Telephone box – Page 2 – derrickjknight

Shade

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In order to use the services of the Post Office whilst Jackie was visiting the Birchfield Dental Practice, this morning I parcelled up some items the Australian branch of the family had left behind; wrote a cheque for the water bill in Sigoules; and packed up the various documents required for my tax return. I then posted everything.

Afterwards, Jackie took us on a drive through the forest.

The unfortunate ponies struggled to find relief from the overhead sun, and clustered where they could under trees offering inadequate cover.

Tormented by flies, one of this group scratched against the tree trunks;

the others just bore their discomfort in silence. The beastly insects crawled over these wretched creatures’ eyes, noses, and mouths.

We could at least benefit from the car’s air conditioning, and choose to venture into shady lanes, three of which are featured for Jill’s benefit.

The domesticated horses enjoyed better shade,

even when grazing.

Outside the shop at Pilley one string of ponies queued for the phone box

While others kept down the grass in front of the houses. This smaller animal, despite its leopard skin coat, was bullied by one of the larger ones when it ventured away from the gate.

Foals are becoming big enough for their mothers to leave them to their own devices. One white mare attempted to escape the attentions of her little one, who was having none of it, and, on spindly legs, quickly trotted after her.

The little ones are still learning to tolerate flies, and twitch about in vain.

The lonely male just went to sleep.

Sadly, juvenile tails are no use as fly whisks,

so our little limpet clung to Mum,

keeping within the sweep of hers.

We visited Tanners Lane on our way home. Despite the low tide, the appearance of water, against the backcloth of the Isle of Wight, gave the illusion of coolness.

Two women and children searching among the shallows, skirted

a rowing boat

chained to the stony shore.

This is the last house on the lane.

We had seen dog roses in the hedgerows at Boldre;

Those on Tanners Lane mingled with blackberry blossom among which Small Heath butterflies flitted. There are two in this picture.

Our evening meal consisted of cold meats, hard-boiled egg, salad, and cheeses.

Now we are going to drink beer on the patio.

Half Term

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Storm Doris had blown about the bag of twigs gathered up a couple of days ago, and dumped more on the beds and paths in the garden.

The Shady Path, with its Camellia shrubs didn’t look too bad, except for the chair blown over on the decking.

We picked up a few more bits of tree and went for a drive in the forest.

Beautifully situated among daffodils on the village green at Portmore is another Telephone Box book exchange.

I exchanged greetings with a friendly jogger running along the verge of the road between Beaulieu and Dibden Purlieu,

as I was walking back a short way into the forest, to the opposite side of the road, where numerous temporary pools reflected the trees they surrounded.

Friars Cliff Café was full to bursting as children, taking advantage of half-term in Hampshire’s schools, had fun on the beach before taking refreshments. We enjoyed a brunch there.

This evening I made prints of Sam and Louisa in the skip from Ratty, the post of two days ago; and two little girls doing handstands and running on the sand. Louisa’s picture was by request. The others were for the mother of the other children who preferred not to have the pictures posted here.

Later we dined on pizza and salad with which I finished the merlot opened three days ago.

Happy Hunting

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Those who have read posts from April 2014 onwards will know that we moved into a house that had suffered from much bodged D.I.Y. We are only putting this right at a very slow pace.

Here is our badly painted crooked mantelpiece made from a bit of wood trimmed with beading. Note the gaps behind the tiles stuck onto the walls, and that between the shelf and the wall.

We can’t stand it any more, so we travelled to Ace Reclamation in West Parley to investigate surrounds created from reclaimed timber. We are now to submit a measured drawing to have one made for us.

Our morning was spent in heavy rain. Here is the entrance to the architectural salvage outlet. The staff member waving in the distance is acknowledging the postwoman who has just delivered the mail to

Ace Reclaim letter box through wet windscreen

an old postbox which serves as Ace Reclamation’s letterbox. This is what that looked like through our car windscreen.

Readers can already imagine that I wasn’t about to make a complete inventory in the rain, however I did what I could. This yard is a wonderful repository of artefacts and materials. There are garden ornaments and furniture galore, some of which, on past visits, has found its way to Downton. Figures in stone and bronze, a giant cockerel, carriage lamps, urns, tiles, timber, rust, telephone boxes, a suit of armour, a mangle, a garden roller, gargoyles, can all be found therein. You could enjoy happy hunting in reality, or, if you’d prefer to stay dry, virtually, through searching through these photographs.

The wooded areas on either side of the long, unmade, road, the potholes in which give a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘off the beaten track’, are waterlogged.

