In Memoriam, Berkhamsted and others.....

Burp Hampster

[Before I proceed I should explain that "Burp Hamster" was the name of the place our daughters decided their Grannie and Grandad lived - aka Berkhamsted]

At lunch I am sitting next to someone who is supposed to be dead..... (there is a lot of it about, Ed).  This person has clearly been Mark Twained (The report of my death was an exaggeration).

The curious thing is that I was in Berkhamsted to pay my respects to a dead man - but it wasn't this one. Suffice it to say that my companion was something of a misprint (in The Old Berkhamstedian magazine.....)

The real object of the obsequies actually died last year, and I appended a brief tribute to him on my post Snettisham Today (https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2023/06/snettisham-today.html) but this was a day for a formal memorial to Jonty Driver, former Headmaster of Berkhamsted School, poet, activist, and family friend.

I last saw Jonty at a reading he gave in Wells-next-the-sea, in June 2021 (was it really that long ago already?) but we had kept in touch.

Anyway, with the greatest respect to Jonty, and his family, and to Berkhamsted School, this is not (quite) about them.  

Some might say that I grew up in Berkhamsted (for more on which town, please see: https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2013/05/berkhamsted-herts.html) though to be exact, I was a boy in Berkhamsted (I was a lad in Lancaster, a romantic in Rome, ageing in Ascot, a has-been in Harpenden and now getting senile in Snettisham - but take your pick). 

My father had also been a boy in Berkhamsted, but then returned here as a father and a much admired man, (but that is another story).

So, though I have been back many a time over the years, I found myself thinking about our time here, and sifting the way things change, or not. After the celebrations of Jonty's great life, and the pleasantries of meeting other dead people, I wander down to cross the Bulbourne, the chalk stream that carved this valley through the Chilterns.

It flows, that's still true, but it shows neglect.  I remember walking down the stream bed from Northchurch to Berko in my wellingtons, past the watercress beds and into the town, without worrying about the collection of dog shit.....  Perhaps there weren't as many dogs then?

On the Moor, which is the canal basin hard by the railway station, I meet a charming couple who have taken to live on the waterways.  How nice to travel slow and easy, tranquil in the security that your home will always be with you while the world passes by inconsequentially.  I am taken by the idea, but realise that it takes two to manage the locks, and so shelve that thought.....

I carry on along the canal side, sniffing that pervasive smell of stale water, dead fish and puddled mud, to reach The Rising Sun, where, with a pint of mild, I watch Ireland beat Scotland in a room I first frequented sixty years ago (yes I was under age, but scoring darts improved my mental arithmetic no end!)

When I leave it is already dark.  I don't really want to go, but I know no one and the match is over and my pint is drunk.....

So I meander down the High Street, dodging the motorised prams and people in unisex one-piece tailor-made personalised jogging suits, past my bank (The National Provincial), which was once the school attended by the girl who would become Winston Churchill's wife, and which is now a restaurant (the bank moved across the street behind the bus stop, but even the NatWest is now gone....)

Almost everywhere is now an eatery.  You might think that no one knows how to cook at home these days. Or you might think that the populace is so well off they can all afford to dine out every night (I guess they would once have had servants? Maybe they still do, though I guess even they may have a night off?)  I don't know, but once upon a time the Gas Showroom was a gas showroom (not a restaurant) and the Post Office was a Post Office (not an M & S Foodhall)

But at least some things don't change.  Woods is still a garden centre, and, appropriately for today, Malcolm, Jones and Metcalfe are still dealing with our demises from the same address.  We did business with them when my parents needed their services, but they may not remember that late one Saturday evening over sixty years ago someone rang their front door bell and ran away.  

Joe and I are still ashamed, having run to hide at the bottom of Park View Road.  

I am particularly ashamed that we were caught.....

Just up the next hill, Boxwell Road, I feel a little weird photographing the facade of Number 2, but this is the house where my dad attended Mr and Mrs Popple's infant school almost a hundred years ago, and it is the address we all lived at some forty years later. 

Hey!  Memories.  It is a questionable benefit being able to recall all the crimps and creases of a misspent life.  Time to call time?

At the bottom of the road I step into The Lamb, wishing to wash away the lingering taste of fish and chips that I hungered for earlier.

Here I meet Gordon Lee, a fellow from Hemel Hempstead, a few years older than me.  His card introduces him as an 'All round good guy,' a 'Roving FF Reporter,' and a 'Soldier of Fortune.'  He has been in town today to watch football , but is intending to return to Papua New Guinea where he feels more at home (I understand).

