Nil November

 Wednesday. 10.25 a.m. Yesterday I didn't feel all that well. I had what seemed to be a migraine, which I rarely get. It seemed like the flu or possibly covid. This morning it seems to be gone, but it wasn't pleasant. A short time lying on my bed did help, but not entirely.

There was quite a heavy rainstorm early this morning, around the time I woke up, but at the moment, there is no sign of rain. The Environment Agency has declared a flood warning for Milton Keynes and the area, no doubt because the River Ouse flows through Newport Pagnall.

I've just come back from a shopping tip to Sainsbury's, and it looks as if Christmas, or at least, the run-up to the festive season, is in full swing. There are Christmas trees everywhere, of varying sizes and presents, or at least, the options for presents, very much in evidence.

Thursday. 4.10 p.m. I now have the bookcase I was given screwed securely to the wall. I am slowly moving the piles of books I have around the flat into the bookcase. I am so glad I was given this, and I have the chest of drawers parked in the entrance hall of the flat, and that will be moved into my bedroom once I have cleared a space on the furthest side of my bed.

Friday. 10.40 a.m. It's a bit miserable and wet. It's pouring with rain and not good out. Just as well it's rain and not tea or orange juice! I know, I'm silly, but after all, why not?

I'm gradually moving the piles of books into the new bookcase. The place looks so much better, but actually not particularly tidy!

Saturday. 12.25 p.m. It's a very grey and gloomy day. It makes me think of this poem, called 'November' and very appropriate for the sort of day it is. When I was at school, we learnt poetry and sometimes had to read it aloud.

No sun — no moon!
No morn — no noon —
No dawn — no dusk — no proper time of day.
 
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member —
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds! —
November!

It was written by Thomas Hood.

There is a fog, not exactly thick, but as I look out of the kitchen window, I can see that this fog is obscuring a good deal of the view. Some of it has been Tippexed out, as you would if you made a mistake on a typed letter, long before computers and word processing.

Changeable Weather

(Easter Sunday) There's a definitely change in the weather this morning. It might be relatively bright and sunny, but Alfie and I were somewhat surprised that there was a light frost as we came out of the door into Strudwick Drive at around 7.30 this morning. I would appear, according to the weather forecast on BBC Breakfast, that it's going to be even colder tomorrow.

I've been to church this morning at the Oaktree Centre, home of Shenley Christian Fellowship! First the first time in I don't know how many months, we are allowed to have socially distanced meetings. A very full (socially distanced, I must add here) house.

Later. Turned the television on at around 4.15pm. to discover the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race on. It's not on the River Thames, but this year it's taking place on the River Ouse near Ely. I suppose, with the pandemic in full swing, they had to make sure that no crowds gather along the banks (spoil sports!) but I really think this is going too far! Mind you, definitely put Ely and the River Ouse on the map. A long river, which runs through Newport Pagnall, Bedford, St Neots and out towards The Wash at King's Lynn.

(Monday) 7.35a.m. I've been out with Alfie. Really early, around 6.15a.m. It's bright and windy and quite cold. Not a lot more to comment on at the moment.

Later. I've been out again with Alfie. He's been doing his 'sitting on the sofa, staring' act and, as I was attempting to read (by the way 'Storyteller: The Life of Roald Dahl,' by Donald Sturrock if you want to know.) I just couldn't concentrate, even after I'd given him several treats. As I have said in the above, the weather is a good deal colder this morning, but I was surprised to see flurries of snow when I was in the kitchen washing up and looking out of the window. We walked as far as Oldbrook Green, but as it was so cold we came back to the warmth of the flat.

5.00p.m. Another of those wonderful Downing Street press conferences. (Do you sense a certain irony in that sentence?) Boris Johnson has just stated that  shops, pubs, hairdressers and other retail outlets are to be allowed to reopen on Monday. Great, wonderful, brilliant etc etc etc. About time to. I can't wait to go into a shop again, and I bet lots of other people will be thinking the same. I really think the BBC should release these Downing Street press conferences on DVD so that, when all this is over (and, please, let's hope that isn't much longer.) we can sit and watch it all when we want something to send us to sleep. 

