derrickjknight

Quiet Days

We woke up this morning in The Firs to very pleasant weather, bright, cloudy, and with intermittent sunshine. I took myself off to West End Road, part of the A27, and walked down this still generously tree-lined thoroughfare until I came to Haskins Garden Centre in Swaythling Road. Just beyond this establishment I crossed the road, took a likely-looking side track and came to the River Itchen, along the bank of which I walked for a while. Immediately behind the building in this idyllic looking scene soars the M27. The roar of the traffic on this motorway drowns the sound one would usually expect to hear from the rushing water. Having wandered around here for a while and noticed the mix of probably Stuart period and modern buildings blending together, I followed another track a little further along, and discovered a sixteenth century farmhouse. The marvellous garden, with its screen of tees surrounding the house could not keep out the noise. This struck me as rather bad luck. After all the house had been there a lot longer than the motor car.

Taking a public footpath leading off Swaythling Road turned out to be an unsound idea. It was gloomy and squidgy. Soon after availing myself of the towelling stepping stones laid down by some resourceful person, I took advantage of a public recreation ground leading to the comparative safety of the main road. The A27 is much quieter than the motorway, but still pretty full of traffic.

When I arrived back at The Firs there were a number of people engaged in silent contemplation in the garden. Jackie was quietly trimming the lawn edges, and small numbers of strangers were wandering around drinking in the flower beds and the pond; sitting silently, eyes open or otherwise; or, in the case of one young woman, Harriet, painting in acrylics. It was a peaceful scene which has been all too infrequent this stormy summer. I did, of course, know the visitors would be present by the time I returned.

Another Jackie and Geoff live in The Tardis. This is a small bungalow built at the bottom of the garden that once all belonged to The Firs. Geoff sold The Firs to Elizabeth and Rob, and built the bungalow in the part of the garden that he retained. The couples came to a very satisfactory mutual arrangement that they would have access to each other’s gardens; thus offering Elizabeth, now alone, access to Jackie and Geoff’s well, and the others an extension of their space when necessary. The very low boundary fence is unobtrusive and has two gaps for access.

Quiet Days are an example of occasions when Elizabeth shares her garden. The lawn lying at the front becomes a car park and visitors come through from the other garden. As I understand it the object is to allow people to ‘just be’ in mutual solitude, whether through meditation, thoughtful reflection, or an artistic activity. There is clearly a call for this opportunity for spiritual nurture, and the events seem to be well attended. It was apparent today that the beauty of the garden is much appreciated.

Jackie and I spent the afternoon weeding, planting and edging the borders. There is a creature in the large wisteria trunk keeping an eye on things. By early evening, having had no rain, we felt confident enough to light a bonfire. Elizabeth and I continued with this, and with pruning to supply it, while Jackie cooked our evening meal. This was a tasty and spicy concoction involving onions, pork, pepper and paprika. Jackie drank a Becks and Elizabeth and I shared a bottle of Marques de Montino 2007 reserve rioja.

37 Rougemont Avenue

On this much calmer day, with a significant diversion, I made a tour of Morden Park. The white cloud in evidence today was perhaps fulfilling the promise we have that the jet stream mentioned two days ago has finally exhausted itself. Grey cloud, heavy rain, and the disappearance of the patches of blue later belied this. A postman was cycling along one of the postpersons’ regular routes through to Hillcross Avenue. I walked up the footpath to the London Road side of the park and along to the registry office where a wedding was in progress. Shirtsleeves and skimpy dresses were on display among the guests. I stopped and told them about the goose-pimpled bride I had seen in the pouring rain happily enduring the photographer’s attention on 29th. June (see post). They clearly felt they were fortunate. At this point I left the park, crossed London Road and continued on to Rougemont Avenue, where, at number 37, my parents had enjoyed their last London home.

As I stood outside the house, a very attractive and elegant young woman opened the front door, locked it, and came down the steps making for her car. I told her what I was doing there and said what a shame it was that she was on her way out because I had hoped to photograph the back garden. She told me she had only moved in a week ago and that the previous owners had landscaped the garden beautifully. I mentioned that my parents had, in retirement in the 1980s, created the terracing, having mixed their own concrete. That was it. I got a result. She smilingly invited me inside, unlocked the door and took me through to the back of the house. The first thing I noticed was that there was no formica on the banisters. I ran my hand along the carved struts and told her about Dad’s obsession.

When he retired Dad got seriously into DIY. He was also seriously into the laminated surfacing which he was convinced would make everything easier to clean. And I do mean everything. Anything made of wood was carefully covered in beige and brown formica. Even those struts were sheathed in two-tone carefully applied laminate. As the new owner unlocked the back door I pointed to the picture window to the side and told her of my quip during one of our Sunday lunches. Gazing through the window I had said: ‘Dad, it’s a pity you can’t get transparent formica.’ Puzzled, he asked me why. ‘Well, then you could cover the windows’, I replied. Guffaws all round, including, of course, from Dad.