I feel a presence, a drift of energy.  It is as if Jonty Driver is catching my eye.  I sense that I should turn in, and thank my new friend for his offer of another drink.  I could go the distance, but perhaps another day.  I am too full of memories, of unclear thoughts. It seems that perhaps I have done with Berkhamsted.  My mother and father are dust on the hill:

I am becoming bleary, no longer sure of anything:

I enjoyed the company of Ron Hall at lunch, despite the announcement that he had recently passed away.  I enjoyed meeting my friends with their canal boat, though I am so sorry that I cannot recall their names.  I would have spilled much beer with Gordon in The Lamb, but I have to leave the last words to Jonty:

Far gone?  Gone for good?  I abjure

All pre-knowledge, but now I know for sure.

You (the reader) don't; or do you?

I wrote this before I knew.

Endpiece

C J (Jonty) Driver

Thank you, everyone,

For everything,

Richard

Where are they now?

 Tigers, c 1960

In the maelstrom of our recent house move, many things came adrift, and I am now in the process of attempting to restore order after the storm.

Just a day ago I happened on this piece of flotsam (above), which floated to my attention in a pile of photos on a bookshelf.  It was still in its presentation card mount, and it has "Tiger's (sic) When I was in Prep 3" written on the back in red ink, in my scruffy hand.  I would have been 8 or 9 years old, and, judging by our clothes, it would have been the summer term of 1960.  I had begun that year in Prep 2, but, with two of my friends, had been moved to Prep 3 during the year, for reasons I am still not clear about.  

If I remember correctly, Prep 2 had Mr Still as form master, a man who inflicted painful punishment on his charges if they made mistakes, usually applying what he called 'inspiration' which involved pinching some hair behind one of your ears between his thumb and forefinger and twisting it malevolently.  Prep 3 was in the hands of Mr Ireland, I think, who would sit miserably at his desk in the mornings and then suddenly rush to the toilet from which he would return a few minutes later pale faced.  It was only years later that I recognised the symptoms as almost certainly being those of a massive hangover.

Anyway, "Tiger's" (sic) refers to our house, so the front row here would have been the gods from Prep 4 and the back row the squirts from Prep 1.  Quite what our house did, or who was in charge, I now forget, though I assume we competed against lions and warthogs or some other beasts, in football, cricket, athletics, ect ect....

So who were my housemates? It is strange, perhaps, that I have only seen one individual from this group since our various ways parted over the years at school.  One or two stayed on to the sixth form, but several departed prima.  But it is also strange that I remember every face, and something of their characters, even at this distance of time.

The back row are perhaps the vaguest.  From left to right as you look at the picture there's Croke, Tanner, Ede, Folkard and Knowles (and, yes, we knew each other mostly by surnames, though some may have acquired nicknames along the way).  Of the five I can only tell you that Folkard, with his dimpled smile, who was a gentle soul, became an accomplished 'cellist.  The one in the middle, with a slightly tense grin, was Simon Farmer, whose elder brother, Michael, was for many years one of my elder brother's best friends.  They lived on Castle Hill, I think, and we may have visited their home some times.

Tanner, who has something of a blank expression, must have been a boarder, as that tie denotes.  I know nothing else about him.

The next row would have been my exact contemporaries, and there were some characters there.  Cavill - John his first name - stayed on to at least O Levels, and I believe we may have been friends for some of that time.  I may be making this up, but I seem to remember he boarded for some of the time, but later commuted from somewhere like Aylesbury, or Chesham Bois?  I recall he made us laugh.

That's me, with the dark hair and nervous lips, next to him, and then there's Julian Alcock, another boarder, who may have lived in France, as you may discern from his facial expression (??? What do you mean?  Ed.  Just imagine a Gitane drooping from those lips.  Maybe a ballon of vin ordinaire in the right fist?  Oh, Hell.  Am I a racist?  You need a therapist, Ed.  Next thing you'll have him in a beret with a string of onions round his neck and a bicycle under his arm.....  OK OK, but I nevaire leeved in ze UK when zey 'ad 'Allo 'Allo!) 

Next to him is Alex Mackintosh, the only one to have his top button done up without a tie.  He lived up Cross Oak Road, on the left, not far from the Millers....

