Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Gardner, Cleone (O2002.30) |
| Interviewee | Cleone Gardner (CG) |
| Interviewer | Eddie Roche (ER) and Peter Ruffles (PR) |
| Date | 01/12/2002 |
| Transcriber by | Unknown |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O 2002.30
Interviewee: Cleone Gardner (CG)
Venue: The Old Stables, Farquhar Street, Bengeo
Date: Late 2002?
Interviewers: Eddie Roche (ER) and Peter Ruffles (PR)
Transcribed by: [unknown]
************** = unclear recording
[discussion] = untranscribed material
ER: It’s about 2 o’clock on a wet Monday afternoon in the sitting room of Cleone Gardner. One of Hertford’s most well known people for lots and lots of reasons, I would say we hope she will explain to us during the course of the interview. Cleone has just told me she came to Hertford in 1935 and has lived here ever since. Have you lived in Bengeo all that time?
CG: No, we came to 157 Ware Road in June 1935, one of the Norris' houses my parents rented and came up to Bengeo in 1938 to the house three doors round from here called Cheriton, Farquhar Street and we were there throughout the war and then after the war my parents brought Hartlands, the house next door.
**** unclear speech.
CG: I don’t know how much more you want to know on that track? I was married from there, five years in Palmers Green, came back, bought 1 Duncombe Road, just up there and were there for 26 years.
ER: So it would have been your father’s work brought him to Hertford?
CG: Well not entirely, my father at that time was under manager at Pyrex Oven Glass so he travelled up every day but before that he was commercial traveller for Poole Pottery for the whole of the British Isles. The main reason for moving to Hertford was we lived in Harpenden and the schools there did not suit my parent’s views. There was either St Georges which was an expensive boarding school, the council school or St Dominic’s Convent and my Methodist parents actually sent my sister and I to St Dominic’s Convent as boarders.
Because my father was doing a tour of Scotland for Poole Pottery and my mother wanted to go with him and so we were put as boarders at St Dominic’s convent, I was six and my sister seven, two weeks before summer term started and the whole of the summer term. But our memories of that experience are very painful and the nuns were extremely cruel and we insisted we did not stay there so we were sent to the council school and the main reason for us moving here was to go to a local Grammar School, Ware Grammar School.
ER: Yes
CG: And they wouldn’t take me in the June 1935, they wouldn’t take me until September. They took my sister who was 13 months older than me. So I was footloose and fancy free exploring the new town and I used to do down onto the Meads and befriend the ponies and all that, walk across to the River Lea. Wouldn’t dream of doing it these days but the barges were coming through with timber for Jewsons and I used to do a thumb sign, could they give me a lift and I would get lifts up on the barges into the town centre and explore everything. It was great fun.
ER: So you would come up through the lock, the whole business really?
CG: Yes the whole lot and just across the Lea was French’s flour mill but it was not functioning and there was a water race that came in at the top and used to feed the wheel of the flour mill and there was a most gorgeous waterfall there covered in aubretias and all sorts and at that time people used to walk across the Meads to see it in full flower.
PR: Lets get the location.
ER: French’s Mill, that was below the lock?
CG: No it was, sorry yes it was below the lock in those terms, towards Ware.
ER: Would that have been where the Rib joins…
CG: Where the Rib and the Mimram, I think.
ER: The Rib and Lea or the Beane and Lea join.
CG: Yes just across the river.
ER: I think even today there are still signs. I think that was where a family called Chapman lived in recent years and I was in that area recently and somebody started to restore the house and have left it but the two cottages further down river have been restored.
CG: That’s right, they were very decrepit.
ER: So that was French’s mill?
CG: Yes I think it was, it was as I remember it but it wasn’t functioning as a mill
ER: There were several of these mills along, well they would be where the river is Dicker Mill, French’s Mill.
Transcribers Note: It was Ware Park Mill had at one time more than one Mil and a malthousel.
CG: And of course when we came to Hertford there were three cinemas.
ER: Yes
CG: The County, The Castle, which was very long and narrow and what has been argued whether it was the Regent or the Regal.
ER: The Regent.
CG: In Market Street opposite where the open market used to be, the covered market I mean, that is now a hairdresser but the building is the same and looking down the side of it you can see the doors as they were. You used to be able to drive through.
ER: Yes it was a right of way through to Salisbury Square.
