release their load. 
When stirred into action by an overhead helicopter, they began to do so.
This afternoon I scanned fifteen of my old negatives, and was able to date and place them in early 1981 at Gracedale Road SW16. Two, of Sam and me, were taken by Jessica. The others, of our son, were taken by me, all, I think, with my Olympus OM2.
Sam is pictured at the piano, which he did not pursue in later life;
on our bed; in a baby walker; and at a meal table, once eating and the rest of the time playing.
In this shot I appear to have been pointing something out to him. Perhaps it was a light bulb, for ‘gigh’ (light) was one of his very first words. He used this when he wanted you to lift him up so he could switch on the light.
Jessica and I bought the dining table in about 1975 from our old manager, Muriel Trapp. It now rests in the sitting room at Sigoules. It was pretty ancient when we bought it, and is rather more so now. I wonder whether there would be a market for it in a retro pub?
I really didn’t need to do much work on these pictures when putting them into iPhoto. No more than a little retouching. What was fascinating, however, was the face recognition facility. If the computer identifies a human face it invites you to enter it into the file. It often goes further than simply asking you for a name. It has a stab at the identity and gives you the option to confirm or deny. If you reject the suggestion you type in the name yourself and hopefully the machine gets it right next time.
In these pictures, my son Sam was only a few months younger than his own daughter Orlaigh is now. iPhoto therefore contains pictures of Orlaigh contemporary with these. By 
now you will have guessed that, time and again this afternoon I was asked ‘Is this Orlaigh?’ How about my Christmas present picture from the Thompson family?
(Anyone confused about personnel is referred to the family tree)
The last time we met our friends Geoff and Sheila Austin was to share a meal in Ringwood’s Curry Garden. By happy coincidence that is where Jackie and I were dining this evening when I received a text from Geoff offering Ashes jokes, all of which referred to England’s recent comprehensive defeat in Australia. We were flanked, in the restaurant, by couples on either side who happened to be English cricket fans. Those on my right were even in Sydney to witness one of the ignominious disasters for our team. As we were leaving I told this couple the one about the difference between the English batsmen and Cinderella. Jackie told me I should take Cinderella’s advice and know when to leave the ball.
The food, by the way, was as good as ever, and Kingfisher provided our liquid refreshment.
Barton on Sea
Jackie having completed packing away the Christmas decorations yesterday, I transferred them to the garage this morning. Anyone who has seen the Christmas posts will realise that this involved quite a lot of boxes.
This afternoon Jackie drove me to Barton on Sea and parked near the cliff top cafe. She 
had a coffee in the cafe and waited in the car whilst I took a bracing walk along the cliff top. I had seen photographs of a cliff fall here in the St Barbe Museum. Now I saw the reality for myself. All along the top there were signs warning people not to come too near the edge. It was a bit scary.
I thudded along the turf path for about twenty minutes hoping to find a path down to the shore. It didn’t look likely that one would be forthcoming, so I turned back and found Fisherman’s Walk alongside the cafe. 
The slice of cliff face to my left as I walked down here demonstrated the crumbly nature of this part of the coast. I understand Dorset has lost more in the recent flooding.
Down below, I crunched the pebbles and watched and listened to the waves pounding the granite rocks at the water’s edge. 
A photographer and his model I had shot on the way down were pleased with the results. Unfortunately the woman braced for the spray was not engaged in a swimsuit promotion. 
It was unlikely to have fallen from a rag and bone cart, and I don’t think the discarded wellie was hers, so I didn’t run after them with it.
Before sunset I climbed back up to the car and Jackie drove us home in time to see glowing yellow-tinged clouds scudding above the bare trees of Castle Malwood Lodge.
This evening we dined on chicken Kiev, mashed potatoes, cabbage, and ratatouille, and Remy would have been proud of it. My drink was Les Courlandes 2012 Chateauneuf du Pape. Jackie’s was Hoegaarden.
The Hat
A comment from Becky on yesterday’s post prompted me to delve back into my photographic archives, and scan three more ancient colour slides.
In June 1971, we went on a family holiday with Ellie and Roger Glencross to their cottage, The Haven, in Iwade in Kent. 
