Category: mEAndering

Places I go

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dear diary ~ a few days down memory lane

Our visit to Cheltenham last week and the long awaited trip down memory lane was such a wonderful experience. Sometimes, no matter how good the memories of times gone by are you know you just cannot go back it will never be the same. As we wandered around reliving memories of such carefree days it did make us yearn for those old days, those simple days…. but you cannot freeze yourself in the past.

There were moments when I felt I would love to live there again – the Regency architecture so light and elegant at the side of our heavy Victorian gothic style here in the north, the variety of shops and the substantial number of parks and open spaces around and within the town are so inviting. To us, coming from a part of the north that is economically challenged the differences were very noticeable – the whole place oozed wealth and with that wealth comes well appointed properties on leafy streets, with well manicured parks and immaculately dressed and very stylish trim ladies, and hardly any sign of the slobby tracky bottoms, tattoo parlours or charity shops which litter northern towns (that is not a criticsm but merely an observation).

We settled ourselves into the beautiful apartment on Monday teatime then immediately went for a stroll around heading towards the street we moved to just off the high street during my second year.

All that remains are the street signs Grosvenor Terrace and the little alleyway at the lower end. All the houses are gone and replaced with a horror of a multi – storey car park, which my camera refused to take a picture of. And that was another observation – the amount of cars now, so many that they have numerous car parks that were not required back in the 70’s…most people just walked as it is not a large town.

Walking back along the High Street we came to the jewellers shop where we bought my engagement ring in 1975 at a grand cost of £28. This was the shop front in 2018 it looked just the same as the day we bought the ring!

And now – this is what we found – completely empty…but I do still have the ring.

We woke on Tuesday to a gloriously sunny and dry day and we finally arrived at our destination Holst Victorian House museum. For those who don’t know Gustav Holst was a composer who is best known for his famous seven movement orchestral suite The Planets and of which’ I vow to thee, my country’ (a poem by Sir Cecil Spring Rice) was set to music taken and adapted from the Jupiter suite. He also composed the hymn tune called Cranham for the poem ‘In the bleak miswinter’ by Christina Rosetti which earned the title of a Christmas Carol when published in 1872.

Gustav was born in this modest Regency terraced house in Cheltenham in 1874 to parents Aldolph and Clara Holst. His younger brother was born in 1876 and sadly Clara died shortly after and they left the house to live in Vittoria Walk in 1882.

I was met and given a wonderfully warm welcome by Laura, the curator of this museum, and one of the local student volunteers. It was through Laura that DH and I made this visit; we had been considering a trip for goodness knows how many years but never quite made it. The purpose of our visit was to view the bedroom in the Holst house that has been temporarily changed (as far as possible) into that of a 1970’s fashion student as part of acknowledging the final residents of this famous house, the Garlicks, who rented out rooms to the fashion students from the art college at that time.

I personally did not know any fashion students who lived in this particular house but it is a similar, although smaller version, of the Regency house on Prestbury Road I lived in prior to Grosvenor Terrace and through Laura contacting me on my blog I was able to provide her with photos, designs and some written memories of what a real life 1970’s fashion student’s bedroom might be like.

Not all the students on my course during the early seventies would have had a bedroom like this. When I first arrived in Cheltenham I lived in a boarding house providing bed, breakfast and an evening meal and the decoration resembled that of my parents house. Many students lived in such places and were comfortable with it being more home from home in appearance but I left half way through the first term as I wanted to experience real student life with no restrictive landlady and her rules, no matter how grotty the place I had to live in. The student house at 58 Prestbury Road did not disappoint and it certainly was grotty but it was all about the people – we were in some respects the original version of Friends.

Some of the key parts of this period had been carefully selected by Laura and her team; the orange bedspread (mine was similar – my mum’s old candlewick one so popular in the sixties and lasted well into the seventies), the cotton printed Indian bedspreads we used to cover up the old wallpapers most rentals had back then, the very graphic flower printed bedding and the mismatch all round.

