A General Update

It's been a wet old summer.  A typically English wet old summer, with the sunny days as rare as rubies being welcomed by people with gratitude and adjectives followed by exclamation marks, such as "gorgeous day!" or "you can't stay indoors on a day like this!"

In the past when my parents would come to stay with me, I would suggest an outing and Dad would flick the curtain and say - "Mm, don't think so.  It's a bit cloudy."  Consequently we rarely went anywhere. 

When you live here you consult the weather only in the way that people check their watches - merely to verify how long you've got before the weather gets seriously bad.  Not because it might stop you going out, but in order to wear the right clothes.

I really don't mind this sort of weather, because I so hate feeling hot, and nobody has air-conditioning because it's not worth the expense for two or three weeks of the year (though when they come I'd mortgage my soul to have it installed right this minute...)

The job

I'll be changing jobs soon, though not venturing far.  For the past three years I've worked in research admin in the urology department of a local hospital, with some secretarial duties thrown in.  For some time now the funding has been uncertain - it's the same all over the NHS - and I'm on a rolling month contract.  This means I don't really know from one month to the next whether I have a job or not, and it was suggested to me that I see if there were any other research admin jobs within the hospital which had slightly better prospects.  I found one in rheumatology, and was lucky enough to get it, so I start at the beginning of October.  Mind you, it's only a 6-month posting, and at the end of March the hunt for another job will start again.  I'm sorry to leave where I am now, but the future there is too uncertain.  I'll be just a (long) corridor away anyway.

The weight

Sigh - not brilliant.  The band continues to protect me, and having gained some 5 kg, the numbers are staying put for the time being because I'm trying harder not to buy chocolate.  However it remains a fact that the band stops me from eating the salads and vegetables I love, and I haven't the patience to keep making soup.  It's the texture and the sense of filling up on low calorie foods that I enjoy and am unable to do.  I end up drinking too much milk, which is one of the reasons why I'm not losing.  And not to mention lack of exercise...

The blog(s)

A friend is helping me to do a makeover, and what you see now (pale green background) is the in-between stage.  Dark backgrounds are much better for showing off pictures, and ultimately I prefer the dark background and light print.  I do love having virtually the whole width of the screen to play with, and two columns instead of one.  I'm planning a special header, though my IT friend may tell me it can't be done.  We'll have to see.

As far as content is concerned, anybody who reads me regularly (bless them) knows that I've drifted away from writing about the lapband and weight issues, except occasionally.  I hold up my hands and admit that it's partly because I'm not doing very well at it for now, but it really isn't only that.  I'm very happy to read about other bloggers' experiences and updates, but I can't face writing a lot about it here:  what would happen is that I'd post less and less.  I've noticed that many of my favourites only update every 2 weeks...2 months... and longer, and if you're reading this, then I miss you, and would love to know what's going on in your lives, good or bad.  But I don't want this to happen to me.

The only way I could keep going AND enjoy it, was to write properly, not as a journal.  I had stories I wanted to tell, I wondered if anyone would be interested, and I told them.  I have lots more, and one of the changes I'm working on is to have a voting section at the end of the story posts (not the rest), to ask you to vote anonymously on whether you like that particular one, or not.  It'll help me look at how and what I'm writing, hopefully to improve.  I sense that the longer ones might be considered boring - or too packed with facts which make them difficult to follow - and I'm trying to address that, though some stories are necessarily longer than others. 

My blog is my home from home.  I can't wait to get back to it at the end of the working day, to see how many hits I've had that day, whether there are any comments, and to watch the list of countries of unique visitors.  I've been delighted at how the number of Argentines, Chileans and Spaniards has slowly crept up in the last few months, and this weekend Argentina has drawn level with Canada in this regard.  What is even more exciting is that in the stats I've been able to see that the Argentine readers have the greatest number of page views after the US and the UK. 

I'm of course most grateful to people of every nationality for taking the trouble to read me (as opposed to the 3 second visit where a glance at the heading sends them straight on to the next one!).  I thank you all, and particularly the lapband Followers who haven't taken their names away.

