Some time ago I had started putting together online all the information which I had collected about the various ancestors of our family, French and English, and of course I'm only bothered here about the English side. But naturally there are many missing elements in my information, and I thought that perhaps some of you would like to help me patch up a little what we can, at least in terms of dates of birth and death! 

So in order to help you I've scanned some of the pages from the French website Copains d'avant where the family trees appears, and if anyone wishes to go there directly, I'd be more than happy to give them my access ID. Click on the pictures to enlarge.

You could help by a) checking the information as it's indicated and b) supplying me with any new one!

Thanks for the help!

Hello everybody! We've just started our Easter holidays! So as it's the hols, a fun post on transportation. You'll see why I say it's going to be fun. Let's start with the vintage vehicles!

I'm not sure whether this is the pram which Mark is describing in the paragraph where he reminisces about the entrance hall of 9DR. Perhaps not, because he says the pram was "low", and this one seems pretty high! I'm not even sure the two prams here are the same. Below is another pic, a generation later, so what do you think? Is it the same?

Here's another type of vehicle, of the less developped kind:

But the bare-legged pinup rather makes up for it, wouldn't you say? Now of course, there was a car at 9DR, sorry a "motor-car" (this was how Grandma referred to it):

And much to my displeasure, I don't have a picture of the Hughes riding away to mass in their .... now here's the vexing bit: I don't know what make car Monsieur Père had. Was it a Vauxhall? An Austin? Here's the silly photo of part of it:

I thought that perhaps it was an Austin America, but the name sounds a little too grand:

So: an Easter bunny for the person who brings me proof of the car! After Grandpa it was Auntie Maud who drove it, and I think she was afraid of shifting higher than the 2nd gear, so that one could tell when the Aunties were coming back from mass because a strange screech was heard as the car came up Aldermans Hill and was about to turn into Derwent road!

The only other family car picture of those days is this one, with Mark proudly posing:

And I think this is the same place, but with Noel this time and an alternative means of transport!

Oh, in fact, I have another car picture, but God knows which car that was!

For coming and going in and around Palmers Green and London, there was the bus service, among which the famous 298, seen here near ther Triangle in the year 1976:

Here's a picture (already seen here) where a local bus was passing on its way up Aldermans Hill:

and on its advertising side banner (zoom in) I think one can just make out an ad for Red bus rovers:

When we were too young to sail to the UK, and our parents couldn't accompany us, there was no other solution but to put us on the plane, and my memories are of the airport in La Baule, where very tall and impressively kind hostesses would be asked to take charge of us, even if it didn't quite make us forget the tear-eyed moments of leaving mum and dad... Here's a document holder which contained the flight papers which identified us Unaccompanied Minors in these wonderful flying machines:

And here the wonderful machine:

Meanwhile, on the ground, there were some other means of transport, of a more violent kind perhaps:

And the same people once met an extraterrestrial vehicle which they daren't use for fear it would whisk them away to outer space:

In spite of squabbles as to ownership, they felt more comfortable in Earth-going means of transport:

Later the person above had one of these:

I remember rushing on it down Hamilton Cres but to say the truth I don't recall it was very good quality. Sorry Mark! (Here are some people reminiscing about the go-cart).

Anyway, let's have now some more standard methods of travel, which sensible people commonly used :

And as always, you do have the exception:

We round off with two photos of maritime vehicles :

Above Auntie Cath is holding what we thought was the VPZ, the model boat which Grandpa had bought for us back in the early seventies, but it turned out to be another boat!

And here's an extract of a video (uploaded by a nice YouTube user here) to show you the street activity in front of Broomfield Park during the late 1960s.

I don't know how long or how many cats there have been at 9 & 7 DR over the years. The picture above shows a 1960 pic with one: does somebody know its name and master/mistress?? Cats seemed to have been important if one judges by this picture:

Look well: Grandma's holding this:

I think this little earthen cat must have been on the kitchen dresser, or perhaps in the Front Room. But to the main subject: I don't recall any cats at any of the two houses until later in their lives, when probably they had less visits and obligations and would have welcomed their presence. I'll come to them shortly, but before, a few of Auntie Olive's letters, where she speaks about them, but unfortunately I don't know when they were written. In this first extract she mentions unnamed pets:

Here's another letter in which she alludes to a certain "Big fellow" which must have been the first appellation of the "Biggy" in the following letter:

Here's the one telling about "Biggy", and introducing "Pussy" (inventive names, as you'll notice):

In this other letter she mentions they came over from n°11. I like the way she finishes, philosophically, when she says "they keep us amused"...

and finally here's a letter about the well-known Pirate and Penny, who hated Pirate for having broken his...jaw:

The latter two are seen in this picture, and there's a portrait of Pirate done by Jean which you will have remembered for an earlier post! Now what was really funny about the cats (and by cats I mean the two above) at Derwent road, and why we in the French family fondly remember them is the beloved attention they had succeded in creating among the Aunties, and, dare I say, Aunty Maud especially! First the way they called them in for the night (I suppose, because during the day they would be free to roam around): Maud would allow her voice to go up a pitch and call out out: "Penny, penny, penny!" with such tenderness that it was quite touching - and a little ridiculous also - to hear her."Pirate" would be called to, by Grandma, again in higher pitched voice, very funny!