We stood in the garden and I took this photograph for Mum. As we left the house and the young woman finally got to her car, the last thing she said to me was: ‘Tell your Mum I will look after her memories’. Elizabeth will make sure she reads this.

The Sunday lunches were a feature of our elder children’s lives. On most of these days we would turn up, unannounced, for a veritable feast. Oval plates, which the proprietors of The Martin Cafe (14th. May post) would have envied, were piled with roast meat, usually lamb, Yorkshire pudding, and all the trimmings; always followed by apple pie and custard, with, if you had room for it, jam tart made with the surplus pastry. Matthew still calls white pepper Grandma pepper. Although now I don’t know how we managed it, there was a plentiful salad tea before we went home fully satisfied, not to say stuffed.

(In January 2014, I discovered a photograph taken in December 1985 at the famous meal table. Mum and Louisa are having a discussion about an apparently questionable item hidden from view. I sit on the other side of our daughter. Uncle Norman is opposite, and we see the backs of Joseph and his girlfriend, who obscures Sam from view. Dad’s initial formica efforts can be seen. Jessica must have taken the picture.)

Returning to the park I continued my circumperambulation, passing the car park where my parents left their car before taking their own walks in this ancient landscape. One day Mum had gone walking on her own. Dad must have been at work. When she returned for the car, it was gone. She walked home, thinking that Dad had perhaps come and collected it. He hadn’t. Some young men were caught engaged in a burglary. The car was to be their getaway vehicle. Their misfortune was my parents’ good luck.

In the early evening Jackie and I drove to The Firs, stopping for a meal at The Farmer’s Home, a pub in Durley. Until we arrived in deepest Hampshire the evening was clear and bright. The nearer we got to our destination the darker the sky became. Eventually we met more heavy rain. The meal was very good, but, as you have already been treated to Mum’s Sunday lunch I will not describe it.

When we left the pub mist was rising from all the fields around.

Conversations

Mrs. Reynard is looking most uncomfortable lately. Perched on her pile of sticks this morning, she was gnawing away at her rear end, which is now on one side completely devoid of fur. The patch the magpie was pecking on 26th. May (see post) is now rather raw.

On my normal route to Colliers Wood to catch the tube for lunch with Norman, in Morden Hall Park, I met Benjamin and his mother. This eloquent and cheerful little chap was on a dinosaur hunt. He was taking his task very seriously and wanted to know if I’d seen one, especially ‘a big one’. He declined to produce his hunting roar for the photograph. Perhaps because I am not a dinosaur, although some people may quibble with that. Well, Benjy, I didn’t see a dinosaur, but I did find a very big slug. His picture is at the top of this page.

One of the most amusing regular announcements on the Underground was given out at Green Park. A long list of severe or minor delays is intoned. This is always followed by: ‘There is a good service on all other lines.’ ‘Which are they?’, I ask myself.

Seated reading on a bench near the mainly Somali area of Harlesden, I picked up one cent of an euro, thinking it might come in handy in the Sigoules supermarket. I hoped it wasn’t a Greek one. It was fortunate that I wasn’t on my feet, for these days I wouldn’t bend down for anything less than a tenner. I remembered once diving for a ten-bob note at a bus stop in Worple Road in case Chris got there first. For anyone too young to remember, that’s 50p in today’s money. But, then, you could do a great deal more with it.

A middle-aged woman came and talked to me. She began by saying I looked so peaceful that if she had a camera she would photograph me. I hoped she wouldn’t notice the one hanging round my neck. She went on to eulogise about the beauty of the thousand year old church that lay behind me. She spoke of recent renovations, and I realised that the graveyard is looking much better kept these days. It is a sad reflection of our times that the building was not open for my inspection. She was on her way to visit her father, now suffering from dementia, in a care home. On her regular visits she does a lot of the feeding and caring herself. This woman was not complaining and initially spoke appreciatively of her father’s carers. She did, however, say it would be nice if they thanked her, because they were paying the full ‘feeding rate’. According to her this former Southern Cross establishment has been taken over by a Methodist organisation. It has a new manager who is trying to improve things. From the sound of it she has her work cut out. Once this daughter learned that I had been in Social Work she told me about some of the attitudes and systems she found problematic, asking me what I thought. For example, did I think it unreasonable that he was not allowed to ‘poo’ until 11 a.m? I most certainly did. Apparently the staff would rather he ‘pooed in his pad’, which they could clean up afterwards, than disrupt other morning routines. She felt that his personal dignity was suffering. My beard didn’t put her off expressing her conviction that it was normal to want to shave every day. Presumably there are days when her father can and cannot shave.

Norman served up a dish of delicious Catalan chicken accompanied by a fine rioja, and followed by apple strudel. Perhaps not entirely by coincidence we discussed the writing of Iris Murdoch. I have not read her philosophy, but have most of her novels, except the last. This was so badly reviewed by critics who could not make any sense of it that I decided to give it a miss. Some time later we learned that she was suffering from the same condition as my conversationalist’s father. For anyone working with dementia the biopic ‘Iris’, starring Jim Broadbent as the long-suffering and somewhat bewildered husband, and Judi Dench as Iris, is essential viewing. No-one living with the condition would need, or probably wish, to watch this fine portrayal of the slow realisation that all is not well and the gradual decline into frustrated helplessness.

