Dunham Massey

The end of May

One of the highlights of my sister's visit with us over half term was a trip to Dunham Massey. During the First World War, Lady Stamford, the owner of this huge Georgian house, offered it to the Red Cross and it was transformed into a military hospital. To mark the centenary of the First World War, the National Trust, who now own the house, restored the hospital’s main ward, the recreation room, the operating theatre and the nurses’ station. They used items left in the house from the time as well as contemporary photos and letters, so it was a very evocative visit, made more so by the presence of actors who move around you and act out part of their lives. This is part of the ward.



You can see the two actors in position. The patient in the bed is very depressed and the nurse is comforting him. He is lying in a bed which is a replica of the original beds, many of which were still stored in the house, as were the lockers, lamps and other equipment. (Original beds and chairs were displayed but roped off, but you could handle most of the other things) You could see items from the time displayed on the lockers, and you could read the patients charts which are displayed on the ends of the beds. If the beds weren't occupied, you could sit on them to rest or to read the newspapers and magazines of the time, or descriptions of the treatment given to the patients. Various medical items were also on display, like the standard plaster cast used on a broken leg and the method used to keep it elevated.

The conditions in the hospital were somewhat different from those in a hospital today.



I hope you can read these rules, they are quite revealing. Of course, this was a convalescent hospital, so many of these patients were recovering from their wounds and today would probably have been sent home to get on with things by themselves.

The recreation area was also used as the canteen. I can remember seeing enamel plates and mugs just like these as a child, in fact my father used a mug just like that one as his shaving mug.


Because it was a recreation area as well as a canteen, actors dressed as patients came in and read or played chess or wrote letters for one another - this was a hospital for the men, not the officers, so some couldn't read or write. There was also a piano for community singing. I can remember living for six months in a boarding house in Nakura in Kenya where there was a piano, and both of my parents played popular songs of both wars so everybody could have a sing song. My father couldn't read music, but he played by ear, a talent neither of his children inherited, I am sad to say.

The operating theatre for the hospital was in the hall at the foot of the main stairs, and the operation taking place there (with life sized figures and a spoken commentary) was brain surgery!

One of the reasons for the choice of this area for the operations was the nearby sink under the stairs which helped a bit towards the hygiene I suppose.


As the patients recovered, they were encouraged to get out into the fresh air and make use of the extensive grounds.



This was a part of the garden nearer to the house, though those who were fitter would be able to walk for miles.

Those who weren't well enough to walk could could at least sit out in the courtyards in the sun.


These steamer chair were originals, in use at the time.

After we had seen round the hospital, we walked round the house, which Paul and I had seen several times before. My sister unfortunately wasn't able to see the whole of the house because she is finding walking very difficult at the moment.

We enjoyed our two visits here very much, and were sorry my daughter-in-law hadn't managed to bring her sister round the house during her visit the previous month. We had originally intended to bring my daughter-in-law and grandson on this second occasion, looking after my grandson and playing with him in the garden while my sister and my daughter-in-law saw round the house and hospital.

However, we had to let my sister out of the car at the entrance as she couldn't manage the walk from the car park, and my grandson, who is devoted to her, insisted on getting out as well. By the time we got back from parking the car, my grandson had squeezed under a fence and run off to have an adventure all by himself in the little wood adjoining the house. There was no sign of him at all, and my sister, being unable to follow him, was distraught. That was nothing to the frantic state of his mother when she turned up, and she and Paul and several passers by all rushed into the wood shouting my grandson's name, while I went off to alert the people at the front desk who prepared to initiate an emergency search. Fortunately, Paul found him trotting along a path all by himself before we had turned out the whole place to search for him, but his mother was not at all pleased with him for giving us all such a nasty shock and he was taken home immediately in disgrace. So the visit, while we enjoyed it very much, not not go quite as planned!


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May half-term

The end of May

We didn't visit to far during Half Term, as my sister isn't able to walk anywhere, but it couldn't resist some photos of one walk we did while she was elsewhere. Paul and I have often been to Fletcher Moss Botanical Gardens which we usually enjoy, but this time took a walk of several miles by detouring first around Stenner Woods.

This is the beginning of the walk, looking like a painting by Monet or Cezanne.




There are even echoes of one of my favourites, Klimt.

It being May, there was plenty of Hawthorne blossom. Some of the trees seemed to be almost dripping with it.




I paused to take a photo of these amazing and flowers. I'm not sure what they are - lilac I presume - but I've never seen anything like them before or since.