Brown, Andrew? was the son of the vicar of St Mary's, Northchurch, where my grandfather had been choirmaster and organist many years before, and where my granny had helped stitch the Mother's Union flag (or was it Women's Institute?  I expect it's still there.). The happy look on Brown's visage suggests a well balanced home life, and in truth I think it might have been.  Later on, perhaps when his father retired, they lived up a lane behind the Rex, and I remember going to a teenage party there one time.

You know the kind of thing.  A beer.  A cigarette.  You don't feel very well.  The person you fancy is with someone else.  The music is loud.  It's hot.  You get into conversation with someone in the kitchen who asks how you don't know you are a figment of their imagination (Steve Harrowell asked that question).  You stumble into the garden.  It's time to go home.

Now Lockhart (Nick, possibly? or Simon?) was, I think one of a family of builders.  And he resurfaced not long ago as one I could have met up with after bumping into two of my old classmates at a memorial service for John Davison, a much loved friend and teacher from our teenages.  I had a subsequent email inviting me to maybe meet up with some others from the dim and distant, and I sort of hesitated.

And the moment was lost.  

But perhaps Lockhart is still there?  Somewhere.    With his engaging and innocuous smile.

Next to him is Hopkins. 'Hoppy.'  A naughty boy.  He lived in the lock keeper's cottage at Dudswell, on the Grand Union Canal, with about twenty (I exaggerate) siblings and would rarely be consistent about attendance or convention or anything.  He used to bring mice in to class in his pockets.  He could also, I am reminded, swallow his tongue.....

Probably became some kind of entrepreneur..... Look at the face.  "What me, Guv?"

And then Marks.  Might have been Lawrence?  Or John (more likely).  A surly, embittered expression.  A boarder, and not a happy one.  Broken family and resentment.  Difficult to know and not one that reached out for friendship.  Given to anger and pain.  Frequently beaten by staff. I really do hope he found peace.

Hargreaves - smiley, laughing, not a care.  The polar opposite of Marks.  Played football like a stick puppet, but laughed like a waterfall. I hope he too found happiness....

Then Manders. Paul.  Son of a hardware merchant in the High Street who loved dancing.  Ever such nice people.  He (the father) died on a cruise ship, in his chair, resting after dancing cheek to cheek with his lovely wife.  Just like that.  And Manders had such a sweet nature.  Not a shred of malice.

Followed by Niggles.  James Niven. aka Jim nowadays.  One of three boys to friends of my mum and dad.  Residents of Anglefield Road and sporty types.  James was the lead guitarist of our supergroup and still aims to make a hit.  The one person in this picture that I have met with in recent years. And hardly changed a bit - still the same skinny cool guy I never really knew.

The front row begins (left to right) with an anomaly.  But Molyneaux was exactly that.  I think he belonged in the back row, being younger than anyone, but he simply wouldn't have shown, so they brought him forward.  He was an absolute clone of his dad, a minister of the cloth, and little David could have preached a fine sermon even in Prep 1.  

Then we have the cheery Morecambe.  I know nothing of him, though I can recall his unusually deep laugh.  Notice he is one of two who wear a watch.  A sure sign in those days of wealth and, perhaps, status.  

Then Rudd. Andrew (not Amber). A good natured soul who later learned a few folk songs with me in our back room, strumming our guitars and thinking we might one day be cowboys.

Then Ian Phillips. A sporting star and probably good at absolutely everything.  He certainly excelled at swimming and cricket and being favourite and all that and was almost certainly the Captain of Tiger's (sic).  Nothing would go wrong for Ian.  He even went out with Jackie Short (after me, I think).

Penultimately Jim Townsend.  Possibly the only one in this picture with more than a smidgen of ethnic minority blood, though I haven't explored anyone else's DNA.  He was certainly one of the first of this disorderly group to own and drive a car, despite his propensity for rolling it in the ditch.....  But that would have been some six or seven years later.  He was a good sportsman too, and, as you can see from his posture, a confident and likeable young guy.

As for Hurst, the blond on the right, look at his arms.  Now look at the whole picture.  Hands on knees, hands in laps, hands behind.  Only Hurst adopts the closed position (with the exception of Marks behind him, who had his own set of angst).  But he smiles.  The cold, hard smile of Greta Garbo - "I vont to be alone....!"

What has happened to this pride of Tigers?  Where are we all now?  Somewhere, perhaps, another of this motley crew is asking the same question, wondering where, and why, I am....  (Though I really doubt it.). 

