Here's an addition to Grandma's trinkets 1, where you'll find some things that used to belong to her or were present at 9DR:

These funny animals used to in her front room, or perhaps on the kitchen dresser, or both!

Our brother Jean drew this portrait of Grandma's pet back in 1983 or 84. (You can see the real version here!)

You'll remember this toy box front her front-room where she stored toys for us to rediscover each time we came back. Noel added a lid to replace the old one which is now somewhere in the 4th dimension.

A teabox with its sturdy origin still visible underneath.

And finally a pale mauve mug (there were other coulours) which was commonly used for cuppateas, and would have been stored close to this one!

In the next post, I'll add some items which are connected to Grandma and Monsieur Père.

Noel has recently sent me a huge amount of material that lay dormant in Bonnebosq, among which some more magazine scans. So here we go, all you lovers of pre-video times!!! We start with pages of Teddy Bear, which I am almost sure now, must have been received at 7DR and either sent to us in France or brought back after the holidays.

Over here, children would have had an equivalent of the above, a teddy called "Petit ours brun" which came both in books and TV programmes.

Now this is for me quite important: Silly Billy! I don't know whether this is the origin of the expression, and I doubt it, but the origin of my use of it, yes, quite probably.

I love the drawing of the *good* children sitting in bed waiting for their bedtime story!

Then there's an antique copy of Eagle, which I think we received before Lion & Eagle, even though I think both magazines continued in parallel:

and one last cover from the Girls' magazine Bunty, dated Feb 22, 1969:

When we stayed at 9DR, we were the lucky subscribers of magazines for boys and girls: Tini had Bunty, us boys Eagle, then Lion and Eagle (I fancy we even had a short try at Tiger), and Noël has also sent me photos of another one, called Teddy Bear, probably intended for younger readers, but we don't remember who. The issues arrived at Auntie Olive's, because some front or back pages have the carbon indication "7 Derwent" written on them. And Mum tells me we also had them sent to France. These subscriptions (1969, 1970 approx) must have lasted perhaps two years - we used to have quite a pile of Lion & Eagle stacked in the loft at Bonnebosq, at one stage. Apparently they have now fallen into disrepair and Noël says only a few of good quality remain.

Here are the Bunty reproductions (sent courtesy of Swanton Road associated press):

As for Lion & Eagle, I used to follow especially the stories of Sylvester and the Touchstone, The Iron man, Archie, Zip Nolan (spot the clue!), Oddball Oats and of course Mowser the princely furbag! But the magazine's covers in themselves were interesting:

Those of you who know L & E will remember: each week you had this kind of enigmas: "What would you do?", and inside there was the answer:

Here are some reproductions of the above-mentioned well-loved pages (courtesy of Moyaux Press Ltd):

Here are some more of Mowser, the priceless puss!

Here is a view of the Teddy Bear magazine (Noel tells me he thinks they belonged to Auntie Olive):

But below is a card which Monsieur Père had sent, explaining that the Teddy Bear issues were intended for us boys. He's also mentioning the trial of Eagle!

I've also found these, some paintings by artist Peter Rocklin representing the comic, along with some other period-related paraphernalia!

(Hope you won't mind my posting your beautiful work, M. Rocklin!)

Here’s another series of anecdotes, after Grandma and Monsieur Père. It’s a real pleasure to talk about Auntie Olive, because relations with her, for me at least, have always been great, perhaps because she wasn’t in a position of authority regarding us. I don’t dream of Grandma anymore, I think, but of the two great-Aunties, yes. In those dreams, I’m crossing over from n°9, and arriving in the kitchen at n°7, where I’m only half surprised to see them both alive, even if a little diminished, and they’re busy with some needlework or baking, and faintly they answer my questions. I understand they’re rather weak and shouldn’t disturbed too long…

Auntie Olive was a great one for games and books. On the first score, she’s the one who introduced us to such standards as Snakes and Ladders, Spite and Malice, and Roulette, but the wonderful thing is that she was usually ready for anything! She had lots of resources: music, drawing books, reading books (there were some quaint French ones, learner’s books, with records! which perhaps served for long ago students of hers – she wasn’t bad at French), and she was ever so nice with us, not minding it a bit if she lost. She served as a kind of friendly duplicate to Grandma: you could go over to n°7, and find the same welcome, the same interest, the same quiet loving and discreet attention, the same (if not better) conversation. There was also fantastic food at n°7 (Auntie Olive’s larder, so deep and full!!)