Here they are, on the beach, with Matthew in the foreground:
The following August, Jackie, Michael, Matthew and Becky – seen posing outside The Haven – and I, spent a week there on our own. Michael displays his ever-paternal response to his brother and sister. The children had yet to learn that it is infra dig to wear socks with sandals, and this was the era of hot pants. It was in this low-ceilinged cottage that I learned to tape newspapers to the beams so that I would see them and bend my head to avoid bashing it. This ploy didn’t always work.
Jackie, who crocheted the hat that Becky is wearing in this picture on the beach, tells me it is not a mob cap, such as the one appearing on yesterday’s market stall, but a successor. In any case, almost everything in that display was sold. Becky did, however, wear the prototype mob cap. After she had been pushed around Raynes Park sporting it in her pram for several months, a maternity shop, called One and a Half, in Wimbledon Village began selling mob caps. Jackie is convinced they followed her lead.
So excited was I by the above exercise, that I stayed in my dressing gown until I’d completed it. Well, that’s my excuse, anyway. I wasn’t looking forward to tackling the concrete slabs I had abandoned two days ago. I did, however, take up the task again this morning. This involved wielding the grubber axe in order to penetrate the iron-hard soil on one side of each buried block, and gravel and hard-core on the other. The next step was, when the obstruction looked possibly loose enough, to give it a good kick; to discover that it still wouldn’t budge; and to repeat the process until it did. Prising it up was done with whatever garden tool was nearest to hand, until there was enough space to get my fingers underneath it and heave it up.
I had thought there were just three slabs in the row, until I came to the corner and found there were more, extending along the long side of the bed. Anyone wondering why I didn’t know these were there, should understand that they are mostly covered by two or three inches of weed-infested earth. 
After four of the extra ones, I stopped for the day. After all, it was still hot enough to keep the bees buzzing.
This afternoon I walked down to the Spar shop to replenish our stock of sparkling water. This gardening lark is thirsty work. The rooks, chasing each other across the skies, are back in residence.
Roger Cobb was ploughing his maize field.
Bev and John are our only neighbours likely to be affected by a bonfire. I always ring them before lighting one. This was the call I had tried to make two days ago that had alerted me to the problem with my mobile phone. I attempted to telephone them again this evening before burning more branches. I had the same problem. And I couldn’t find the reset button. So I rang O2 at Christchurch. The man who answered the phone knew only of one reset which would wipe all my information. He suggested I took the battery out and put it in again. I did that and it worked. Except that I got a voice telling me my stored numbers were not recognised. I waited a bit and tried again, successfully getting through to Bev. This time Jackie helped with the combustion and we made quite good progress before dinner which consisted of her delicious chicken curry and savoury rice. We finished the Cuvee St Jaine.
A Blighted Oak
This morning began with an hilarious exchange with Becky who corrected our ageing memories over the Apple Juice story. This necessitated amendments in the form of a postscript.
The very heavy rain kindly desisted as I walked the two fords Q later on. The sun put in enough of an appearance to set twinkling the streams running downhill in the ditches, and on the tarmac and verges into Minstead. The blustery wind had not given up. Its thrumming blended well with the tinkling of water on gravel.
Silently dripping from branches above, the rainwater described expanding ripples on the pools beneath, and the torrents pouring under the concrete surfaces of the fords swirled and bubbled, far too fast for me to get a shot in focus. The roughness of the aggregate’s texture produced a criss-cross effect as it disturbed the flow of water upon it.
Minstead’s drains are not yet clogged up, but they will be, and the downhill streams will then proliferate.
I am not sure whether it is Adam or Eve that has lost a large limb to the winds. This bough would certainly have blocked the road until removed by the foresters.
Heaps of crumbled tarmac have been laid across Primrose and Champion‘s gateway in an effort to make their winter feeding a less soggy affair.
Vociferous rooks filled the sky and a silent squirrel sped across the road in front of me on the approach to Running Hill. As I walked up it, tall beeches swaying aloft creaked alarmingly.
This evening we dined on one of their very reasonably priced and excellent set meals and T’sing Tao beer in the friendly atmosphere of Totton’s Family House Chinese restaurant.