This evening Jacqueline came over for meal, and, given that she had recommended the Watch Me to us, we just had to take her there. The food was as good and reasonably priced as always. As I don’t normally eat another meal after a Norman lunch, this was stretching it a bit for me.

Directions

On another wet morning I set off to visit Amerland Road in Wandsworth. I chose the route up to Wimbledon Common, along Parkside, and down West Hill. Apparently it is the jet stream which normally strikes north of Scotland that is responsible for our stormy summer. Having learned this I reflected that it is hardly surprising that there is a deal of depression in those countries even nearer the pole.

In Mostyn Road a mother was guiding her small daughter on a scooter across the road. Hearing an approaching taxi, she led the child back to the safety of the pavement. The cab came to a halt to allow them to cross.

A painting job in Fairlawn Road in Wimbledon, begun yesterday, was nearing completion. Whether the weather eventually put a stop to this I am not sure.

Rounding Tibbet’s Corner, Parkside had been part of a three lap twenty mile road race I had run in the late eighties. This involved three plods up Copse Hill. I had fallen in with another runner and we continued in tandem for most of the race. On the third climb up the hill my companion started to flag and doubted that he would be able to finish. I went on ahead, completed the run, backtracked, and encouraged him to reach the end.

One of the many traffic signs warning of congestion during the forthcoming Olympics is on Parkside. And I thought we had succeeded in our bid because of improved transport facilites. Arriving at Tibbet’s corner I was uncertain which of the major roads off the roundabout was West Hill, and asked the way at a portable burger bar. The two men serving and their two customers had conflicting ideas as to which one it was, and even whether I needed to use the underpass. I gambled on one and soon found myself trotting down Putney Hill, which I knew to be wrong. Realising I should probably be taking a right turn which should take me through to West Hill, I asked a woman with a dog who confirmed this. Walking down the correct hill I thought of Phyllis Holman Richards who had set up her Adoption Society in that street after discovering a young woman giving birth in a phone box. I never knew Phyllis, for my time as a consultant to her Society came after her death. However, others fondly remembered her. Since the establishment, with its short term mother and baby home, was almost opposite Amerland Road, I wondered whether the delivery had taken place in the predecessor of the kiosk in the header picture.

Yesterday’s post describes my grief at the loss of Vivien. Eventually this subsided somewhat, and my brother Chris and his great friend Mike Ozga took me in hand and out with them to various venues. We rode around in a little mini. I don’t remember whose it was. As we were all six feet two or three we caused great amusement when we unfolded ourselves from this tiny, yet surprisingly roomy, vehicle. One evening they drove me ‘creeping like snail unwillingly to’ Helen’s twenty first birthday party. Never, at the best of times, a party animal, I stood in the Amerland Road flat not knowing where to put myself. There were a couple of girls in a corner and I thought I might put myself there. One of them said to her companion: ‘You’re in luck, he’s coming over.’ Unfortunately I only had eyes for the disinterested party. Jackie.

Although she was, in spirit, rather like Shakespeare’s schoolboy, she was definitely female. Claiming to be eighteen, Jackie, I learned later, was awaiting that birthday before taking up her post as a housemother in Shirley Oaks. This was one of the old style self-contained residential villages that existed in those days for children in local authority care. Visiting her there, I got to know the young people and their stories. How did they get there? Who was responsible? What could be done to prevent it? These were the questions which exercised me and gave me my direction. I soon left my insurance desk and began working as an Assistant Child Care Officer in Tolworth Tower in the Royal Borough of Kingston Upon Thames. That was December, 1966.

Since today’s perambulation had been quite a trek, I returned to Links Avenue by 93 bus from Putney Hill. Having been a bit uncertain of the way to Putney Hill from Amerland Road, I asked a young woman how to get there. She knew neither the hill nor the bus route. However, standing in the pouring rain, she insisted on connecting to the internet on her mobile device and consulting it. Asking me for my postcode she finally came up with a route. I was to take the 270 bus from stop D in Armoury Way. This would decant me at Tooting Broadway tube station whence I could travel by underground to Morden. If you are bored with this detail, imagine how I felt. Well, she had been so kind I could hardly set off in the opposite direction. I therefore followed her advice until out of sight, then took a diversion which led me to a postwoman. She soon put me right, but said it was quite a long way. When I told her where I had come from, she laughed.

Tonight we had salad, courtesy of the man at Hillier’s Garden Centre mentioned two days ago; boiled eggs; tinned corned beef and tuna from the larder. I finished the Roc des Chevaliers, and Jackie, being out of Hoegaarden, had a Peroni.

One Life Cut Short; Another Changed Forever

A much more pleasant day today was cloudy with occasional glimpses of sun. I decided to visit 18 Bernard Gardens and 79 Ashcombe Road in Wimbledon.