She was certainly the one who encouraged us most to read in English, and went out of her way to find the books we wanted or suggest some new ones. Ah, this was where the former headmistress was at her best! She used to take us to the Library in Broomfield Lane (and of this place too, I still dream!), where I would always, rather ridiculously, check the French books department… but anyway, I had all the English books I needed thanks to her: the Enid Blyton ones in particular. There was the Secret Seven series, the Famous four, the Adventure series (the Sea of Adventure, the Valley of Adventure…) And I also swallowed up the Adventurous Four. Auntie Olive was active in providing us with the books of the series we hadn’t yet read, either by ordering them or being on the lookout for them when they were difficult to find. The Famous Five were a particular thrill for me. Arriving in Palmers Green for the holidays often meant the unadulterated pleasure of yet a few unread volumes from a beloved series! I would hope, or half-know, that two or more new books lay waiting for me, freshly out of the shops, and I spent days on mummy’s bed, plunged in the fictitious world that Enid Blyton had invented, a total dupe of her clever art. But I have no regrets. Enid Blyton was loved. I ask for no excuse!

With Tini we have been trying unsuccessfully to locate a book which we both fondly remember Auntie Olive reading to us, called the Story of the Little Round Man, but it isn’t the one you’re liable to find if you google the name (there’s another story with the same title). This funny round man lived in a ball-shaped house that could roll around very fast. In the story he saves some children wandering in the woods who find some beautiful shoes which, it seems, someone has left there for them to try. Tempted, they do try them on, but the shoes immediately force them to follow them all the way to a cave where a bad witch lives. They are her prisoners! The Little round man has to find a way to be directed to the witch’s lair. He puts on only one of the magic shoes, and, asking his rolling house to follow him, controls the shoe enough to discover where the witch lives, and can plan the escape of the children. The house is left outside the entrance and is spotted by the witch. Intrigued by the house, she steps inside, but the Little round Man jumps out from hiding, bangs the door shut, and orders the house to move as fast as possible with the witch inside (she’s all bones and angles), until she relents and accepts to save the children. We loved this story, and I don’t know how many times Auntie Olive told it to us. If anyone knows where this book is, that is, if it still exists somewhere…

(later addition: here's the book's whole story! - it's Roundy, not round!)

I have decided to tell a rather embarrassing anecdote, because anyway now time has gone by, and really it was innocent: I once actually prodded Auntie Olive’s chest, and asked her “What’s that?” Can you imagine? I remember exactly the spot where we stood, at the junction of the two gardens. With a slightly demure tone, she answered “It’s my bosom”, and I was to remember that word so generously proffered. Until this day, I swear I had never felt attracted in any way, and I don’t quite understand what had made me do this, but happen it did.

One habit of the Aunties was, when we ate together at n°9 (often on Sundays) to get up before dinner was over, and start the washing up in the scullery, and while I didn’t realize then why it was they didn’t stay with us until the end of the dinner, it became a sort of joke: whoever did the same in our family in Bonnebosq later on, was likened to them. Perhaps they felt it was their way to show their gratitude for the invitation? Or a do-gooder’s attitude of people who anticipated the duty which everyone would feel of giving a hand, and wanted to be there first? Also they never ate much pudding, so this might be another reason: they thought their time was best used in a helpful way.

Once in Bonnebosq when Auntie Olive was staying with us, we went for a walk together in the countryside, and I made a mistake in the choice of the route back to the village: instead of the shorter, normal one, I chose the much, much longer one, and we did a walk three or four times what I had planned for her. When I realized my mistake, it was perhaps not too late to go back, but I was too proud to admit it, and we walked all the long way. I never knew whether she knew, whether she too had realized, because she didn’t tell me. An old lady of 70 keeping quiet about her 10 year old grandson’s blunder, which meant reaching much later and tired: for me today this is a sign of her discretion and wonderful tact. I think she wanted to trust me, to appear to be guided by me. Amazing. Will I be like that with my grand-nephews and nieces?

