This morning our plants enjoyed some welcome rain; I identified, scanned, and retouched twenty black and white negatives from my unsorted collection; and Jackie shopped for 
and prepared our evening meal. 
When, on 24th October last year I visited the site of Rodin’s Burghers of Calais, I mentioned some missing prints I had made in the 1970s. In fact I was confusing them with some black and white ones from 1982. This were among the negatives I worked on today, and I reproduce one here. Anyone familiar with the work will recognise that the position in which I needed to stretch myself for this shot would probably be beyond me now.
This set of negatives can be safely dated at early summer 1982, by the same method of deduction as the colour ones featured on 20th July. A trip to Cannizaro Park alongside Wimbledon Common with the Shnaps family provides one theme. 
I think it must have been in the park that the unknown girl was about to turn her cartwheel.
Jessica, Becky, Maurice and Beverley, with their boys, brought up the rear as Sam delightedly raced into his brother Matthew’s arms.
There were also a number of pleasing portraits of my other offspring, Becky and Michael.
The Zebby board books were a great favourite. Never having seen them before or since, I think I bought them in one of London’s many remainder bookshops. 
Michael here reads to Sam, whose excited expression suggests this book was ‘Where’s Zebby?’. Sam must have spotted him before he emerges from behind the upright railings that offered him the perfect camouflage. Board books are heavy duty and can withstand a considerable amount of attempted mutilation from young fingers and teeth.
On a bright and blustery afternoon, having missed the post at Shorefield, and wishing to ensure that Alice received her birthday gift on time, I walked on along the cliff top to the Needles Eye cafe and up Sea Road to the Milford on Sea Post Office. I missed that one too. Never mind, my granddaughter will forgive me.
I returned to the path overlooking the sea via Park Lane, and thence home. Motorboats sped along the solent, and hardy holidaymakers sat watching the waves or walked along the shingle.
I know you will all be keen to learn what Jackie cooked during the day and served up this evening. Now I can reveal that it was her trademark juicy lamb jalfrezi (recipe), and it was delicious. It was accompanied by vegetable samosas, mini poratas, and boiled rice; and followed by mixed fruit crumble and custard. The proprietors of the Shaan in Newark would approve of our choice of dessert. Jackie drank Kingfisher and I drank Cobra.
Tag: Burghers of Calais
……Twixt Cup And Lip
This morning, having read yesterday’s blog post, Jackie demonstrated that she has a broader recollection of our first date than I do. I was clearly so bedazzled by her that I only remember the ‘cannibal’ moment. She, however, recalls the first occasion on which she had to hang around waiting for me to take photographs. 
I had, you see, taken her to see the ‘Burghers of Calais’ on that day in February 1965. She experienced a certain compensation in having seen David Kernan, of ‘That Was The Week That Was’, fame walking in the park. She remembers tight white trousers. Although I had, as stated yesterday, made the prints in the 1970s, it was the smitten young man I was almost fifty years ago who took the colour slides. 
There they were, correctly labelled, in the box from a decade earlier. Here they are now reproduced.
This afternoon we had an appointment with Elliot, the agent who had shown us The Old School House at Bisterne. By now, we were so keen on that one that we didn’t really want to see today’s choice. However, we thought it would be sensible.
Glenacre in Thorney Hill in the heart of the New Forest, is in a setting to die for. The view from the house takes in a field at the bottom of the garden which is a section of Glenacre’s land that has been sold off, but accommodates the residents’ own horse. The only possible drawback is that the terrain is so hilly it would put my knees in jeopardy. That, however, has been thoughtfully taken care of. The older style bungalow with a very large footprint and wide doorways was designed for a resident in a wheelchair. It has high ceilings and a double-ended wood burning stove.
We arrived early as usual, to see a Community Response Ambulance parked in the driveway. We were still wondering whether there had been some kind of emergency when Elliot drove up and told us that the vehicle went with the owner’s job.