-oOo-

This is another little cross-pollinating from my other blog, Eavesdroppings & Stories:


Background: She is a highly organised individual, listmaker supreme and the tidiest mind I know. Some years ago she and her husband decided to cross hemispheres to have a long faraway holiday involving several mini breaks and stopovers within the holiday. Unwilling to hand over the responsibility of its coordination to an agent, she planned it efficiently and meticulously, compiling numerous interrelated charts and lists. Means of travel at every stage? Tick. Budget? Tick. Right clothes – and only what was strictly necessary to enable them to travel light? Tick. Medication ordered in advance? Tick. Visas, overseas driving licences? Double tick. All set, they departed for Heathrow airport, and once there headed for the correct check-in desk.
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Check-in hostess: Passports and tickets please.... excuse me, this passport does not agree with the name on the ticket.

A stressful conversation ensued.

What he didn't say: For crying out loud, she’s brought her daughter’s passport by mistake! Little Miss Perfect – I DON’T think... What do we do now?

What she didn’t say: Why must I have to think of everything – he could have checked them...

Him: (annoyed) Well I’ll have to go on ahead on my own, and you join me as soon as possible, say a day late...

Check-in hostess: Ah, but just a moment Sir, you’ve brought an out of date passport – look, it’s got the edge clipped off by the Home Office. So where’s your new one? (Sees his flushed face) – ah... at home I take it?

What he and she said: Censored

(PS: There was a grumpy and recriminatory return home, and the holiday was eventually started three days late. The travel charts had to be torn up...)

-oOo-


Photo Finish -
from Lonicera's photo archive

(All non-digital, except for the Gilbert & Sullivan pictures)

Sunset at Portishead

St Ives, Cornwall. 

(Another doorway for Zanna's collection.)

Gilbert & Sullivan's The Yeoman of the Guard, 2011

Gilbert & Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance, 2008

A fountain in Requena, Spain

Bougainvillea

A little robin in my garden

-oOo-

Tales from Argentina - The Boarding School (Part 2 of 2)

I have dredged through my mind to bring every positive and interesting fact into the open, because my overpowering and abiding memories of those three years I spent there were unhappy. 

I was always hungry and dreaming of mashed potato; I was permanently cold in the winter months - at 5 I didn’t know how to tuck in my clothes to ensure I didn’t get a freezing draught round the middle; I had chilblains on the fleshy part of my hands at the base of my thumb, and suffered from constant earaches.  I was lonely and sometimes scared, because there was a touch of The Lord of the Flies (1) about my life there.  We were left to fend for ourselves and I remember feeling constantly anxious. 

In this show celebrating the national day in May, we were dressed in pale blue and white crepe paper, the colours of the flag.  This was autumn, and I remember the prickly grass underneath, hence the expression on our faces.  I'm second from the left.

Bullying went unchecked and I had to be careful to keep out of the boys’ way, particularly after an incident when I had climbed a willow tree and by mistake knocked off an oven bird nest (they are made of mud, and the oven bird abandons the nest each year, so there are many empty ones around stranded on tree tops) which glanced off the shoulder of one of the girls.  The boys all gathered round the foot of the tree and yelled at me that they would not let me get down.  I explained – then cried – that I had not done it on purpose, and I was sorry, but in vain.  I was kept up the tree for a couple of hours as I got increasingly frightened and wanted to go to the toilet.  They sat and watched, and eventually drifted away when dinnertime came and they must have got bored.
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Oven bird nest (internet)

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I don’t know if I was clumsy or just unlucky, but some time after that I unknowingly slammed the bathroom door on the finger of a little girl (who carries the scar to this day), and the following Sunday it was my turn to be dragged before the courts at Sunday Service.  I had to stand up and be told that I was cruel and careless, and had made the child cry.  Red-faced, I whispered sorry and sat down feeling thoroughly humiliated.

I was always frightened of the boys, who did exactly what they liked with the children such as me who weren’t good at standing up for themselves, though I would clarify that the bullying was never s.exual, probably because they weren’t old enough.  On my eighth birthday they took me behind a barn and gave me the bumps – one boy at each leg and arm, and bounced me up and down, then pulled my ear eight times, with the last pull being particularly vicious and which left me – again – with an earache.  It was a violent experience.