Apple Juice
This morning I made a start on sorting and scanning 20 years of random film negatives. The first strip was not my own. It was taken in January 1984 by John Gordon, a friend of my sister Elizabeth. 
This shot featured in the Southampton Daily Echo. Sponsored in aid of Hilldene, her son Adam Keenan’s day nursery, I (701) was taking part in a ten mile race. ‘Race’ simply describes the event. No way was I in contention. I was merely happy to beat my own personal best. This one was completed in 64 minutes, and was a new best time, probably because it was snowing when we began. That does tend to make one rather nippy. I felt rather smug when Elizabeth told me that the photographer had said it would be a comparatively easy task to run alongside me for the pictures, and found it wasn’t. The reason long distance runners look much slower than they really are is the heel/toe action which requires the heels to land first in the stride.
Today was twelfth night, and therefore time to take the Christmas decorations down. First their storage boxes had to be removed from the garage. Carrying the stack of containers through the kitchen, I walked into a metal chair and bruised my shins. The stack rose above my eye line, and I hadn’t thought about it in advance.
My running days are over now, but what promises to be the longest running joke of all time continues to surprise. As Jackie stripped the Christmas tree she let out a cry that must have been heard in Emsworth. It was even louder than mine when I clouted the chair.
Perhaps three years ago now, Jackie and I took Becky and Flo for a meal at Frankie & Benny’s in Ampere Way, Purley. Our granddaughter, as is her wont, drank apple juice. The container bore a green sticker. As we parted company in the car park, Flo slapped the passenger side front window and ran off smartish.
There, adhering to my window pane was the apple juice label. Naturally, when someone plays such a prank, one must retaliate. About a month later, Becky found the item on a part of her car that I do not remember. Backwards and forwards went this transitional object, returned in the most devious of ways. The gaps between the transfers were gradually extended. This was essential because you had to give your victim time to have forgotten about it.
Have you, dear reader, remembered that Jackie was stripping the Christmas tree? Well, you know what she found hidden among the artificial foliage, don’t you?
Given that we last hid the offending article in Flo’s Christmas present in 2012, one has to admire her patience. Yes, Flo, we had forgotten about it. But we’ll get you back. In the immortal words of Vera Lynn, ‘Don’t know where, don’t know when’. You do know that, don’t you? (Vera Lynn, known as ‘The Forces’ Sweetheart’, raised innumerable spirits during World War II with, among others, her rendering of ‘We’ll meet again’, which can be found on Youtube).
Adam Keenan grew up to be a skilled and much sought after animatronics creator. Three years ago he made a realistic mechanically animated dragon for Flo’s birthday. One of its joints became dislocated. This necessitated a spell in my nephew’s hospital. I well remember my tube journey back to Morden on the day I collected the cured lifelike creature. I took great pleasure sitting in a crowded tube train surreptitiously pulling levers which made its eyes open and shut; its head turn and its tail sweep; and watching the faces opposite me.
At that time Jackie and I were holders of the drink sticker. So, of course, when Flo opened the box containing the repaired treasured animal, it had a suitable label round its neck.
Far too much rain for the forest and its environs to cope with continued to fall as, this afternoon, we drove to Totton for a mega post-Christmas provisions shop. Reminiscent of last year, brown water flowed from the overfilled drains in the gutters across the centre of the main road into this suburb of Southampton. We followed a petrol tanker most of the way, feeling rather grateful that we were not one of those cars, waiting to turn out of side roads, that got the benefit of the bow waves as the large wheeled lozenge sped past. As Jackie said, there would not be much point in having a car wash at the moment.
On our return someone played ducks and drakes with huge hailstones bouncing from the water-bound tarmac to the car windows and vice versa.
Two fallen beeches in the road from London Minstead to the A337 bear the legend:
Each is too long to fill the frame of one photograph. This had us speculating that the purchasers may have been wood-carvers, for craft fairs, after the great storm of 1987, were filled with the work of those who had benefited from the trees that fell throughout the South of England.
This evening we dined on beef hotpot and cabbage, followed by the last of our Christmas pudding. I drank La Serrana tempranillo 2012, whilst Jackie drank Hoegaarden.