On Maycross Avenue someone had spilled a bag of gems, and in

Woodside, SW19, a child had lost a little bear. In Mostyn Road I met a man exercising a ten year old white German Shepherd dog. Passing Building Blocks nursery in Dundonald Road I heard the taunting chant: ‘Nah nah ne nah nah’, and thought of the infant on the receiving end. Walking up Hartfield Crescent I passed the childhood home of Tom McGuinness, mentioned on 10th. July, who warrants a post of his own sometime.

My days in marine insurance featured in The Drain (6th July).

This was where I met Vivien who I married in 1963.

We began our married life in my parents’ house at 18 Bernard Gardens. This was where she proudly brought Michael home and we lived for a few more months until

we bought 79 Ashcombe Road for £2,500 (no noughts missing). In Ashcombe Road we did our own decorating and I transformed a rubble heap into a reasonable back garden mostly laid to lawn for our little boy to play in.

As a recent toddler he helped me push a roller over the turfs we had laid. This was not to be our home for long. In September 1965 I went out one evening window shopping for a present for Vivien’s 23rd. birthday which was to be in a couple of weeks time. Forty five minutes later I returned home to find her dead on the floor of the sitting room. In less than an hour I had become a single parent.

Years later I was queueing for soap in Floris in Jermyn Street when the young man ahead of me was offered products from Duchy Originals. ‘I don’t want any of that stuff. It goes to charities like unmarried mothers doesn’t it?’, was his response. I leaned forward and said: ‘I’ve been a single parent as it happens.’ ‘I’m bringing mine up on my own’, said the shop assistant. He was gone.

Now I must return to my awful night. Deep in shock I collected Michael from his bed, where, thankfully he had been sleeping; gathered him up in his blankets; and carried him up the road to Bernard Gardens. My mother took us in and eventually put us both to bed. In my case that was not to lead to sleep for another three days, when I had stopped crying. Dad came home a little after our arrival. I can still hear his teardrop hitting my bedding. I will be forever grateful to the gentleman; doctor, official of some sort, I have no idea, I was past taking it in; who visited me the next morning to tell me that death had been instant and Vivien would have known nothing of it. My wife had died in an epileptic fit. I had always known that she could possibly have an accident, but never dreamt that the condition could produce a fatal collapse. To this day I don’t know whether he said it was her heart or her lungs.

Returning from the funeral I was to find a Health Visitor on the doorstep. She had not visited before but was making a check up call following Michael’s birth. He was now fourteen months old. She fled and never came again.

Michael and I were to stay at Bernard Gardens for the next three years. Until he was three Mum cared for him alongside my brother Joseph, just three years older. When Michael was considered old enough he attended a day nursery, where he met his lifelong friend Edward Blakely, and he and I moved to a studio flat at the top of the house which had just been vacated by the Egan family. I could be sole carer with the advantage of family below who babysat when I went out. I was able to continue working, collect him from nursery at the end of the day, and, I thought, cook us a meal. On the evening I began my new routine, never having cooked before, I decided we’d have spaghetti bolognese. I cooked up some mince in a saucepan. No herbs, no spices, no onions, no carrots, no tomatoes, just mince. Hopefully I used some sort of cooking oil, but I wouldn’t be sure. I boiled the spaghetti until it was soggy and served up. I don’t remember whether either of us ate any of it, but I do remember thinking, after I’d tucked Michael up in bed and turned to face the washing up at 9.30 p.m.: ‘Blow this, he gets a meal at the nursery, I’m going to the caff at midday’.

I had, by now, realised I could never stay in an office job. All I needed was a direction. How I found that direction is a further story.

This evening we had another excellent meal in the China Garden where we went with Becky, Flo and Ian.

Walking In The Rain

Well, I thought this would be an original title for the summer of 2012. Yesterday’s sunshine proved to be an aberration. This morning we were back to normal, pouring rain. As I needed to go into Morden to present yesterday’s wine stained raiment to the dry cleaners and to pay in some cheques I continued on to Morden Hall Park. Only the cleaners could possibly be called dry. At Bill’s birthday party (15th. July post) the younger ladies were claiming that, although their long term recollections may be impressive, the older gentlemen’s short term memories were shot. Perhaps that is why I start my blogging as soon as I get back from my walks.

For a few days now, I have been intrigued by a set of tankers bearing the name ‘A Better Service’ stationed outside the park. Since their pumps were snaking into the streams of Morden Hall and I didn’t think any more water was needed, I asked what the team were doing. Apparently the various connecting rivulets get rather stagnant unless they are oxygenated. The pumps were therefore circulating the water. Note the umbrellas.

A jogger smilingly agreed when I observed that it was ‘perfect weather for it’. I remembered how refreshing it was to be cooled and hydrated by falling rain when running marathons. Rather more surprisingly, a team of volunteers armed with cutters and saws, engaged in clearing the banks, struggling with the sodden foliage, were of the same opinion.