Flooded Milton Keynes and Bedford

 (Monday) I put BBC Breakfast on at around 6.20 and they were reporting 'live' from Bedford. The centre of the town is flooded and all along the Embankment and around Longholme lake the river has risen and engulfed the fields around the River Ouse, all places I know well.

Although I wasn't able to visit Chloe and family in Worcester over Christmas, I was able to chat with her via Skype, something I haven't done before. It was great to not only chat, but she gave me a guided tour of the extension to the house which is more or less completed. She didn't show me upstairs, because the children were asleep in bed (it was around 7 p.m.). There is a new utility room and the downstairs wet room off the kitchen as well as an office. I hope that probably next week we can have another chat and this time have the boys involved as I haven't seen any of them since last Christmas because of the pandemic.

It's a good deal colder this morning. I was out with Alfie at 7.45a.m and not only was it a good deal colder, but there was a fog hanging over the centre of Milton Keynes which I could see from Oldbrook Green. I am making sure that I wrap up to keep warm, with my Oddballs woolly hat on as well as gloves (which I managed to find.) My hands get really cold and can get so cold they become numb. Something to do with having had a heart attack. Your extremities, such as your toes and fingers, can be affected. I ought to explain that Oddballs is a brand of clothing, utilising brightly coloured and highly patterned clothing, particularly underwear for men and women. Originally set up to sell these items and the profits going to cancer charities, initially for research into men's cancer, particularly testicular and prostate cancer but now also women's cancers. A good cause and I have bought quite a few items, and because of Carol's cancer, I thought it highly personal to me.

I've been out again with Alfie and it was really quite foggy. Well, not too thick that you couldn't see a hand in front of your face, but a good deal thicker than it was earlier.

(Later) I've been watching a documentary on YouTube, called 'The Cult of Doomwatch,' which was an early 1970s drama series which had storylines about what happens when science goes wrong. I remember it quite clearly and it had some really frightening storylines. I have a connection to it as one of the leading actors, Simon Oates, was a guest director when I was at the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham in 1969, working as a student A.S.M. I'm desperately trying to remember what he directed. I have an idea that it was 'A Day In The Death of Joe Egg,' written by Peter Nicols. I may be wrong and unfortunately I don't have any way of finding out. I used to have a whole box full of the programmes from plays I worked on. You always got given one on the opening night of the plays I worked on. Some were signed by the cast. It's a pity, as they would be great to look through. I even had production photographs, but they also went astray years ago. I expect they went missing along the way as I've moved quite a few times over the years.

(Tuesday) I've been doing on-line surveys for several years now. You sign up to various sites and give as much detail about yourself and then you get an email with a link to the survey. You have to do a quick survey to show if you are eligible and if you qualify you do the survey, which can take up to 20 minutes and you get rewarded points which accrue and can be turned into cash or vouchers for well-known brands. I usually get Amazon points which you can spend as you wish from their site or else turn the points into vouchers for 'bricks-and-mortar retailers such as Marks and Spencer, John Lewis or any other high street companies. Don't expect to be able to make a great deal from these surveys, but as the Tesco ads tell you 'Every Little Helps.' I am also on a site called Consumer Pulse (you have to be invited. You can't just sign up to this site.) You have to input to their site when you buy products such as clothing, shoes, books, CDs, DVDs etc and the points build up and can be turned into vouchers for such companies as Sainsbury's, Argos, B and Q etc etc. I had reached a good payout of around £100 so I decided to redeem them, turn them into Argos vouchers. You usually get your vouchers sent to you, as paper vouchers, but because of the pandemic, you get them as eVouchers which can be spent on-line. I was expecting them to come in a couple of weeks which is what normally happens, but I was surprised to find they were sent in an email, as a string of letters and numbers. So, I thought I'd spend them. I got to the Argos website and managed to select some items, a new toaster (the old one is beyond repair, frankly, and it took ages to toast a piece of bread.) I found a Breville toaster and decided on that. Then, a new electric kettle. The old one is a Russell Hobbs and it has a Brita filter in it. The one I chose is similar but made of glass. That's ordered, but won't be ready for collection until tomorrow, Wednesday. Also ordered a plate rack for the kitchen sink, bath mats and a 'Welcome' doormat, which might be helpful in preventing mud and other bits and pieces coming into the flat. I got the toaster on Sunday and I had to go to the Argos store in Milton Keynes to collect it. Click-and-collect only and you have to queue up and it took about 20 minutes to get to the check-in. They don't allow you inside the store. A member of staff takes your details, your order number and another code which identifies you as well and the item ordered and it's handed over. 

