MUSINGS FROM THE BOWER 12


Suddenly, we have butterflies! After gloomy weeks with no butterflies alighting on the ‘butterfly friendly’ plants we grow in the garden near the bower, they have arrived. Not a lot – but they’re coming. Over the last few days the sun brought along Red Admirals, Peacocks, Commas, Large Whites and Holly Blues. I spent ages today watching a glorious red Peacock on the purple buddleia against a brilliant blue sky. Magic!
It makes such a difference when the sun shines – I know that folk from other countries laugh at us for constantly talking about the weather. But how can we not, when we never know for certain whether we need a brolly or a sunhat?

I bet that the weather was one of the main talking points at the Olympics, even amongst the competitors from overseas. It’s been fantastic, hasn’t it? Not only seeing hundreds of skilled people giving their all in their chosen sport, but watching the immense pride on their faces as they stand on that podium to receive their medals. The opening ceremony was amazing, creatively telling of some of Britain’s history with a cast of thousands never putting a foot wrong, and the lighting of the torch was both touching and exhilarating. But the showstopper must have been the Queen. Let’s face it, how many 86 year-olds do you know who parachute from helicopters?! Seriously, though, we are seeing the Queen in a new light. So often, royal insiders have mentioned her sense of fun – now we have seen it for ourselves. Bond has a new girl!

I don’t seem to have done much this week. After editing the Doll Showcase Magazine that I produce and publish, I’ve been working on my autobiography. It’s not of my whole life, I think that would be pretty boring. This is just the story of my childhood. The most surprising thing I’ve discovered is that, as I write, incidents I’d forgotten come crowding back into my head. I found a photo of the first school I attended, and it must have triggered my memory. All at once I could recall making a puppet, playing with metal zoo animals, learning to sew (on a horrid piece of stiff cambric) and losing my hanky!

Luckily, my Father was an amateur photographer, so I have several of his albums covering all of my childhood. My pets – my dog, cat, tortoise, guinea pig. My toys – my dolls, rocking horse, teddy and dolls’ pram. Holidays – sitting outside various caravans, building sandcastles, paddling or just enjoying the sun. And people, so many aunts, cousins, uncles, grannies, granddads – and parents. All gone. What memories, and how wonderful to have the albums to jog my brain. I don’t expect many people will read the book when it’s done. I’m really writing it for my children – but what fun I‘m having doing it!
　
　

　

MUSINGS FROM THE BOWER 11
　
　

Someone once told me that, as a child, she hated dolls and when she was given one for her birthday she took it into the garden and smashed its head against the wall. (This was an elderly lady, so the doll wouldn’t have been a cheap plastic version, it would have been one made from bisque china, the type we now refer to as ‘antique’.) I was horrified!

I’ve loved dolls all my life, they were my constant companions as a child and I spent hours tucking them into their pram or carrycot, bathing them, ‘feeding’ them and dressing them. Nowadays, I often see dolls at boot sales, and often despair – the dolls have been so badly mistreated. They are covered in scribble from felt tip pens, they are smeared with make up or nail varnish, their hair has been chopped off or they have had their eyes pushed in. Sometimes, I rescue these waifs and repair them to the best of my ability, but often they are beyond redemption and I suspect that the sellers just dump them into a rubbish skip at the end of the day. What a short life they have had! If they had been loved and looked after, one day they would be ‘antiques’ and might well have a value. Already some plastic dolls are selling for a hundred pounds or more – unbelievable but true.

In fact, amazingly, some plastic dolls now sell for more than antique dolls. Sadly, at the moment there is a slump in the antique doll market, and dolls which once sold for a few hundred pounds struggle to make even a quarter of their value. Many new collectors aim to replace their childhood dolls, which invariably were plastic, rather than buy ‘old-fashioned’ china dolls, and I can well understand that point of view. I love all types, old and new, baby and teen, china, cloth, plastic, celluloid or even paper! Happily, I still have several of my own plastic and plaster childhood dolls and in most cases can still remember where they were bought. My dolls have no monetary value, they are too ‘well-loved’ (in other words, well played with and scuffed!) for that, but they are a constant childhood reminder and I could never part with them. They are not beautiful in the sense of an antique doll, but they are cheerful – and they are mine!

