Mothering Sunday

I wish my mother were still alive. Then I would buy her a flamboyant bouquet of flowers on this day. More important, I would sit by her side and share all those things that I have longed to be able to talk to her about since she passed away. Or would I? 

Earliest memories: Part 1

I wrote the following some while ago and thought I had published it, but either I hadn't or else I had accidentally unpublished it. So here it is, but as I now have more material I want to share it will have to be renamed with "Part 1" in the title.

Possibly my earliest memory is sharing a bath with my older sister and somehow slithering around so that I was face down in the water, at which I made such a commotion that I was quickly rescued. This occurred more than once so that taking a bath became a dangerous mission. For me to remember this at such an early age, it must have been very traumatic and may well be why I still easily panic when out of my depth in water.

I've noted elsewhere how I distinctly remember posing for this photo, feeling the coarse sand-dune grass scratching my body. I like to think the location was our favourite holiday haunt Brea Hill, Daymer Bay but I cannot be sure.

I remember, pre-school, standing, legs apart, on the dining room fireplace hearth and swaying from one foot to the other whilst enquiring of my older sister what was school like, and then years later asking her what senior school was like ("Physics" - 'what's that?', "oh ever so boring, all about light and speed and weight and stuff" - 'sounds very interesting to me!')

Pose for annual official photo at APS

Of course I remember my first day at Alresford Preparatory School ('APS', a dame school), at least I remember being introduced by my older sister. My older sister comes into many of these tales. I can remember not wanting this cheap toy telephone to be in my official photograph but being told to pose like this. Back then the government provided all pupils with a third pint bottle of milk every day and this we consumed via a straw. In the winter it was sometimes frozen and I remember the disgust I felt at the teacher saying it was "just like ice cream". Adults sometimes say ridiculous things to children and expect them not to be taken in. On one occasion I tried blowing instead of sucking through the straw, with disastrous results. But it was only an experiment - how else does one learn? 

My mother and me

That's my mother, just how I remember her: this picture still gives me a lump in my throat. Memory is so frustrating: I feel like I ought to be able to recall, oh, so much more but in fact I remember so little about my parents, good as they were. She loved flowers, that much I can remember - and her signature meal was roast lamb with all the trimmings (which would include Yorkshire pudding even with lamb).

We aggravate the world by first being born then, in order to stay alive, by consuming its bounty until we die and rot in our graves leaving behind no more than an aroma and a feint but gradually vanishing memory in the minds of those we came in contact with.  Such is life and what is achieved?  All is vanity!

Church mountain and Celandines

Every year and about this time of the year I find it necessary to disprove that I will never again run there and back and climb Church Mountain (bare foot). And so, the weather being clement, yesterday I headed that way. It's not much of a climb but when you add getting there and getting back... So as not to be late for dinner I had to push myself - didn't even stop at the summit - and once home I was pretty tired and aching and thirsty.  But I did it! I'm not totally decrepit yet!

Stats: 14.5 miles, average speed moving 4.0mph, maximum altitude 538m.

Our lake in the distance

Other People on the ruins

Me

Wayside Celandines

Celandines always remind me of my mother.  We were having a picnic or perhaps just a snack on the triangle of land in the centre of the map below. I must have been very young and I guess my older sister was there too. Very proud of my horticultural knowledge I pointed out the buttercups only to be told by my mother that they were celandines. From that moment on I have always loved celandines for the memory but regarded them inferior to buttercups.

 

I like this picture

Sci-Fi stories about time travel are often unsatisfactory and yet the concept is curiously attractive. But we can sort of time travel back by looking at photographs.

I like this picture - it brings back memories of posing for it whilst feeling the warmth of the dog beside me and the roughness of the bricks under my legs, and anyway it is a great photo - does that make me a narcissist?

Sadly the colours have faded - I was in fact wearing a light blue jumper and the sky behind was largely blue. I've tried adjusting the colours but cannot get it quite right.

The location was our "top garden", the one with the swimming pool (to the right) and my workshop (on the left).

I use this picture as my avatar for various computer apps so I get to see it daily. And sometimes as I look at it and dwell on times past I remember that my father, behind the camera, was also looking and it makes me wonder - and this makes my heart lurch - how much did I disappoint him in later life? Doubtless he appreciated my company in the railway room, the things I used to invent, my success at Oxford and getting a job for the BBC, my falling in love and marrying Ali. But then more and more of my time and devotion was spent on church things and with my own family and, when my mother died, he began to spend more time at the W's and for both these reasons we got to be with each other less and less.