They would also regularly let themselves be charmed by whatever the cats were doing, and would refer to them with the the expression: "Just look at it!" and this phrase became a cult-phrase at Bonnebosq whenever we caught ourselves doing the same thing, filling an empty space in the conversation with an allusion to the cats. "Faire du just look at it" became a common ironic comment for somebody who couldn't find anything better to say than mention the cats, or let himself fall so low as to paraphrase what the cats were doing without realizing that whoever was looking could SEE what they were doing without needing somebody to comment!! Rather nastily too, we would imitate Auntie Maud saying "He purrs" as she did when she had one of the cats on her knees and couldn't think of what else to say - well, she never was very talkative, as we all know.

Have some of you other memories connected to "our furry friends" of 9DR?

24/04: a Facebook comment from Auntie Mary: "We had a black and white cat called Nipper. He had originally belonged to a neighbour, but spent so much time with us that she said we could keep him."

Now what about this one ? Which cat was it ? Pirate?

 

I hesitated when writing the two gardens in the title for this post, because perhaps one should say there was really one big garden, separated only by a fence, and also because the gardeners took care of the two plots in the same way. There used to be the front gardens, of course, even if they don't exist any more now, but these were hardly of any value even back in the times when the Aunties dug and sowed (I'm sure you immediately saw the reference!). To say that these two gardens were an esssential part of the life at n°7 and N°9 isn't enough saying. When one reads through Auntie Olive's letters, for example, the one subject which is inescapable is gardening, the state of the garden, the time of the year for this or that type of flowers, vegetable or fruit tree or fruit bush, etc. You might think the subject enabled a form of consensual chit-chat which filled the communication needs without needing to broach other less family-correct issues, but if it was, I'm certain that it also developped into a genuine field of interest which the Hughes especially loved. The Wood in the household rarely mentions gardening, but certainly she was involved in the final operations of the overall process.

So perhaps one might say there was a well-managed separation of the the tasks: Olive and Maud busied themselves with the production operations, Grandma was at her transformation unit, and everybody intervened in the consumption. The two older Aunties also had their own manufacturing units, because their larder was always full of the preserves which they praised and liked so much. The garden was, I think, especially important for Auntie Maud; the only photos we have of her are also photos connected with the garden, and the only sample of text that I have of her is something to do with "the daffs" which was directed to my mum, written at the bottom of one of Auntie Olive's letters. Here's the letter, rather interestingly typed until she couldn't fit the piece of paper into the typewriter and had to finish with ink!

Am I right to say that as the years went by, the garden shrank? I would like to document this idea with actual photos, but I think I recall that there was more lawn when I was a boy than later when I came back as an adult. Of course the childhood memory of the size of things has a tendency to picture them bigger than they really are, but there would also have been a good reason for the pasture to be reduced, and more land handed over to agriculture!

Now if I try and list what was grown in the two gardens of 7 and 9 Derwent, I'm sure I'm going to forget things: better informed people than myself would certainly do a more accurate job (Auntie Jo?). Here's what I remember. First the veg: potatoes, cabbages (Charles was fond of them), onions, radishes (I remember them very well, Grandma certainly kept them for us knowing we liked them so much), runner beans (I didn't use to understand why they were called that), and there was also the delicious long-leaved lettuce which was so different from home's "salade", whose numerous leaves were much wider and wrinkled.

Then the fruit: loganberries, gooseberries (fantastic taste) and probably other berries (straw, rasp and black), plums (probably various kinds).

Then the flowers and bushes: lavender, tulips, sweet peas (I helped Monsieur Père to fasten them on the fence strings one year, after we had gone to buy some "for Grandma"), the famed daffodils (see here), the big ferns which were near the sandpit, irises and gladioli, of course the roses ("English roses"?), which had been planted in the triangular forefront of Auntie Olive's garden, and which had such an amazing scent! Each time I came to stay, I would remember to go and visit them. Their perfume secretly merged with the pleasure of being back, with the Englishness of summer holidays, the blue sky above and the hot afternoons. So if today I'm such a lover of roses, it is undoubtedly because of those rosebushes in Auntie Olive's garden. Below, in this 1973 picture of Mark, you can actually see the labels on the rose-bushes!