When it was hot enough to swim in the pool I couldn’t wait to get in, yet often found myself clinging to the edge because those who ventured into the middle got vigorously ducked (repeatedly) by the boys, terrifying for those who were still learning to swim.  We were organised to swim there in two batches, so there were at least fifteen children in the pool at any one time.  The adult in charge would look on impassively.

When as a child these things happen to you in the presence of adults and no remark is made, that's when you feel truly alone because you assume that their lack of response indicates that they are normal behaviour.

The same thing would happen when we were out riding.  The juniors like me were not given saddles, and we had to manage with a piece of sacking and a strap.  We therefore had no stirrups which would have helped us protect our spines, and at one point I had a permanent running sore on my coccyx which nobody noticed for some time.    But in those days, Sunday mornings and the mandatory “going for a ride because it’s good for you” would make me long to be ill and be able to stay in the dorm.  I was always the last because I was one of the smallest and couldn’t kick the horse into action, besides it hurting the base of my spine.  If I wasn’t last it would be because some of the boys would come up behind me and whip my horse, which taken by surprise would sprint off at great speed and fill me with terror. 

This was certainly because I was a 'townie', but at no point did anyone try to teach me how to cope – at any level.  Riding didn’t become a pleasure until many years after I left the school.

The country girls were tough; they had brothers and knew how to give as good as they got, and I’m afraid I wasn’t in this category.  However the worst thing you could do was ‘snivel’ and I struggled hard all the time not to – and usually succeeded - since I knew I would be held in contempt.  Nobody taught me how to keep warm, or told me that bullying was wrong and I was right to feel scared, that it was wrong to feel hungry, that it was OK to cry when I had a bruised coccyx and no one to look after me.  Maida my rag doll was my only proper link with home, and I was devastated one night when during a pillow fight in the dorm someone picked her up and threw her, and she landed in the middle of the room, face down in the half full chamber pot.  I rescued her and washed her face as best I could, and she still has pride of place on a shelf in my bedroom today:

Maida, aged 53

It took me years to work out that the problem with the school at that time was that there was no supervision of the children, no teaching of the basics which might otherwise have been taught by parents, and very little warmth or compassion from the staff.  We were little children of 5, 6, 7, expected to know how to fend for ourselves; it was hardly surprising that some of them developed feral instincts.  Taken together I construe it as neglect, probably because – along with the textbooks - they could not afford the extra staff it would have required.

End of year show 1961 - on a "princess and the pauper" theme

Now a pauper - with the other princess in the background

During the winter holidays in July 1961 my parents finally realised that despite having fed me up at Christmas I was once again run down, and after visiting a doctor for some minor ailment, he warned my mother that I was showing signs of moderately severe malnutrition.  Once again I was at home being allowed to eat exactly what and as much as I pleased, and on returning to school for the next term the headmistress’ response to my mothers concerns was a suggestion that I should be given a tonic.  By the end of the school year in November and following a row between my mother and the redoubtable Aunt Rose, they took me away from the school, and it was the happiest day of my life up to that point.

I have been told by people slightly older than myself who attended this establishment that  ‘townie’ children like me were bound to find it a bit difficult.   My response to this is to say that a verdict can only be given many years later, when its long term effects are judged.  You only have to read a few dozen autobiographies to know that unhappy schooldays are experienced by a great number of people, from the Royal Family and Jane Eyre on downwards, and I’m perfectly aware that I’m one of millions. 

But that doesn’t make it any better, or any more excusable.  The old British public school methods taught you to become leaders of men, but not good parents and friends.  They taught you to bear suffering in silence with stiff upper lip, which makes for a stirring story but not for a properly balanced individual equipped to withstand emotional pain and hurt without taking it out on others in later life.

If I must take on the whole of the middle and upper class British establishment as well as the farm children who coped with this life to say this, I will, and with confidence: seeing your parents once a month for a few hours and never alone, is at best quite wrong, and at worst crucial to stunted emotional development.  Can all these people honestly say that they have brought up their own children in the same way or watched their grandchildren being brought up thus?