CG: But that was known as the flea pit and what they called the balcony was one step up from the main floor and the back row were twin snogging seats as they used to be called. But I can remember seeing Oh Mr Porter there, Will Hay, some of which I think was filmed at the North Station.
ER: That’s correct.
CG: And I can remember going to the Castle Cinema and seeing Judy Garland in, oh dear, my head is going for names, Follow the Yellow Brick Road, you know, what was it called?
ER: Not Pinoccchio?
CG: No, no I forget it will come back, the songs..
Transcribers Note: The Wizard of Oz
PR: I shouldn’t really interfere but particularly with today’s concerns about young people roaming it might be worth just getting clearly to describe a bit more abut that freedom, new town, on your own and wouldn’t have had friends here to protect you.
CG: No, I knew nobody.
PR: No, so you were very much alone and had something gone wrong no one would have said I’ve just seen her get on that barge as they wouldn’t have known who you were.
CG: My father was in London all day and he didn’t get home till about 7 or half past and my mother used to spend about two hours every afternoon lying down in bed. She always claimed she had a dicky heart. Mustn’t get cross with mother or her heart. She finally died of a coronary at 92.
PR: On so she was on the right lines.
(Discussion)
PR: So who would have been on the barge? Who would you have spoken to?
CG: Just the barge men.
PR: All men?
CG: Yes all men, and it didn’t feel at all frightening at all in those days.
PR: What would have been the goods on the barges?
CG: Oh timber, timber coming up from London to Jewsons, I can’t remember anything else.
ER: Because three were coal shutes in what was called the wide water.
CG: Yes.
ER: Just before the Jewson Wharf.
CG: There might have been coal barges as well but the ones I remember particularly are the timber.
ER: Yes, yes
PR: Where did they drop you off.
CG: Erm well more or less they pulled up.
ER: At Jewson’s Quay.
CG: Yes.
ER: And because they had quite an expanse of ground there, didn’t they?
CG: Yes they did.
ER: You can see it now because they’ve build all the flats there at Mitre Court, I believe it’s called, which goes right down to the river and because now what they’ve done they’ve made moorings on the opposite bank by the Folly allotments. So it’s a reversed procedure, instead of boats pulling up with the timber, pleasure the long boats now then pull up and moor on the other side of the road, the other side of the river I should say.
PR: So did the men more or less ignore you once you were on board or did they chat to you or what.
CG: They chatted a bit but I mean it was just like a free ride and I’d sit up in the prow of the boat and someone would talk.
ER: Keeping out of the way.
CG: Yes that’s right it was just fun to ride on the river.
PR: Did they have a dog on board, I mean was there *** an attraction for you?
CG: I don’t remember any dogs, no it was just riding on the barge.
ER: I suppose that was the attraction.
CG: Yes oh yes.
ER: The attraction of riding on the barge and plus it was a free ride as well wasn’t it.
CG: Yes and going through the lock was quite an experience, oh yes.
ER: And because in those days were there other children that roamed?
CG: They were all at school, the school holidays yes.
ER: Yes I suppose.
CG: I was on my own.
ER: Yes, so thinking back, I think you would shudder when you think I did that and I was quite safe and I got to where I am now.
CG: Like I remember I used to cycle down Port Hill no hands. I wouldn’t even like to cycle down Port Hill now.
ER: Yes, yes and so you had to wait until then, until the September until they would accept you into Ware Grammar School.
CG: And then in September I went, I wouldn’t say with my sister because we used to, we started off going on a bus but my sister and I never did much together, she was my only sister and no brothers and we were under Miss Woodhead. I’m afraid we used to call her blockhead and some of the time she lived in the house next door to us on Ware Road, I can’t remember exactly how many years but the headmistress living next door was a bit uncomfortable. We started, I started in the new block which has been demolished since at the eastern end of the Old Ware Grammar School building.
ER: Yes
CG: And it was a very old building with a spiral staircase and we were not allowed to run at all because everything would shake and there were some boys in Class one or two, boys of about 6 or 7. I can remember Michael Vingoe as a boy there.
ER: Yes oh yes. What was the reason they took small boys?
CG: I really don’t know, they only took them for about a year to two, first and second class, not after that.
ER: So it was a sort of a prep school type.
CG: Sort of, yes perhaps there wasn’t anything else. I don’t know at what age they started at Hertford Grammar.
ER: Erm, I think probably about 11 plus, as it is now.
