oak apples – derrickjknight

Prompted by Facebook comments from Becky and from Jackie, I began the day by adding a postscript to yesterday’s post. Becky had noticed a fascinating aspect of Murphy’s signature, and Jackie pointed out a detail from her memorabilia side of the fridge. Her copies of those two school photos are far less besmirched than mine. I knew I’d seen them somewhere. It’s amazing how, when things become part of the wallpaper you stop noticing them.

Clustered around much cleaner copies of two of the school photos are pictures of Flo and a family thank you card from Easter.

Something else that has also escaped my notice is a profusion of oak apples in a scrawny tree on the verge just outside our back drive. I could have saved myself a search in the hedgerow, for there they were, all the time, right above my very nose.

The work of scanning and replacing the prints that Elizabeth has returned to me continues. Today’s selection spanned 1974 to 1981. Some have appeared in previous posts and need no repetition here, except perhaps for the 1974 portrait of Jessica that appears in my post entitled Chamberlayne Road.

I don’t know who took the photograph of Jessica and me, Carole, and the top of Becky’s head, on the steps of Marylebone Registry Office where we married on 1st March 1980. It may have been Matthew.

Similarly unknown is the person who focussed on Jessica and a very floppy Sam that June;

or this one of me from 1981. I don’t even know where it was. What I do recognise, however, is the woollen tie Helen gave me sometime in the 1960s. I wore it on and off for years, and was sad when I found that I had lost it in one of my moves after 2008. Now, of course, no-one much wears ties. I wonder if ‘Flog It’, the T.V. programme for antiques punters, would be interested in my collection?

I do know who took this one of Sam reaching for an Indian brass incense burner in front of a bookshelf, in Gracedale Road that same year;

and this of Becky and Sam frolicking in the Drapers’ pool at Meldreth. It was me.

The Dore’s London was a present from Jessica’s sister Sue. As usual, iPhoto asked me when I entered that photo, ‘Is This Orlaith?‘.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s scrumptious cottage pie; piquant cauliflower cheese; Juicy carrots, onions, and garlic bake; and tender spring greens. The cook drank Hoegaarden, whilst I imbibed Heritage de Calvet Cotes du Rhone Villages 2014.

The potentilla in the front garden is fully in bloom, as are the pansies in Jackie’s window boxes on the wall.

This morning a woodpecker took advantage of its long, sharp, beak to penetrate the suet balls suspended from the crab apple tree.

I took a walk as far as Roger’s field footpath and photographed oak apples nestling in the hedgerow. I had noticed these on a day too dull to produce a picture. It took me some time to find them again.

A.P. Maintenance completed their work on the back drive when Aaron and Robin concreted the entrance.

Today I began replacing the photographic prints Elizabeth had returned to me yesterday. The first album starts in about 1923 and runs to 1978. Before I set them back in their vacant pages I scanned them and put them into iPhoto. One theme running through was that of school photographs. The style and quality of these has changed over the years, but all bear one general characteristic. That is that if they reach home uncreased they are bound to eventually become rather gunged, and many are so badly treated that they never reach adulthood.

My paternal grandparents’ ‘Norwood School for the Sons of Gentlemen’ was small enough not to suffer the fate of other, earlier panned shots of the entire staff and pupils, where some clown would always start out on one edge of the group, and dash round the back to plant him or her self on the other side before the lens reached them, thus appearing twice for posterity.

When I was at school, the photos we proudly carried home were still group images, but now in individual classes or forms as we called them. They were still in black and white.

The form master in the first of these, taken, I think, in 1956, was Richard Milward, who features in ‘No-one Forgets A Good Teacher’; the second, in 1957, Fr Hamer S.J., on whom I focus in ‘Look At That Book’.

That 1957 class can’t be the only bunch of boys who thought it would be cool (‘though we didn’t have that use of the word then) to sign the back of the photo.

These pics, despite having spent most of their life in an album, are somewhat wrinkled.

By 1974, school photograph production was rather more sophisticated. They were now portraits in colour and came in a variety of sizes according to the parental purse. Those of Matthew and Becky have clearly been cut from sheets, probably of four copies which would be distributed among Mums and Dads and grandparents. These bear the stains of an early life partly spent clutched by sticky fingers; partly subjected to spillages one can only speculate at; and possibly twelve months beneath a fridge magnet. I took out as much muck as I could in iPhoto, but cropping was all I could do to rescue this one of Matthew, taken at Holly Mount school in Raynes Park:

Attending that same school was Becky, photographed in 1974 and 1976, when she, too, signed the back of the copy she brought to me.

Michael is also pictured in 1974, wearing the uniform of his Raynes Park school of The Sacred Heart,

and in 1977 at Islington Green school, where uniform was not required.

This evening Jackie drove us to Lymington, where we dined at Lal Quilla. We both drank Kingfisher, and shared an egg paratha. My main course was King prawn Ceylon with special fried rice. Jackie’s was an interesting new chicken dish with pilau rice.

P.S. Here is a Facebook observation from Jackie:

‘What do you mean the school pictures stay under magnets on the fridge for 12 months ?! I still have my school photo’s of Mat and Becky on the fridge here! They have travelled with me for over 30 years! Love ’em.’

and a very acute one from Becky: ‘Interesting that Paul George John Murphy has signed his name in a ring(o).’

Tag: oak apples

Who Were The Other Photographers?

School Photos