Laura had assembled and printed a newspaper to hand out to visitors (see on the bed) that contained my written memories of life as a fashion student together with some of my photos of that time. I had surprisingly few photos and not of good quality as it was an expensive hobby back then to buy and develop film.

The wardobe above was so similar to the one I had in my room at both houses and the kimono dressing gown hung on the door was made from my very first printed length of fabric. We had to create a design that incorporated an element of pattern and would be printed in one colour and repeated.

Many of the sketches I did at the time were copied and pinned up around the room to give a little authenticity…

….but one of my favourite little touches was this blank sketchbook Laura had left for children to draw their own designs in. I remember this is how I started about age 8 just drawing lots of fashion ideas on any scrap of paper I could find not knowing back then that it would eventually lead to a whole career.

This beautiful quilt was hung on the wall, which I believe is on loan from the lady who made it and each of the patches is a genuine 1970’s fabric.

After we said our goodbyes we ventured off to test more of our memory skills. It wasn’t hard to spot 58 Prestbury Road – looking far more elegant than it did when we lived there. After having a small bedroom on the little half landing I eventually moved up into the attic bedroom that is the little tower you can see at the back of the house.

The attic stairs were the only ones to have any carpet – a traditional patterned red one and I rushed out and bought some carpet cleaner to bring it back to an almost new state. I was quite proud of that stair carpet it was the only piece of beauty in the whole place and it was only when one of the students had their mum visiting that we washed the kitchen floor and found the lino actually had a pattern!

We soon noticed that the road was tree lined now – so that was a surprise, but the bus stop and the bench just outside the house was missing.

The little shop I worked in for a while across the road is still going strong.

Of course we couldn’t leave Cheltenham without a day exploring the Promenade, where you find a host of the more expensive chains like The White Company, Hobbs, Anthropologie (need I go on!). I was so focused on the shops I didn’t even get a good picture.

The Promenade leads to the Imperial Gardens and eventually to Montpellier gardens…

…and Montpellier itself where there is a cluster of more individual even more expensive shops with beautiful window displays reminiscent of our time in Vicenza.

It was quite unexpected that there would be a shoe repair shop in amongst them but this is no Timpsons – rather I think he would be mending only shoes that have been handmade in the first place.

They also boast a branch of ‘The Ivy’ although expensive, not as eye watering as I thought it would be….but no we didn’t have a meal there – I just took a charming little picture.

By Wednesday I had walked further than my feet could cope with so we had to limit ourselves to allow for recovery. The day did not start well anyway with an early morning call from my mum in a panic which was not very coherent and by 10.30am I had another call from her carer saying mum had blacked out for a while and she had called the paramedics who were with her at the time and she was refusing to go to hospital. They had not been able to contact my sister, but the paramedics were very good and rang round to try and get her GP to come out (no chance on that one) or a nurse. A nurse came and took blood and eventually a urine sample and my sister finally arrived. So the day was interspersed with phone calls and not knowing if we might have to pack up and go home and sort mum out!

We decided to go out to Pittville Park while waiting for further news and took a flask of soup for lunch and sat by the lakeside to calm ourselves and watch the ducks and the heron.

Afterwards, we walked up to the Pump Rooms and out onto Albert Road. At the top of this road was the Art College and the fashion block – but all is long gone and has been replaced by the student accommodation village. The bus stop near the corner has also gone – it was here one night after college when I waited for the bus down into town that one of the royal cars came around the corner from the nearby race course and slowed down as it passed me and there was the Queen Mother waving from the back seat. I turned round to see who she was waving at but then realised it was me as I was completely on my own. Shame she didn’t offer me a lift!