More Politically In-Correct Books and Films

Continuing on the theme begun in my last blog post, what about all those other works of literature, usually aimed at children, as well as films? Just think of a series of books that I read avidly as a child, beginning with "Swallows and Amazons" which were written by Arthur Ransome. They were about a group of children who seem to spend their lives perpetually on holiday in either the Lake District, Norfolk or Essex. The children are John, Susan, Titty and Roger Walker. I don't think, in all honesty, you could have a character called Titty in a book nowadays. Sorry, but the name just causes (sorry for the pun) a titter. You would have to re-name the character for a modern audience. I think it's the fact that they sail their boats on one of the Lake District lakes (I think it must be Windermere, but I'm not sure.) and there's no attempt to them wearing life jackets of any sort. When I was growing up, my father was an avid sailor, and had several yachts, some of which were sailed on the River Ouse near where we lived, mostly at Cardington Mill. We were never allowed in these boats unless we either wore a life jacket (generally a very bright orange or yellow) or we could swim proficiently (about the only decent thing I ever got from going to Rushmoor School was the fact that I learnt to swim). The stories of the Walker children continue in several other books, Pigeon Post, Swallowdale, Peter Duck, Winter Holiday, We Didn't Mean To Go To See. I think he later books might have been set in and around the Essex coast. As we used to go on holiday each year to Frinton-On-Sea, and the inlets in and around Walton-On-Naze, which was a little bit further up the coast from Frinton, this gave the stories a good deal more interest to me because I could picture the places in the books. But I think it's the fact that there's no hint of 'Health and Safety' and neither the fact that they wander around the Lakes and surrounding countryside free from any sort of adult interference. When you consider things like 'Child Protection' today, and the unfortunate stories that have come out recently about child abuse, it makes these stories, although written in the 1930's, even more intriguing. It's sad that today's children don't get the freedom to roam about as the children do in those books. Even when I was growing up in the 1960's there was no such thing as 'Health and Safety' or 'Child Protection.' Infact, when I consider the fact that living on a farm alone had many dangers and perils that would make the place a possible death-trap. We built hideouts in amongst the hay and straw bales, never once thinking that they might collapse on us and suffocate us or even catch fire. I used to make tree-houses, fairly high up in some oaks trees in the garden at Malting Farm. Thinking about it now, I could have easily fallen out of the tree and broken a leg, arm or whatever. You didn't think things like that were in the least bit dangerous in those days, but I suppose children never see the dangers in anything.

Returning to Swallows and Amazons. In the mid-1970's they made a cinema film of the book. It was, by coincidence, at the time I was an A.S.M., working at Century Theatre in Keswick. We did a series of four plays, running in repertoire, and changing every two days. Hard work, to say the least. When they began filming (no doubt on Derwent Water, on which Keswick is near). When we were out looking for props in the town for the plays we were staging, we often got asked whether we were from the film unit. It was also a coincidence that this film had a screenplay written by David Wood    who was in a play that I worked on at Greenwich Theatre called "A Voyage Round My Father" by John Mortimer. The director of the film was Claude Watham who also directed the Mortimer play, as he had done when it was originally done as a 'Play For Today' on BBC Television.