CG: I really don’t know, it soon stopped.
ER: But for yourself, I mean I can understand what you’re saying about you didn’t do much with your sister.
CG: Well I was very sporty.
ER: Whatever, when you’re young you have this age difference. I know when I was at the grammar school you didn’t mix with boys in the year above, we all know our place in the order of things.
CG: In fact quite soon I met, what was to turn out to be my sister in law, Jean Gardner who used to cycle from Waterford to Ware Grammar School and come up the back way and then I’d meet her where Bengeo Hall…
ER: Yes.
CG: Where the Savory’s were and we would cycle under Ware Park and then through the allotments to come to Ware.
ER: Where Allenburys is?
CG: Yes and come to Ware on the wrong wide of the level crossing.
ER: Yes
PR: Now that’s an often used Hertford description under and over the Park.
CG: Yes
PR: That walk…
(Discussion)
CG: That part of the path was wide enough to drive a car.
PR: Can you explain it to the listeners under and over the park.
CG: It’s now a very narrow footpath but it used to be possible to drive single track under Ware Park to go up the hill.
PR: Where would you join it Cleone at this, the Hertford end?
CG: The Hertford end, as you go down New Road and curve round and go, wat we always used to call the pooh sticks bridge, over the river.
PR: The Rib, yes on the Ware Park Road.
CG: Yes you come to appoint where the tarmac road goes up the hill into Ware Park.
PR: Up across the marsh.
CG: And this track goes along post the old mill.
PR: Past the mill you were talking about earlier.
CG: Yes that’s right.
ER: Very rough track.
CG: Yes and then that at the far end curved up the hill but there was a track that went straight on, there was a very decrepit old cottage at that far junction, which is no longer there and through the allotments and there were some old rotting barges in various little water places and you’d come out in the sort of Hanbury area.
ER: That’s the track we used to use when we used to cycle to Ware swimming pool.
CG: Yes, yes.
ER: And as you say it was under because Ware Park went up.
CG: Yes.
ER: It went up there. Up there you could go up and over. I’m not sure if there’s still a right of way now or not, a walk way, but yes and I think this is one of the ways we get the expression under Ware Park and over Ware Park.
CG: And at Ware Grammar School the gardens. We had all the gorgeous gardens then nothing had been built on and they were beautiful. And tennis courts and all sorts going up the hill, right to the top and a barn at the right hand end, the Hertford end, we used to have our packed lunches and we had to pay a penny each day to get a mug of water and a plate to eat in the barn.
ER: This was always before the advent of school dinners wasn’t it?
CG: Well there were school dinners but my parents were a bit tight for money and couldn’t afford it, I now dislike sandwiches vey much because we had sandwiches all the time but it seemed to work out all right.
ER: So there were sports fields behind Ware Grammar School buildings?
CG: There were some tennis courts.
ER: Where we now see the college grounds.
CG: There was a lawn immediately round the back of the old central building where we used to do gym displays because PE and gym were my sort of thing I liked and there was a half covered, well sort of covered, area where we used to climb ropes and go up wall bars but it was exposed to the weather on the south side.
ER: So your gymnastic work was outside.
CG: Well it was under a roof with walls round three sides but open on the other side.
ER: Quite cold in the winter I should imagine.
CG: Yes and sometimes we had to walk across to Ware Drill Hall to do displays and things wearing our gym kit. In those days navy blue knickers, a square necked blouse and we had to walk across like that. It felt very embarrassing in those days not to be covered up, just to walk across in your knickers and square necked blouse.
PR: And a sensitive age really for young girls.
CG: Yes.
ER: So did they have a sports field locally for …
CG: We had to go right up the top of the hill to play hockey and things like that, that was right at the top of the hill.
ER: Near probably where the rugby club is now, the old Hertfordians.
CG: It was up on the right, I don’t know where the rugby club is, opposite where present day Presdales is.
ER: Yes, it sounds very much like there…
CG: When the war came they built air raid shelters, underground trenches, in the gardens at the back of the school and I remember when I was taking my school certificate exams, when the air raid sirens went we had to file out with somebody between each of us who was not doing the exams so we couldn’t discuss it and crib. And we had to sit in silence on these wooden benches along the trenches perhaps for an hour or more before we could go back. We were then supposed to take up the exam exactly as we were, it wasn’t easy.
