Significant Anniversaries

The Blitz was seventy years ago. I listened to Woman’s Hour this week, describing the blitz on Plymouth, and then Liverpool.

When I was writing Tainted Tree, I wanted to describe an event that took place as a result of a bombing raid, and looked through some books on the war that the OH’s father had passed on to him. I found that there was a major raid on Plymouth and, since a large part of Tainted Tree takes place in the West Country, Plymouth seemed to the be right place to use.

As far as London was concerned, I remember my father describing how everyone tried to persuade him to go into the shelter, but he preferred to stay in the house (on a regular basis). He was rather deaf at the time, so was able to ignore the bangs going on around him at our East London home. He had an ARP whistle which I found in a drawer once, and I believe he had to go out and look up at the sky, and then - presumably, blow it, if he saw a suspicious plane. I wish I had asked him more about his experiences, for as someone said today, the blitz was not just about the courage of The Few, but of the many – those that experienced it in their own homes.

In the road where I lived, when I was a child, a house opposite had been bombed, and remained a bomb site for all the years I remember. And a block of flats nearby were bombed, and I think I remember my mother telling me that they went to look for relations there, but never found them.

Our own anniversary falls on 11^th – another significant day - and we’ve been married long enough for me not to be surprised when the OM shows signs of male craziness – a bit like those odd men from Three Men in a Boat. Yesterday, he said to me, ‘We’ve got a problem. There’s a bird up the chimney.’

He could hear chirping, but any bird would not have been able to escape, as there’s a piece of polystyrene wedged there, to keep soot from coming down.

We have a very straight chimney, and I’ve been fooled myself sometimes into thinking that a bird has got trapped, when actually, it’s sitting on the roof singing to itself. I decided not to say this to the OM, as he tends to get a bit huffy, if he thinks I’m trying to evade helping him. He got in a very large dirty plastic sheet and asked me to cut it up. I couldn’t follow his plan, but it seemed he wanted to put it over the fire place, and was then going to catch the bird in a bucket, inside the fireplace (he asked for a box, but I didn’t have one), once he had stopped it from escaping into the room. This idea seemed full of holes to me, and my scepticism must have showed, because he said, ‘Well, what’s your plan, then?’ I said I didn’t have a plan, but I got him a somewhat smaller transparent plastic bag, which he attached to the front of the fireplace with masking tape. He left the large sheet over the carpet, ostensibly to protect it. In the mean time I carried out the nearest thing to my plan, which involved closing the curtains at one end of the room, opening wide the windows at the other end and moving the newly recovered settee out of the flight path.

(I didn’t believe for a moment that any bird worth its salt wouldn’t be able to escape from his bucket and plastic sheet.) After this, he pulled the polystyrene out from the chimney, and waited. It won’t surprise you to know that there was no bird up the chimney. But after we had stopped laughing, and after he had stripped off the plastic, I took the opportunity to clean the grate.

We have a decorator here at the moment and feel somewhat invaded – but he is doing a really good job on places that have become shabby over the years, and also, as a result of occasional floods and burst pipes.

At the weekend, we went to the RHS Gardens at Wisley, which is a nice easy trip for us. We decided to rejoin, even though we still have our membership of the National Trust. Many of the flowers have faded by the end of August, and Wisley has, as an attraction in September, a Sculpture Trail, which we followed. I didn’t take my camera, which was a shame because there was an interesting range of exhibits from some very beautiful bronzes to some interesting designs, for example, a butterfly and a dragonfly of stainless steel, both about two or three feet in size and some other creations which were amusing. We liked one sculpture – I think it was a heron - whose body was made of a motor cycle engine.

The following day we went to Hughenden Manor, the home of Disraeli. We started out earlier, as this was an hour’s journey away.

Thinking it was going to rain, we were primarily interested in the house, but the garden, which we saw after all, was also interesting with very formal planting in its main part, with some mature shrubs in another, and a walled garden full of fruit trees and vegetables. Visitors can play croquet on the grass, as you can see above.

The house, apart from containing the history of Disraeli and his wife, Mary Anne, also had a cellar devoted to the map makers of the Second World War. During that war, all the other exhibits were moved to one room and the manor was taken over, for use as a secret intelligence base, code-named "Hillside". The UK Air Ministry staff at the manor analysed aerial photography of Germany and created maps for bombing missions, including the famous "Dambusters" raid. Now, the cellar is a little museum in its own right describing that period. How appropriate for this 70^th anniversary.