P.S. In her Facebook comment on this post, my daughter Becky has corrected a few details concerning the label. Firstly the restaurant was Frankie and Benny’s. She reminds me that the game began when, during the meal, Flo stuck the object on the back of my hand and I left it there all evening. That amused our granddaughter. As we were leaving I placed it on the back of her hand and dashed away. Plonking it on our window was her retaliation. But that didn’t take place immediately, Jackie now remembers. We left the restaurant in convoy. When stopped at traffic lights Flo emerged from the gloom and planted it on the driver’s window, not mine. Our last transfer took place a little more than a year ago when we hid it in a kitchen canister.
Now, had this all taken place when I was Flo’s age I probably would have needed no memory jogging. On the other hand, it couldn’t have, could it?
My Branch Of The Family Tree
PREFIX 12th April 2023: Three further deaths have occurred since the first publication of this post. Ages are those on 15th January 2014
I am indebted to Jane, one of my followers, for pointing out the need for a family tree in order to clarify some of my posts. What began in May 2012 as a record of my days based on walks has become a much more extensive project, arising out of far more interest than I could possibly have imagined. The blog title ‘Ramblings’ comes from the idea that as I physically ramble along and take notice of what is around me, I also ramble in my head. This brings about much reminiscing woven into current experiences. Memories are not neat and tidy affairs. They pop in and out of one’s head at will.
‘Ramblings’ have become a record of one man’s life as prompted by this aberrant and disorganised memory. My daughter Rebekah has initiated me into the joys of digital links and tags. The computer, you see, is capable of tidying everything up. I am working my way through more than 4,000 posts, adding these amazing aide-memoires.
A comment from Alex Schneideman has also prompted me to tidy up a lifetime’s photographs. My archives are in four forms. There are photographic prints in hundreds of albums dating from 1942. There are boxes of colour slides dating from 1963 to 1981 and again from the first decade of the current millennium. There are albums of negative film covering the hiatus in the colour slides. And finally there are the computerised digital images from the time of the acquisition of my Canon S100 in July 2012. The albums and colour slides, and of course the digital pictures, are correctly filed in chronological order. The twenty years of negatives are the problem. They were kept in the processors’ envelopes with no dates or identification attached. One cardboard box containing these was lost in the move from Newark in December 2006. Whilst at Sutherland Place I began to attempt to sort the remaining collection. That is how they found their way into negative albums. The task of identifying everything on each strip is what I have been procrastinating over for the last few years. Thank you, Alex, for giving me a reason for getting on with this.
For Jane, and anyone else who would find it helpful, here is my branch:
Mum and Dad: Dad died on Christmas Day, 1987, three weeks after I moved to Newark. Mum died on 15th September 2021
Me: Born 1942; Brother Chris: born 1st October 1943, died 17th October 2014; Sister Jacqueline: born 1947; Sister Elizabeth: born 1954; Brother Joseph: born 1960.
I married Vivien in June 1963. She died in September 1965, having given birth to Michael in April 1964. Our son Michael – ten days old in the picture was married to Heidi. Their three children, therefore my grandchildren, Emily 20, Oliver 18, and Alice 14 at the time of first writing this post. Michael died on 13th February 2019.
I married Jackie in March 1968. Our children are Matthew (b. December 1968) and Rebekah (b. August 1970).
Rebekah’s daughter Florence, 17, is the first of our shared granddaughters.
This is where it begins to get complicated, as if it weren’t already. You may like to pause and take stock.
Jackie and I parted in 1972 and each remarried some years later.
I married Jessica in 1980. Our children are Samson (b. 1980), and Louisa (b. 1983). Jessica died in 2007.
Sam is married to Holly. Their children are Malachi (almost five years) and Orlaith (13 months). Consequently these two offspring are my grandchildren.
Louisa is married to Errol Thompson. Their two daughters are Jessica (almost 7), and Imogen (5). Two more grandchildren for me.
For Christmas the Thompson family gave me a framed photograph on canvas of the grandchildren I would have shared with Jessica.
Jackie and I met again at Matthew’s 40th birthday party in 2008 and have been living together again since soon afterwards. On 17th October 2017 we remarried.