ER: It must have been quite a daunting thing because I mean it was one of the most important times in a young person’s life.
CG: Yes.
ER: Doing the exams.
CG: Of course you always had to carry your cardboards box with your gas mask in, a thing of barley sugar, a pair of spare pants and some tights, we had to carry those in your gas mask box everywhere.
ER: Now that’s an interesting feature in itself. People often wondered what there were in gas mask boxes, we all had gas mask boxes of various sorts but obviously girls had to hold more than boys. So you stayed at Ware Grammar School, obviously you did your school certificate.
CG: Until I left in 1943, I started nursing training in 1944, March ‘44.
ER: Had that been an ambition of yours?
CG: No, I wanted to be a PE teacher but my mother disapproved very strongly she said “If you’re a PE teacher you’re too old by the time in your mid thirties” completely ignoring the fact that Miss ?? was our PE teacher at Ware Grammar School was well into her fifties, short and tubby but she was very active and my mother had persuaded the doctor to say I had a curvature of the spine. My sister tells me it was because they couldn’t afford the training, but that was never said to me. So the only way I could leave, and I had been a Red Cross nurse at the County Hospital, the only way I could leave home was to go nursing where I got a roof over my head, daily food and pay. I went to Cardiff Royal Infirmary.
ER: So, without being unkind, you mother was a dominating person.
CG: She was, yes she was, didn’t understand school at all because she’d hardly ever been to school.
ER: Is it a decision that you regretted?
CG: Not really, nursing’s a very good training for life.
ER: A nice little niche to be in but nursing, as I know from my own family, is very had work for a young nurse in training.
CG: We worked a 72 hour week and 15 shillings a week pay, anyway that’s not Hertford.
PR: What about your mother’s background, you say she hadn’t been…
CG: My mother’s father, my mother came from Mablethorpe and Trusthorpe on the Lincolnshire coast and my Grandfather had a six storey windmill at Trusthorpe, immediately behind the sand hills. My mother was the eldest of four girls and their way to school was in a pony and trap to Orford, no – yes, I think it was Orford. My Grandfather had a bakery as well as the mill and my Grandmother used to run a little village shop with the help of the daughters and they had a fire in that bakery and my mother as the eldest of the girls had to cycle three miles to Mablethorpe to get a doctor and apparently she over stressed her heart and was unwell for a while but she, for reasons I’ve never been very clear of, she had a tutor at home and so didn’t understand school and school discipline at all, but it’s a different world altogether.
ER: It is indeed isn’t it. So you went off and did the nursing training.
CG: Yes.
ER: So you departed Hertford for a period of time.
CG: Yes, I came back, I’d done my state finals and came back and I actually re-met my husband’s family, who lived at Waterford, at his sister’s 21st birthday party and my parents by then had moved to Hartlands and Hartlands was never built as a house. It was built by Pemberton Billing who built most of these houses as a community centre and it had rooms for playing table tennis, billiards and a room on the ground floor where you could drive a car in with a pit underneath where you could the repairs under the car. And when Pemberton Billing went bust in the 1920s a Mr Bibbye brought that house, that building and converted it into a house, a ground floor and the upper two floors and when my parents brought it Mr Bibbye moved into our old house, Cheriton, which was only two bedrooms and we moved into Hartlands to the upper two floors because on the ground floor was a Miss Sworder who was related to the Sworders of Bishops Stortford.
ER: The auctioneers and valuers.
CG: And she was very deaf and if you went to the front door she’d come to the sitting room window with a long copper ear trumpet which you had to shout into and I was married from that house and Miss Sworder died, we’d been in Palmers Green for a total of five years and I’d got, by then three children, two boys and my daughter, my elder daughter Rosalind was eight months old when we came back here and we moved into the ground floor where Miss Sworder had lived and we were there about 18 months while we were looking for a house to buy. We looked at several but we ended up buying number 1 Duncombe Road which was owned by the Cull brothers, one used to work for Longmores and two used to run what is now called Gays, the shop on the corner. Very Victorian kind of dress they wore, cloth caps. Anyway they had rented, they owned a lot of property round here, but they rented 1 Duncombe Road out for £60 a year. It’s a three storey Victorian house with four double bedrooms, three reception rooms, kitchen, two cellars and a garden round three sides of the house.
ER: Can I stop you there, 1 Duncombe Road is the house, the big house on the corner?
