Well, we had to eat very early (the theatre we were going to started at the ghastly hour of 7.15 p.m.) so we couldn't go to one of the smarter places. While we were waiting, keeping a table for the tardy man, Phyl and I had a martini, and when Uncle arrived he looked aghast we hadn't one waiting for him, so ordered a large one and two more small ones, to level things out. Now two dry martinis on an empty tummy is really one more than I need, so I started dinner in a nice state, and the fact that we shared a bottle of white wine with lamb cutlets helped no end. But by the time we arrived, in a flurry, at the theatre – Theatre Royal, Haymarket, and an exquisite little gem of a place it is, too, with lovely Corinthian pillars edging the pavement outside – we were all quite ready to enjoy the show. And as the play was good – a sort of modern Month in the Country – and the actresses in it included Dame Edith Evans, Dame Sybil Thorndike, Wendy Hiller and Kathleen Harrison, it could not possibly be anything but beautifully acted . . . We dashed to the station, caught a train for Chipstead and, when we arrived there and tore up the station steps in greatly deteriorated weather – it was now pelting with icy hail and rain – right at the end of a queue of theatre-going residents all aiming for the one and only taxi, we were absolutely delighted when the taxi-driver, perched high in his office window, saw Uncle over the heads of the other people and promptly pretended we'd ordered the taxi and bundled us in while the other people had to stand around and wait until he got back. Arrived at 'Oakhurst' Uncle told the driver to turn the car around and rushed into the hall, which he did, arriving coincident with a large whisky Uncle had promptly poured for him. Possibly this explains why it is that Uncle never has any trouble getting a taxi at the station, but it also makes it very pleasant to go out with the dear man, for you are wafted along all the time on a flood of good wishes from whatever staff you come in contact with.
. . . All the time, whenever we met anybody, Uncle kept moaning 'I've got to go to Paris' very much the same way my brother says on Sunday, 'Oh, Mother, I've got to go to the Club.' The operative word, of course, nobody believes in the slightest. Uncle was rather annoyed, though. He has been trying, for some time, to get a trip to New York fixed up, but at the weekend his firm (an oil firm, you know what they're like) told him they had arranged instead for three men to come from New York to England to see Uncle. In a way it was very flattering, but Uncle was livid, because he wanted that trip, and as he is retiring (five years later than anybody normally is allowed to stay) next July, it was his last chance of a free trip to the States. So, perhaps as a sop, they sent him to Paris just to oversee the experts who were going with him . . . I think he'll find life awfully dull after July, when he'll have nothing to do but concentrate on his wife's faults!
. . . Now I must get this mailed; I shall buy stamps so that you can see the new ones with the Queen's head on them. I think the green 1½d stamp is a little frilly – all those emblems around her head look a trifle unconnected, but the red 2½d stamp I think is quite charming. If you want one or two for your stamp collection (unfranked, I mean) just let me know and I'll pop them in another letter . . .
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
1953
BOURNEMOUTH
January 10th 1953
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . Mr Bigelow, I don't know if I occasionally give you the impression I am a very clever young woman. Just in case that is so, allow me to disillusion you this week: I am absolutely, utterly, entirely, completely, and wholeheartedly a washout as an upholsterer!
Mother gave my brother and me gift tokens for Christmas, which are exchangeable at certain stores for purchases to the value of the token. My brother didn't really want to have to spend his at a big store (he doesn't, as a rule, use women's clothes and knick-knacks! and the stores have only the smallest of men's departments) so I paid him cash for his voucher, and used both that one and my own and some more cash to buy remnants of green rep material with which to recover the sofa, Chesterfield or settee (whichever you prefer), and our large armchair. Also involved were millions of tacks, upholsterer's large-headed nails, webbing cord and what have you. I should have included iodine, bandages, nail oil (for growing new nails) and a spare hammer. As it was, on two evenings my brother just sat and watched me struggling because, as he pointed out, there weren't two hammers in the house so only one person could bang away at a time.
The sofa and chair are now recovered, I have not yet followed suit and am covered with torn flesh, broken nails, and dirt all over me, and the springs tied down to within an inch of themselves.
Mac 'helped' for a while by pulling out nails and dropping them into the mess on the spread-out newspapers on which I was kneeling, then he suddenly remembered an engagement – and brought out for me to see the actual invitation card, so he must have thought I'd view the engagement with a bit of jaundice – and departed in a hurry. After that, I was on my own, usually upside down in order to get the hammer to the nail. Next day, the dear man remarked icily that he thought I had not pulled the webbing nearly tight enough. So I made the sort of remark you can imagine, and he stayed at home an hour or so that evening, the better to instruct me in the art of webbing-pulling. I held down two of the coiled springs; he held down the third one, picked up the hammer in his right hand, and glared at me as I said brightly, 'Yes, dear, that's how Mother and I did it last evening. Now all you have to do is to pick up the nail in your teeth, place it where you want it to go, and give yourself a smart tap on the back of the head with the hammer. Or else grow a third hand in a hurry.'