This is merely a factual record. The events have been full of all kinds of emotions, both extremely pleasurable and terribly painful. This particular post is not the place for those.
P.S. My far more intelligent friend Judith Munns has sent me this hand-drawn Family Tree gleaned from this post.
Update 29.8.15:
Matthew and Tess have been married for fifteen years. They now have a daughter called Poppy. This required me to amend Judith’s family tree:
Residential History Continued
As stated yesterday, Jessica, Sam, Louisa, and I moved to Lindum House in Beacon Hill Road Newark, on 10th December 1987. This home was large enough for all the southern family members to come and stay, and they often did. 
Its large garden was a haven for children, as evidenced by this photograph from Louisa’s Birthday party in May 1989. The games were organised by Kate, a teenaged baby sitter. Sam gleefully advances in a T-shirt that for some reason I don’t remember sports my signature. Louisa sits a little behind and to his side. All the children in the photograph were regular visitors until the house was sold in 2006; some, as they grew older, would often stay overnight, particularly if they lived in villages outside the town and had socialised in it. By now I was using an Olympus OM2. I cannot find the negative so this reproduction is from a scanned print.
With Jessica’s death from multiple myeloma now a matter of time the house was sold in December of that year and I rented a flat in Hyde Park Square, SW London. The story of this three week fiasco is told in ‘Aaargh!’. Chesterton’s, clearly feeling they owed me something, provided me with a six month let in a house in Leinster Mews, just opposite Kensington Gardens. After this I had three years at 29 Sutherland Place, in the lounge of which I am seated in Alex Schneideman’s portrait featured in ‘Showstopper’.
By the summer of 2010, Jackie and I, now reunited, took a flat in The Ridgway SW19, a street in which I had dreamed of living throughout my childhood. This establishment is described in ‘A Professional Clean’.
P.S. I pressed Publish prematurely again. After a year in The Ridgway we moved, until Jackie’s retirement, to a quirky little 1930s flat in Links Avenue, Morden, which we left in November 2012 for Castle Malwood Lodge, in Minstead, Hampshire. We have the ground floor flat on the right hand corner of the photograph.
‘If You Don’t Like It, Move’
Early this morning I did a bit more work on elderly colour slides with which to amplify my residential history. The Soho years spanned 1975 to 1980. This is when Jessica, Michael and I lived at 2 Horse & Dolphin Yard. This mews flat backed onto Gerard Street in the very heart of Chinatown. 
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 ours 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.’
Jessica and Michael happily stood on the doorstep in December 1979.
Becky, who had spent many weekends there as a child, took her own daughter, Flo, to see the place in June 2008, and sent me this photograph from her mobile phone. That of course would not have been possible in those days.
In the spring of 1980 we bought and moved into a semi-detached house in Gracedale Road, SW16, where we lived until December 1987, by then joined by Sam and Louisa.
Behind this photograph taken in 1984 can be seen the makeshift bookshelves featured in ‘Chinese Boxes’. It was in December 1987 that we left London for Newark. I will continue the story tomorrow.
A little later this morning, leaving Tony to spend the day alone before returning to his Essex home, Jackie drove us through severe rain and spray to Sanderstead where Michael and Heidi hosted a family day attended by Emily, Oliver, Alice, Louisa, Errol, Jessica, Imogen, Mat, Tess, Jackie and me. This was the last exchange of Christmas presents this year, except for those we have brought back for Becky, Ian, and Flo who were unable to come. Heidi produced some splendid salads, whilst Michael baked a delicious bacon joint and whole salmon. 
Trifle and mince pies complemented Alice’s splendid gingerbread house which was a particular hit with Jessica and Imogen. Various wines and beers were on offer.
As usual the older female cousins had an exhausting time playing with the younger two whilst the rest of us enjoyed more sedate conversation. A surprise hit was my labelling machine that I had brought along so that Jessica and Imogen, to whom Jackie and I had given identical boxes of Derwent coloured pencils, could make their own stickers for their presents. This delighted Alice, who first helped the little ones label every one of their gifts, then made progressively ruder messages for them to adhere to the other adults.