CG: On the far corner of Duncombe Road and Cross Road
ER: Yes, I know where you mean, a fine house.
CG: Yes well we brought that in 1956 for £1,900 and it took us 15 years to pay that off. My youngest daughter Jocelyn was born there and when she was about to get married at the end of the 26 years this house I’m in now came on the market. It was lived in then by the Jacksons, Mr W A Jackson the bank manager of Barclays(discussion). He died and Mrs Jackson was I think 83 then, this was 1982 and she didn’t want to move out but her family insisted she went to a flat in Harpenden where one of her twin daughters was. I’d wanted this house since I was a teenager living at Cheriton and I’d seen a Mr Smith who built the red brick house next door to me. He’d moved in here and did all the alterations to this house. This was originally the harness and tack room and stable for a bigger house which was between me and Farquhar Street called Hythe and it was a Victorian cottage in the middle. Where the kitchen is now was a harness and tack room with a hayloft above, the detached garage over there was a stable, sorry not a stable, a coach house. Behind me was still a stable for two horses with half stable doors on the end and the end of the house there was a concrete, like a passage, nothing in it.
I’d seen all the alterations being done in the 1940s, very tastefully and in fact Mrs Jackson gave me an album of photographs taken by Mr Smith as he did all the alterations and then I’ve added to that ever since with the things I’ve done because I’m a bit of a DIY person. I’ve been here now 20 years and I’m here hopefully until they carry me out in my box. But it’s very interesting when Mr Smith did the alterations here he made a cellar under the kitchen floor which has wooden lid on it and that was very clearly used as an air raid shelter. There’s three bunks in there 2 full length, one above the other and one across the end. There’s a little dip behind the ladder where you do down where they obviously had a potty, there’s shelves and lighting to put things on when you’re down there, it’s all still there. If I had ever gone down there in an air raid and the house had collapsed on top I would have been petrified because there is no way out. There’s ventilation at each end but that’s interesting.
ER: They thought they were doing the right thing at the right time, I can see your point though if the house had collapsed.
CG: And when we had the house rewired they took up the bedroom floor……
Tape stopped abruptly; gap before next one starts. They are now talking about a neighbour who had been in Farquhar Street for many years.
CG: I think it’s is her daughter, I am very vague to how many children she’s got but her daughter committed suicide by throwing herself off Beachy Head.
PR: On no.
CG: You haven’t heard anything?
PR: Oh gosh.
CG: Because she’s a widow now.
PR: Someone told me the other day and I’m trying to think who it was, that they’d been to, I believe it may have even been a priest, to a service you conducted quite recently, certainly someone, it may have been in Enfield.
CG: I’ve done a couple in Enfield recently.
Transcribers Note: Cleone had become a celebrant for humanist funerals so they are referring to Enfield Crematorium.
PR: And how impressed, I think is the word, they were when they hadn’t expected to be because of their own…..I don’t necessarily mean they are going to change their own approach to things at all but they found it very satisfactory and appropriate, some that you’ve led I believe.
CG: I did one for a biker and people were dressed in everything under the sun but before everybody was seated somebody’s mobile phone went off. So before I started the ceremony I had to say will you all please make sure your mobile phones are switched off. I’ve never had to do that before.
ER: You see the old mobile phone has become so much part of people’s lives. We went to midnight mass at our church this year and poor old Father Liddell, he wasn’t in the best of moods, as he’d a bit of a ding dong at the earlier Mass that they have, they now have a Mass at half past six in the evening which to me is not a proper Mass and he’d just come out on to the alter to start the great midnight Mass festivities and a mobile phone went off and fortunately, I thought being a bit nasty, the phone belonged to one of the elite, at least it wasn’t one of the other ranks.
CG: And of course if you are at that church you know young Kasinsky, he’s one of the people I give a lift to choir each Tuesday night.
ER: Yes unfortunately I see him in a different venue.
PR: The Old Cross Tavern.
ER: and last night, he’s in Ware Choral and my wife gives him a lift to Ware Choral, she always drops him off in Bengeo Street. He says that near enough I can walk the rest of the way, she knows jolly well where he’s going. He one of those people, he’s a stalwart, I don’t know if he’s a good singer or a bad singer but he’s always there.
CG: He’s keen.
ER: And he overcame the problem with his eyes.
PR: So what happened to your upper class mobile phone user?