The ditches are filling up fast,

and flooding a paddock,

in which stood three damp horses, two of which were a sandy colour I have not seen before.

Mind you, the gorse glowed a grateful golden yellow.

On our way home we visited Friar’s Cliff Café for brunch. There was just one other customer couple who had braved the blustery seafront to reach the comfort always available there.

This was the sea through the rain-splashed window.

Anyone who has seen a photograph of a Friar’s Cliff Café breakfast will not be surprised to learn that a selection of small Asian snacks, such as samosas and spring rolls, more than satisfied us for our evening meal with which jackie drank Hoegaarden and I finished the Cahors.

Wet Paint

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Today I scanned a few more colour negatives from the Summer of 1986.

The first is Sam in the garden of our home at Gracedale Road.

This is where this picture of him and Jessica was taken.

I cannot definitely locate the sites of the holiday photos.

These of Matthew guiding Sam up a mountain

and exploring the summit, was in North Wales.

The full meadow would have been in the same part of the country as the following phone-box sequence; possibly North Devon. Modern farming, and the increase in motorways have put such meadows in jeopardy. It was Dame Miriam Rothschild who led the move to revive them with her wildflower seed mix (http://www.ohllimited.co.uk/the-ashton-estate/wildflower-seed-mix/). The Head Gardener tells me that this woman was in the habit of flinging them out of the window of her Rolls Royce.

Now, what would the average person do when faced with a ‘Wet Paint’ sign on a bright shiny surface?

I’m sure you know, and would not be surprised to discover that Jessica was no exception.

Jessica and Louisa and phonebox Summer 1986

Neither was she averse to introducing our daughter, Louisa, to risky ventures.

On this occasion she was pleased to demonstrate that she had no paint on her fingers.

Sadly these telephone boxes have, in the countryside, largely fallen into disuse, and, like their companion red pillar boxes, rarely bear a coat of fresh paint.

This evening, Becky, Ian, Jackie, and I enjoyed our usual excellent food and hospitality at Lymington’s Lal Quilla. I chose prawn dansak and shared special fried rice and egg paratha with Jackie, whose main meal was prawn dupiaza. The four of us shared onion bahjis. Becky drank red wine and the rest of us, Kingfisher.

PS. See TanGental’s comment below, with its link to the recycling of telephone boxes.

May Fair

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Incessant rain had hammered down for 24 hours after the family left yesterday. It was not until mid afternoon that we could go outside to survey the damage and stake up the taller plants like

these nicotiana sylvestris that had been beaten and weighed down.

Some, such as the Priscilla gladioli, had been broken off completely. Becky made their vase more than 20 years ago.

In the meantime, I scanned another dozen slides from May 2004 in my Streets of London Series.

During that time I regularly walked past Murray Road NW1 on my way to visit a foster home in North London. The maroon concrete planters were part of the London Borough of Camden’s efforts to brighten up the streets.

Essie Carpets, at 64 Piccadilly, on the corner of Albemarle Street, W1, sells Persian and Oriental rugs of allegedly superior quality. Never having been able to contemplate such luxuries I am unable to confirm this from my own experience.

Crossing Piccadilly and walking through Piccadilly Arcade, one comes face face with Beau Brummell, that famous Regency dandy about whom Wikipedia has this entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beau_Brummell

The sculpture was made by Irene Sedlecka in 2002.

The next three photographs were made in a district which came to National consciousness in the 1980s when ‘the deputy Conservative Party chairman and author Jeffrey Archer met the prostitute Monica Coghlan‘ This last phrase and the next three paragraphs are slightly edited extracts from Wikipedia.

‘Shepherd Market is a small square in the Mayfair area of central London, developed in 1735-46 by Edward Shepherd on the open ground then used for the annual May fair from which Mayfair gets its name. It is located between Piccadilly and Curzon Street and has a village-like atmosphere. The area was called Brook Field, through which flowed the Tyburn. It contained paved alleys, a duck pond, and a two-storey market topped by a theatre.^[3]

During the 1920s, Shepherd Market was a run down area, popular with writers and artists such as Michael Arlen and Sophie Fedorovitch.^[4] Arlen rented rooms opposite The Grapes public house and used Shepherd Market as the setting for his best-selling 1924 novel The Green Hat, which prompted Anthony Powell to move into the area in 1926.^[5]

It has been associated with upmarket prostitutes since the eighteenth century.^[2] When Olivia Manning and her husband Reggie Smith lived at 50a, she found the prostitutes “fascinating”.^[6]‘

Jeffrey Archer once cajoled thousands of pounds from guests at a Charity Dinner auction on behalf of Parents for Children Adoption Society during my period of Chairmanship.