We decided on the Art Gallery / Museum on Thursday where there are some wonderful William Morris treasures (which is another post another day) and all too soon Friday, the last day, arrived and before heading home we met up with my sister-in-law and her husband who had popped over from Oxford to Winchcombe for a hot chocolate in the Old Bakery and a catch up. Winchcombe is a delightful Cotswold market town heaving with history and those wonderful mellow stone cottages.

It was a delightful end to our visit.

Before we even arrived home we had a call from daughter No. 2 to provide some childcare the next day with an overnight stay at grannies for Little L and Sweetie.

Mum recovered and is awaiting our next visit this week.

Life is soon back to normal!

Back soon x

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dear diary ~ a peaceful haven

For anyone that doesn’t know, this week is Heritage Week when many unusual and inaccessible places open their doors to the public for free. Over the years both in England and Scotland we have seen inside some amazing places. We had a look online and decided on a trip over the hill into Greater Manchester to this unusual little corner called Fairfield tucked away in the heart of the busy suburbs of Droylsden. It is almost an echo of a modern day gated community – yet this Moravian Settlement once surrounded by nothing but farmland is now surrounded by a built up area and some rather busy main roads.

The settlement opened in 1785, planned and constructed by a community of people who were part of the congregation of the Moravian Church. This tiny self sufficient and self governed village boasted a shop, bakery, farm, laundry, inn, fire engine and night watchman as well as its own physician and of course the centre piece being the church.

From what I could understand of the talk this Christian body have similarities to the Amish and the Quakers in that this little community value simplicity, hard work and everyone being equal in the sight of God.

Sadly, it is no longer a self contained village and not all of the houses are occupied by people who follow the Moravian Church and its principles, some of the houses have been given over to social housing and one or two sold off, but it still retains a unique atmosphere that is hard to describe, it has to be experienced.

As you enter this little village you pass through some quite impressively large gateposts and immediately feel like you have stepped back in time with the wide cobbled streets lined either side with beautiful Georgian style terrace of houses in soft red hand made bricks. All the houses are immaculately presented with mature trees softening and enclosing the formality of the layout. As we drove through the gates we were immediately enveloped by a sense of peace and tranquility… a similar effect to when we drove through our gates at the beach cottage….a true haven.

We had limited time as there is so much to see both inside the church and museum and outside around the village and grounds, so we will be going back again next year, perhaps on a day when the weather is kinder. Tea, coffee and fruit scones with jam and cream were being served in the community hall and a few stalls of plants and gifts were helping to raise funds for the endless restoration work needed to keep the listed buildings well maintained.

For anyone living near to Manchester this is a must to go and see. It is the largest example of its kind in Britain and the little museum tells the wider story of its development and of days gone by. It will be open again next year to visitors from about May to the end of August, but we were told they will be holding other special events before then.

Do go and see them they will give you such a warm welcome.

It was a lovely day out for us and despite the heavy downpour we came away feeling quite invigorated and are already eagerly awaiting news of their Christmas event dates in November. I expect it will look quite magical dressed up for Christmas and we will look forward to taking the grandchildren with us this time as Father Christmas is expected to make an appearance.

On the way home we called on a friend we have not been able to see all year due to our commitments elsewhere….a double treat…we had a catch up and a natter with a welcome cup of tea.

If you are interested to know more click these links…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairfield_Moravian_Church

https://www.facebook.com/FairfieldMoravianChurchAndSettlement/?locale=en_GB

https://manchesterhistory.net/manchester/outside/moravian.html

Back soon x

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dear diary :: getting back into the swing

Home again and back to normal daily life and all that entails. Already there have been ups and downs in the couple of weeks we have been at home. Mum has had another urine infection – they make her say and do the oddest things as these infections disturb the brain. It is generally known now that a lot of the ‘dementia’ in elderly people is actually a lack of fluids but even though they are told to drink more they don’t as it means more trips to the toilet. For mum this is not easy as her mobility is so reduced she is on the verge now of not being able to walk at all.

