Dear Lumpy (10 page)

Love to you all from all of us here

XX D

My brother Lupin sets off driving an articulated lorry full of medical supplies for Poland with his new and highly unlikely friend, Molly the Marchioness of Salisbury, as his navigator. Astonishingly, in order to raise money for their Polish adventure they threw a ball at Hatfield House with Prince Charles and Princess Diana as guests of honour. My brother told me I was going to sit next to a building society manager from Wolverhampton, who in reality turned out to be Spike Milligan.

The Crumblings

Burghclere

6 April

Dearest L,

I hope you are behaving yourself reasonably well. Has Henry been conscripted into the Army yet? I expect he will be. With his knowledge of liquid refreshment, I expect he will be put into the Army Catering Corps. In 1945 I was sent on a commanding officers’ cooking course at Aldershot. One of my instructors was the head baker from Lyons, another a chef from the Savoy. In the POW camp I was for a year Mess Cook with Peter Black. Our speciality was bread and potato pie, alternated with a pudding made from crushed biscuit crumbs and dried figs (v good for bowels). Your mother is in belligerent form. We are having the conservatory done up. The result is that it looks like a moderately clean lavatory at a provincial railway station. Deepest Gloom was beaten by a neck in a £2,000 race last week. However he has won over £3,000 in win and place money this season which eases the pain somewhat. The Hislops are just back from Provence. They boarded a French plane but a strike was called and they had to get off. They were just transferring to an Italian plane when the crew walked off over some grievance. They then started off in a car but the motorways were blocked by striking lorry-drivers. Eventually they boarded a boat at Dieppe. There were 250 London schoolchildren on board, 247 of which were extremely sick. The Cringer is very well and getting rather fat. The Post Office has obtained a licence to sell drink. (Big opportunity for Henry, perhaps?)

Best love to you all,

D

Much to everyone’s horror we are now at war and our troops have been sent to the Falklands. My father can’t resist the opportunity to have a dig at Henry who years earlier had managed to fail his officer’s exam and thus failed to get a commission in the army.

Budds Farm

24 August

Dearest L,

V cold and grey here, more like early March. Your mother is off to London to see Aunt Boo who has bronchitis and is fairly groggy. I have heard nothing from Jane lately: I believe Lupin is off to Germany. We had a good dinner at La Riviera last night: only £40 for four, cheap by the hideous standards of today. Solomon is very tiresome as about seven local bitches are on heat. Newbury Carnival took place yesterday and the streets are even dirtier than usual. Mr Thorn was nearly electrocuted when doing some repairs on Friday. The electrician had told him a cable was dead when in fact it was very lively indeed. Four Fishers came to lunch on Friday: Mrs F now drives a jumbo-sized Mercedes. Marcus Fisher killed 2 pheasants, thereby anticipating the start of the season by a couple of months. We ourselves are going to Wales for a few days, somewhere near Harlech. I rather like the Welsh, they are amusingly sly and dishonest. As a matter of fact I tend to get on well with most foreigners bar the Scotch whom I dislike quite a lot. I loathe bagpipes, kilts, the Scottish accent and the barbaric cooking at Scotch hotels. Argyllshire reminded me of Woking except that the ponds were bigger and the food far worse. I rather like Belgium – hideous, quarrelsome people but excellent cooks and gardeners. I also rather like Egyptians who are too idle even to flick away the bluebottles crawling over their eyeballs. I don’t know Poland very well but lived there for a bit. Most Poles are romantic but agreeable. I think I can still say ‘Good Morning’ and ‘This lavatory smells awful’ in Polish. My Arabic is limited to ‘Does your father live in the Old City?’ Not very useful, on the whole! I rather think the Arabic for ‘Impossible’ is ‘mushmumkin’. It was unfortunate that the Arabic for ‘Allied Military Government’ was the same as for ‘dog-turd’.

Love to all,

XX D

Dinner at La Riviera is one of the highlights of my father’s life, but he is not as enthusiastic about either Scotland or its inhabitants.

Chez Nidnod

Monday

Dearest L,

I hope you had a nice time in sunny Devonshire and that you behaved with reasonable decorum. Nidnod is in very good form, Peregrine having been declared ‘Champion dog’ at the Flower and Dog show. I had hoped the Cringer would win the Veterans Class but he was in a bad mood and refused to cooperate. However he was placed second despite peeing on the judge’s handbag. There were some good stalls at the show and I bought a plum cake for £1 and 2 books for 5p each. I did a very good vase (red dahlias and carnations with grey foliage) for the Floral Decoration Class but had no luck; the prize went to some frightfully chi-chi exhibit, old man’s beard and stinkwort in what looked like an old shoe. I went to a rather ghastly funeral last week, the climax came when a royal Artillery Trumpeter played the Last Post while the organist was flat out with Sheep May Safely Graze. Lupin is here (plus dog) and has gone to see some quack over near Basingstoke. All men are hypochondriacs at heart. We have 20 people coming to lunch on Sunday and already Nidnod is rather excited. I am getting in lots of Spanish brandy of the kind that would make a week old corpse leap lightly from the coffin and enter for a six day race. My watch has gone wrong for the first time since I bought it in Hartley Wintney five years before you were born. (Not very interesting but I’m pushed for news.)