If I could live my life over again many things I would not change - but I like to think this I would change - to spend more time and talk more with both my parents. To be an encouragement to them particularly in their later years.

Lady Watts and corrections

Walk down Broad Street on the left hand (West) side and continue down Mill Hill and you will find this garden on the left. When I was a boy it was owned by the widowed Lady Dorothy Dudley Watts. She was very friendly and would even talk to us children and I thought it was neat to have actually conversed with a real lady.  The term "lady" is horribly misused now-a-days.

As for the "corrections", here are some extracts from an email from my sister following my last blog:

Aunty Eva was mum's mother's sister, not granddad's.  Sorry!

The picture of grandad and mum and you and me was taken at Aunty Bee's house, Anglebury, in Woking.  Here is a Streetview picture of the cul-de-sac that Anglebury was in.  I remember dragging a wooden toy with wheels along this road which was then rough gravel. I also remember my dad taking us children to the nearby footbridge over the railway to watch the trains.

In the picture of East Street granddad and Aunty Eva lived in the purple house, number 50, (it did not have the single story extension then).

The old Congregational church where dad and mum got married still exists though not as a church and is in Pound Hill, not West Street. Dad used to run the Sunday school but they left when I was 8, so you would have been 5. We didn't immediately go to New Farm - for at least a couple of years we went to the Baptist church in Winchester and dad played the organ.  I remember being allowed to sit next to dad on the long organ bench as he played.  The hymn "Crown Him with many crowns..." still always reminds me of that church.  I found the building that was the Congregational church on Streetview:

Regarding mum's illness, she had had rheumatic fever as a girl of 14 and missed a whole year's school. This damaged her heart and when I was about 10 she had a recurrence of it and we were farmed out to stay with all sorts of people, and given a midday dinner with David and Betty Fairhead for ages, which disgusted me as at first dad had taken us to the Corner Cafe for lunch which I thought was wonderful in that you could choose what you ate!  I remember eating a roast chicken dinner at the Corner Cafe, complete with bread sauce, and it met all my expectations. There is nothing quite so bad as eating out and paying through the nose for it and the meal not meeting one's expectations - I regret this happens all too often.

My mother

If mothers have strap-lines then my mother's might have been "quietly determined". I think inherited a bit of this trait from her: I remember on one occasion her telling me that I had a stubborn streak. Like most children do I am afraid that I totally took my mother for granted and thereby I missed the opportunity to get to know her as a friend. I do know that she was a praying woman - I remember often seeing her on her knees by her bedside. Mind you, she had prejudices: she would not buy butter that had been imported from China (not sure that I would mind you!) and didn't have a good word to say about Roman Catholics. Of course I loved her, but like I said I took her for granted.

Here she is as a young girl, and a beautiful portrait of her as a young woman.

To give some idea of context, here's yours truly in typical garb though untypically looking cleaner than usual, and my mother as I remember her. The workshop of Smith & Crockford is visible in the background. The gate from our little bit of garden onto the yard was later moved over to the far right.

My mother's father Alan Crockford lived in East Street next to John Arlott's house, not that I ever noticed him. Here is a recent picture of that part of East Street, and picture of my mother with granddad and I suppose my sister Margaret and myself.

I remember all that you can see about him - the way he held his head, the braces, the trousers hitched high, hands in pockets. He used to frequently give my older sister and me boiled sweets, especially barley sugars: possibly this is the reason why I now have so many fillings and hate barley sugars. Or maybe they were never that good. His wife died ages before my era, so my mother was brought up by an aunt, and Alan's sister, "aunty Eva" to us, looked after him. In those days we had "tea" there once a week with tinned fruit salad served with tinned milk being the order of the day.  It was considered a treat in those days: we had to eat it with bread and butter, the idea being that it was too good to consume neat so it had to be diluted. This principle of eating has stuck with me and to this day I find there is something wrong in eating meat, fish or cheese on its own: I have to dilute it with potato, bread or some vegetable. There were other food rules like no second cake unless you first have at least two slices of bread, no jam on your first slice of bread, and of course we had to finish what was on our plate. As a result now, even when in a restaurant, I find myself apologizing if I leave anything uneaten.

I found this interesting post - I thought at first this was the house he and Aunty Eva lived in, but in fact it is one or more to the right, but doubtless the "Allan Crockford" was my granddad as he was a builder and invested in property.