In the Botanical Gardens themselves there were also some beautiful trees.


I thought these maples were particularly spectacular.

It was also the right season for rhododendrons, which reminded me how much I am missing by not being at home in this season






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Beginning of May

First 3 weeks of May

Good grief, five months behind! The truth is that I've been so busy I've had very little time; I'm dreadfully behind with emails as well as with this blog, so I need to catch up quickly.

After our French visitors left at the beginning of May, we had about a week's breathing space, then we went back home to Oxted for a week to do various things there and to attend various medical appointments.

We were fortunate that the azaleas were in bloom in the garden - I always enjoy the blaze of flowers from the azaleas and rhododendrons at this time of year.



Above is one of the azaleas in full bloom and below is a rhododendron in the front garden.


I'm afraid I didn't quite manage it without a bit of a car in the photo - visitors' cars park on the forecourt, so it's hard to get a photo there without a car in it.

After a very busy week, we drove back to Manchester on May 16th, but not for long! We managed to squeeze in a few excursions with my grandson in the next few days - one was to Marie Louise Gardens. Marie Louise Gardens are often described as a hidden gem, because so many residents are unaware of their existence until they stumble across them by accident, as we did. The garden was given to the citizens of Manchester in 1903 by Josephine Silkens, in memory of her daughter, Marie Louise, who died young in 1891, aged 26. It is small and very peaceful, with some lovely shrubs and huge specimen trees. However, the reason for taking my grandson there was the very tame squirrels. We took peanuts.



My grandson was fascinated by the squirrels, who come right up to you as soon as they see you, in the hope of a tasty treat. He was happy to throw them peanuts, I let them eat from my hand, until one of the bolder ones mistook my finger for a peanut. He had sharp teeth! It's probably not a good idea to hand feed them, but it gave my grandson the opportunity to see them up close, and he was quite fascinated.

On May 21st I caught a train back down to London for the retirement party of a friend and ex-colleague. It was very nice to catch up with all my old colleagues. I spent the night with my sister, and caught the train back to Manchester with her next day. It was her birthday, so there was a cake when we arrived.


The cake was designed by my grandson, so it features various pictures of Thomas the Tank Engine - the little soul is so fond of Thomas he is certain everybody else in the family must be similarly smitten!

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April 2015, second half

After my grandson's birthday was over, I started to feel a lot better as I finished recovering from the virus which had struck me down after Easter. It seems to have been the same one suffered by my other son and family over Easter, with a lot of coughing followed by vomiting; I'm almost convinced I caught it over the phone, since it seemed to be exactly the same as his, and I hadn't knowingly been in contact with anybody else who had it!

As my granddaughter became slightly less demanding and started sleeping more at night, my daughter-in-law was able to focus a bit less on the baby and we began to be required a bit less. So we were able to go out walking, though there had been some rain, and it was a bit wet underfoot. We had a short walk this time, to Fletcher Moss Park, which also includes an area of Botanical Gardens.



The gardens slope down a hill, with a pond at the bottom. I stood looking up the hill for this photo. As you can see, the side of the hill is designed as a rockery. It is quiet and peaceful, as relatively few people seem to know it and the weather still wasn't really warm. It was too early in the year for many flowers in the rockery, but the contrasting coloured leaves of the many different trees compensated for the relative lack of blooms. There is clearly meant to be a rill tumbling down the slope, but there's no water in it at present, and the pond at the foot of the hill clearly needs more work.

If you stand at the foot of the hill looking away from the rockery, the view is different but just as pretty.



The pond is still being renovated, so it will undoubtedly improve in time, with many more plants. And, once water is tumbling down the rill, the pond will be oxygenated and the water will be clearer.

The spring blossom was to be found at the top of the hill.


We were fortunate to be there when the blossom had just appeared and before the wind had blown it away.

There were drifts of daffodils too.


These blooms were the biggest I've ever seen. You can't see it from this photo, but each one was almost as big as the palm of my hand.

A couple of days later, we drove to the airport to collect my daughter-in-law's eldest sister and her son, who stayed with us for 5 or 6 days until May 1st. With all the toys in the spare room at my son's house there isn't room for two beds so they stayed in our flat. As well as having space (just) for two,beds, I also have two bathrooms, which makes it easier for having guests. And of course, they got a good night's sleep in my house, free from noises of wakeful babies.

