Tag: caterpillers

A Knight’s Tale (21: The Summer Of 1947)

Derrick and Chris 1947

This photograph was taken in my grandparents’ garden in Durham in April 1947.  Chris and I  had just learned of our sister Jacqueline’s birth in Wimbledon.   I didn’t think the pram in the background was for Jacqueline, because it belonged to my grandmother.

Our attire needs a little explanation.  Chris’s footwear was a requirement imposed by his having broken his leg some weeks earlier.  Hopefully it is our night wear that we are sporting.  I hasten to add that our normal clothing was being preserved against accident by Grandma who was preparing for the journey for us to take possession of the new infant. Grandma Hunter had told us that Grandpa was very particular about always wearing clean underwear in case he had an accident. It seemed to me that if you had an accident it didn’t much matter what was the original state of your underpants. Maybe she had a different mishap in mind. Chris looks a little less sure than I do.  He and I were enswathed in our grandmother’s pink silk petticoats.

It was on that stay that the incident of the caterpillars occurred, so maybe Grandma was as eager as we were for us to travel down south to meet the new arrival.  My brother and I enjoyed trotting out with jam jars into which to entrap all kinds of poor creatures.  We weren’t knowingly cruel, for we always included a lettuce leaf or other greenery for food, and pierced holes in the lids. On this occasion it had been caterpillars that had received the treatment.  When we dropped the jar in one of the corridors of the house, Grandma wasn’t exactly overjoyed at the sight of a carpet of crawling grubs fleeing grasping little fingers.

Probably the very next day we were back home in Stanton Road, SW20;  I was sitting proudly in the garden with our baby sister in my arms; and the above photograph was snapped.  Chris doesn’t look any more certain about things.

In this age of global warming it is worth remembering that the months of the May and June after this were hot enough to send me inside coated with tar from the melted roads in which I was playing. I expect my poor mother could never clean them. We happily amused ourselves in the street, devoid of cars in those days.

The Royal Meteorological Society report of January 1948 describes the weather of Summer 1947 as ‘a memorable one in meteorological annals. The severity of the late winter, the rain and floods of March, and the drought and warmth of late summer and autumn were all outstanding over a very long period and their occurrence in a single year unique in meteorological history. The year also included the two longest periods of easterly wind for at least 66 years, one giving severe winter conditions and the other the warmth and sunshine of August’ (https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/j.1477-8696.1948.tb00856.x)

We are only a small island, yet the accents are so diverse that people from one end of the country may react to those at another as if they are speaking a foreign language. I discovered this on my return from Durham when many Londoners could not understand what I was saying. I have no doubt that this affected my start in school which is to follow.

From Lattice To Web

I began this extremely hot cloudless day with a walk through Telegraph Woods.  Alongside Telegraph Road, into which Beacon Road forms a T junction, lies this ancient elevated woodland.  I believe the name comes from the fact that the fire beacons prepared as a warning against the Spanish armada (see 7th. July post) were superseded by the telegraph system.  There is, however, alleged to be the remains of an armada beacon surrounded by Douglas firs just inside the woods. Even older remains are said to be those of an Iron Age hill fort. Using the steps set into parts of the very steep terrain one could believe it would have been difficult to penetrate.

Hearing a rhythmic rustling I looked up into an extremely tall beech tree in time to see, descending in stately fashion down the trunk, a curled up leaf looking like one of the caterpillars that did a trapeze act from the leaves of the lime trees that lined the Stanton Road of my childhood.  These creatures only had feet at the beginning and end of their lengths and therefore formed a series of arches as they rolled down the trunks.  Are there any entomologists out there who can identify them?

Given that woodland once extended to the very boundary of Elizabeth’s home and that today’s deer may have a collective historical memory it is perhaps not unusual that in some years her garden has been invaded by ungulates devouring her spring shoots.  I was nevertheless surprised to see a fossilised stag embedded at the foot of a tree.

I walked through the woods to Hampshire County Cricket Club’s Ageas Bowl.  At the back of the cricket ground lies what looks to be a very serious golf course.  Some golfers were already out playing, or dragging their caddies into position. Others were gathering for the fray.  Some riding in golfing cars, which must have a name I don’t know; others with bags of clubs slung over their shoulders, or carried on wheels.  What they all had in common was an air of material comfort.   From the central mound in the wood there is an amazing view through the trees onto the rolling landscape and beautifully tended greens.

I finished off a new edge to a bed this morning, then had a coffee with Elizabeth.  We got talking about how far photography has come in the years since the second third of the nineteenth century.  I often wonder what William Henry Fox Talbot in particular would think if he knew that photographs produced with the press of a button could, through the intermediary of a bit of wire and a box you plug into a wall, be immediately transmitted around the world and instantaneously printed. In 1835, when he obtained his tiny grey picture, just over an inch square, with his own little wooden camera obscura, of a latticed window at Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire, little could he have known what would be done with a thumbnail in today’s computer.  Fox Talbot referred to his cameras as ‘mousetraps’, which is indeed what they look like.  For many years to come, sending photographs to others had to be carried by ‘snail mail’ or personal delivery in gradually developing forms of transport.  Now we have the world wide web.

My header photograph today comes from the municipal dump where Elizabeth and I took the garden refuse left over from the weekend’s bonfires.  We decided on this over lunch, for which, fortuitously, I ate a Sainsbury’s latticed pork pie.  Bonfires, now that we have long sunny days at last, have been upsetting the neighbours.  Instead of burning our pruned material we bagged it up and took it to the recycling centre.  It needed two trips and the first thing we saw as we re-entered the drive after the second was one we had left behind.

The sun was so strong that it appeared to be burning the colour out of Cotinus leaves.

For our evening meal Elizabeth and I drove out to The Phoenix in Twyford where we had good basic pub food in a cask ale establishment.  I had faggots, chips and peas augmented by one of Elizabeth’s sausages, which still left her with two.  My starter of stilton and broccoli soup was excellent.  We both took a chance on Punter beer, which paid off.  Noticing two Stanton Road lime trees, I was disappointed to find no caterpillars.