Every week I used to play draughts with him but first had to wait until he had finished the ritual of listening to The Archers on a valve wireless set. Hearing the theme tune, unchanged in all those years, still brings back those memories.

The following entries of deaths appear in the parish register.

CROCKFORD ALAN EAST ST. 1963-11-04 76 C 4 10 315
CROCKFORD DAISY JANE EAST ST. 1930-11-28 46 C 4 10 1197


But, hang on, this blog was meant to be about my mother...

I do not personally remember too much about my parents wedding, but I have these pictures:

I have included the second picture because of my grandad. And the first picture is taken in front of the old Congregational church where the ceremony took place - this building was in West Street but no longer exists. As a family we "worshiped" there until such time as my father has some issue with their doctrine and and changed allegiance to New Farm Chapel - which does not seem to have changed in appearance since I left there apart from the addition of a circular window.

Taking Paul's injunction literally, women were not allowed to speak in church. My mother most certainly would have, had she been allowed, for she was forever composing sermons which, I suppose, none but her eyes ever read.

And then we took that fateful family holiday in Scotland. On the way up we stopped by the shore of Loch Lomond because she was not feeling well. I remember my dad and I half heartedly climbed a little way up a hill overlooking the loch. She was complaining of weakness and her ankles were swollen. I cannot remember whether we continued or returned home at that point, but that was the beginning of her heart problems which ended in what was then a very serious operation in a London hospital to replace a heart valve.  I remember, while she was in the convalescent home, taking her out to nearby Selborne hanger.

This is a wooded escarpment into which has been carved a zig-zag path - my mother was not up to walking much and she encouraged me to go off exploring as was (and still is) my want - but somehow it didn't seem to suit the circumstances.

I am not sure about the relative dates, but around that time I must have started work at the BBC Research Department, got married (doubtless to be the subject of another blog), given in my notice (another blog to be) and moved to Grennell Lodge (another blog..., and now a nursing home).  From time to time we visited my parents or they traveled to see us. There were rumours of wars (more on this when I blog about my dad) but I have always been a bit naive and I do not care too much about hear-say. And then the telephone call in which I was told that, whilst she went upstairs to take an afternoon nap, my father strolled up to the top garden possibly to have a cigarette and doubtless to blow some cobwebs out of his mind and then, on his return, he went upstairs to look for my mother and found her dead, still in bed. It was confirmed that the cause of death was related to the heart valve. My only hope was that she passed away without pain.

The following entry is recorded in the parish register:

BAILEY KATHLEEN CECILIA EVE 1982-04-19 61 EX/S 96 722

So what do I remember most about my mother? The fact that she loved me unconditionally, so that after leaving home I knew I was always welcome back. The fact that both my parents spent quality time with us children, so that there was never a feeling of being unwanted. The fact that they believed in discipline and taught us Godly principle (mind you, such indoctrination is not always an advantage). Happy family outings and the yearly holiday usually in the West Country are etched in my mind. My mother was quite an artist, though never exhibited her work: generally she never thought she was good enough at anything, but she took care with all that she did. Morning coffee (hmmm... instant coffee powder and made with hot milk and sugar, but I loved it) and a few biscuits. A special supper after all the meetings on Sunday evening. The handmade rug she used to work on in odd moments of free time (of which she seemed to have little) and which never seemed to get finished. Her getting up before anyone else in the winter and laying a fire in the living room to take off the chill (there was no other heating in the house back then, and even when my father installed gas fired central heating it was rarely used because of the expense: and no double glazing so Jack Frost was a common occurrence. Being conscious that she got hurt when dad said things, that she found his folk so very hard to get on with (didn't we all?). That, on the subject of me and girls, rather than probe she simply said that one day I would come home with a girl on my arm and that would be that, and this is exactly what did happen some years later.

And that my mother's folk were relatively normal. The folk that she stayed with when her mother died, Aunty Bee and Uncle Elf (Alf), who lived in Woking: although they were the type that you knew you had to behave with, we children also knew that they loved us, made room for us, and we felt safe and entirely happy whenever we visited them. Granddad I have already mentioned. Aunty Eva was a bit starchy but her being a spinster might have had something to do with that. There were cousins and other distant relations and as far as I can remember they were all relatively normal too.

Now I have grown up, I would love to be able to go backwards in time and be able to talk to her and share where I am at and get her input. If only I had spent more time with her...