So we had a busy end to the month, conducting guests around Manchester when my daughter-in-law was busy. We took them to the newly opened Whitworth Gallery, which I'm afraid Paul and I did not like much. The collection is large - 55,000 items - and apparently includes major drawings and watercolours by 18th-century artists like Thomas Gainsborough and and 19th-century landscapes by the likes of J. M.W. Turner, Thomas Girtin and Samuel Palmer, as well as an important group of Pre-Raphaelite works by Millais, Rossetti, Holman Hunt and Burne-Jones. Later Impressionist works include the likes of Degas, Van Gogh, Pissarro and Gauguin, while works of European Modernism apparently include Picasso and Paul Klee, as well British artists of the early and mid-20th century, like Sickert, Epstein, Hepworth and Moore. So we were delighted to think that we might be able to see such a very wide sweep of art in a relatively small gallery.

Unfortunately, we didn't. Most of the things I had hoped to see were not on display at all; there were several Turner watercolours, but displayed 5 deep up the walls, obliging us to stoop over to see the lower ones, and needing binoculars if we wanted to examine the higher ones. Hardly any of the Pre-Raphaelite works were on display; it was hard to find a single Impressionist work. I did find one lonely Picasso, lurking downstairs in the 'People's Choice' section. I was the only visitor down there at the time - and Paul and our visitors never found it at all.

Instead, the concentration in the newly re-opened gallery was on Contemporary art, in which which Paul and I have no particular interest. I suppose I should be grateful not to have to go to the Venice Biennale to see Sarah Lucas, but I was unable to work up much enthusiasm for things such as 'Tits in Space', described as 'multiple pairs of cigarette-encrusted orbs that float against a pitch black background.' Actually, the Sarah Lucas exhibition is entirely sculptures made from cigarettes, mostly human torsos from the waist down made from cigarettes. Not my kind of thing at all!

I was more enthusiastic about our visit to Dunham Massey the following day. Dunham Massey is another finalist in the Art Fund Small Museum of the Year 2015, having been transformed by the National Trust back into a First World War hospital to commemorate the centenary of the First World War. I would write about this in more detail, but we went again later in May, so I'll leave it until then.


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April 2015, first half

As I'm catching up a bit, April is clearer in my memory. I'm going to divide it into two, since I seem to have quite a few photos and for some reason, I no longer seem able to post very many at one time.

The month began with a bang, as we drove back home just before the Easter holiday began, and my son and family drove down on Good Friday. My sister arrived shortly afterwards, so we had a full house. I had hoped to see my other son and family too, but they took turns to be ill over the holiday, so we never managed it.

My son had to drive home to Manchester on Easter Monday, and my sister went back to work the next day, but my daughter-in-law and children stayed for 10 or 11 days. My grandson loves our house, and he can run about all the place in the 5 acre shared garden (for those who don't recognise Imperial measurements, it's more than 2 hectares). I did enjoy being home again, and the garden started to be lovely - we were very lucky with the weather, of course. This is one of the magnolias at the front of the house.



Unfortunately, I got a virus of some sort, and was thoroughly unwell for a couple of days.

Once I had recovered, we drove back to Manchester, having spent two really enjoyable weeks at home. Then we had to get ready for my grandson's fourth birthday, which was quite lively!

This is the birthday table, just before the guests arrived.




As you can see, it wasn't a big party - only 5 or 6 little friends, but that was quite enough. Quite a few of his classmates have invited all the rest of the class to birthday parties, but my grandson hasn't enjoyed any of them; it gets too noisy and rowdy for him, and on a couple of occasions he's come home in tears. He's much happier with just a few friends.

He demanded a cake with Thomas the Tank engine on it. Fortunately, the very wonderful Asda will print any photo you have onto white cake icing, so he chose what he wanted and my son designed the resulting A4 sized artwork, which was duly printed onto an A4 sized cake. I failed to photograph it without all the children in it, so I'm afraid you'll just have to imagine it, but he was delighted with it! It had his three favourite engines on it, as well as his name, and was much admired.

We were also fortunate with the weather for his birthday, so the adults sat in the garden in the sun, while the children were able to run about outside as well as inside, and play on the birthday trampoline. He had asked for a small trampoline for his birthday, 'just like the one belonging to the boy next door'. Unfortunately, it hadn't arrived by the night before the birthday, so we faced a trampoline-less birthday. Then my son had the happy thought of borrowing the child next door's one once my grandson was in bed.

He had no idea that the trampoline he unwrapped next morning wasn't really his, and bounced on it happily. When the real one arrived, we quietly substituted it for the borrowed one, and he hasn't noticed. They are both extremely similar, the one we bought him was the same colour, only very slightly larger and it has a different company name stencilled onto it, but he didn't notice that.