A coot noisily warned me off its chicks and a heron stalked the streams. A tiring golden retriever persisted in chasing a small black poodle around in circles. This rather upset a watching toddler, who needn’t have worried because the larger dog was never going to catch his prey. It did, however, present a moving obstacle on the rather congested path.

At a gate leading from the rose garden to one of the sodden waterside footpaths I stood aside for an intrepid troop of retirees sporting various assorted rainwear, and umbrellas lowered to form offensive or defensive weapons. The gentleman bringing up the rear asked his female companion: ‘Have you been retired long?’ ‘Five years, but I’ve never been married,’ was her reply. I suppose everything has to start somewhere, and no longer does a woman have to wait for the man to make the first move.

It has been a good year for slugs and fungi.

A forlorn fuchsia reminded us that Fred ‘Tosh’ Madden had not been forgotten.

A couple of abandoned supermarket baskets were nestling in the undergrowth, and someone had discarded a sandal. My saturated pair screeched on the communal wooden staircase back at Links Avenue.

This evening’s gourmet meal consisted of Derrick’s succulent gammon and pork sausages casserole, followed by strawberries, helped down by Roc de Chevaliers Bordeaux 2010. The Cumberland sausages came from Sainsbury’s, as did the wine. Lidl provided the gammon, onions, and mushrooms for the casserole; and the crisp, crunchy carrots which accompanied it. Other vegetables included Sainsburys’ weird shaped Anya potatoes, the sprouting buds on which had to be removed before serving; and cauliflower (a bit passe) from Wimbledon Village’s Bayley and Sage. Garlic paste to add flavour to the sauce was bought in one of the halal shops in Morden. The bay leaf was from Tesco and the thyme from goodness knows where.

We have a fridge stocked up with salad ingredients virtually given away by a poor man who was selling his produce in the waterlogged Hillier’s Garden Centre car park on Saturday. He said he had been doing really well until eleven o’clock when the rains came. Now he had to give multiples of everything otherwise he’d have to take it home. This latter statement didn’t come from him. I just know that’s how it goes. I’ve often thought that a very hard way to make a living. However, he remained most cheerful, and also sold us, at a fraction of their true value, the piquant strawberries we ate this evening. They were bathed in Sainsburys’ ‘LIGHT’ evaporated milk. If I knew how to print those last four words upside down I would do so. This is because the tin from which it was delicately served was punctured at the bottom and I had to put my ear to my placemat to be certain what I was pouring.

Portrait Of A Lady

Taking advantage of the better weather and making an early start, we finished the planned planting and the new bed by the pergola. The morning was fine, but as we set off for Helen and Bill’s barbecue in Ringwood, raindrops began to fall. In fact they didn’t amount to much although they did force the party indoors. The gathering was a small one including the hosts; their sons David and John and their partners Jen and Stephanie; Jackie’s other sister, Shelly, her husband Ron, and their daughter Jane. We were fed substantial ‘pickings’ and drinks all afternoon and had a great deal of fun swapping stories. All this was rather poignant for me because I had known Jackie’s sisters and Bill when we were so much younger. We had spent most of a lifetime apart and yet in many ways I felt it had been no time at all.

Bill was fascinating in talking about his wartime evacuation as a six year old. This was in the days before Local Authority Social Services Departments or the Child Care Departments which preceded them. Vetting was minimal if it took place at all, and some of Bill’s stories reflected that. I was reminded of a time in 1967 when, as an Assistant Child Care Officer, I had advertised for foster carers for a set of twins. One of the applicants, a no doubt good-hearted elderly woman, had written: ‘If you put labels on them with their names on them I will meet them at the station’. This, no doubt, had come from her knowledge of the evacuation process from 1940. It was exactly Bill’s experience.

At one point I managed to spill a glass of red wine all over my beige linen suit. As I mopped it up and Helen ‘confiscated’ my glass because I had ‘been a naughty boy’, I told the group of another occasion on which I had had to mop up alcohol. Some thirty odd years ago in a pub by Wandsworth Bridge I had been sitting at the garden picnic style table/bench with some friends. This was in the days when you could smoke in public places in England. On that hot summer evening there were several drinks on the table, as well as two very large, very full, heavy, industrial style ashtrays. As I sat on one side of the bench, two of the others opposite me got up at once. This upset the table which toppled in my direction, tipping me backwards onto, fortunately, the grass. There was I, on my back, legs trapped between the seat and the table, covered in sodden dog-ends and other people’s beer. The one drink that had not been spilt was the upright pint of Guinness which I still clutched in my right hand. On that occasion I had been wearing a track suit, so no harm was done. I have yet to see what the dry cleaners will make of today’s disaster.

I am grateful to Helen and Bill for their having preserved an extremely precious drawing. In 1966, when Jackie was 17 and I was 23, I made a pencil portrait of her which I gave to her mother. Unbeknown to me Veronica Rivett kept that drawing all her life. When sorting out the house after my former mother-in-law’s death, Helen offered to take care of this for Jackie. When Jackie and I got together again she asked for the picture for the home we share in Morden. Unfortunately it could not be found. By Jackie’s birthday last year we were reluctantly giving up hope. On that day she received an e-mail from Helen attaching a scan of the portrait which had obviously been unearthed. Bill delivered it to Elizabeth’s a week or so afterwards.

