Aaron came today to continue completing my work on the back drive. He was as quick, efficient, and neat as usual. This young man certainly gets through a phenomenal amount of work in a day.
Jackie had a better memory of our ‘Engagement’ outing. I appended her Facebook comment as an informative P.S. to that post.
I then spent the morning scanning 36 colour slides from our four day honeymoon in March 1968. In ‘Tales From The Window Sills’ and ‘The Watchers Watched’ I have described and illustrated aspects of this holiday in Ockley. The first of these mentions the deserted house, and the second the fire.
The King’s Arms, where we stayed, is a 16th century coaching inn with attractive beamed walls and ceilings. We took all our meals at the hostelry and spent the days exploring the environment, the farms, the fields, a lake, and the churchyard.
We wonder what has happened to the deserted house that fascinated us so much.
The one event that seemed to draw out the whole village, streaming past the derelict home, from which it was visible, was the exciting fire which, at first, seemed to be engulfing a rather grand house, but transpired to be burning a shed.
The fire brigade were called and dealt with it quite swiftly.
This afternoon I watched England beat Italy 47-17 and Ireland beat France 18-11 in the Six Nations rugby tournament.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s classic chicken jalfrezi and savoury rice, followed by apple crumble and custard. We both drank Kingfisher, neither of us finishing a bottle. Never mind, we both continue to improve.
P.S. Update on the deserted house, from Jackie’s Facebook comment: ‘Having driven fairly regularly past this house over the years, I can report that altho’ it has lost some of it’s character, it still exists, and houses on this prestigious Surrey village green cost an absolute fortune (close to £1,000000!). It was a distant village in 1968, but with rail and road connections so improved, it is now considered to be within working distance of London so commands premium prices. It is a shame really as the whole village is now full of very rich people and does not have the character of the 1968 village we knew. Even the wonderful village store, that sold everything (even leather boot laces for farmers’ boots) has been converted into a very posh dwelling.’