Best Love and a XXX for Rebecca

D

Flower arranging is not a skill one would immediately associate with my father. However, he could actually put together quite a good display.

Budds Farm

5 September

Dearest L,

Not many squeaks from you lately! Nidnod is well but worried because old Doris Bean, who keeps her horse and is 81, fell down in her kitchen last week and broke her thigh. No joke at that age – or at any other age, either! I took Nidnod and the dogs for a walk by the River Kennett the other afternoon. When we got home panting for a cup of tea Nidnod discovered she had dropped the burglar-alarm keys so we were locked out. We had to drive back to where we had walked, and thanks to my Boy Scout training the keys were found! Mrs Surtees took Peregrine’s mother to the West Ilsley Dog Show. The poor little thing (the dog, not Mrs S.) was attacked by a lurcher who was dragged off just in time. Seven stitches had to be inserted at a cost of £35.

I suppose I had a couple of pleasant days at Brighton staying with Cousin John in his flat overlooking the nudist beach. My accountant has had 2 heart attacks and his stand-in annoys me beyond belief. I think I shall give him the tin-tack. We attended the opening of the Drag Hunt’s new Kennels near Lambourn. The Master saw fit to make a speech containing three exceptionally vulgar stories which shocked the adults but were greeted with howls of delight by the many children present. Mrs Surtees came to lunch in the garden last week and I provided a delicious hock cup. Nidnod and Mrs S both felt very poorly afterwards and I think I must have overdone the ‘special offer’ Bulgarian brandy. I had quite a bad headache myself. No news of your brother who, as far as I know, and I don’t know much, is still unemployed. Mr Parkinson is lumbered with his mother-in-law who is driving him round the bend as she drinks a lot, never stops talking and is inclined to be incontinent. Mrs Gaselee is recovering slowly from a fractured skull. We did not go to the Lambourn Lurcher Show yesterday: too many gypsies and thieves of every description.

Best love,

D

My father’s letters were better than any gossip column and probably more accurate.

Budds Farm

Monday

Dearest L,

So sorry to learn that Rebecca’s godfather and your great friend had died. I assume not unexpectedly. It is sad when some old buffer who has been a friend of mine for years drops off the hook: it is infinitely worse when a young man in his prime is the victim.

All my sympathy to you and Henry.

D

Andy Loch was – and still is – sadly missed. At his memorial service half the congregation was made up of crying girls!

Home of Rest for Impoverished Members of the Middle Class Burghclere

11 October

Dearest L,

I hope all goes well with you. Plenty of rain here and the garden very muddy in consequence. Nowadays Mr Randall turns up in very posh clothes, attired for a luncheon party in SW1 rather than for digging manure into the vegetable plot. This week-end he and Mrs R are off on a coach tour in Devonshire. They have a much better time than Nidnod and I do. It has been truly said that the pleasures of youth are not really pleasures, and that the consolations of old age do not exist at all. Jane is glowing with pride after her article in the ‘Daily Telegraph’. I worked for the DT for eight weeks in 1955. The Sports Editor was always sloshed by teatime and I had the utmost difficulty in getting paid. We went out to dinner with some very nice people last Wednesday, rich too, but the repast was revolting. The first course looked and tasted like Sunlight Soap. I sat next to a fearsome old bag, Lady Grimthorpe, who feigned deafness. In my view she is an absolutely ideal candidate for the lethal chamber. The following day we had a very good lunch with John Abergavenny who is giving up his job as the Queen’s Ascot Representative. I think Nidnod was sitting next to a trainer who has become a millionaire by shrewd property deals. Most of his horses belong to an Arab who runs a series of highly profitable abortion clinics in Hammersmith. I was introduced to a v small Polish girl whom I thought was having a day off from a local school. However later I saw her with her noggin in a tankard of the hard stuff and discovered she was 26! Poor old Solomon is getting very frail and simply could not jump up on my bed this morning. His appetite, though, remains unimpaired.

Did you hear about the lady who had three whippets? She called them ‘whippetin, whippetout and whipe-pet’.

I hate my new accountant who looks like Himmler and is liable to behave like him, too. Mrs Hislop recently met Loopy’s first wife, I think her name is Cecilia, and said she was very good looking still. Someone I met, possibly Emma’s brother, mucks in with Henry’s brother at Bristol Univ. I hear the glamorous Miss Blacker is being courted by an individual called ‘John the Barman’.