This year is the 50th anniversary of my leaving the school in 1961.  I was there between the ages of 5 and 8.  Fifty years on I can say with absolute clarity that feeling permanently hungry - not to mention zooming up in weight every time I went home and losing a lot when I got back to school every term - sowed the seeds of what would become a weight problem all my life.  Being bullied by boys gave me an inability to communicate properly with the male section of society for the next twenty years, and a problem with communication itself.  Nobody remembers my stammering before I went to the school, but that I had a very noticeable speech impediment when I came home, which was so marked for the next ten years that I could only really say out loud what was in my head when I was at home with the family.  Not that I was dumb outside home exactly, but I never spoke without a stutter, and got teased a lot, even on occasion by teachers, in front of other pupils.  These issues are all understood better these days. 

All this created a feeling in me of always being left behind, or excluded, not helped by the fact that my schooling at the boarding school with no textbooks was so inadequate that I was a very poor student for the next few years.  However, I do recognise that this, and the fact that my stutter didn’t improve for so long, was also because for various reasons I kept changing schools.  Once I got to secondary school I became a very good student and won prizes – evidence if it were needed.

My parents’ – particularly my mother’s – upbringing had been tough, and the difficulties she encountered lasted much longer than just the first few years.  I imagine therefore that she wanted us to be like her and come out fighting.  Neither of my parents realised for three years that what might have started as my being one of several children slipping through the net,  had become neglect by the school, and she certainly was not aware of how miserable I was.  Her way of making it up to me was to let me eat as much as I pleased, and she always regretted that she had sent me there.

Aunt Rose and Uncle Ed continued with the school for perhaps another decade or so, before retiring to another part of the world, and the establishment was continued by one of their sons and daughter-in-law, until it finally closed in the early 1980’s.  The former pupils hold nostalgic school reunions from time to time and have a FaceBook page.

I recovered – of course I did.  I’m glad it taught me how not to do things, and it left me with a healthy and abiding anger towards bullying.  Telling the story on my blog is not meant as catharsis – I worked it out long ago.  I had just never felt I could write about it fully till now.

-oOo-

(1)   Lord of the Flies is a novel by Nobel-Prize winning author William Golding about a group of British boys in wartime marooned on a desert island following a plane crash, who try to govern themselves, with disastrous results.  They become increasingly savage, until the day a passing British warship sees them and a naval officer lands on the island.  This brings the children’s fighting to an abrupt halt.  In the final scene the main ringleader starts to cry, reverting to childhood once more.

-oOo-

Photo Finish -

from Lonicera's non-digital archives

Buenos Aires

The posh Hurlingham Club created by and for the British community and named after its London equivalent, these days more egalitarian but still expensive...

...where polo is played.

The Torre de los Ingleses, gift of the British Government,

and said to be a small version of the tower in London

and the clock with Big Ben

Puerto Madero - part of the clean-up of the River Plate,

about which I have written in past posts.

Nostalgia reigns supreme - the colectivo from the seventies. 

There were still a few around in 1994 when this was taken.

La Boca, a suburb of Buenos Aires by the River Plate.

I submitted it to a competition at my camera club once,

 and called it "She's late", alluding to the man in the window.

-oOo-

Tales from Argentina - The Boarding School (Part 1 of 2)

I was five and a half years old when in March 1959 I was sent to a boarding school for three years.  It was located some 200km south west of Buenos Aires, in a flat corner of the country prone to scorching dusty heat in the summer and heavy frosts in the winter. Worse still were the rainy periods when the dirt road that went past the school turned into a quagmire.

Towards the end of their lives my parents felt differently about the decision to send me there, but at the time it was their considered opinion that it had three mayor factors going for it. 

Firstly it was both a school and a working farm with horses to ride and nature with which to commune.  This outdoor life, they felt, was the ultimate healthy environment in which to grow.  Secondly its biggest draw for them was that it was run along British lines by an English family, Mr & Mrs G, a couple in their fifties, and several of their children at various times.  In some ways it was (then) a miniature example of a British public school.   Thirdly, it was inexpensive – I would be getting a pseudo British education at an affordable price.   

