Class and Privilege

 It was on seeing an old photograph of my mother in India at the time of the Raj, sunshade aloft, and sitting in some kind of chair which was suspended on two poles, and being carried by four orderlies, that I realised I must have spent my childhood in a somewhat privileged environment.

I was born near the very important town at Silchester, in Berkshire. Our local doctor brought me into this world and never charged the family for his services as my grandfather had got him out of some scrape or other at Cambridge when they were studying there. 

The society I entered was not an ordinary one. One grandfather was a medical Knight for the royal household, the other a country vicar and President of the National Rose Society. Then there was a knighted uncle in politics and a great uncle the Dean of Salisbury. With such connections we were accepted in privileged society. But we were poor.

My father, after Wye Agricultural College was working in the British Protectorate of Egypt when the WW1 was about to take place. He returned to England to join his Territorial Regiment and was sent to India and Mesopotamia. There, in the battle of Hanna, he was shot by Turks in the Ottoman Empire's army and returned to England where he never really recovered.

We had a chicken farm and he had a war pension for income. But I think most of our money for living, education and the like must have come from relations.

My mother, used to court circles, found being a farmer's wife difficult. I remember her being in tears when the local band appeared in our drive at Christmastime to sing carols. We had not a penny to give hem. Perhaps they were given eggs. 

My parents played a lot of bridge. Should they lose, fellow players would always volunteer to pay their debts. That was the way it was. Being in financial straits was accepted. It was who you were that counted.

We children, unaware of the family's plight, grew up with nature, riding horses and bicycles, fishing in ponds and rivers, swimming, dancing (we had a sprung floor) balls, tennis parties (we had a lovely grass court), and generally living an ideal life.

We had a maid called Constance who smelled of Lifeboy soap. She cooked good English fare on a blackened, coal burning range that also heated water. We made our own gas to light the house. Open fires provided warmth. Two wells provided water for the tank in the roof. There was a Swift petrol engine that did the pumping, but when we couldn't get it started (which was often) we took turns at the hand-operated pump in the kitchen. We grew and preserved most of our food, stored in a larder on the north side of the house (there was no electricity for refrigeration). I remember the pheasants there that were hung from the two longest tail feathers. When the birds fell to the floor they were ready to cook. I recall their horrible smell. But that was the way they were treated and enjoyed in those days.

That kind of life was coming to an end just before the Second World War. The chicken business collapsed because of fowl pest and the import of cheap eggs from Poland. My father was dying from treatment of the cure-all of the day, radium, and tried, unsuccessful to grow mushrooms. We sold the house, but not before turning the barns into a thatched cottage, where I sometimes lived alone as my mother moved to London to succeed quickly and become the Chief Welfare Officer for the WVS (Women's Voluntary Service).  She took in lodgers (I remember a deaf General and a retired ambassador) at a time when German buzzbombs were landing indiscriminately on London.

The idyllic and privileged country days for me were over. I went to the USA as a war refugee and returned in 1942 to join the RAF and become a pilot. The war changed our way of life and the way we dealt with it and with our fellow human beings. I barely had an education, but learned much from my time in the Air Force and post-war, the thirst for missed knowledge.

The privileged country days of yore had been wonderful for me, though largely unappreciated. My goodness, how lucky I had been to grow up in such circumstances. 

It seems like an age ago. And I suppose it is an age ago.

Triptych

 This is a hodgepodge of a blog. It is to do with food, communication and bumblebee homes (again).

Food 

In our house we like an early evening drink with a small bite or two to go with it. These morsels are seldom the same. Recently it has been a slice of our home-made bread, cut into small cubes and dried to a crispy state in olive oil. Added before or after have been garlic, chilli, Worcester sauce (after), celery salt, powdered ginger and such. But don't leave the stove when frying these bits as they can be spoiled so easily. Keep turning them. The sound will tell you when they are just right. A second or two later and they will burn.

I have just made some hummus, so that will become a many-flavoured dip with heated pitta bread in slices to dip into it.

And if he oven is on, cook aubergine slices, coated in olive oil, as bites, perhaps with a smear of chilli sauce and half a small plum tomato on top for looks.

When using salt, sea salt adds something special, like the sea saltiness and crunch. 

I have written before how splendid are freshly shelled prawns, cooked quickly in olive oil with a mixture of grated garlic, grated chilli and grated fresh ginger. If the prawns are cut in half, this combination of taste and texture makes a splendid sauce for pasta.

Communication

In my old fashioned and old aged kind of way, distant communication should be by landline/telephone or hand-written letters. But today is different. 

Margreet has moved with the times and communicates with things like text message (sms), e-mail, Whatsapp, Messenger, Spam, Zoom, Face time, browser, Google, Safari, Wikipedia and probably others. There seem to be so many. This is wonderful. But with all these methods, communication (possibly even vital ones) can get lost. Progress with modern communications often involves confusion, usually time-wasting, and also waste of paper. I find much of it beyond me, but essential for my blogs, for instance, when my words leave this keyboard and fly into the ether - thanks to Margreet and her know-how.

Bumblebee Boxes 

I have written, I'm sure, on the value and charm of bumblebees. They pollinate, and do so in all weathers in farmers' fields, gardens and commercial greenhouses. So we must look after them in any way possible.

I have designed and made recently two small winter-hibernating retreats for bees - hopefully bumblebees. I wanted a box where a pregnant bumblebee, in early springtime, could make a nest to bring up a family of young.

So I found a discarded piece of moulded, wooden skirting board, and with saw, nails, and glue made such a possible home - lining it with cotton wool.

What I had been seeking before this construction was a suitable wooden box and not found one.

Then, when collecting the early morning newspaper, and passing houses in our street, there, outside one of them, was an ideal wooden box (probably for jewellery) for someone to take away - which I did. All I had to do then was to drill a hole, make a small landing platform and waterproof it.

So now I have two possible breeding boxes, when a week ago I had none.

Come bumblebees to pollinate our runner beans and reproduce with us next spring - like our great tits did - with two broods.