Life is so mysterious and exciting.  I mean, look at our shoes.  Look at our hair.  Look at our collective girth.  It would be a strange picture of a group of kids today that didn't include a few lads on the chubbier side.  And of course we wouldn't all be so white, or unadorned, or perhaps so well? (And there would probably be gurls....)

I do hope that my notes here will be taken in the spirit of wonder and kindness intended.  My reading of faces is entirely amateur and unreliable, though I did mingle with these chaps on a daily basis.  

I think what is important to me is that we all meet and play with many other beings, but perhaps we rarely think about them (or is that just me?) I can still almost smell these boys, and still their personalities, their idiosyncrasies (barely hinted at above) shine through the sixty or so years of our lives since the snap of that shutter.

But there is something else.  If you look really carefully over my right shoulder there is another face straying past the scene.  Someone who probably didn't know what was going on.  Not a Tiger, obviously, but perhaps a lonely soul, wishing he could be a Tiger, just for one moment.  He is the one who perhaps deserves our attention.  The one who doesn't fit into the picture at all.

Where are they all now?

Where are we?

A Farewell to Herts.....

To every thing there is a season.....

A time to get, and a time to lose; 

a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

We are about to move on.  After seventeen and a half years in a cul de sac in Harpenden, we are about to be uprooted and transported to a village in Norfolk.

Retirement from local education establishments, the eventual death of my mother in a care home near St Albans, the slow descent of my wife, Amanda, into the disorientation of dementia, and the independence of our two daughters - all of this warp and weft of life has led to a realisation of impermanence and the decision to move on.

Of course the options were endless.  If I were solo, I might have followed my ancestry and moved to Western Ireland, seeking Irish citizenship and a breath of Atlantic air.  Or I could have retraced my steps to Italy, to end my days in sunshine and vineyards.....

Or I could have stayed put.

But this man is not an island, and I have, at least for the moment, some residual responsibilities for others, and so the intention was to find a home with space for assistance for Amanda, and a stimulating environment for all.

Although I grew up in Berkhamsted, I'm not actually a Hertfordshire boy; my birth took place quite quietly in Southsea, Hampshire, a stone's throw from the boating lake, and I spent the first five or so years of life in Portsmouth, inhaling sea air and exhaust fumes from her majesty's (and others') navies.  

In fact, not one of my immediate family was born in Hertfordshire, though between us we must have lived here for a cumulative couple of centuries, at least..... 

Dad's father started it. After the First World War he was a schoolmaster and in around 1925 he moved to Northchurch, now almost absorbed by Berkhamsted, where he took up the post of Headmaster of the local school (as well as choirmaster and organist at St Mary's). In the mists of my misspent youth, my elder brother and I used to drink in the Red Lion, across the A41 from the school and church, and the locals would regale us with tales of our grandad, such as the time he lined the entire school up in the playground and whacked the lot.... What larks!  No intervention from erstwhile Fireplace Salesmen posing as government ministers then!

Dad attended local school, went to Uni, then to War. After which, following a period in Portsmouth, where I happened, he returned to live out his life in Berkhamsted, as master at the School and then as secretary of the Old Boys' Association.

When he retired, I tried to persuade him to move away, to start anew, but he would have none of it, and his ashes rest in Kingshill Cemetery, where mum has now joined him.

All this, and this scattering of local photographs, is why I am feeling apprehensive.  Hertfordshire, or at least a slice of it from Berkhamsted to Harpenden, spilling over the Chiltern scarp and down the dip, encompassing villages and farms, pubs and chalk streams, is a part of me and I am a part of it.

In the past year, for instance, Amanda and I have walked some thousand miles of footpaths in the area.  Sometimes glorious in their flowers and hedgerow blossoms, sometimes Somme-like in the sludge and slurry.

In the past sixty years and more I have walked, and cycled, most every lane and bridleway across this part of the Shire, and stopped to rest or take refreshment in villages that until recently showed little change since the Domesday Book.

  

In the early seventies, my elder bro lived in Stevenage, and I was then temporarily back home with my parents in Berkhamsted, living in the house where Graham Greene had himself grown up (and to which I, oddly, refused him entry, but that is another story....)

On a number of occasions I walked between the two towns, a 28 mile road hike (passing through Harpenden), taking a footsore seven hours, but never thinking of the traffic. I  wouldn't risk it now......

There are wonderful stretches of land here, whether in broody summer:

Or in moody winter:

There are great houses, with beautiful grounds, like Ashridge, where Amanda posed so youthfully just a few years ago....

My grandparents lived and then died near here.  An aunt and uncle and their three children were Harpendenians (?). 