The grounds consisted of a main house, with several outhouses and a smallish hut which served as one of the classrooms.  What had once been a barn was used as a makeshift dining-room with trestle tables on Parents’ Day, the Sunday once a month when our parents were allowed to visit.  In the afternoon it would be cleared of tables, and benches lined up to turn it into a hall and stage for us to perform our Parents’ Day show.  There were also fruit trees in the grounds and a small wooded area with, at one end, a couple of tiny playhouses made of mud and straw large enough for children to stand up in, and at the other, in a small clearing, an Australian tank which served as a swimming pool in the summer.

Surrounding the compound were paddocks with grass or stubble for grazing – I remember only ever seeing horses there, which were kept for riding.  The property lay on the main road between a town and a village, but in those days it was years away from being paved, so getting to the school was to a little girl like me a frightening adventure.  At best it was a slow and bumpy progress, at worst feeling we were isolated by the thudding rain and fearful of skidding in the mud; occasionally getting stuck and waiting for a kind passer-by to help push us out.  I remember mixed feelings about wanting to delay arrival and the beginning of a new term as long as possible, and on the other hand wanting the car sickness and the inevitable all round discomfort to stop.

In the late nineteen fifties there were about 36 pupils in the school.  Most children came from the farming communities where life was tough anyway; few of us were ‘townies’.  There were four dormitories two and even three bunks high, for junior and senior boys, and the same for girls.  Small chores were allocated to each child every day, such as making their own bed – no joke when it was a bunk – taking it in turns to empty the slopping chamber pot (shared by 8) in the centre of the room every morning, tidying the hairbrushes on the dressing table, and so on.  Few people would have had central heating in those days, and we had small kerosene stoves in the classroom to keep us going in the winter, though not in the dorms. Temperatures were often below zero - I remember seeing the frozen water troughs in the fields when we were out riding in the late morning. 

We were instructed to call the couple who ran it Aunt Rose and Uncle Ed.  They shared the teaching duties with other young women who came and went – they never seemed to stay for very long.  There were only two classrooms with the classes split by tables, so various levels were all together.  The cacophony of knowledge around me left me in a permanent state of scholastic bewilderment, and there were no textbooks.   

I remember sitting in front of a history paper looking in perplexity at the question “Why did the Tuscans lay siege to Rome?”  because the only bit I understood were the first two and the last two words.  I wondered what a siege was, and what involved laying it.  I stared at it in misery until my seven-year-old common sense prevailed.  Why does anyone do anything?  So I wrote as my answer “Because they wanted to”, though there was a niggling doubt in my mind as to whether Uncle Ed would consider it a proper reply.  Fortunately they found it amusing, and told Mum and Dad on Parents’ Day – who continued to laugh about it down the years, but I could remember the feeling of utter ignorance.

Our daily lives started each morning with breakfast consisting of a piece of bread with a pre-allocated scraping of butter and honey and watery mate cocido, South American green tea which when served to children is boiled with milk.  One week our bread tasted strongly of kerosene (paraffin) and we learned that a bottle of the fuel had spilled on the bread bag.  We were given it anyway so as not to waste it.  Once a week we got a boiled egg.

There were lessons in the morning, then lunch which was either gristly tough boiled meat and vegetables or rice (puchero), pasta in a thin tomato or beefy sauce or polenta with tough pieces of meat in it, and a milky pudding such as semolina to follow.  Then we queued for the highlight of the day – a boiled sweet each.  The afternoon could be a few more lessons or sports interrupted by a mug of very sweet black tea and a piece of bread, or we were left to our own devices.  After a light and early dinner we went to bed.  On rainy days we played with the collections of English games the G’s had – pick-up-sticks, tiddlywinks, draughts (checkers), halma, dice and cards.  There were a few old English books to look at, but they had no stories in them.

On Saturdays there was embroidery or Scottish and Irish folk dancing for the girls, and at lunch time we were each given the necessary to have a sort of basic barbeque-cum-picnic.  Sometimes you were allowed to go and cook it in one of the two playhouses, other times you had to make your own fire, then figure out how to cook your meat and potato in the saucepan provided.  On Sundays you wrote your weekly letter home, checked and read by the staff, and then went riding.  There might be swimming in the afternoon if it was warm enough.   