Our evening’s drive back to Morden was in pleasant, sunny weather, although clouds did seem to be gathering. We had no need of more food when we returned.

Vertigo

Before the rain set in, Jackie in particular having got up early, we managed to get quite a bit of planting done, and even start a bonfire. New and older, refurbished, beds are being filled, and, where necessary, thinned out; some plants being separated and moved.

The variously hued heuchera make a colourful display.

The patio area, which has received Jackie’s attention all through the year, now looks splendid.

Jackie has, in this area, and in her hanging baskets transplanted her small London garden into Elizabeth’s The Firs. For the short length of time the sun was out today the flowers could be seen in all their glory. By about 11 a.m. we gave up, left the planting, the bonfire, and the new bed I was starting, to the elements, and went off, smelling of wood smoke, to Sainsburys to buy wine for Bill’s birthday. Helen and Bill are hoping to hold a barbecue to celebrate this tomorrow. As we were nearing Sainsburys Jackie mentioned that last week their entrance hall had been totally given over to a display of raincoats and umbrellas for sale. They had obviously had a run on them because there were none there today. What they clearly had not had a run on was their stock of garden recliners. An announcement came over the public address system offering them at a price reduced to £10. We didn’t think we would have much use for one this year. We did, however, wonder whether one of the gazebos sold in Hilliers’ garden centre which we visited on the way back, might be a good method of keeping the rain off the gardeners at work. Later, without knowing this, Elizabeth made the same speculation.

From Sainsburys we went on to Wickham where we found a present for Flo. Before arriving at Wickham we stopped off at the vineyard for a tasting. Although I could manage, at a pinch, to recognise the taste of strawberries in one of the wines, I struggled with some of the other fruits which differed from the grape. What was more difficult was to discern any aroma other than the charred wet wood lingering on the fingers holding my glass. Having sampled everything in sight we came away with six bottles and two tea towels. Jackie thought it was quite ridiculous of me to buy two French tea towels to take to France. It seemed perfectly logical to me. We returned to Elizabeth’s for lunch, and, as so often when eating, the subject for discussion was the efficacy or otherwise of various forms of dieting.

Over breakfast Elizabeth and I had discussed Cottenham Park, the theme of yesterday’s post, and she had also remembered trips to Dundonald Recreation Ground in Wimbledon. The path along which we would have walked is featured on 11th. May. As a little girl she had been disconcerted by the gaps between the flooring planks of the bridge over the railway to that destination. Being able to see through them to the railway lines, to her so very far, below, she thinks is when she discovered her fear of heights. My similar awareness came much later when, in my early forties, deciding that the guttering of our house in Gracedale Road needed attention, I bought a nice long ladder. Starting to scale it, I began to get a bit wobbly. The ladder remained firmly fixed; it was I who was unsteady. I never did get to the top, and, for all I know, the guttering still needs attention.

My paralysis was always worse when there were children involved. I feared for them as much as for myself. A few years before I bought that ladder, in 1973, I had, alone, taken Michael, Matthew and Becky to North Wales for a few days. The little ones went running towards the pitch dark waters of a lake. I was concerned that they might fall in and called them away. Had I known at that moment that it was an extremely deep disused slate quarry I would not have been half so calm about it.

Much later, when Sam was about ten, and therefore older than Mat had been in 1973, we were walking as a family in Cumbria. On our return journey I was faced with a sheer rock face we had to climb. Looking back now it wasn’t much more than fifteen feet or so, and we had come down it with no difficulty. The problem for me was that I could not see beyond the skyline at the top. Emptiness beckoned. Sam clearly sensed my fears. He took my hand, said: ‘this way Dad,’ and led me up.

Later still, again in the Lake District, the family and Ali and Steve wanted to climb up from Grasmere, across Striding Edge, to a summit whose name I can’t remember. Striding Edge is a notoriously narrow ridge with a sheer drop of thousands of feet either side. No way was I going that way. I took a softer route, but, seeing it as part of my marathon training, I ran all the way up. I was going great guns until I slipped on some scree and looked up to see a straight line on the horizon above me. My brain produced a similar affect to the time mentioned above. I sat down. After a while I gritted my teeth, rose to my feet, and began to climb. Pretty soon I sat down again. This went on for about three quarters of an hour during which I’d covered about fifty yards, but had reached the top. The sheer drop I’d feared turned out to be a very wide path about as wide as Oxford Street. ‘What a twit’, I thought. I then strode along to the agreed meeting point, glancing across the wide open space to Striding Edge. I could see my family silhouetted against the skyline on the sharp bit of an enormous razor blade. I sat down again. Gradually piecing myself together I managed to arrive at the summit at more or less the same time as the others. Somewhere there is a photograph to prove it.