My childhood dolls

Some people think antique dolls are ‘creepy’ and a friend of mine refers to them as ‘devil dolls’! But to me, an ‘antique doll’ (the term is generally applied to bisque china dolls made up to the early 1930s) is a doll steeped in history. ‘Bisque’ china, incidentally, is a matt china which resembles skin, far more than if it were glazed or ‘glossy’. Gaze into the doll’s beautiful eyes (the eyes of these dolls are lustrous, as they are made from glass, often mouth-blown), and imagine the things she has seen, the events she has ‘lived’ through. A doll made in the early years of the twentieth century will have witnessed two major world conflicts, seen more than twenty prime ministers take office and known five Kings and a Queen to ascend the throne. She will have seen the change from tiny biplanes to enormous jumbo jets, the invention of television and the computer, the first space flight, the landing of men on the moon and amazing leaps forward in the fields of medicine, science and technology. She will have also witnessed well over a hundred Christmases, and been privy to the births, deaths, wedding and birthdays of the members of the family in which she was cared for.

An antique bisque doll

 

An antique doll won’t have aged in the physical sense – she may have lost a finger, her hair might have worn thin and she might even have a slight crack on her head. But, unless she has been cruelly mistreated like the doll I mentioned in the first paragraph, she will still be beautiful. Many museums have exhibitions of these dolls, or at the very least will have a couple on display. Next time, don’t just pass them by – think of all that history they have seen. And marvel at how well they have survived even after being played with by a young child. Then imagine giving one of those large china dolls to a child of today!

MUSINGS FROM THE BOWER 10

Goodness, it’s hot today. That’s when the bower really comes into its own – shaded by climbing plants, it’s a cool green refuge from the sun when the heat is too much to bear. When the table is loaded with a jug of iced water, fruit, a snack and a novel by a favourite author, I can while away the hours. The bower now has a new addition – a metal sign bearing the legend ‘Welcome, Friends’, which I bought at the Norfolk Lavender Farm last week. I feel it is appropriate, somehow, for readers of this blog.

Norfolk is another of my favourite places, and so my daughter and I decided to take a short break to visit Holkham Hall and Pensthorpe Nature Reserve. We also found time to call in at Sandringham, Norfolk Lavender and Hunstanton. Luckily, the weather wasn’t too hot. In fact, it was rather on the chilly side and it rained whilst we were at Holkham, which didn’t diminish our enjoyment in the least. As well as the Hall itself, Holkham Hall has a wonderful museum of bygones and a vintage vehicle collection, so there was plenty to see, even though it was too wet to visit the gardens. The home made lunches served at Holkham are delicious – especially the cakes. We had enormous cream-filled meringues, drizzled with strawberry and chocolate sauce. They were delicious, but we knew we would walk off all those calories the next day when we visited Pensthorpe, so we didn’t feel too guilty!



Vintage car at Holkham Hall



The cakes at Holkham were delicious!

Pensthorpe is beautiful, and very visitor friendly. For those who can’t walk far, there are gardens, duck-filled lakes and walk-in aviaries right near the visitors’ centre, but my daughter and I decided to explore the larger lakes, the River Wensum and the ‘Scrape’. At the Scrape you can enter a hide and watch waders and ducks as they go about their day. It was especially good to see the avocets; such graceful, elegant birds with their long upswept bills and smart white and black plumage.

Pensthorpe Nature Reserve

Once we had left the popular areas around the wildfowl lakes, it was as though we had the reserve almost to ourselves, and we spent ages taking photographs, watching the birds and just revelling in being out in the Norfolk countryside on such a beautiful day. There were butterflies and dragonflies in profusion, and in some places we had to be careful where we trod as there were lots of newly metamorphosed toadlets. Flowers were everywhere; native plants such as foxgloves, cow parsley and willow-herb provided a spectacular backdrop to our walk, while the beautiful gardens were filled with cultivated species.

Sandringham is, of course, one of the Royal Family’s holiday homes, and is a delightful house to visit. It is light and airy, unlike so many other ‘stately homes’ that tend to be dark and claustrophobic, and is, of course, filled with beautiful things. It is a very personal house – there is always a half-completed jigsaw puzzle around (Her Majesty is fond of puzzles) – and there are plenty of photographs, ornaments and other items to remind us this is a home still occupied by a family.

On this occasion, however, we weren’t visiting the house itself. Invariably when we go to Norfolk, we use Sandringham as our base! You see, there is free parking (in woodland, much nicer than tarmac) and a large visitors’ centre that comprises a restaurant, shop (which sells gifts, books and locally produced foodstuffs), an ice-cream parlour and a plant shop. There is also an enormous area of parkland and woodland. So if we are anywhere in the vicinity we call in for a meal or a snack, or a mooch around the shops – several of our garden plants have come from Sandringham, including a chocolate scented cosmos, some dazzling pinks and a rosemary bush.