Best love,

D

Did you know that Harry Randall is rhyming slang for candle?

My father is equally unimpressed with the Daily Telegraph, Lady Grimthorpe and his new accountants.

Budds Farm

9 February

Dearest L,

V many thanks for your well-chosen card. You should have seen some of the night nurses at Basingstoke! They were capable of anything. I am now back to normal, not that that really amounts to much. Nidnod is somewhat overwrought and better before 6 p.m. than after. She simply refuses to relax and cannot understand why she is always tired. I am thinking of writing an adventure story for small children called ‘The Desperate Adventures of Peregrine, the Dog Detective’. The Cringer is well, but apt to regard the interior of Budds Farm as his personal lavatory. Mr Randall is just off to Leeds to bury his brother-in-law. Aunt Joan’s greatest friend, Marjorie Napier, was found dead in her bath, presumably after a heart attack. She had been there quite a long time. That sort of thing is the fate that elderly people living alone all dread. The Greenham Common women are becoming rather a bore: a pack of savage, men-hating left-wing lesbians! I have just been invited to a champagne and oysters party in London at Bentleys. I certainly propose to accept. We have been invited to meet the Queen M at lunch on Friday. I must make sure I have a clean collar. Lupin seems in good form and seems to think he is the young tycoon of N.W. Kensington & District.

Best love to all

D

Unsurprisingly my father and other locals clearly had disparaging views of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, which had been going strong since September 1981.

Budds Farm

22 February

Dearest L,

Was it you who sent me rather a pert Valentine card? I thought I recognised your writing but could not be sure! V cold here and I am wearing as many clothes as I did in Poland in 1941. Your mother is in poorish form and seems to take a dim view about everyone (bar Paul) and everything (bar the Old Berks Hunt)! Sometimes her views are so violent that I think she will attack the Greenham Common women, for example. I wish you could cheer her up a bit. We are having a lunch party on Sunday but unfortunately her rich boy-friend Rodney Carrott will be in Kenya. Perhaps he will meet up with Aunt Pam! Solomon is much better now that we have stopped giving him pills: I think vets are as dangerous with pills as doctors are. I made rather a good drink the other day: 1/3rd Spanish brandy, 1/3rd white rum and 1/3rd cointreau. The guests were quite chatty afterwards and your mother never drew breath for a second. Your mother is furious with Mrs Block who made critical comments about Peregrine’s domestic and sexual habits. She will never be forgiven. The Bomers are building an additional garage and the lane has been blocked with bulldozers, gravel lorries etc. I have heard nothing from Jane recently; she is more long-winded on the telephone than anyone I’ve ever met. How is Rebecca? I suppose it is a slack time of the year for children’s parties. An army of moles is rapidly destroying my lawn and I have been singularly unsuccessful in killing any. A golden pheasant is busy removing the buds off my polyanthi. I have got to attend a boring lunch at the Hyde Park Hotel next week. I think I’ll go up by bus.

Love to you all at Clancarty Road,

D xx

Best of British Luck with your driving test.

Depressingly I fail my driving test for the sixth time.

Budds Farm

1 April

Dearest L,

Happy Easter to you wherever you are: I assume in Devonshire. V cold here and I can’t get going in the garden which continues to be in a sad condition. Two funerals last week, one at Windsor and the other at East Woodhay. The Cringer is well and managed to open Nidnod’s handbag and remove a large bar of milk chocolate. Nidnod has back trouble, bronchitis and diarrhoea, which happen to be about the only 3 diseases I have not got at present. She makes matters worse by refusing to give up hunting, and long hours in a biting east wind are hardly calculated to relieve her situation. All in all, she is in very poor form. The Newbury area has been invaded by hordes of savage women, not one of whom could truthfully be called a sex object. They look more like Feldwebels from the SS. Major Surtees went to see a quack about his arthritic knee and was charged 65 guineas for a consultation! I went to Basingstoke Hospital for a check-up and was seen by a man who looked like an Indian jockey. He said I was more or less OK and should be able to struggle on for a bit, doubtless to the irritation and disappointment of some of my near-and-dears! We have got a lot of Nidnod’s relatives to lunch on Sunday and Nidnod is producing a turkey. I am mixing a little cocktail called ‘Between The Sheets’ which contains almost everything bar gin. The Bomers are all away for Easter, I think down on the coast of Kent where the east wind should be reasonably keen. Nidnod is working on the Tote at the local point-to-point on Monday. I have just had some curious gravel for breakfast called ‘Grapenuts’. We used to be given it on Sundays at my preparatory school in place of porridge. I have not heard much from Jane lately: I believe it is Piers’s birthday on April 6. I haven’t seen Rebecca for ages. Has she grown much?