We had a trip up to see her last Sunday after having Little L and Sweetie to stay on Friday and Saturday night. As they left we jumped in the car to drive the 90 miles to see mum – she hates being alone on a Sunday and my sister was away for a rest (though you can hardly call it being on her own as the carers go in 4 times a day).

I have started a course of acupuncture to see if it might help my ear problems and the peripheral nerve damage in my legs and feet from the ruptured disc I had over a year ago. I have never minded needles and quite frankly the doctors are at a loss so I will have a go at anything.

Last Monday we woke to a phone call from my younger daughter who, if you have been following my blog may remember, we helped to buy a new used car – the one that had a burst tyre on the motorway 14 minutes later. Perry’s in Rotherham have been very good and sent a cheque to her for the replacement tyre and we are hopeful we might recover some of the money for the recovery charge we paid to get her off the motorway. Anyway back to the phone call….”mum, the car is at the garage again”, “oh no” I said, ” what has happened this time?”…….. “a taxi driver came out of his driveway on the school run and straight into me and then drove away – I am waiting for the police”.

Daughter, Little L and Sweetie were shocked but OK, my daughter is now having to have physio because of bad whiplash.. the taxi driver eventually came back to the scene after his neighbour, who had seen the crash, rang him to tell him to come back. He has had a similar accident before coming out of his drive. Obviously he doesn’t have great timing and luckily daughter was not going fast. The car is not quite a write off but badly crumpled. Such
a shame.

On Wednesday it was such a beautiful sunny day we used our free NT coupon and went to Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire for the day. It must be over 30 years since we last visited and there is now a huge car park which was almost full and a new visitor centre. When we previously went you parked almost outside the door in the car park that had all of about 10 cars in it and the cafe was in one of the old kitchens. It was very interesting as the volunteers had time to chat and tell us quite a bit of the history and odd quirks of the place.

The little book on the left was found hidden behind one of the wooden panels in the dining room. There are never as many little artefacts of this nature in a place of this date as you find in later Georgian and Victorian properties so this was quite unusual.

We had arranged to go to help my elder daughter this week, who lives nearby, with her young baby but unfortunately baby Chocolate was unwell with a virus and a high temperature at the same time as her husband was also ill in bed. We could only help wash dishes and do a few household chores and nurse the baby to give mum a break as no way was he being put down in his cot – all he really wanted was to snuggle up with his mum. He is no better today so we will have Master Freddie here tomorrow to help out. I did have plans but of course I can put them aside.

I seem to have got quite a few unfinished decluttering jobs on the go now as it has been quite a broken up week one way or another. I am still wading through old paperwork and managed to scan on to the computer a lot of documents that I feel need keeping. I know you should not keep things ‘just in case’ but we have been saved a few times by hanging on to things. When we had the flood we could produce every receipt and got a good price for our contents, when there was all the endowment policy scandal we could produce plenty of evidence and more recently when the Skipton B.S. failed to transfer our ISA savings we could tell them the day and almost exact time that we had dropped the transfer request forms (that they claim they had not received) into the branch because I had kept the dental card machine receipt which showed the date and time we paid and the appointment was prior to us dropping in the forms. With each of these issues there has been a lot of money at stake that we might have missed out on if I wasn’t quite as diligent at keeping old paperwork.

It is so easy to keep a record digitally and I can then archive all these documents onto a memory stick. I hope I will never need to look back at them but you never know!

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beaching ~ homeward bound

Our time at the cottage came to an end, as it inevitably does, all too soon with many gardening tasks left unfinished or not even started but we just have to accept we do what we can in the time available.

Of course in hindsight travelling home on a Bank Holiday Monday was not the best of ideas but one borne out of the fact that our half way overnight stop in Carlisle at the Premier Inn was so much cheaper on the Sunday night.

It was exceptionally busy, both in the hotel and on the roads.