Eventually he decided the webbing was quite tight enough, and went out. Eventually, too, I got the darn job done (more or less) and this included covering the easy chair. Mac suggested that instead of taking the bottom stuff off and working from under the piece of furniture, I should take the top off and work down. Unfortunately I was halfway through before I realised that this entailed cutting a line right through the present covering, in order to reach the stuffing. And then the stuff-ing had to be taken out and piled in dirty little mountains on newspaper all over the room. When the springs were disentangled, tied, and set firmly where they belonged, I put back most of the stuffing, and then the food parcels you sent me for Christmas came in useful again, for I had kept the boxes and the wood shavings, and these latter went in to implement the stuffing already in place. The seat now looks rather like that shapely Japanese mountain, but a few nights of Mother's weight plomped firmly in the centre will soon put that right.
And now the carpet looks unbearably worn and ragged! And, to be frank, I quite miss the untidy, homely appearance of our furniture, covered as it has been these last few years with a motley collection of travelling rugs, bits of old curtains, and the cats. Now Mother smacks the animals if they climb up, and it takes all the comfort out of home-life. Though, to be sure, it does give the human beings more chance at sitting on the sofa and chair than normal . . . . . .
I read your last letter, at first sight, as '. . . . . . I have a bird free lunch.' I too have a lunch table (non-stop) for sparrows at the office, and I have a poor little sparrow now feeding there with an injured foot. He holds his little leg close up against his body and hops on one foot and uses his wing as a sort of crutch. Trouble is the other birds in their greed are apt to push into old Hoppity, who overbalances and falls off the sill. Then he is too sorry for himself to fight his way back, so he gets a good feed only when the others are elsewhere, and that is rarely. If I could only catch him, I could take this bird to the Sick Animals' Dispensary (branches all over the country) where they could, perhaps, splint it and look after the little thing until the bone sets. Perhaps, though, if the bird keeps this bad foot off the ground long enough, the bone will set naturally and the foot will be of use again later. I watch for him every day (he gets out of bed late) but have no way of telling which bird he is except for the foot, so I won't know whether or not the foot has healed, once he starts using it again. Ah well, I suppose it's only one sparrow and
there are plenty more. But I don't like seeing even a sparrow in pain and discomfort . . .
Now I must go; my boss has lost some book or other and claims I must have borrowed it. As I never knew he had it, it is unlikely, especially as I have never borrowed any sort of book from him in my life; but I shall have no peace until I find it.
So au revoir until next Saturday, and I hope you have recovered from your cocktail parties of Christmas and your gay New Year's Eve ditto.
Very sincerely,
Frances Woodsford
Graduate, School of Upholstery-Botchery, Inc.
BOURNEMOUTH
January 24th 1953
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . If this letter is more inaccurate than usual, it is so because I am typing it in the cashier's office as the duty cashier is ill and the other one went home before this one felt unwell. On Tuesday I went to my boss and said in the sweetest tone I could manage, 'Where would you like Mrs Mollison to work today, Mr Bond?' and when he glared and asked what I was talking about, I said innocently, 'Oh, she's the only person who's turned up today.' That'll teach him to shout at me for trying to arrange for a spare body about the place just in case yet another one went off sick. It's this wretched flu epidemic, which is really hitting us hard. I do hope you're not being fashionable. The World Influenza Centre or something is getting very upset because, though they say they usually can plot an epidemic, they don't know whether this one started on the Continent and spread to England or vice versa. As the patients feel just as badly one way as they do t'other, and as any plot they like to make only shows the facts after the events, I don't feel that it matters a great deal.
Did I tell you last week I was reluctantly going on a picnic on Sunday? Well, I was and I did and it was lovely. We went, as we so often do, over the Purbeck Hills in Dorset. It was misty when we started, on the 10.40 bus from the centre of Bournemouth, but the sun came out in odd moments when it wasn't doing anything else, and the mist wrapped the horizon around in a pretty little fuzz and comfortably hid the scars of war as the bus went across the moors. To reach the village at the foot of the Purbecks – Studland – the bus runs through Bournemouth and Parkstone and Canford Cliffs, all very la-di-da districts, then dives down to the flat Sandbank that is so called, crosses the mouth of the Poole Harbour by the bus ferry, and goes on for about three miles over wild and deserted moorland, with the long line of hills edging it to the south, and the arms of the harbour to the north. This moor is slightly undulating, and has a vivid blue piece of water called 'Little Sea' set in its brown and purple scrub on the left of the road – with the sea beyond the blue lake, and the white cliffs of the Purbecks in the distance. Hill after hill rises in the mist in pale grey, like so many scenes on a stage. And then we reach Studland and have to get out and walk on our own flat feet.