Back on books and films. Just think of Harry Potter. Why didn't the Dursleys, who had young Harry as a lodger (where they actually related? Were they really Harry's aunt and uncle?) Nevertheless, they had Harry under their care, so why did the poor boy end up living under the stairs? Why were they never prosecuted for child abuse? Expecting the child to live in such confined conditions is surely abuse of some sort? Why didn't the authorities intervene?

Then think of Oliver Twist, in particular the musical version, on stage and screen. What are they teaching children if they watch Oliver! That crime seems to pay, perhaps? Teaching youngsters to PICK POCKETS! Really terrible.

I seem to have veered off course about unsuitable or politically un-correct films for children, but never mind. I'll get back on the them in another blog post. It was good to reminisce on various things. The whole point of these blog posts I suppose.

My Mum and Dad- Part 1

I have mentioned both my parents in earlier posts. There was around 20 years age difference between my mother and father. My mother was around 21 when they married in 1945. My father would have been in his early 40s. Our lives revolved around dogs, horses and boats. The dogs were greyhounds. My father was a farmer first and foremost but he was also a registered trainer of greyhounds. We were very much into bloodsports. I know that now such things as fox hunting and hare coursing are not exactly 'politically correct' and have been banned in this country for several years, but as a farming family you do anything that protects your livestock against predators such as foxes. I'm not sure where I stand in the debate regarding this activity. I suppose when you are bought up with it as being 'the norm' you tend to accept it without thinking about it, but I suppose I would say I come down on the side of the antis to a certain extent as we are supposed to be a modern and forward-thinking society and such things as bloodsports (although I don't like the term) shouldn't be practiced. I don't actually believe that they are a particularly effective way to control foxes or hares, but neither do I believe that shooting is very effective, as you would need to be a very good shot to be able to hit either a hare or a fox and particularly those animals which know the layout of the countryside and are able to avoid being shot. Then, when we drive out through the countryside on our frequent journeys to National Trust properties or wherever we happen to be going in our car, we very often seen dead foxes at the side of the road, along with a wide range of other wildlife such as rabbits and badgers, which have been killed by traffic, there isn't much difference surely in them dyeing under the wheel of a speeding car or H.G.V. and from the barrel of a shotgun. Both my parents used to go coursing during the winter months. It would be cold and frosty and would usually go off to somewhere her Cambridge. I wonder what they would have to say about there being a ban on this activity. Probably total disbelief. My mother died in 1981 and my father in 1993. 

I have mentioned that we had a hut on the River Ouse near Cardington Mill. My father owned several sailing boats over the years. One was a wooden, clinker-built boat called Amaranda and it was sailed on the Ouse at Cardington. He also had a small motorboat whose name I forget. He used to steer this up and down the river on Saturday afternoons during the long hot summers of my childhood. My mother would, as ever, be in charge of vast amounts of food, packed up in the back of whatever car we had at the time and then drive to this hut, gaining entrance to the site through a gate in Cardington Road and across a meadow and over a rather rickety bridge across a stream. The hut was painted bright green and was locked up for most of the time and contained such things as deck-chairs and Calor gas, which was used to boil the kettle for tea. 

Later on my father bought another boat, made of fibre glass and about the same size as Amaranda and he had membership of the sailing club at Grafham Water, a reservoir near Huntingdon. It is around a 25-30 mile drive there. I never took to sailing. Probably because my father had very little patience with us children and would not understand my lack of enthusiasm for sailing because he would bellow at me to move quicker about the boat when the boom moved across in a strong wind and it would hit you hard on the head if you didn't get out of it's way fast enough. Also, I never could fathom out which rope to haul on at the appropriate time and to me it was far to complicated. I would rather go and visit somewhere in the boat without all the hassle of hauling on 'sheets' (the correct term for a rope on a yacht. Don't ask me why!) Or forget which is 'port' or 'starboard.'