Until I began my reguIar flights to France I always had similar discomfort on a plane. This was mostly on takeoff and landing. It is now no longer a problem. Should I go on climbing expeditions with the same regularity? I don’t think so, somehow. I understand Tom Cruise is rather short; nevertheless watching him at the beginning of ‘Mission Impossible’ was a tall order for me.

This evening I made a beef rogan josh. Elizabeth and I committed the crime of drinking red wine with it; Marques de Montino Reserve rioja 2007. Jackie had the Co-op’s Jubilation beer. There were a couple of slight hitches over the samosas, which were from Sainsburys. I called the ladies for their food and Jackie asked me if I’d done the samosas. I hadn’t. ‘How long do they take?’, I asked. ‘Oven. Top. Ten minutes.’ was the reply. Elizabeth turned on the oven. I waited a while and put the samosas in. Ten minutes later I was ready to serve up. Unfortunately the samosas were cold. What had I done? The cooker is a Belling range model and I had put the samosas in the top left section which happened to be the grill. The bottom left oven had been blasting away with nothing on its top shelf. Something got lost in translation. However, the meal went down very well, and as, as always, I wasn’t quite sure what my method had been, Jackie told us the story of the Victorian parlour song ‘The Lost Chord’. You may need to Google it.

During the ten minutes or so that we were finally waiting for the samosas we did a tour of the garden to admire the work that Jackie had been able to do during intervals in the rain. It was then that we realised we had been engaged in a triple role reversal. Jackie had done the gardening, Elizabeth had been hanging pictures, and who had done the cooking?

Cottenham Park

On another cloudy morning I set off for Cottenham Park in what estate agents now call West Wimbledon.

In Maycross Avenue I met another elderly lady. I didn’t attempt to engage Dolly in conversation.

Further along I spotted another effort at accommodating both pansies and the motor car.

Arriving at Raynes Park, I walked up Amity Grove, past number 76, where Jackie and I had shared our first home together, and the Copleston’s house at 112.

The play area in Cottenham Park now occupies the site where I lost my fourteenth summer.

(Please bear with what follows, Judith).

I was playing cricket with some friends and no-one wanted to be wicket keeper. As a bowler I was no wicket keeper. However I nobly volunteered. I stood far too upright and far too close to the stumps. A wide ball came down the leg side (the side near the batsman’s legs, where it is difficult even for a more agile player to see the ball). I lost sight of it. Smack! A full-bodied strike straight off the bat sent the ball into my left eye. For the next three weeks the ball was not the only thing I lost sight of. Home in bed I was suddenly beset with excruciating toothache in that eye. In the days when GPs actually made home visits in the evening, our lovely Dr. Gallaghan, who worked himself so hard that he died of a heart attack in his forties, came out to see me. ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’ he asked, having placed one hand over my right eye. ‘How am I expected to know?’ I replied, ‘my eye is all swollen and closed.’ ‘It isn’t’, was his response. I still feel the cold sweat I immediately broke into on that warm summer evening.

Then it was straight to the Royal Eye Hospital in Surbiton where I spent the best part of the summer of ’56. Doris Day was top of the hit parade with ‘Qu’est sera sera?’. I wasn’t allowed to read, and so had to make do with the radio and the salacious comments of the man in the next bed involving me and the nurses. I didn’t know what he meant, but I did learn the song off by heart. As a child, I should have been in the children’s ward, but the beds weren’t big enough for me. For a few days, when the men’s ward became overcrowded, I was decanted to where I belonged. A box for my feet was placed at the foot of the bed. My feet were still attached to my legs.

When I came out of hospital, Gurney, the boy who had hit the ball, said: ‘You haven’t missed anything’. I could have killed him. The affected eye was always weaker, and, some fifteen years ago, I finally had an operation, for a cataract. Now it’s fine. I was first given specs at the age of eighteen. The optician told me that by the time I was sixty I wouldn’t need them any more. Rather rashly not taking into consideration that he was himself about that age, I said: ‘When I’m sixty I won’t care’. I felt rather embarrassed. And, of course, when I got to be sixty I did care.

The year after this I proudly became the opening bowler for Garrick House Cricket Club, which was soon to merge with Trinity (Battersea, now Oxley) Cricket club who used to play there.

With my sandals squelching across the sodden outfield I reflected that there can’t have been much play there this year.

On the North side of the park lies Melbury Gardens, where I watched the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, on a miniscule television set. (See post of 27th. May.)

The modern sports pavilion, boasting showers and a bar, now lies on the site of the small hut which passed for a changing room. After the game, we would wash in a bowl of cold water, always allowing the oposition first go; then it was off to the Raynes Park Tavern for a jovial evening. It was into this hostelry’s small private bar that, at fifteen, I sneaked for my first half pint of beer. I didn’t like it much, but persevered, for the sake of male cameraderie. In those days Jackie helped the late Eileen Oxley; wife of Stanley, one of the three founders, in whose honour the club was renamed after his death; prepare the teas and do the scoring.

