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

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!

Fax of Life

 Always Look on the Bright Side......

I was never a huge fan of Eric Idle, but I did spend many an evening in the '70s with my friend Duncan and a bottle of 140 proof Polish Pure Spirit, laughing carelessly at Monty Python's Flying Circus.....

I also cannot confess to being abducted by the charms of The Life of Brian, but I will say that Idle's concluding song as he is crucified remains with me, if only for its catchy refrain.  The lyrics may not be up there with the greatest poets, but the cheeky, whistle-along, upturned sentiments provide something of a fillip....

And we need catchy refrains and fillips these days.....

[Duncan, by the way, worked, in a pin stripe suit, for the local authority in Preston; he once recounted to me a day when he had had to appraise a policeman's accommodation.  He sat on a sofa between the copper and his wife, while the former rolled a sizeable joint.  I don't know why? the rozzer lamented, but we don't seem to have many friends....

Duncan later moved to Finland, where, he reported, nothing happened during the week.  At the weekends, I heard, people endeavoured to become as drunk as possible and to make as much love as was available....  

I haven't heard from him since.]

Finland, Finland, Finland

The country where I quite want to be

Your mountains so lofty

Your treetops so tall

Finland, Finland, Finland

Finland has it all, Finland has it all

Michael Palin

Amanita Muscaria (Fly Agaric) is in season. A fungus associated with elves and fairy tales.  It has a long history of use in religious ceremonies, particularly in Asia. For over 4,000 years it was the ingredient in a sacred and hallucinogenic ritual drink called soma in India and Iran; while the Siberian shamans would give it out as a gift, sometimes via their own urine, in northern winter..... 

One year I collected a grand crop of these attractive mushrooms, and baked them in the oven.  They sort of melted into a confection of brown sludge.  Despite an inclination to sample such, I decided it was better medicine to bin them all....

But then poppies, late flowering specimens here anticipating the armistice, also have their secrets.....

But then, narcotic or hallucinogen, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing....

Hey!  These are the fax of life.....

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

Some things in life are bad

They can really make you mad

Other things just make you swear and curse

When you're chewing on life's gristle

Don't grumble, give a whistle

And this'll help things turn out for the best

And

Always look on the bright side of life

Always look on the light side of life

These are dark days, and for many they are darker than for me, or you. I worry about some of our leaders, whose busy lives and limited incomes must make them so unhappy.....

Amanda and I walk in the bright autumnal woods. Nothing is what it seems. The turning leaves lunge at us, or speed past as if there was no tomorrow....

I note a holly tree, the bright berries symbolic of a famous sacrifice some generations ago. They whistle past me, like shot from a 12 gauge tearing life from limb....

One of my favourite trees won't stand still.  Life is alive, bright, quick and sparkling. It's not how I think I feel, but as I watch this tree dancing its lonely one-step, I wonder....

Beech leaves similarly dazzle me.....

And a silver birch rushes past me, glad to be alive.....

If life seems jolly rotten

There's something you've forgotten

And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing

You know the old chestnuts are the best....

Though, yes, there may always be a sting somewhere.....

Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true

You'll see it's all a show

Keep 'em laughin' as you go

Just remember that the last laugh is on you

I take some solace in the colours of nature, the vibrance of life as it turns.  The seasons work their magic, touches of hope at the end of every tunnel.  

All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.

I take some solace in that billions have died - all those that went before, have gone and none complain.  And I take solace in that within another few decades all - Trump, Johnson, Cummings, Gove, Patel, Corbyn, Putin, Jimmy Carr, and me - will be dust.... And few will care - least of all us.....

You know, you come from nothing

You're going back to nothing

What have you lost? Nothing

Always look on the right side of life

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die......