I was sorry to miss most of the spring in my own garden, but we have had some lovely spring flowers up here as well.



These gorgeous trees are at the entry to the park we walk through to school every day. We're very fortunate that the park also has a small playground, so, unless it's raining, my grandson plays on the climbing frame and slides every day after school, which gets rid of a lot of his surplus energy.

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March 2015

Dear me, I am so far behind with writing this that I can hardly remember March; it is already June, and I have nothing apart from entries in my calendar and photos of my family to help me remember March, so this entry will be quite short! I think we must all have been quite tired - this is a photo of Paul 'babysitting', and I have a similar, even more unflattering one, of me, and another of my son in the same position!



I returned from London at the beginning of March, and I know that my grandson and I continued to enjoy the spring flowers as we walked to school through the park, as I took quite a few photographs.



He goes to school either on his bike or his scooter, so I have to trot to keep up with him, but he does stop to admire the flowers from time to time. The middle of the month was quite busy as my sister came up for a week. My other son and his family also came up for a long weekend, which gave me time to appreciate my younger grandson, who has a very sweet nature and the most beautiful smile. So that made March a busy month for visitors.

The unfortunate event which happened in March was my being struck down by a kidney stone and spending the night in A&E, full of morphine. I haven't heard anything yet about why it happened, but it's the second time - the last time I didn't go to A&E because it passed off after several hours, but this time it really was unbearable and went on for so long. The stone had passed by the time I went home in the morning. Unfortunately, the hospital was too busy to send me for any sort of scan to look at the stone, and by the time I had a CT scan, two or three weeks later, there was no sign of the stone. March is a month I am glad to forget!

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February 2015

In February, baby chaos continued. The baby continued to refuse to sleep in a cot or a Moses basket, and would sleep reliably only if her mother was holding her. In an effort to help, I bought them a ridiculously expensive thing called a Cocoonababy, which is supposed to replicate the womb and helps the baby to sleep alone; unfortunately, it didn't work either! Everybody we knew who had one told us how it had saved their sanity when their baby refused to sleep alone, but our baby wasn't interested!

Then we had an alarm because my daughter-in-law suddenly started to run a very high temperature; she had septicaemia after my grandson was born and could have died, so this time she needed to go off to hospital very quickly to make sure it wasn't the same again. My son took me back to my flat for my night things in case they kept her in, but after tests, they decided it was just a virus and sent her back home. So I was able to return to my flat and my own bed.

The emails I received from Paul every day revealed mixed enjoyment from the skiing. Breckenridge had been great in January as usual, but the snow in Canada where he went later was very poor this year, and he wished he had stayed in Colorado or Utah. He was on a Telegraph ski holiday with a British ex-Olympic skier; he took the same holiday last year to different resorts in the American Rockies and it was a great success, but Canada this year certainly wasn't. There wasn't enough snow, in fact it rained every day he was in Whistler so it was alternately porridge or sheet ice. I was very glad not to be there! Other Canadian resorts he also visited were not a lot better, and Paul looked forward to being back in Colorado. He says he won't ski in Canada again - though I think it could be a shame to make such a judgement on one bad year.

At least spring had started in Manchester. When my grandson and I walked to and fro across the local park to take him to school, we admired the snowdrops which were flourishing in January and early February.


Later in February, we admired the crocus.



This gave us the opportunity to practise lots of colour words - purple is not a word a small child often needs.

Paul left the ski resorts in Canada and moved back to Colorado, staying at Copper Mountain, where the snow was superb. He was introducing the resort to a friend he usually skis with in Utah when he failed to notice a tree root, trapped his ski, and twisted his knee. The resulting damage to his knee led to his being advised not to ski any more this season, and he had to come home a month early! I caught a train down to London to meet him and, once his ski clothes were all washed and packed away until next year, we drove back up to Manchester, where school half term was starting.

We planned to take our grandson out a lot during his week's holiday to relieve our daughter-in-law, but it was not to be; our poor little grandson got measles, and spent the whole week in quarantine and confined to the house.


He was quite spotty, as you can see from the artwork taken to school as part of his 'what I did in my holiday' project. Don't ask me why his hair is as long as his arms and longer that his legs, and why he has no nose; I think he focused on all the spots!

Once he was back to school again, we had visits from a friend of my daughter-in-law and my sister, and then as the month ended, it was time for another visit back home. I am responsible for a rental flat belonging to the development where I am still a director, so it was time for inspection of it and renovation planning so it could be let again.

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