There is plenty of seating around the visitors’ centre and the locally-produced ice cream is delicious. A couple of years ago, when the temperature was nudging the nineties and it was too hot to do anything, we spent a relaxing day at Sandringham sitting in the shade, reading. This time, though, the temperature was cooler, so we treated ourselves to a ride on the tractor and trailer, which tours the Sandringham estate, taking in areas that visitors don’t normally see. We really enjoyed it, especially the ancient oak trees, the tree-lined paths and the hares bounding amongst the grass. The driver gave a fascinating commentary.

We also managed to fit in a trip to Norfolk Lavender – a haze of purple at the moment – and a VERY blustery walk on Hunstanton beach (I think we were the only ones foolish enough to brave the wind!) amongst other stops. The sunset at Hunstanton was fantastic. But then work beckoned, and so we left Norfolk with its vast skies, back to our tiny but pretty garden with its flowery bower. And my daughter hung the notice on the bower for me.

Sunset at Hunstanton, Norfolk

MUSINGS FROM THE BOWER 9

　
Well, it’s back to everyday life after the holiday, and for the most part it’s been enjoyable. One definite high spot was going to visit the Bibliophile Mail Order Bookclub in London, where I signed a quantity of two of my collectables’ books – ‘British Dolls of the 1950s’ and ‘British Dolls of the 1960s’. Years ago I was a freelance book reviewer for the company, and regularly received huge cartons of books all waiting to be read and then written about. I loved the work, but sadly, it eventually proved too time-consuming and I had to give it up. Although we had corresponded for years, I only met Annie Quigley, the owner, for the first time last year when I was invited to a tea party at Bibliophile to celebrate the occasion of the granting of a Royal Warrant to the company by the Duke of Edinburgh.

So it was lovely to meet up with Annie again, and after a delicious lunch we began working on the pile of books – Annie turned to the title page that she wanted me to sign in each book which certainly speeded things up, and I duly obliged with a flourish of the pen! It didn’t take too long, and much to my surprise, I didn’t develop writer’s cramp, which I had half-expected. Nowadays I’m more used to keyboard tapping than writing with a pen. All too soon it was time to leave, but hopefully it won’t be too long before I return to see Annie and her team.
　

A few days later, I was up early and by 7am, my daughter and I had taken our places in Harlow town centre ready to see the Olympic torch pass by. We were determined not to miss this moment of history. Although we had to wait for over an hour, the time soon passed as we soaked up the atmosphere of the whistle blowing, flag waving cheerful crowds, the banter of the officials and the various promotional, police and security vehicles that appeared. There was even a Salvation Army tea van that soon attracted long queues. I hadn’t seen one of those vans in years. Then the Salvation Army band struck up and began playing their stirring tunes – ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, ‘Bread of Heaven’. Rousing stuff. Then someone shouted ‘Here comes the torch’, and the cry was taken up by the crowd. The bearer – Tianbiao Ni – looked so proud that he had been chosen to run a lap, and he was the subject of hundreds of photos as we all clicked our cameras, phones or ipads. And then it was over, and my daughter and I went back to the car, and home for tea and toast!

As with most places in Britain, we’ve been subjected to torrential downpours over the last few weeks, but I’m pleased to report that the bower is still looking pretty. At the moment it is sporting several passionflowers, and I think there will be blooms on abundance going by the quantity of buds – the humid conditions certainly suit this plant. There is a beautiful creamy-white rose with a faint apricot tinge out as well. It’s a bit of a mystery, this one, as my daughter purchased it a couple of years ago as a ruby anniversary gift for my husband and I. It was labelled and sold as a red rose, and is lovely, even though it is the wrong colour, but I wish I knew what it actually is. There is also a mass of honeysuckle and some clematis by the bower as well as various other plants including a scented jasmine. If only the weather would improve – at the moment it’s too chilly to sit there for long, and the few warmer days we experienced a couple of weeks ago are already a distant memory.

Even so, I’m still visiting garden centres, and have been to two this week though have bought few plants. Instead, I’ve been browsing and buying various sundries. I do enjoy visiting garden centres, they sell so many interesting things, often unusual gifts and home accessories that you don’t see elsewhere. Recently I found a delightful soapstone hippopotamus! This week’s buys included two more bird feeders – our feeding station often has long queues, and the greedy pigeons and squirrel don’t help the situation. I also bought two ornate labels for the only herbs I manage to keep going in the garden – Rosemary and Mint –deciding they deserved posh labels for valour, and a solar owl whose eyes light up at night. I looked out into the darkness a couple of days later and it looked really scary, so maybe it wasn’t one of my wiser buys!