I assume the driver of this police car alongside Chesterfield Street, still in Mayfair, was seeking directions from a colleague.

Hay’s Mews still contains some of the original converted stable buildings.

Around one corner is Waverton Street;

Balfour Mews

and Rex Place run into S. Audley Street where services are still held in the 18th century Anglican Grosvenor Chapel.

This young man must have taken his life in his hands as he crossed Park Lane and straddled the stride-stretching barrier to reach this strip of grass. And he could manage to sit cross-legged afterwards.

This evening Jackie collected our dinner from the garrulous Mr Chatty Man Chan at Hordle Chinese Take Away. Dessert was treacle tart and ice cream. We both drank Kingfisher

Clearly The Day For It

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The meteorologists having informed us that the bright, albeit nippy, early morning sunshine would be covered by cumulus soon after mid-day sent us off into the forest, after a brief wander round the garden where

hanging baskets are now mostly filled with plants, like these pansies at the front,

which catches the dawn rays,

particularly lighting blossom such as that of the prunus Amanogawa;

and a sparrow surveyed the terrain from the safety of a holly tree.

The back drive,with its own share of hanging baskets, was also looking bright and sprightly.

On the road out of Lymington towards Beaulieu, a collection of cattle lounged along the curving verge. Only after she had finished using this to have a good scratch under her outstretched jaw,

did the first one find the energy to lift her head and satisfy her curiosity.

Further on down the road, a passing cyclist, when informed that she was in the shot, quipped that had she known she would have smiled.

Donkeys, joining the queue for the bus at East Boldre, preferring to stay on their feet, made use of bus stop, phone box, and wooden bollard to shift their ticks. Note that the telephone box has been saved and dedicated to the memory of John Kitcher.

Across the green behind the bus stop stands a hawthorn tree very handy for the ponies. This one, risking possible entanglement, vigorously rubbed its rear against a broken branch. This was clearly the day for relieving an itch.

Beyond Beaulieu, the approach to Fawley refinery and power station varied the vista.

When we last visited Calshot beach the Hoegh Osaka was stranded on Bramble Bank. The strand that today we had to ourselves had then been packed with reporters, photographers, and sightseers; and the empty lanes choked with parked cars.

Today the Southampton Spinnaker was a focus of my attention. Someone appears to have set up cricket stumps for Jesus. I cannot think of anyone else who could play on this surface. (But see the Quercus Community comment below!!)

The paths of a yacht and a motor boat passed at speed.

Having recently watched the BBC’s magnificent adaptation of Bleak House, in which the long running Court of Chancery case of Jardyce v. Jardyce is pivotal, I was intrigued to read the basis for privacy of this section of beach (should you be equally intrigued you will need to enlarge the image of the notice.

We drove on to King Henry VIII’s Calshot Castle in time, once more, to watch a tanker passing.

Also passing each other, emulating the two boats above, were an oystercatcher and, I think, a sandpiper, each striding along ignoring the other.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s pork chops in redcurrant jelly; fried potatoes; crisp cabbage and carrots; and the peppers, onions, leeks and garlic melange. This was followed by Bread and Butter pudding, with cream for her, and custard for me. She drank Hoegaarden and I finished the madiran.

In response to popular request, the Culinary Queen has penned her method for making Bread and Butter Pudding.

‘Strike While The Iron’s Hot…….’

A comment from my blogging friend, Mary Tang, on yesterday’s post led me to contemplate first names. Mary has met many people who share her prenomen. Apart from my Uncle Derrick, I have only come across three others who share my spelling. Strangely enough, they also all had the same surname.

The first Derrick Knight to create a certain amount of confusion was a documentary film maker who began working in the 1950s. Some of his films were used in Social Work training. I never met him, and I didn’t make films. But I needed to convince a certain amount of Social Workers that it wasn’t my name on the credits. The above photograph is borrowed from Guy Coté’s site.

When my picture appeared on Google’s images page heading the story of a man on Death Row, this causes a little consternation for half a day. As a black American footballer he may have shared my name, but not my appearance.

The one namesake I did actually meet put a flier through our letterbox sometime in the 1970s when we lived in Soho. He was the proprietor of a new shop called Knight Games, just opened in Dean Street. I just had to walk round to meet him. Imagine our joint amazement when I entered the establishment and we found ourselves staring at our doppelgangers. We were the same height, the same build, the same hair colouring, with similar features, and wearing similarly framed spectacles.