These boats were taken with us when we went on holiday to Frinton-On-Sea on the Essex coast (see earlier post for more details.) The clinker-built yacht was built by James and Co boat-builders in Brightlingsea, which is further down the coast and on the Colne Estuary, around 15-20 miles from Frinton. We did spend a certain amount of time at Brightlingsea, but there wasn't an awful lot there to keep children occupied. Even later still my father bought a much larger boat called Flashpoint which had a cabin on it with galley and we sometime went down to Brighlingsea and stayed on this boat, but I found it very cramped and it was moored off Mersea Island and you had to get out to it in a little rubber boat and to be honest I'm not a very good sailor. But it did mean that we had somewhere to go for a few day's holiday. At some point or other I do remember going to stay in a rather nice pub somewhere on the Hard at Brightlingsea, the name of which I forget. There again, it meant my mother got a break where she didn't have to cook food and organise things as she had to when we went on holiday to Frinton (usually for two week at the beginning of September, at around the time of the harvest. I imagine I must have had time off school but again I don't remember exactly.) We went to a rented house, so my mother would have to cook and prepare meals and it can't have been much of a holiday for her. (I mention more of this in an earlier post on here.)

Still Raining

Considering the flooding in other parts of the country at the moment, particularly along the River Thames near Chertsey and Staines and in the Somerset Levels, we shouldn't complain here in Milton Keynes about flooding. We have had very little, although there has been a considerable amount around Newport Pagnall and Olney. As I sit and write this I can see out of the window from the lounge and the rain is falling as hard and fast as ever, some running down the window. The garden is like a quagmire. Whenever the dogs go outside they come back caked in mud. Neither of them wants to stay outside for long, and who can really blame them? The fence is looking very unstable. Along the right hand side of the garden an entire section of the fence was blown over a couple of weeks ago. We managed to right it and prop it up as best we could and put some old garden chairs against it and it seemed to survive in this condition for a few weeks, but it came down only a couple of days ago with an almighty crash which I heard when I was reading. This fence-section is now in such a poor state of repair that there is really no point in attempting to right it again. The upright planking has come adrift from the cross-pieces which hold it together. It, along with the remainder of the fence, is in a very sorry state and I predict that a further strong wind will see it completely disintegrate. Alfie has been tempted on several occasions to wander through the gap in the fence whenever he goes into the garden, but I think he now knows that he must stay in the garden and not go through the gap. We have all manner of items propped up against the fence in an attempt to either shore it up or plug holes in it. Having said all that about rain, it is still relatively mild. There have been days when we've been out to the car first thing in the morning and discovered the windscreen has a layer of ice on it, but those days have been few and far between. I drove to Waitrose this morning and saw primroses had bloomed along the side of Chaffron Way. Considering we are barely halfway through February it seems very early to see signs of flowers blooming. Definitely a good deal milder than this time las year when we had a very long spell of snow and ice.

Workmen are currently working along the road from this house with a shredder into which they are putting cuttings from bushes and trees. It had got very overgrown along some of the paths around this estate so it was good to see this work being carried out. A lot of the trees along the inner ring road of the estate has been cleared and it is now much tidier and clearer. A lot of the trees along the Redways and Gridroads have been cleared and i must say it looks very neat and tidy.

Boats, Dogs and Horses

Family life when I was growing up always seemed to revolve around either boats or horses, and, thinking about it, dogs also. Living on  farm as we did meant we had plenty of room to keep horses. I seem to remember the arrival of the first pony, called Meg. My brother Robert was, and still is, horse-mad. My younger brothers Sandy and Andrew were involved to some extent, but not to the same level as Robert. Gymkhanas were (and possibly still are) held in and around the county of Bedfordshire and into the neighbouring counties.