Once I am orientated towards home I suddenly get a longing to be back and reacquainted with all my own things, especially my bed, so we didn’t have a leisurely trip down this time. We left Carlisle at about 10am and as we neared the top of the Lakes the traffic had increased considerably but no queues had formed and we seemed to keep rolling. Our main stop was when we pulled off the M6 at junction 36 (Crooklands Interchange) and headed for Burton in Kendal, hoping to find a cafe for a drink.

A very interesting village with some grand architecture which I thought had quite a French influence in style.

Some interesting street names too.

Sadly, the little village only has a shop with a coffee machine and no tea, the Kings Arms is presently closed for a refurb and the main road through was like a race track and parking non-existent for visitors……I took a few pictures on a quick walk around – it is a long drawn out village and halfway along we decided to cut the exploration short and never made it as far as the church as the noise level of the through traffic drove us back to the car and we moved on ending up at the notorious Lancaster motorway services with a hundred other fellow travellers lunching at Costa. The queue for service was long and the vegetarian selection limited but luckily we managed to grab the very last two mushroom, egg and spinach baps to tide us over – but again with all the noise and grubby tables we didn’t stay long.

Once we arrived home and unpacked I realised how exhausted I was but a quick walk to our village was necessary to pick up some fresh milk and rolls. We came across the end of the village Scarecrow Trail and stopped here and there to admire the ‘Royal’ scarecrows.

The ‘quick walk’ took much longer than we thought and once back home again I prepared a nourishing lentil and leek stew for tea and then relaxed in front of the TV for a while….promptly falling asleep while the tea cooked itself on the hob.

I promised pictures of the cottage garden. As we left many plants had grown over the fortnight we had stayed there and were just about to bloom. The ferns had grown so much in height unfurling as they go.

I was surprised at how many primulas had sneaked up around the pond as I thought we had lost a lot under the heavy leaf fall from the sycamore it lies beneath – they might be a spectacular sight that we will miss by our next visit.

Looking down from the lane it all looks under control but believe me in a garden like this with the wild flowers like red campion and blue alkanet poised and ready to invade nothing is under my control….we only manage it.

This is the view from below looking up toward the lane – doesn’t look so good now from this view does it!!

DH has still to finish the staging – but it was never going to be this visit and I had to content myself by removing as many of the overgrown wild planting of campion, buttercups, alkanet, some extremely viscious nettles and the straggling goosegrass, as I could – uncovering the few actual plants that had not been nudged out or given up. It was a place I didn’t get to weed last year and the results are always the same – the invaders move in swiftly.

These old terracotta drainage pipes I use for herbs. I had to clear them of the old ones as they had become huge and woody. The rosemary had reached 5 feet with a four foot root and had lost the will to live – probably through exhaustion a couple of years ago and no amount of pruning back encouraged it back to its former state. It is a sheltered and sunny and spot by the conservatory and the open ended drainage pipes act as a deep rooted bed and the soil here is very fertile so I will set some herb seeds at home and plant fresh ones again this year.

The solomon’s seal is one of my favourite plants in the lower wood and they continue to spread and march along quietly interspersed now with the bluebells – well, unfortunately they are the Spanish variety set by the previous owner and there is no hope of ever getting rid of them to replant with the English variety so I just have to tolerate them – but they look equally as beautiful at this time of year covering the wood floor.

I left a little patriotic contribution to the Coronation celebrations next week.

The dicentras are spreading nicely again and the white have now merged with the pink.

The cherry tree keeps going – it needs attention too but we keep thinking it will not survive much longer – it must be getting on for 50 years old, has some form of hard fungus at the bottom of the trunk and has had to undergo some rather extreme pruning in its time but it merrily carries on flowering each year although the striking pink candyfloss that looms up over the weeping larch is not as abundant as it once was.

The tale of our latest confrontations with the new site owner will be told another day. As always it tainted our visit somewhat – my head says to leave but my heart is still drawn to our little tumble down cottage with its wild garden looking out over the sea.