On the South side of the recreation ground lies Cambridge Gardens, which, on one memorable afternoon when I had first opened the batting for my club, I had peppered with boundaries. The despairing bowler said to Charlie Moulder, who was umpiring, ‘he bats like a number eleven (the last man in, who wasn’t usually much good with the bat)’. ‘He is a number eleven’, said Charlie. ‘And I keep feeding him’, bemoaned the bowler.

In my late teens, night after night, I played cricket with Mick Copleston. As we batted until we were out, continuing our innings the next evening, Mick would bat for weeks. Except when it was raining and we played billiards in his front room. He beat me at that too.

Today, walking back down Durham road, I passed the Ashby family home. They moved to London from Peterborough some time in the 1950s when we attended Wimbledon College. Chris and I were delegated by the masters at the school to look after the Ashby boys. After travelling under the Raynes Park Station railway arch I overheard a couple having an argument. ‘I ain’t fucking walking’, wailed the man. As a 163 bus, which would have taken me home to Links Avenue, passed me on Grand Drive, I rather thought he had a point. Continuing on alongside a playing field off this road I saw some boys settling themselves to play cricket. I fell in with one of their mothers who was walking her dog. Together we negotiated the soggy footpath.

This afternoon we were again treated to summer refreshment in the shape of a very windy, very heavy, rainstorm. Jackie drove us to Hampshire in the early evening and we dined at Eastern Nights before going on to The Firs.

Mordred

Dawn, after another night of rain, broke clear and sunny. I set off, with no particular goal, to stroll around the streets off Hillcross Avenue. I have previously mentioned the fact that Morden’s front gardens have been given over to the motor car. Outside this extended car park I chatted with an elderly woman who remembered when everyone tended their gardens. She said not many people liked gardening these days. I replied that perhaps that was so, but ‘what do you do with your cars?. The header picture, from Cherrywood Lane, indicates that some people try to maintain both plants and cars. The bricked surface shows the edge of the car standing area.

Emerging from The Green, I could not resist the temptation to continue onto Cannon Hill Common, where my feet got wet in the sodden grass and I skidded on the quagmire that masqueraded as footpaths. It had definitely not been a good idea to wear beige trousers fresh from the cleaners. The illustration of a path on Wimbledon Common on 10th. July gives you some idea. There was fishing going on by the lake, where a young mother was explaining to her toddler that ‘a dog is a dog and a duck is a duck and they are two different animals’.

It being a Mordred day, from Cannon Hill I walked back into Morden to pick up an Independent, for which I set a monthly crossword. Of the missing cats mentioned yesterday, Daisy has obviously returned home, but Diego is still on walkabout. I have mentioned Mordred before, and an illustration of his work appears on 5th. July. It is time to explain how he came into being. About thirty years ago I first ran in the Newark half marathon. For the event Jessica, Sam, Louisa and I went up to stay with our friends Maggie and Mike Kindred and their daughter Cathy in Southwell. Little did I know what this trip would lead to. We eventually moved from Furzedown in South London to Newark in Nottinghamshire, and a lifelong friendship was cemented. Having discovered that Michael and I shared a passion for crosswords, it seemed natural, when I got bored with reading on my daily commute to London, to set him a puzzle. He solved it and retaliated. This exchange continued for some time. Other commuters, noticing what I was engrossed in, interrupted my work to ask for solutions to puzzles they were solving. I did not give them the answers, but helped them to work it out for themselves. After a while Mike and I decided to do something a bit more ambitious and write a book which took students through a series of graded puzzles with the object of their being competent to solve a daily cryptic puzzle in any of the newspapers. I might say that, in doing so, our own solving abilities became vastly improved. This book became, in 1993, ‘Chambers Cryptic Crosswords and How to Solve Them’. It remained in print, going into a second, improved, edition for just short of twenty years, until Chambers was finally taken over by a company who did not want to use it. Not being able to break into a daily newspaper team in those early days, we decided to set what are called advanced cryptics. These are much more difficult, themed, puzzles found in the weekend newspapers, the editors of which accept puzzles from anyone who can meet the standard. We began with The Times Listener, generally recognised as the most complex of this genre. Now we had to have a pseudonym. So Mordred was born. I have always loved Arthurian legend, and as a setter, fancied myself as an evil Knight. Mordred was King Arthur’s treacherous nephew. The ‘dred’ bit fitted nicely with Michael’s surname, and as has been mentioned by more than one sorrowful solver, the whole is a homophone for more dread. We set a couple of joint puzzles as Mordred until, on the editor’s advice, we split up (although remaining very good friends). I became Mordred and Michael continues to set as Emkay.

I spent this afternoon doing my head in trying to get some figures right for my accountant, which didn’t much matter because the clouds were gathering again and the rain soon came back. It was still pouring in the evening when we went out to the China Garden restaurant in London Road for an excellent meal. Since living in Soho’s Chinatown in the 1970s, when you could get a set meal for £1.00, I have not really found many Chinese restaurants that pass muster. This one certainly does. The food is tasty and crisp; the service attentive, friendly, and discreet; and the ambience gentle and soothing. The rain continued as we left.