ER: Well it carried on ringing you see because it belonged to one of the children you see and they changed their phone and didn’t recognise the ring and it went on and on and eventually they realised that this phone was near to them, in fact, it was in their pocket. He was not best pleased. But they do, if you go to a concert they have to remind you, please.
CG: I have a mobile phone but only in the car and only for emergencies, I never use it for normal communication.
PR: And what a meteoric development all the mobile phone thing has been hasn’t it? Not many, five or six years ago we were without them by and large and certainly on the train “Hello, I’m on the train”.
CG: It’s the driving on the mobile phones.
ER: They have their advantages, you say you have one in your car, I bought my wife one because she goes across Bengeo to Ware with her chums and she drives and I said look I think should have one of these just for my piece of mind. It’s a dark old road from Bengeo to Ware going the back way.
CG: Well on journeys from here to West Wales to my son I got it for emergencies or if I’m running later.
CG: It can be a security..
PR: It’s the huge boom in the industry that’s….
ER: But I think this boom is beginning to…
CG: But all these computers, I don’t have a computer, I’ve got a word processor I can print things up, store them on floppy disk and all that but I’m not into computes. My grandchildren are way ahead of me, in fact I was talking to my eight year old grandson, well he’s nearly eight the one I’ve just been asked to collect, and I said when I was your age there was no television at all and the only radio we had was cat’s whisker, we had headphones and my sister had one half and I had the other to listen to Uncle Mac on children’s hour and he well if you didn’t have any television what did you do and he couldn’t understand….
ER: We come back to where we started you went off across the meads, you made your own pleasure and entertainments.
CG: We played games or…
ER: Yes.
CG: Did jigsaw puzzles and all kinds of things, you passed your time in many ways but we didn’t get glued to television and the internet. No it’s a different world changing all the time and not always for the better.
ER: But looking back has it been a good world for you?
CG: For me yes, I mean I could have done without the war but even then you learnt a lot it’s, I feel extremely fortunate. I’ve got my family, people who don’t have children, my aunt is 92 she’s got no family and it’s a different world. There’s so much to do now so many things you can be interested in, there’s no need to be bored.
ER: And plus the fact you have how many grandchildren?
CG: I’ve got nine grandchildren, eight are boys and one great grandson, he’s one and a bit now.
ER: So you’ve got lots.
CG: He’s already been to Australia and back for three months out of his first year, he won’t remember a thing about it.
ER: Exactly my own grandson he is in America at the moment. He went to America earlier in the year at the age of six months and he went off last week. Fortunately my daughter’s best friend lives in America and they come and go as we would go to London on the train.
CG: This time last year I set off on a round the world air tour with Saga for seven weeks, three days after the New York disaster but we were going round the world the other way and we ended up in New York. And I had a Tessa [tax exempt special savings account] coming in in the January and I thought if I don’t this, this was going to odd places I’d never been, I’ve been very lucky I’ve been to lots of places.
ER: How many weeks did you say?
CG: Seven weeks and I thought if I don’t go now at 75 I probably never will so I went and I blew most of my Tessa on me and it was fantastic.
ER: But it was your Tessa wasn’t it?
CG: Yes.
ER: And I bet your children say to you, why don’t you.
CG: That’s right.
ER: So can you, sort of, run down the places…
CG: We went to Kenya and did a hot air balloon over the Masai Mara and all the animals. We went to India, I would not like to go to India again, there’s wonderful places to see but such poverty, it’s pathetic, it really is awful. Then we went to Borneo, Brunei, Australia, Cairns, Great Barrier Reef, Ayers Rock, Sydney. Ansat airlines collapsed and left us at Ayers Rock a day longer than we should have been so in Sydney we only had from 6:30 on a Sunday ninght to the next morning when we went off to New Zealand. So Gay Vingoe’s daughter lives in Sydney and she and her husband and boys came, collected me and drove me over the Sydney Harbour Bridge and all that but the opera house wasn’t illuminated then so I’ve got no visual picture of Sydney Harbour in daylight at all which is sad.