I wasn't overly keen myself, as I was never liked all the associated activities which went with horse-ownership, such as mucking out, tack-cleaning and so on. I was put off by horses when I was bitten by one. I was sitting on  fence near the stables at the rear of Malting Farm. There was a field of cattle to one side and horses in an adjacent meadow and between was a drinking trough used by both horses and cattle. A cow mooed and one of the horses decided to nip me on the fleshy part of my upper arm. And before you ask, yes, i really hurt. On another occasion one of the ponies I occasionally rode bolted with me on it and I  nearly landed up going through a five-bar gate at the end of the field. Not really something which was ever likely increase my love of equestrianism as you might well imagine! I did occasionally venture out on horsey rides around Cardington, but nothing very adventurous. I would put the horse I was riding into occasional 'top gear' as you might say and go for invigorating gallops across fields of stubble during the harvest period, but that was about all. During that time of the year you could go for miles across country when the corn was newly cut. Robert was the one of my brothers who did show jumping but I can honestly say that I was never brave enough.

My parents got into horse breeding and used to show mares and foals at agricultural shows such as the  Bedfordshire Agricultural Show and later the East of England Show which was the merging of several county shows which included Bedfordshire and held near Peterborough. The Bedfordshire show was on fields where now Tesco and the beach pool (The Oasis) were built in the 1990's.

We had a sort of riverside 'hide-away' near the River Ouse near Cardington Mill, a sort of beach hut where my parents sailed a boat. Infact they had several boats, one being a motor boat. Summer weekends were spent at this hut and the usual gang of friends and relatives with descend, expecting to be both entertained and fed. My mother provided her usual fantastic teas. The hut contained all that one would hope to have for picnics, including deck chairs and tables as well as having a Calor gas ring for boiling the kettle. Several years ago  I walked along the opposite bank where this hut used to stand, round about where the canoe slalom is today, there seemed to be absolutely no sign of either the hut of the actual site of where it stood. I think there's a sort of sluce there which is in case the river floods, which it has done in recent years. We used to get in through a gate in Cardington Road, which is the road into the centre of Bedford and near where The Barns Hotel is today, (about two miles from Tesco's) and drive across a grass meadow to get to the hut and there was a somewhat precarious wooden bridge across a stream in order to reach the riverside site.

My great aunt Liz used to visit us at weekends.  A maiden aunt, I might mention, who had a certain sort of aura about her. She always seemed to get her own way. Much in the mold of the character Lady Bracknall in the play "The Importance of Being Ernest." She possessed the larges nose of anyone I can think of, and I'm only too relieved to think that I did not inherit this nose . It was very large. My father used to go and pick her up from her home in Philpots Avenue in Bedford and she would come for tea and then be taken home in the evening. In the summer she would come to the riverside hut and join in with tea, but she was as deaf as a post and probably as blind as a bat, so I don't think she could possibly have joined in with much of the conversations. I remember she wore a hearing aid, not one of the modern sort that you get today, which, when worn, are barely detectable,  but one which was extremely visable with a seperate microphone arrangement which was connected to the ear-piece with a piece of wire. I recall having to shout quite loud to get her to hear, even with this hearing-aid, which seemed to make the awful howling sound which seem to go with all hearing aids.
My brother James had a black Labrador dog called Flon. He used her for retrieving when he went shooting. I'm not sure how reliable she was as regarding retrieving. Anyway, this dog used to go with us to the river, and was very water-orientated, as are most retrievers, Labrador or otherwise. She would head straight for the water whenever we got to the hut. Keeping her out of the river was something of a problem. One afternoon, when Aunt Liz was in attendance, I think she probably spent most of the time asleep in a deckchair (well, she would have been in her late 80's  at the time so she was pretty ancient. I think she was 95 or thereabouts when she died in 1965.) Anyway, the dog, Flon, had been for a swim and came out onto the bank, and did what all dogs do  when they've been in water, she shook herself vigorously and unfortunately near the sleeping Great Aunt Liz. She became quite annoyed, as you can imagine and so it was decided from then on to keep the dog away from her. On another occasion the dog went for a ride in the motor boat along the river with my father in command and the dog sitting in the seat next to him. It was a bright and sunny day and the fish were leaping and things were drowsy. My mother was about to pour the tea. The sandwiches were made. The Victoria sponge taking pride of place in the centre of the table and no doubt another load of friends or relatives were about to arrive or perhaps they had just arrived. My mother waited for my father to return in the boat and looked along the river and into the sun, so couldn't see clearly. She said that Aunt Liz was in the boat which she could just see coming round a bend in the river. But she wasn't IN the boat at the time. She thought the DOG was my great aunt, who certainly sat in a somewhat imperious fashion when in the boat and thinking about it now, the dog did look rather like her,  although from a distance, I must stress!