There was a cold little breeze from the north-east which chased itself around our back hair in most unfriendly fashion, but the climb to the top of the cliffs, and then up the long slope of the hill to the highest point, warmed us up quite satisfactorily. Gave us a good appetite for our lunch. I had brought a flask of hot soup, sandwiches and an apple and tomatoes. The soup was delicious, and so much better for a winter picnic than tea or coffee. We ate sitting in the sun under a broken-down bit of wall we discovered. It didn't keep off the wind (if it had, we would have been sitting in shadow) but it shut out 50% of the view, which was unkind. Immediately after eating, we went on, meaning to find a path which ran along the south slope of the hill, as we knew from experience that to go down into the Corfe valley meant drowning in mud in the only pathway open, and walking along the very ridge of the hill was chilly. We slid down the hill a few yards, and found ourselves in the warmest, cosiest, sunniest and most sheltered position you could wish for. So we spread our raincoats on the grass and went to sleep in the sun for nearly two hours! How's that for England in January?
Somebody I know, who is coming to England in March for his first visit to this country, asked me what sort of weather he could expect. I replied, 'Everything.' But even I didn't really anticipate getting freckled on a hillside in January, between two days when the frost was heavy and white and the fog came down in a blanket night and morning. Incidentally, I have never known so much fog as we have had in Bournemouth this year. Normally we get a damp sort of seamist, which drives in from the beach and disappears in the morning. But this month we have had really thick fogs (twice the bus services have been stopped for some hours, it has been so bad) and they smell like wet washing hanging about a house . . .
My brother has been very worried recently over a big decision he has had to take. He has discussed it with me, and with one or two friends, and we feel we have had to fail him just when he needed us, as none of us felt we could advise him one way or the other – it was a decision for himself alone. Most of us have felt rather strongly on one side of the question, that it is better to work where you are happy than to tie yourself to a better-paid job that you don't like. I know from bitter experience how miserable it is working with one man with nobody at work with whom to associate other than the boss! However, my brother has taken his decision – for more money – and, although I have been able to do nothing, his other friends have pulled strings to see to it that he is given a month in which to try out the new job before committing himself to it irrevocably. So they at least have been able to help when it was needed. After working about fifteen years (except for the war) in one department, in very happy conditions, it's an awful jolt having to leave in one day, which is all the time the Town Clerk has given Mac to clear up his outstanding work and move over to the other office. We are very proud of him – there were 150 applicants for the job, but the Committee decided not to consider any as they wanted my brother. Now it remains to be seen whether or not he can get along with his new boss, who is notoriously difficult when she's not being downright impossible. That is all very hush-hush and secret, so don't say a word to nobody, no how.
Now it is high time my missing cashier felt better. I must go and investigate.
Bye for now.
More next Saturday,
Fran
BOURNEMOUTH
February 7th 1953
Dear Mr Bigelow,
. . . Poor little Holland; it was only last week, I believe, that she said thank you very much but we don't want any more dollar-aid, America. And so few hours later, she is devastated and drowned. Our own floods are bad enough, goodness knows – I know Canvey Island as well as I know Bournemouth, and can imagine how awful a flood would be, for the whole island is like a flat saucer, with the rim only a few feet above the surrounding sea and a causeway usable at low-tide the only way off to the mainland. But Holland! One sixth of her land flooded, and such a little land, at that.
It was on Thursday last week that we celebrated the flight of that Canberra 'plane which took 22 hours to go from England to Australia. On Friday it was announced we were building two more passenger- carrying jet 'planes capable of transporting 150 passengers, 550 miles an hour. And on Saturday Nature decided we were getting cocky, I suppose, and sent a ferryboat, on a 25-mile trip from Scotland to Ireland, to the bottom, then went on around the coasts and brought devastation all down the East Coast, before hurling her waters point-blank into Holland. We are such little people, when it comes to a hand-to-hand fight with nature, aren't we? In spite of Assam Dams, and Tennessee River Valley schemes and Golden Gate Bridges, and Atom Bombs . . .
I've not heard even a whisper of a rumour from Rosalind about the possibility of coming over to England and/or Europe this year. Is the matter shelved or cancelled, do you know, or is she waiting for exact dates before telling me? Or, it occurs to me as I write, are the Akins going only to Europe and missing out England altogether and Rosalind doesn't like to say so for fear of hurting my feelings? You might tip me off if you know. You see, if they are coming to England, and Rosalind will have time to spare to stay with us (with or without Mr Akin) and their visit will coincide with our w
ater show at the Baths, I must start working on the Boss quite early to advise him of the situation so that he will know what's coming! . . . He's awfully difficult about time off at the best of times, but early in the summer it's nearly impossible, for then we are trying to get settled with new staff and there are always the most ghastly muddles for me to sort out. He can be spared, but has no intention of sparing me at that point; so if he's got to have his mind changed I shall need time to work the miracle.
Last week I sent you a sarcastic cutting from the newspaper about the 'bonus' of margarine and sugar in honour of the Coronation. The next day a letter appeared in the paper which said:
To the Editor, Daily Telegraph.
Dear Sir, I am appalled by the sarcasm and ingratitude shown by people over the announced bonus of four ounces of margarine to celebrate the crowning of our gracious Queen. Surely, anybody, even of the meanest intelligence, can see that the quarter-of-a-pound of margarine has been given to us so that we can baste the ox.
Dear Mr Bigelow Page 12