Then we went to New Zealand, Christchurch, Queenstown, up Milford Sound and up to Auckland, fabulous scenery, it was spring in New Zealand I’d like to go there again. And then we went to Hawaii across the date line and in Hawaii I was horrified at the huge fatness of these American people, 25-30 stone toddling along and piling their plates, no attempt to loose weight, Hawaii’s got some very beautiful places and then we went to Los Angeles, Hollywood Bowl, spent a day at the Universal Studios and did all the rides and all that. Then four of us didn’t go to Disneyland in Los Angeles, we went to the Queen Mary, went over the Queen Mary and had lunch, it’s all very interesting and then through a Russian submarine. And then we went to Miami, Miami beach, which I found very disappointing and then we went to the everglades and then we went on a one week cruise liner The Holland Maasdam, very luxurious cruise liner with about 1000 of us on it, wonderful concerts, fabulous food you could take as little or as much as you wanted. And we stopped off on several of the Caribbean Islands, St Thomas, Guatemala, Hoffman Key *** and the one big disappointment, I was all set to do a hang gliding over the sea and I was on the boat all harnessed up ready to go and there were about six of us and the first one went up but not for long, it was a boy of eleven and then his dad went up and was brought straight down and we were told it was too windy and they had to cancel the whole thing so that was very disappointing.
ER: Don’t you think it’s a bit risky?
CG: I would have loved to have a go, I did the ride on the Jurassic Park and that was with the animals coming out at you and so on and then there’s a sheer 85 foot drop.
ER: Yes I know all about it.
CG: And I did that and I’ve got a photograph of me on that just to prove I did it
(Discussion)
CG: No, I loved it. Then we went to New York and whole area of the disaster was smoking, couldn’t go too near it but we could see it from the Hudson River and I went up, on my own, up to the top of the Empire State Building, fantastic view, I took two cameras with me, one for film and one for slides and I kept a diary. And then I spent three days in New Jersey staying with Eric Saronsen, do you remember saying I mention in the ***. I’ll go and get his address.
(Discussion)
I stayed…
PR: An old flame ***********
CG: I found him *** headed, his email address is Milord which says a lot and he, they were very generous. I stayed three days with them, I liked his wife Madeleine very much, I told her I was glad it was her who…
ER: Tied the knot.
CG: Who tied the knot. They provided me with a car from their house to JFK to come home it was very good. He hasn’t written to me since. I wrote and thanked them very much but I haven’t heard since.
ER: See there’s a thing, I look at the local paper and I see there WI groups and they have people come and talk to them and there’s a prefect subject “Around the world in seven weeks”.
CG: Well I had to go and give a talk to a group in Ware on Thursday night, Wednesday night with three days’ notice
ER: Because the only way people, a lot of people find out about, or know about these things. Did you find it tiring?
CG: I did a coloured slide show. At times very but at other times no it was very relaxing in places and in fact I flew home overnight from New York, got here into this house by 9:30 and went to the Choral Society’s Concert that night, 3rd November. I didn’t have any jet lag.
ER: I remember you, you were the lady who nodded off.
CG: I don’t think so, but no it was great, it really was.
ER: So really and truly you’ve had a, it sounds to me, a very good varied, active full life.
CG: Oh yes, certainly, I’ve been to Japan four times, been to Pakistan up over the Himalayas and across China from west to east, that was Ken’s treat to himself when he retired, he wanted to go to certain places where he’d handled the manuscripts they’d found. Been to Norway, after he died I went with my sister to Western Canada, all up the coast, spent a month. No, I’ve been very lucky.
ER: Is there anything you would have like to have done?
CG: In terms of places I’d like to go I’d still like to go to see Egypt.
ER: Or any unfulfilled ambitions?
CG: I don’t think so, as long as I can see my great grandson grow up. I’ve left some money for him on his 18th birthday but I don’t think I’ll be there.
ER: You never know
CG: My mother was 92, her youngest sister was 93, my aunt is still alive at 92, my father was 87 and still driving the car although I don’t think he should have been, you just don’t know. I’m getting distinctly creaky, I’ve a problem with my left hip now but my sight is still fine.
ER: Being DIY guru I should think you might find a remedy for that.
CG: You never know.
ER: A little bit of WD40.
CG: No, life is for living as fully as you can.
ER: Thank you for giving us your most valuable time to come and sit here.
CG: It’s pleasant to have some company.
(discussion)
CG: Things to do.
ER: I think we can turn this off now.