Family Summer Holidays- Part 3

As I have mention in the earlier post, my father's yacht was the central reason for the holiday in Frinton-On-Sea. I think the sailing must have been particularly good along that stretch of the Essex coast. The boat he had which was called 'Amaranda' was a Jewel class yacht. It was clinker built, meaning it was made of overlapping lengths of timber made in the traditional manner. He had another yacht built of fibreglass of about the same size and later still a far larger yacht called 'Flashpoint' which was moored in the estuary at Brightlingsea and which was fitted out with a galley and sleeping accommodation , although it was quite cramped. I wasn't so keen on sleeping in that tiny space afore, as I got seasick with the motion of the boat and also some amount of claustrophobia in such a tiny space. This had a tender, a small rowing boat attached which was used to ferry us out to the mooring.  I remember that my Uncle Michael (my mother's brother, now, alas, dead.) was a very good sailor and would take command of "Flashpoint" because I think as Dad got older he found it quite difficult to manage. Dad had bought a small wooden rowing boat from somewhere in Colchester I seem to remember and took some duty as tender and was called 'Midge.' This was quite a basic sailing boat and could be sailed quite well by one person. Mum was good at sailing that alone and I think my brother James sailed that a few times. This was also sailed on the River Ouse near Cardington Mill, as we had a hut there which was used as a base for sailing and summer picnics, but, unfortunately, all of that had been swept aside when the business park was built.

The yacht would be taken down to be parked at the beach on arrival in Frinton. We had to go to the estate agent to get the keys for the house we had rented as well as the beach hut. I know that now it's quite fashionable to rent or own a beach hut at places such as Southwold, Frinton, Bournemouth and other seaside resorts, but when we went it made a very good base on the sea front. Frinton has an excellent beach, very fine sand between breakwaters or 'groynes' and the sea comes in right up to the level of the promenade and so washes the sand clean and makes an  excellent safe place for families with young children to have a holiday. Inside the hut (we had a different one each year, but I believe that they are all basically the same inside) there is an inner and outer area, the back area being lockable with double doors and which makes a good place to change when you go swimming. In that part of the hut there would be a Calor gas ring for boiling water for tea, a set of around six deckchairs, a picnic table and probably one or two other tables. In the front section of the hut there would be a benched area, so you could set up your table here and sit for meals or set up on the promenade at the front of the hut. 