And our dear girls grew tall and came of age round here - this was taken on Sarah's 18th birthday above Tom's Hill, Aldbury....  Happy days!

Amanda and I were married in Hemel Hempstead, and to celebrate our silver wedding anniversary - some good few years ago now - we returned with the girls to commemorate the day....

But, there are times to weep, and times to laugh; times to mourn, and times to dance...

In 2003 we settled in Harpenden, where there is the old:

And there is the new:

The town is famous for its science:

But also for some of its famous residents.  Eric Morecambe, for example, is still fondly remembered by many, while Owen Farrell, George Ford and Maro Itoje, all attended St George's School.  Maro, in fact was one of my most delightful English pupils, and a model boarder:

Owen shook my hand one parents' evening when he was chaperoning his sister, effortlessly crushing my fingers while he smiled, charmingly .....

There were good days.....

And now it is time to turn, turn, turn....

To fly to pastures new, and to open a new chapter.....

Moving on will be hard.  There's never a good time.  We came here in a heat wave.  The first night we opened all the windows, and I couldn't sleep a wink for all the trains hurtling past the foot of my bed.

Now it is wet, and wintry, and we are getting old.  We will lose all familiarity, and have to carve out new habits.....

But there's no going back.  However much you turn, turn, turn, you cannot go back....

And so we leave. Thank you to all who have travelled with us thus far, and who have been friends and supporters through thick and thin. And, though our ways must part, I sincerely hope this is not, in any sense of the word, the end of the road.....

Ciao!

Who knows where the time goes?

Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

Across the evening sky, all the birds are leaving

But how can they know it's time for them to go?

Before the winter fire, I will still be dreaming

I have no thought of time

For who knows where the time goes?

I'm just back from Kingshill Cemetery, Berkhamsted, where we have just interred my mother's ashes in my father's (and her) grave.  My black Skoda the hearse, a purple cardboard box the coffin....

It's not far off ten years since dad died, and though I still miss him, I guess I was getting used to it.  Then mum passed away at the end of October last year, and we managed to get together as a family for a funeral in December....

Since then we've been waiting for the right time, with family all over the place, and the world struck down by a virus, and waiting for the stone to be cut....

And all that time she's been with me, in my room, waiting to be back with her man....

With the virus in mind (and travel restrictions) we decided I would go ahead with the burial, and then we will get together when we can, and visit and mourn and celebrate....

I thought it would be easy.  A piece of cake, perhaps....  She died at the age of 96, severely affected by dementia, and in these last months of lockdown, I have often thought that it was merciful and good that she passed away before this wretched time.  And I thought today would be a simple act, a kindness, of sorts.

But....  Then come washing back the waves of years, the memories of life and youth, and happiness.

Who knows where the time goes?

Sad, deserted shore, your fickle friends are leaving

Ah, but then you know it's time for them to go

But I will still be here, I have no thought of leaving

I do not count the time

For who knows where the time goes?

I notice a bumble bee entering a hole by a neighbouring grave.  The sexton tells me there are several nests around, and that the badgers from adjacent Brickhill Green (where I used to ride my bike in and out the claypits) dig them up and unearth the graves.

Nature, take your path....

I take Amanda for a walk in Hockeridge Woods, just down the hill from the cemetery.  I grew up round here, and as a family we walked here timeless times. Later I took my own girls here, telling the names of trees....  

These beautiful woods, owned by the Royal Forestry Society, have grown with me throughout life.  I wish there were more like them...

We used to stop sometimes by these shaded picnic tables.  It was in this grove the pictures at the head of this piece were taken, many years ago.

It's quiet here now.

Sandy Denny wrote the song I've chosen here. It was the last song she sang in public, before her untimely death, the result of a mixture of drink and dangerous medications and a catastrophic fall down stairs.

The song itself, and Sandy's life and death, have nothing to do with my parents. But she had the voice of an angel, and I find her thoughts on the passing of time appropriate to this day.

I don't mean this flippantly, but I often think of Sandy, especially when I come down the stairs at home.  Who knows where the time has gone?  And who knows when our time will come....?

Who knows where the time goes?

And I am not alone while my love is near me

I know it will be so until it's time to go

So come the storms of winter and then 

The birds in spring again

I have no fear of time

For who knows how my love grows?

And who knows where the time goes?

The Lady

Alexandra Elene

MacLean Lucas

(Sandy Denny)

6·1·47 – 21·4·78

In memoriam

Mum and Dad