Tape 3
PR: Well I hope I’ve remembered to say at the beginning of this side of the tape I am afraid I let Eddie down badly because as laid back as one shouldn’t really be even though one ought to give the appearance of being slightly out of things when someone else is conducting the interview I didn’t give him clear instructions on the machine operation so when you turned over the tape the wrong buttons were pressed on this side and we missed quite a number of important things one of which I was particularly interested in having recorded was just a note on the origins of the Victim Support in Hertford and I remember a saying how Cleone had joined quite quickly after the beginnings of Victim Support; I think as a result of a newspaper advertisement which Pam Viner also responded to, although Pam cam in a little bit earlier and how the police had one day asked me to set about getting a group of people together to be trained to do this work which the police said was happening in various parts of the country. I remember notably in Bristol that they referred to, so I went around to various people I thought would be good listeners because although we’re not counsellors, the listening skills are paramount and the people I got Gerry Booker, Duncan Dormer and Valerie Morrey not Carol Kendle, she came in a little later but Joan Pamphilon and Pam herself was from Watton Church and all of them were hymn singers and the police were a little bit uppity about that and in 18 months and we were *** to go out and find some heathens as it were to come and make a little bit of balance and Richard Threlfall and Richard Taylor also were part of the very beginnings of Victim Support locally.
(phone call from Cleone’s daughter, didn’t realise tape was running, not transcribed)
PR: Did we get Victim Support in Eddie? It would be nice to have it on tape.
ER: As I was saying I was offered the services of Victim Support, I thought it was a very nice gesture on the part of the people concerned and I thought isn’t it good that there are people who are prepared to give the time to do this because it must be quite a specialist thing to do.
CG: It’s caring for other human beings and being only too thankful that’s it’s not you the victim.
ER: It’s quite a delicate process particularly as you say you deal at the top end of the ladder and people who have gone through a very traumatic experience whatever it may have been and to try and these people a) to discuss.
CG: Yes some people find it easier than others. One thing you must have is a lot of tissues but I think it’s very helpful for them to have someone else to talk to.
PR: You rarely get a “go away I don’t want to” or people may say no need now I’ll come back to you and most don’t I think, they all appreciate the calls. I do think the organisation is suffering increasingly from one of the big troubles of the modern world professionally or volunteers and having it’s workers tested and retested, inhibited by rules and regulations, frightened by possible proceedings against you if you do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing because that’s what the world is isn’t it? Looking at litigation of various kinds it doesn’t very often come to Victim Support workers but there’s a fear of all that and that means the organisation in the County and Nationally for ever dishing out warnings and training you, appraising you and testing you and questioning in our meetings what you said and how you said it so there’s quite a strict discipline which in a sense is good but it can inhibit the freedom of the individuals.
ER: For arguments sake bereavement, it’s a very delicate thing isn’t it? I mean I’ve known people they’ve lost a husband or a wife or a child and I know in one case I spoke to a woman and she lost her husband and she said “thank goodness you’re talking to me, people are avoiding me, they think that I’m going to break down into a flood of tears, which is possible” but I said to this woman well I said you know what it is I think this happens to most of the uninitiated what can you say to somebody who’s perhaps quite suddenly lost a much loved partner.
CG: Well in my experience I would have a patient with my in my consulting room and I knew that my husband had got this meeting at 8:30. I heard him leave the house and 10 minutes later the Rector rang and said come quickly he’s collapsed so I then had to gently dismiss my patient, took my car round expecting to follow an ambulance to the hospital to find them trying to resuscitate him and I had to cross the doorway and I had to step over him and I could see it was too late and then you work on automatic pilot ‘cos I had to sit down and phone all the family and I found, that as you said, people who were on the same side of the road as me would cross over because they were afraid of upsetting me or being upset themselves and it is a very difficult time and if somebody is there available to speak I think it is enormously helpful. Not everybody will open up but most are so grateful somebody cares enough.
ER: I think people care but they’re just, I mean we sent a card to somebody today *** Spencer’s wife and my wife said to me what can we write on it.
PR: I had the same problem myself this morning.
(discussion)
ER: You see someone in the street and you know they’ve lost their husband and you say to them well I’m very sorry.
(discussion)
PR: I’ve had that exact thought because I wrote my card early this morning and then sat thinking when shall I deliver it and that’s selfish and self protective, would it be better tonight after dark.
ER: Put it in the post which is very impersonal isn’t it?
PR: So I’ve done it but wondering what will happen if Pauline opened the door so I was the one crossing the street in a way but in another circumstance.
CG: I had a phone call this morning, am I still doing humanist funerals this young man…….
Tape cut off at this point.