This morning a courier called Phil delivered my brother Chris’s chair which Frances has sent me from Wroughton in Wiltshire.

On a warm, wet, and overcast afternoon, after visiting the bank in New Milton, Jackie drove us out to Ace Reclamation at Parley, beyond Christchurch.

As we negotiated the bumpy potholes of the mile and a half long track to this architectural salvage outlet, Jackie observed that ‘you must really want to get to this place to come down here’.

Once we had parked outside the truth of this came home to me as we clambered over a pallet laid alongside a large puddle in the entrance. I was reminded of Walter Raleigh spreading his splendid cloak over one such, so that Queen Elizabeth I wouldn’t spoil her shoes.

The yard and and the sheds comprise a cornucopia of reclaimed artefacts. A giant cock perches above an old telephone box. New corrugated iron sheets are piles alongside covered planks. Pub and Post Office signs are suspended above various garden ornaments of dubious provenance. Just opposite The Crown, for the past two years, has stood a very tasteful item of garden statuary. Not so today. The figure I had intended for Jackie’s Christmas present had been sold.

We had a look around anyway, if only to confirm that we had aimed for the best piece there. The red Egyptian replica bearing implausible bare breasts didn’t quite cut the mustard, although one of the staff members did suggest she might.

Neither did we fancy the two huge dogs standing between an assortment of vacuum cleaners and an ancient bath. They appeared to be guarding an assortment of doors, roof tiles, and paving.

Another hound, set up a warning clamour when I presumed to photograph a jumble of chairs, radiators, bath, mirror, and fireplaces. Fortunately, he was penned in.

Autumn leaves adorned part of a carding machine

and a heap of rusting grates.

Wooden planks and metal posts stood opposite them.

Some items are deemed requiring protection from the elements. These are kept inside,

which can get rather dusty.

A string of fairground horses line up alongside everything including the kitchen sink.

Finally, pinned to an arrangement of doors was a sign pertinent to our predicament today. Examples of various fireplaces were also displayed.

As a parting quip the manager advised me to ‘strike while the iron is hot next time’.

We drove on to Lyndhurst where we intended to buy another present. We didn’t find that either.

Never mind, we dined on a juicy chicken and bacon pasta bake, with a medley of roasted vegetables. I drank Cimarosa Reserva Privado malbec 2013.

Eric’s Trampling

Even in the restaurant last night, my camera was not safe from Flo’s clutches. Here is a photograph she took of her mother:

For those of you who have suggested the obvious Birthday/Christmas present, we bought one for this talented photographer a couple of years ago, but she didn’t bring it with her this time.

This morning, albeit painfully, I made it a couple of hundred yards to the post box without a stick. Despite the increasing use of e-mails and texts to communicate in writing we still post letters in these historic boxes. How long the increasingly costly service will manage to survive is open to question. Like most of the country’s telephone boxes this one has fallen into disuse. They remain a tourist attraction in London, but elsewhere the mobile phone has rendered the landmark red cabinets largely obsolete.

There is a gap in the hedge alongside the field, through which the farmer gains access between the rows of parked cars. Glass jars had been lobbed into the hedgerow where cherry blossom now blooms.

We have an interesting ornamental cabbage in the garden. I played with maximum saturation on this heavy crop.

The heucheras are now flowering,

which is more than can be said for anything planted under the bird feeders where Eric tramples,

before going on walkabout (photographed by Flo yesterday).

The sausage content of Jackie’s classic casserole comprised chipolatas from Lidl combined with Tesco’s finest pork and red onion. The other usual ingredients contributed to the rich, tasty, sauce. Mashed potato; and crisp carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli were the supporting cast. I finished the cabernet sauvignon, while Becky and Jackie drank a melange of rosés.

Portrait Of A Village

A sprinkling of rain refreshed us as we wandered round the garden this morning, discovering everywhere a fine varied crop of hellebores in full bloom.

This afternoon Jackie had a coffee date with Helen. Although the high temperature in Milford on Sea was only forecast to reach 3 to 4 degrees, we were to expect sunshine and showers, so my lady drove me there before going on to Highcliffe to meet her sister. It seemed to me that this would be an opportune time to wander about the village with my camera. No-one had mentioned that the showers would be hail and sleet, the first of which struck as Jackie drove away. I spent the next two and a half hours alternately circumperambulating the one way system and the green; taking shelter when necessary; and sitting on wet benches; but I was rewarded with suitable light.

The Red Lion pub can be seen in the above picture. The village also boasts The Smugglers Inn, past which a woman with a walking aid carried home her shopping. Other residents, some with dogs and some with children, were similarly occupied.