I went through Auntie Olive's letters to look for more info, and found just what I needed: she mentions Maud's role, and a number of the garden's inhabitants (you'll see I've forgotten a number of them!):

The garden also meant a wealth of seasonal activities and obligations which are described in the letters I was mentioning: collecting and burning the leaves in autumn, covering the bulbs for the winter (I suppose they used straw or mulch of some sort), and cutting the dead stalks. In winter perhaps some scraping and preparing of the earth after the tidying up was over, then in Spring there must have been the planting of seedlings, the weeding, the spraying of trees and other such care (I have read about the thinning of some of the veg), and in Summer the mowing, the watering and of course the picking, washing, bottling of the produce.

I shouldn't forget one of the Aunties' great innovation of the later years: the compost! They probably had a sort of heap where they put their waste, but it was a big improvement when they had this compost box or whatever it was called just outside (or was it in the little outhouse next to the toilet?):

I'll finish off with a tribute to the gardener in chief, Auntie Maud, whose "company" was appreciated (), but more importantly who would be instrumental in solving the gardening issue!

And here's a pic where we can see Monsieur Père gardening in the background:

 

(Mme Tussaud's French touch!)

It was mainly Grandma who was responsible for outings, while we stayed at 9DR. When we were smaller, she came with us of course, and then later when we were older, she organized things, and we could go on our own. We usually took the day out, with a picnic, and rode by bus to the tube station, commonly Arnos Grove or Wood Green. The destinations were few: the Natural History Museum, and the Science Museum; then there was Madame Tussaud's and the Planetarium. In 1971 I was taken with Nicky to the Tower of London (where an annex of Madame Tussaud's established itself later). And perhaps once I went to the British Museum, but I'm not sure. Mark was often part of the group although I couldn't say for sure which times it was.

Even though they were the main destinations, the Natural History and Science Museums were definitely the best. I must have gone three or four times over the years. But it was each time a rediscovery, and the quality of the exhibits, the variety of what was to be seen and done there was so great that we loved the places absolutely. When I say we, I mean Paco and myself, or with Hélène, - but I think it was more a boys' thing, wasn't it, Tini? - and then the cousins I've mentioned. I even went back with my own children, and had as great a time myself showing them around!

Some of my best memories of both museums revolve around a few things which struck me then, the huge whale at the NHM:

the very old section of a tree which saw Nebuchadnezzar (perhaps, well at least Jesus-Christ):

and of course the dinosaurs and all the other mammals. I've always been a sucker for stuffed beasties, because somehow their life is still there, vibrant, and offered to you who come to see them. At the SM there was the engines model sections which we loved to operate thanks to a little switch or knob you had to press, and this started the pistons, the chains and wheels, and it was so magically smooth. I've tried to find pictures on the net but had very little success. I wonder whether you can still see what we used to admire. The very nature of science means that the Science Museum should change its exhibits fast. Here's one though, which doesn't really represent what I remember!

Some of the artifacts, such as the boat models, had fascinating details I could spend hours plunging into, imagining the work needed to build them and dreaming about the little everyday tasks on board such ships.

These are the model wheels of the Great Eastern, which I certainly would have admired, having read Jules Verne's Une ville flottante at the time. I believe there was also a minerals section, but I don't remember it specifically, perhaps because I've been to too many museums around the world where such sections exist. I'm not sure in fact that such a section wouldn't have been held at the NHM (this does look like the NHM architecture)?

From the Science Museum, I would always bring back some scientific toy; one year it was a gyroscope, which, like Pr Gregory at Bristol University, (check his "Exploratory") I found mesmerizing. One year I bought the plan for a harmonograph:

and back home I spent glorious hours building the instrument, using wooden structures and metallic parts which had to be carefully sharpened in the right shape, and I finally managed to come out with brightly coloured "harmonograms", some samples of which I might still have kept somewhere, but I don't know where. So here are two postcards which I had bought at the SM:

Back in those days I had developed a strange interest for chemistry and natural sciences, for example mosses, ferns, and lichens. So going to these museums increased my passion tenfold. When I was 14 or 15, I bought a book at the SM called "New advances in science" or something like that, which was a collection of university-level essays on chemistry, nuclear physics, and soil mechanics (among others), and I read through them even I couldn't understand a thing! But all this fascinated me, and I tried as best I could to absorb as much science as possible.

The other places of visit were more touristic and interesting as far as I was concerned.  Mme Tussaud's was fun of course, but that was it. I enjoyed the Planetarium though, scientist that I was! I think I had tried to takes pictures of the show inside, but the result was dismal.

I have a few photos of an outing to London which dates back to 1973, and where you can see Grandma at the Tower of London, posing next to a cannon (of all things!), Nicky and myself outside the NHM:

I wonder if I am not wearing a "jacket" which Mummy wanted me to have to look smart, but which I never actually wore much, it being not my style to go around with jackets. Perhaps it was in connection with Grandpa's funeral too, since it took place that year in June. But below I can be seen with the French "duffle-coat"!