Our agent then gave us the news that the response of the resident at The Old Schoolhouse to being told they had a probable buyer, was to take the house off the market. Given that it is his son who owns the property that may not be the last word, but it doesn’t augur well. The Agency staff are all furious at this apparently inexplicable reaction, and have not given up on it yet. Jackie and I have the experience to speculate about the cause of this stumbling block, but that should not be recorded in a blog. We are less than optimistic, so are applying ourselves to looking elsewhere.
Glenacre is something entirely different and would not push The Old Schoolhouse from the top spot, despite the height of its own position. 
However, we could live there. Nevertheless, I made phone calls seeking appointments to view other properties, the first of which will be Sway Road, Bashley, tomorrow morning.
For those of my readers not familiar with the old adage from which today’s title is taken, its first phrase is: ‘There’s many a slip…..’.
Our evening meal was Jackie’s splendid chilli con carni made with our own chillies,and onion and mushroom wild rice. I drank some Kumala Zenith 2012 which was certainly potable.
Lovelocks
Last night Jackie researched the history of Bisterne on the Internet. Emma historian, in her blog featured this year’s Scarecrow Festival, photographing the exhibits as I did. She had this to say about The Village Hall and The Old School House: ‘The Village Hall was built in 1840 to house the local school and is adjacent to a thatched building which was once the old schoolhouse. Following its closure in 1946, the two buildings were given to Bisterne and Crow to be used as a Village Hall.’ In his 1958 article ‘Journeying through Bisterne’, Roy Hodges adds: ‘a picturesque cottage, once the home of the village schoolmistress when the hall was a school’ as a description of the house we viewed yesterday.
This afternoon Jackie drove me to Southampton Parkway for a London trip to visit Carol at her flat in Rochester Row. If anything interesting happened on the journey I missed it because I slept most of the way.
On this beautiful balmy Autumn day tourists, as usual thronged Westminster Bridge. Some of them, perhaps, had indulged in leaving tokens of their love for each other in a less vandalising manner than is generally applied. 
Locked in place on the supports for the handrails lining the steps leading up to the bridge were a row of tiny padlocks bearing the coupled lovers’ names. I thought of them as lovelocks. 
Normal examples adorned a seat in Westminster Tower Gardens, alongside the Houses of Parliament. 
Lovers in Barbados, as I discovered in 2004, use a less permanent platform on which to inscribe their names. Thick succulent leaves sufficed for them.
My reason for entering the gardens as a slight diversion from my route to my friend’s flat had been once more to admire the work of Auguste Rodin. That great French sculptor’s ‘Monument to The Burghers of Calais’ has always intrigued me, and sometime in the 1970s I had made a series of large black and white prints. Had I been able to find the negatives this evening I would have illustrated this post with one. So, why didn’t I use today’s photos? You may well ask. I didn’t take any. Why not? 
Because the work was away on loan. There is something elusive about Rodin for me. When Julia Graham, one of my Area Manager colleagues in Westminster Social Services, about the time I was taking the aforementioned photographs, had asked me to bring her a poster back from the Musee Rodin in Paris, that establishment had been closed on the occasion of my visit. I was able, on a subsequent trip, to rectify the situation, so maybe I’ll get to find my negatives.
In order to purchase the lifting of the siege of Calais by England’s Edward III, six burghers were willing to sacrifice their lives. This is the theme of the dramatic sculptural group. They were saved by the intervention of the English Queen, Philippa of Hainault. 
The crowns of England and France were pretty interchangeable in those days, as exemplified by Richard, Coeur de Lion, featured two days ago. Today, he still sits astride his horse, sword raised, about to send his motorised transport into battle from the Houses of Parliament car park.
Lambeth Palace, which I would pass on the 507 bus back to Waterloo, stands on the opposite bank of the Thames, vying with the vast modern buildings alongside, the tallest of which blends with it rather well.
I walked through Dean’s Yard, where the ornamental trees were beginning to rival the splendour of the Parliamentary gilt in the background.
Jackie met me at Southampton after I made my usual journey back there, drove me home, and fed me with a superb sausage and bacon casserole followed by apple crumble, with which I finished the Kumala begun a few days ago.