One woman was forced to keep tugging her dog away from the gutter as she passed the Post Office. The Telephone and pillar boxes stand beside The Old Smithy which is now a gift shop.

The usual airborne warfare took place over the rooftops as gulls battled for perches.

There are a number of good quality antique shops like ‘The Village’ which has interesting china and glassware in one rain-spattered window, and one of those dolls which are so lifelike as to appear ghoulish to us, in another.

The Charity Shop received regular visitors, and Marjory’s Florist and Fruiterers next door displayed rich red rhubarb and, I think, persimmons.

The eyes of a stunning child’s portrait gleamed through the glass window of Lynk Photography Studios, which occupies an attractive building on a corner site.

To the rear of this building steep steps lead down to someone’s cocooned entrance door.

At the high point of the green can be found other residences I though worthy of note, such as:

Green Cottage,

Myrtle Cottage,

and Milford Cottage.

Towards the end of my photoshoot, driven by sleet and hail, and attracted by its appetising window display, I, almost literally, since the dining area is quite a bit lower than street level, dived into Polly’s Pantry where, in convivial company with friendly service, I enjoyed a warming pot of tea. Some two hours before this I had exchanged greetings with a plucky, disabled, elderly gentleman who, with the help of a wheeled walking aid made his cheerful way along the undulating pavements. He did say it wasn’t very pleasant weather, but hardly in a complaining manner. This was Percy who, as I sat at my table, opened the door and manoeuvred his frame down the step where he was warmly welcomed as an obvious regular, and assisted to his seat, by the young lady who happily entered my shot of the shop. Nick, the young proprietor bakes all the cakes you see in the picture.

I was rather relieved when Jackie arrived to take me home to thaw out and, later, to enjoy her delicious lamb jalfrezi and glorious savoury rice, accompanied by Castillo Albai reserva rioja 2010.

The First Gothic Novel

Jackie, as usual, drove me to and from New Milton for my trip to London to visit Norman for lunch, and Carol afterwards. I took my usual routes from Waterloo to their respective homes.
A woman also being delivered to the home station this morning, left her driver with a farewell that had me chuckling. ‘What?’ she asked, addressing him through the still open passenger window……… Then ‘sod off’, followed by a cheery ‘see you later’. I hadn’t caught what had provoked the imprecation.
A short while later she and I had a good laugh about it on the crowded platform.
It was a gloomy day in London, which is probably why I focussed on some of the more seamy aspects of the capital’s suburbs. Littered around a bench in the recreation ground at the far end of Preston Waye (sic) were beer cans, fag ends, and other debris from a party, the attenders of which had eschewed the bin provided. The bicycle rack across the street from Preston Road tube station had not saved one owner from losing his wheels, and judging by the rusting condition of what was left of his transport he had decided to leave it where it was. Alongside this a pair of soiled underpants or panties lay on the floor of a telephone box. I didn’t investigate them closely enough to determine the gender of their erstwhile wearer.
Signal failures between Eastleigh and Basingstoke extended my outward journey by forty minutes and caused chaos at the end of the day when two train-loads left the terminus on one service, resulting in large numbers of passengers standing or sitting on the floors of the aisles. Squeezing past the standers and stepping over prone people on the way to the loo was rather embarrassing, especially as it was impossible not to touch them, and absolutely necessary to be careful where you did.
Horace Walpole’s ‘The Castle of Otranto’ dubbed by Andrew Graham-Dixon and others the first Gothic novel is a short book. I read it on the train. Published in the 1760s, the first edition rapidly sold out and has been in print ever since.
Harking back to the Middle Ages, as Gothic does, the book had all the necessary ingredients for evoking a romantic image of that period. There is a feudal tyrant, knights on a mission, damsels in distress, forbidding weather conditions, and a gloomy castle complete with dungeons, empty corridors, and a hidden passageway. The well-constructed plot, in five chapters, follows the form of Greek Tragedy, and the author borrows from Shakespeare devices such as his clown characters.
Walpole’s story was perfectly timed to engage the enthusiasm of his times for such tales, and spawned many others, such as Matthew Lewis’s ‘The Monk’, with which I continued whiling away my extended train journey.
My Folio Society edition of ‘The Castle of Otranto’ is illustrated by Charles Keeping, one of my all-time favourites. He has a distinctive style and remains faithful to the text, nicely capturing the required mood. Here we have Isabella, a young woman fleeing the tyrant Manfred. A gleam of light in the gloomy castle depths renders her visible and displays the frightening path with rippling pools she has to tread.