Sunday evenings were dreaded because we had a Sunday Service in the room which doubled as classroom for the older children, rainy-day dining-room, dance-room and Church.  We sang hymns in time to Aunt Rose’s harmonium playing, said a few prayers, and then came the tough bit.  Uncle Ed would stand up with a piece of paper in his hand, on which he had noted the list of misdemeanours committed during the week.  We had to stand up as the accusation was read, account for our bad conduct and public shaming would follow, with punishments doled out accordingly.   I  think these tended to be lines to write, and being left out of treats, fortunately there was no caning in the school.  In any case, being embarrassed in front of 36 children was probably punishment enough.  If you knew you were safe that week you shrank back on the bench with relief, guiltily enjoying the fact that it was someone else’s turn to be in trouble.

Every fourth Sunday our parents were allowed to visit.  Sick with excitement we would stand on the fence in our red checked pinafores waiting to see whose parent was the dot in the distance weaving ever closer, dodging from one side of the rutted road to the other. 

On Cloud Nine, Parents' Day

They would arrive at midday, weary from the appalling dirt roads, and full of stories of the number of hours it had taken.  We were allowed to join them after lunch, though not for long, because there was usually some entertainment prepared for them – sports day, a gymkhana, a little concert, a musical or a play commemorating a national holiday.

We would all have tea together and then the desperate sick feeling would return – our parents had to leave in daylight because of the terrible roads and the long journey home.  It was a very long and draining day for them.   I remember several parents days when I spent the afternoon trying not to be sick, and not succeeding.

There was little to fear from the fauna, aside from the non-poisonous snakes, which we learned to look out for, and a creature which still makes me shiver when I see it – the horned toad, or Ceratophrys cranwelli, (known as an escuerzo), a large, plump, brightly marked toad with an aggressive disposition, a liking for fresh meat for which it was willing to jump surprisingly long distances, and a propensity to give you a very strong and painful bite if you got too close. 

(From the internet)

(Fifteen years later when I saw a stuffed one at a Bristol museum – I had not expected to come across it - I jumped involuntarily, even though it was clearly dead and the other side of the glass.)

I learned to recognise the plants by smell and appearance.  I didn’t know what they were, but learned years later that the trees whose shape I had admired were weeping willows, and that the trees covered in fragrant blossom in the Spring were peach trees.  Other trees were good for climbing, and I would get as high up as I could to reach the canopy and feel far away from adults and other children down below.  I did fall off once, I don’t remember from what height, and landed sitting down.  That was my first experience of being winded, and understanding what it meant to take breathing for granted. 

We were very isolated from the outside world, and a great treat was to be taken to the nearest village in Uncle Ed’s old blunderbuss (as we called it).

On one occasion we were given the exciting news that the road in front of the school would be part of the route used by a national cross-country road racing team (Turismo Carretera) the following day, and that we should not even think of venturing beyond the gates.  Up until the early 1960’s these races were held on local dirt and asphalt roads closed for the occasion.  However there was nothing to stop us climbing the fence or perching on the gate to watch them go by in a cloud of dust.  That is until one of them stopped and shouted to us that he needed water as his engine was overheating.  One of the boys rushed for a bucket, and the catfish in the fish tank got a big surprise when the bucket was plunged in and the driver rushed off with it.  The boys later always claimed it was the famous Argentine racing driver Juan Gálvez.  If it was I never knew, though my research shows that he did participate in this particular race in 1959, which was held in the area near the school.

(From the internet)

Picture taken at the beginning of that race in 1959,

with Carlos Menditeguy in pole position.

(To be continued)

-oOo-

Photo Finish -

from Lonicera's non-digital archives

Argentina 1994

Sierra Grande, province of Córdoba

More of Nancy's garden

(see post before last - The Healer)

Sierra Grande, province of Córdoba

Cheeky Benjie, one of my friend Michèle's sons

-oOo-

Go to Part 2

Tales from Elsewhere - Mind How You Go...

Hilda looked in stunned amazement at the damage done to her car 10 seconds earlier. 