Another thing that I love about garden centres is that so many have their own cafes, and invariably they serve home-cooked or locally prepared and sourced food. When I’m away from home I always keep a lookout, as it’s much nicer and much more relaxing to stop for lunch at a garden centre than a roadside venue, and often these days even the smaller centres will sell sandwiches, rolls or cream teas. I’d rather support garden centres than the service stations or roadside café chains!

 MUSINGS FROM THE BOWER 8
　
Frank Sinatra used to sing:
‘It’s very nice to just wander
The camel route to Iraq
It’s oh, so nice to just wander
But it’s so much nicer
Yes, it’s oh so nice to wander back.’

Well, I haven’t wandered along the camel route to Iraq, but I was in the Isle of Wight last week. The Isle is one of my favourite haunts, and when I’m there I always feel as though I’ve drifted a couple of decades or so back in time, when things were more laid back and we didn’t need to rush. Even so, when I was aboard the homeward ferry, although sad the holiday was over I was already wondering how the garden was doing, wondering if there were any letters for me, wondering how our bunny was in his holiday home and, of course, wondering what to cook for tea!

The Isle of Wight is really crammed with lovely things to see and do, and although we managed a full schedule, we only just scratched the surface. We try to go there at least once a year and of course have favourite places that we return to time and again, though it’s also fun to discover new things. This year we visited the Donald McGill postcard museum in Ryde. It’s only small but is jam-packed with thousands of the artist’s saucy postcards as well as other memorabilia, and it was fascinating to see all those cards – and to learn how many the censor banned.

 

The Isle of Wight Zoo, home to rescued tigers and other big cats, is always a must as is the Seaview Wildlife Experience which is the only place I know that you can get mugged, delightfully, by ducks! Amazon World is super too, home to lots of exquisite birds as well as armadillos, anteaters. Best of all is the lemur enclosure where lemurs take great delight in climbing all over you and insist on sitting on the camera when you try to take a photo.

If you’re after history, then Carrisbrooke Castle, Osborne House or the Roman Villa at Brading are all superb places to visit. At Carrisbrooke, not only can you see the window where Charles I became stuck when he tried to escape, but you can see a donkey demonstrate how water was once drawn from the well via a treadmill. Queen Victoria’s house at Osborne is packed with treasures and quirky bits and pieces, and the grounds are marvellous too. The under-cover remains of the Brading Roman villa boast superb mosaics; I just marvel at the detail that can still be seen in these centuries-old paved floors.

Another favourite place of mine is Arreton Barns. This free to enter craft centre cum old village is a great place to spend a few hours, whether you want to watch craftspeople making pottery or leather belts, or prefer to explore the old agricultural artifacts and collectable objects that are scattered around. There is even a collection of old amusement arcade slot machines dating back to the 1950s and 60s, while the shops sell gifts, delicious fudge, retro sweets and pretty lace cloths.

Shanklin is a pretty village, with a deep chine to explore if you’re feeling in need of a walk, or you can just stroll around the gift shops and end up with a cream tea in one of the tea gardens. Godshill is similar, though is let down by its toilets which are right at the edge of the car park and are dark and gloomy. Sorry, I tend to judge places on their facilities. If you expect tourists to visit, then it’s important to ensure their stay is enjoyable. I also enjoy Ventor Botanical Gardens, and sometimes, if you sit really quiet, you will see the rare wall lizards creeping from under the stones to bask in the sun.

As well as all the attractions, the Isle boasts a superb coastline. At Alum Bay you can take a chair lift to the beach and then catch a boat which will take you to the Needles – a magnificent sight from the water. I love to just sit on the cliff at Freshwater sketching the wild flowers that abound there, or to take photographs of the shells, pebbles and seaweed on the beaches around the Island. And the final must is an evening trip to one of the places where you can watch the sun setting over the sea – it looked fabulous this year as it turned the sky multihued above the pier at Ryde.

It was good to be home, though – and to get back to the Bower. In the week that I’ve been away, roses and passionflowers have come out, making it more enchanting than ever. All we need now is some sunshine!