There was a parking space on what was called the Greensward, a long stretch of grass which runs the whole length of the Frinton seafront. There is a slipway which runs down to the promenade and a further one which allows boats to be manhandled onto the beach and then launched. It was quite a strenuous task to haul the boat up and down these slipways, but I think at one point the car was used for this purpose.
As I said in the earlier post, it can't have been much of a holiday for my mother, because we stayed in a rented house in Frinton and this would mean there would still be meals to cook and we children would need to be looked after. Also, my mother and father sailed most days and knowing my father, who wasn't the most patient of men, it must have been quite stressful being a crew member for him. I can remember on several occasions being on board one of his yachts on the River Ouse and he wasn't patient, particularly if you hauled on the wrong sheet (rope) or moved at the wrong moment, as you had to if the boat was tacking into the wind, for example. If you didn't move fast enough you were very likely to be hit on the head very hard by the boom, the wooden 'stay' which kept the bottom of the mainsail fixed to the mast and moved about quite freely if not taken under control with whatever rope you happened to have in your hand and if not you'd get a lot of abuse from my father such as 'get out of the way, you idiot!' or words to that effect.
Quite a few family friends would congregate at the beach hut at Frinton. Not just my uncle Michael and his wife Gemma, but also a couple called Tim and Betty Smith.  They were a really nice couple, but they would argue with one another and would sit and bicker endlessly.  Can't have been much fun for my mother, inviting someone to tea and have to listen to them constantly bickering.
My brother Andrew appeared in 1961. I think after four boys my mother was keen to have a daughter. So it was a bit of a surprise when child number five was yet another boy. The Smiths, on the other hand, had been married for years and no baby appeared, but around a year after Andrew was born their one and only child appeared, called Ian. Funny little kid, bald, not very good looking, to say the least. In fact, possibly the inspiration for Yoda in the 'Star Wars' movies! I shouldn't make such comment, but never mind. Then there were the Boddy family, Ashely and Alison. Again, lovely people, but very noisy. I think Ashley bought my father's first boat, 'Amaranda.' He was another very good sailor. But as I say, whenever this family visited you needed to keep at arms length or wear earplugs as Ashley had/has a very loud laugh and the whole family makes a great deal of noise.
My Great Aunt Liz stayed at the Grand Hotel  which is on the seafront at Frinton and quite an imposing building.  She was one of my father's Scottish relatives, never married and was ancient even when I was a teenager.  She died at the grand old age of 95, in 1965, so almost 50 years ago. She makes me think of Lady Bracknell in "The Importance of Being Ernest." Blind as a bat and just as deaf and with a huge nose, which, thank goodness, I didn't inherit. Imperious, to say the least, and although she wore a hearing aid she never seemed to have it tuned properly so it made that unfortunate whistling noise that hearing aids are prone to. You would find yourself repeating things endlessly if you had a conversation with her, which could make life very difficult. Anyway, she would come down to the beach several afternoons when we were there, but it would mean her being ferried around in cars and taken down to the beach as she couldn't walk far.
Andrew, as I've said, was the youngest of my parent's children. I can't imagine what looking after no less than five children would be like, not just feeding, clothing, birthdays, Christmas and so on. So it's no wonder that my mother needed some sort of help. So Andrew had someone to look after him when he was a baby up until be was around 9-10 I suppose. This lady was Miss Fuller. To this very day I'm not sure of her Christian name. It's odd, but it's true. She had been a seamstress and very good too, and had gone to our neighbour's at Cardington, the Porter's and used to do mending. Somehow or other she was sort of 'head-hunted' by my mother and came to work for us., doing virtually the same thing. I know, it's odd to us today, but people did mend clothes. It's not something that is done now, I should imagine, even with the 'recycling' generation and the need to be 'environmentally friendly.' I imagine this would be a left-over from the days of the Second World War and what followed with Austerity. Anyway, she had one afternoon of mending socks, darning etc and then when Andrew was born she used to take him for walks in his pram. Eventually she came more or less permanently as a sort of nanny, but I don't suppose she would have wanted to be called that. So she came with us when we went on holiday to Frinton. I don't know what the arrangement as regards payment. I suppose she was given something, but I don't know. But I suppose she was getting, in effect, a free holiday. At least it meant my mother got some sort of time to herself as Miss Fuller took virtually complete control of son number five. Things went very well with this arrangement until my grandmother  Ferriman came to Frinton. I'm not sure for certain whether she came for a day or two or whether she stayed with us, but she was another body for my mother to look after.
One afternoon there was something of a cat-fight between Miss Fuller and my grandmother. Don't ask me what it was about. It was in front of everyone on the promenade near the beach hut. My grandmother was going on  about something like who was looking after my brother, and Miss Fuller, who was an extremely strongwilled lady, put her foot down and said that SHE was looking after him. It was like something out of one of those comedies, almost fists flying, fur and feather. 'He's my grandson and I'm in charge of him!' from granny Ferriman and then 'He's my responsibility' from Miss Fuller (or words to that effect.) I'm not sure how it ended, but it must have been very embarassing for my mother. I think it may have been about who could take him for a walk along the promenade or something equally trivial. I know it must have caused no end of entertainment for all and sundry!