She had been taking her 10-year old son Bobby to school down the solitary, narrow Somerset country lane which linked their home to the outside world, concerned that they would be late, since his carpool lift hadn’t shown up for some reason.  They had waited at home for half an hour before setting out, so were running much later than usual, and she wondered fleetingly if she had been going too fast.  But on Church Lane “fast” didn’t apply.  The tarmacked track was 11ft wide – less so when the hedges hadn’t been trimmed by the council, and she was normally very careful.  This had been a head-on collision of two cars moving at a sedate pace.

They had lived in the village since their children were tiny, back in the late 1950’s, when they purchased an acre of land on a hill which overlooked the Somerset levels from the Church, in whose ownership it had been since the 1300’s, and built their timber framed house and swimming pool.  In church records the plot was known as The South Plantation, and the name was retained, making it sound as if it were a property next door to Tara in Gone with the Wind. 

The acid soil had ensured that they had a spectacular garden with camellias, azaleas and rhododendrons in a profusion of all different colours, and a carpet of English bluebells every spring.  Hilda’s husband Ted had so landscaped the land that the sitting-room’s ample windows looked on to levelled land which dropped away into a ha-ha at the boundary, giving the illusion of ownership of the vista as far as the eye could see.

Having a very narrow lane going past the house ensured that heavy vehicles seldom ventured down there and they frequently heard tooting horns as cautious drivers negotiated every small (blind) bend in the lane.  In unusually harsh winters they stocked up on supplies because it was unlikely that snow ploughs would get to them for weeks at a time, and on one memorable occasion in 1978 Hilda, Ted and their youngest son Bobby were delighted when the grown up siblings visited them with their wives and partners for Christmas and were unable to get home until a week into the new year. 

Quiet and pastoral it was, yet there was the occasional drama.  Ted, erstwhile war hero, captain of industry, writer of books and leader of  men, while trying to repair the up-and-over-door of the garage, managed to lock himself in one afternoon.  He climbed on a box to attempt to reach a high rise window, the box collapsed and as he fell he dislocated his hip – again. 

Hilda was in town till late afternoon and he lay there for two and a half hours, his otherwise commanding and loud voice of no use to him at all.  Presently he heard a neighbour walking by outside and managed to attract her attention, which meant that before long the fire brigade was in attendance to get to him the other side of the jammed door of the garage, and an ambulance to take him to hospital.  Hilda came over the brow of the hill just in time to behold flashing lights, various people milling about and her husband being inserted into an ambulance.

Their tom cats also regretted having found a hidey-hole in the shed where warmer and drier shelter could be found among the canvas sun loungers and spare tennis nets.  When they disappeared for a few days Hilda and Ted had reconciled themselves to the fact that they might never know what had happened to them, but were destined to be proved wrong when Ted went to the shed to get something, and on opening the door, two extremely thin, screeching black streaks flew passed him in a blur and made for the kitchen.  What had saved their lives was the fact that it had been raining, and the shed leaked somewhat.   Their miraculous faculties didn’t end there – Hilda and Ted came back from holiday once to find their ‘tom cat’ nursing kittens.

Hilda waited for the driver of the offending car to get out, reflecting indignantly that in twenty-five years she had never even met anyone coming the other way on the lane, and what were the chances of meeting someone at precisely the time she was using it and was on one of the blind bends?

In fact the odds were high, because the lady who got out of the car looking equally stunned was the mother of Bobby’s friend, who shared carpool duties with Hilda.  Her son was also in the passenger seat.  Each mother had thought that it was the other’s turn, had waited at home for half an hour before setting out feeling stressed about getting their son to school late, and wondering what the other mother was doing.

The husbands reluctantly stumped up the repair fees on the cars, and thereafter if you were driving Ted home from anywhere, he would invariably tell you just before each of Church Lane’s blind bends –

“Remember to toot!”

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Photo Finish

from Lonicera's non-digital archives

Pot Pourri

Fuerteventura (Canary Islands) above & below

 

Bristol Gilbert & Sullivan Operatic Society: 

The Pirates of Penzance 2008 (above & below)

One of the stalls at a street antique market in the suburb of San Telmo, Buenos Aires, in 1994.  If the detail interests you it's worth enlarging to see the interesting Eastern European paintings and the other bric-a-brac.

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