MUSINGS FROM THE BOWER 7

I was browsing in a hobbies shop recently, and noticed a whole aisle given over to ‘Scrapbooking’. There were masses of accessories, from the books themselves through to decals, buttons, decorative papers and all kinds of miniature stick-on accessories. I could see that the making of scrapbooks was now an in-thing.
During the 1980s/90s when my children were small, we filled scrapbooks too, but unlike today’s arty creations, ours were designed to record our holidays. Sometimes we made additional scrapbooks to fill with memorabilia relating to the places of interest we had visited over the year; zoos, exhibitions, stately homes and other days out. The first scrapbook I made was when we were on holiday in Cornwall. My son was one year old, and I wanted to create a memory as I knew he would never recall this holiday. My son and daughter can’t really remember much about their early holidays, so the scrapbooks have proved fascinating. For the first few years, I wrote the diary while the children contributed their finds to the album. Later, they were old enough to write the words themselves.

We bought a postcard from each of the various places we visited, and kept admission tickets, meal receipts, sugar sachets, car park tickets, paper napkins – even the occasional ice-lolly stick or chocolate wrapper. Yes, I know it’s junk, but it’s also treasure! Free leaflets and fliers were a boon, and feathers, a small piece of seaweed, tiny shells, and some daises or thrift from the cliff all contributed to the scrapbooks. The children were always on the lookout for interesting holiday bits and pieces, and they made holiday drawings too.

By now, you’re probably thinking that it can’t be much of a holiday if you have to work on a scrapbook every day, but in fact the work is minimal. All you need to pop into your luggage is a notebook, a supply of small plastic bags and an old bus timetable or similar book which won’t matter if it becomes soiled. Each evening jot down in your notebook where you went, what you did, and most importantly, the prices you paid for admission, boat trips, bus rides or other things. Then put the day’s treasures into plastic bags together with a slip of paper with the date. Press the seaweed and flowers in the bus-timetable (you were wondering about that, weren't you?). It doesn't take long, honest. When you arrive home, stick your notes and treasures into a scrapbook and label everything up. The children will enjoy helping to create this snippet of social history and it prolongs the fun of the holiday. Older children get fun out of these books too – when I suggested that we needn’t bother any more, now that they were older, my son and daughter greeted the suggestion with shocked protests even though they were well into their teens.

Not only are these holiday scrapbooks wonderful to look back on in years to come, they can resolve arguments (was that mine we visited in Cornwall or Wales, and what was the name of that little tea room in Devon?) Unfortunately, they can also cause great anguish when you notice how admission prices have tripled over the years!
　

Musings From the Bower 6

Musings from the Bower

Sue Brewer

　
The other day someone asked me how I began my writing career. It wasn’t an easy question to answer. The very first thing that I ever had published – and was paid for – was a letter in a magazine entitled Fur and Feather. I was about 13 at the time, and would like to say that this was the kick-start to my career. I would like to say that – but of course, it wasn’t. At 13 I didn’t really know what I wanted to do when I left school. And though I loved writing, thanks to Michael Guinery, an enthusiastic teacher in my primary school in Welwyn Garden City, I didn’t see it as a career. I ended up working in a ‘special’ library (one attached to a research institution) before moving on to a college library.

It was much, much later before the writing really took off. I had become interested in breeding various types of amphibians, and submitted an article to the Aquarist magazine. Soon, I was writing regularly for them on many topics. At the same time, I decided to dabble in the fiction world, never thinking I would get a story published as it is such a cut-throat market. By a fluke, my story was included in a Woman’s Realm supplement – and suddenly, I was writing short stories for them, and other magazines as well. The thing that helped my writing more than any other, was my word processor! At first I had bashed away on an old typewriter, but the processor gave me freedom to correct and to alter my work without having to retype everything each time I made an error.

By the 1990s I also had a weekly column in a local newspaper and was writing features for various collectables, doll and teddy bear magazines, as well as writing stories and also producing ‘blurbs’ for a bookseller. I decided I would like to try my hand at writing something for children and was given the opportunity to produce a short book in verse dealing with phonetics, for a children’s reading scheme. Then my Mother asked for help – she had written an autobiography dealing with her childhood spent in a children’s home, and so we decided to publish it ourselves, knowing the market might be limited. This proved so successful that a few years later, I took the same route with my first doll book. The book was about the famous Tiny Tears doll, but was full of so much detail and general geekiness that I knew no publisher would take it on. I was amazed at how successful the book proved to be, outselling all my expectations.

Then, by a stroke of fortune, I was offered the chance to write books for a publisher on many subjects including dolls, comics, toys, autographs and games. Along the way I’ve edited a few magazines, written for others and published a magazine of my own, Doll Showcase, which has now been running for eight years. Recently, I released a selection of my short stories, first published in Woman's Realm, on Kindle under the title ‘Twisty Ends and Tangly Tales’. I’ve also written a couple of novels which I’m still plucking up courage to send to a publisher. Maybe one day, I will!