There is a little gesture which I do every day and that comes from her. She taught me to wash my hands by placing the four fingers of one hand in the hold of the four fingers of the other hands, and rub nails and fingertips one against the others in a sort a twisting gesture. Before she showed me this gesture, I remember distinctly that my handwashing was palm against palm only. You might think that this is insignificant, or worse, a puritan-inspired teaching aimed at keeping children’s nails clean. I see it as a handshake with her.  

Going to school in England was for us a mixed experience. What you must understand was that it was presented to us as a way “to improve our English”, and we knew we also had to go because we couldn’t stay at Grandma’s all day long doing nothing. The first memories I have are of the infants’ school of Hazelwood Lane where Auntie Olive had once been headmistress (check this page), and where she asked if I could be admitted, probably some time during the month of July, in 1965 or 1966. I remember especially my emotion when being looked after in the playground by a very old and lovely girl of 9 (perhaps) who was called Julie, and I immediately found the name as beautiful as the girl. With her friends she must have thought we were an interesting specimen: little French boys, recently arrived in the school! What struck me too, God knows why, were the sports shoes, plimsolls, which we had to wear for the gym class! I wasn’t happy at Hazelwood, and it was an immense relief when we could walk back home with Auntie Olive, past the Triangle and up Aldermans Hill!

Then came the several times (3? 4?) that we went to Saint Monica’s primary school in Cannon Road. Here too there was first the introduction to the Headmaster (Mr Moffat, as Jane in the comments rightly reminds me) with Auntie Olive, who seemed to be so well known and respected! I was still smaller than she was, then. Mixed feelings there too, especially at first, when we were considered curiosities from an outlandish, fiendlike area of the globe where frogs jumped all over the place and the strange uniformed scoundrels facing us couldn’t distinguish us from them. Each summer, upon arriving at Saint Monica’s, we had to go through the painful experience of loss, when we were once again left to our defenceless resources and forced to learn the language and the codes of a new social zoo. No playground friends any more to feel glad with, no customary games, no smaller ones to feel superior to. We were the small ones. Assembly was a specially impressive moment: the whole school in one silent, obedient mass, looking up at the Head addressing each and all: and then the prayer, and the milk with a chocolate biscuit, goodness, how vivid all this still is!

Classes used to be rather more fun, because we had special treatment. Teachers were of another species than the playground animals: they were considerate, and explained to the wild variety that we had been caged there for a good purpose: we actually were on holiday and still wanted to join classes here in England! Thirty turned heads and sixty eyes were ogling us, but it wasn’t as bad as outside. In fact it was a sort of protected haven, because the worst was still to come: school dinners! There, wilderness ruled anew, and not only that but the food which we had to eat was different! A whole new ordeal… It’s silly, but I have only bad memories of school dinners at Saint Monica’s! Everything seems to be bunched up in that one dinner when I was forced by everyone around me to eat that sticky rice pudding with a flashy red sweetener that everyone poured over it in gallons! My appreciation of British culture then was low. Back home at Grandma’s, food was so great! What had happened to it when I was transplanted at school? The only consolation was Grandma’s little bag with a bar and a fruit, in which I felt the protection of her closed front door and the familiar softness of her thick carpets:

Okay, perhaps everything wasn’t that bad after all, and indeed I think I was mostly describing the first times. There were also good moments when, having made a few friends, or being sheltered by courageous cousins, we became accepted and somewhat forgotten. There were rounders for example: I think this game gave me one of my life’s first great joys. The elation at being part of a team and helping others to win a round, or winning one myself, now that was truly something. It made up for all the rice puddings and red goo I ever ate.  I was never very good at batting, but boy I ran, and I was good at catching too, and saved my team more than once in this way. The very name “rounders” is full of the special, dense, pleasure of summer days in England when time utterly disappeared and concentrated bliss filled all my senses. I don’t know whether we stayed in the school grounds to play, or whether we had sports in the park, because the best rounders in my memory took place there. We would just have to go down Cannon Hill. The streets around the school, as the years went by and saw us returning to Saint Monica’s, were increasingly familiar and a welcoming environment that seemed to greet us as we walked up and down them. Conway road, and its little pedestrian passage leading to the end of Cannon road, past the pond with newts inside (once caught them in a jar filled with aquatic plants and brought it back to Mark's place), and the Guides hut (where I believe Mum had long ago Brownie meetings) and along the shaded railings to the school. The school soon entered our comfort zone, people remembered us from past Julies, and teachers took it for granted that we would be in their classes once again. Often we were invited for tea at Auntie Mary’s nearby, and could play with open-minded cousins who liked us.

As I’m writing all this, I realize that today, such periods at school as had been organised for us French cousins would be very complicated. Recently we tried to see if our Joseph might spend some time with his cousins in Bexleyheath, but Hélène told us the school hadn’t agreed on grounds of security. Exchanges between English schools and the continental counterparts have become very difficult. My last experience of school in England was St Ignatius (http://www.st-ignatius.enfield.sch.uk/) in 1975, where Mark was a student.

We took the train at Palmers Green station in the morning, and went down the line to Enfield Chase; I had a train pass for the month, and it was the first time I went into the station after having walked so often up and down the slope which was in fact the bridge over the railway. Most of my stay was at AB’s that year, which made things easier with the organisation. But of course I depended on my cousin for common transport, and once he made us miss the train because he’d forgotten his tie at home!

Mark would probably remember things better than me, because I was the subject of observation at St Iggs! And indeed I was sufficiently steeled from having been such a subject of observation in the past that it didn’t affect me much any longer. I decided I wasn’t going to bother, and indeed watch the comedy of silly school-conscious pupils confronted to an alien like me! Poor horrified Mark saw his carefully built status as an integrated Ignatian swerve dangerously when I fancied I was not going to heed his recommendations, and not wear anything else than my plastic sandals and a clumsily made shoulder-carried satchel! Because of the last item, I was immediately looked upon (so he told me) as a “poof”, and poor Mark had to suffer as a very guilty introducer of such a scandalous foreign species. Nothing less could explain such eccentricity. And my sandals got immediately labelled “Jesus boots”! Everyone else roamed the playground with incredible platform shoes, so I roared with inner laughter. It was easier than before because I was 2 years older than the rest of my group, and had mastered the rules of the subtle game of making my persona more enviable than ridiculous.

So my days at St Ignatius come back to me as quite a tolerable experience. I belonged to a “house” (Campbell House if I recall well), and took part in the sports events – I recall helping my team almost win at badminton. I was in (Mark’s) 2C form, which was fun for me because this was exactly what my future French class in September was going to be called (the numbers go down in France, not up). A lot of the classes were spent for me sitting at the back doing not much when I didn’t want to participate (it was agreed that anyway I wouldn’t get any marks). Probably as a result of this boredom, I once carved a word in red ink on a table (“U-boot”, because I had recently seen a film about German war submarines), and I was told off by fellow-students. But even that didn’t make me lose my cool; I knew I would be gone back to France (my haven!) before coming back in that particular classroom. But I did like the metalwork class, in which the teacher had managed to give me a copper caddie-spoon for me to make, and this in time to finish it and bring it back home as a present for Mum. My diary for July 22^nd, 1975 says that I had entrusted Mark with a goodbye letter for the 2C guys, which he gave to M. Crossing, the geography teacher. Wow, I’d completely forgotten that. I wonder what they said. Mark, do you remember? (check below)

I read further about those holidays (something I had certainly never done before!) and realized that you had come back with us, Noël, Paco and myself that year, stayed at Bonnebosq until August 9 when your mum and Chris joined you, and you all stayed until the 19^th: I wrote that I had been seeing you for 55 consecutive days! And I think I have never been to the beach so often than then!