Chapter 48: Packed with news

Stories, mostly short ones, about a wedding, a television star, cats, ancestors, a nightmare house move, spontaneous comments by our kids, and an Australian crab picture...

Let’s begin with a story — probably not true — told to me by Aussie comedian Barry Humphries in the 1970s: Mary, an Australian teenager who’d just completed her high school education decided to go back-packing around Europe for a few years. Before departing, she felt she should go to Wagga Wagga to say goodbye to her ancient and very frail grandmother. “That’s nice, dear,” said her grandmother, “but keep away from England. That’s where all the criminals come from.”

From a letter date September 19, 1977:

The Australian film, “The Devil's Playground", is doing good business in London. I saw it and was most impressed. Not as good as "Picnic at Hanging Rock", but excellent nonetheless. I was mainly interested in seeing what sort of а fist Nick Tate made of his role. I've known Nick on аnd off over the years here. He's a nice bloke, with his feet as close to the ground as you could reasonably expect of an actor.

He gave me exclusive coverage of his wedding a few weeks back. I sold a pic to the “Sydney Daily Mirror” and а story-and-pic to “TV Week”.

Here’s the “TV Week” article, published on October 1, 1977:

And here’s a “TV Week” article from March 1976:

CONSIDERED “OLD”?

Let me tell you of a sobering experience I had the other day. Rosemary and I had been discussing my imminent 40th birthday and she had been trying to boost my morale by saying I didn’t look a day over 21 (would you believe 30?). Anyway, when I was walking down the street later I broke up a scrap between a bunch of kids aged about ten. As I walked away I heard one ask: "What happened?” "Oh," replied another, “that old bloke told us to stop".

REALLY?

The other day I popped into a local bank to pay a bill and discovered that the girl teller was named Batson. I explained that was my wife’s maiden name. I asked her where her ancestors came from, explaining that Rosemary's came from Northamptonshire. "Oh no,” she replied, “all mine came from Australia".

From a letter dated October 14, 1977:

On our wedding anniversary-cum-40th-birthday weekend, Auntie Lill Crosbie [who is on a long term visit to the UK] shouted us all a weekend away. We drove to Cambridge for a picnic lunch and in the afternoon I foolishly agreed to take Rosemary and the kids for a trip on a punt. It was very picturesque winding among the ancient Cambridge University Colleges, but damned hard work -- specially coming back against the current. I came very close to going overboard at one stage when the pole unexpectedly became stuck in the mud. By the time we got back to the pier I was exhausted and felt 50 rather than 40, Rosemary and the kids thought it all immensely amusing.

ANCESTOR NEWS

And on the subject of ancestors, I have been plugging on with the Coxes and continue to find much material about my great uncle, the Rev Francis W. Cox. Did you know, for instance, that his portrait hangs in a college gallery in Adelaide and that his diaries, part written in shorthand, are in the State Library in Adelaide? Recent research in County Hall archives here traced F. W.'s three half-brothers, but amazingly no record whatever of his eight half-sisters. The whole thing is a great mystery. In other developments I have traced a "missing" house once occupied by the Coxes. A map of 1818 shows it to have been backing onto Southwark Cathedral and to have been marked for demolition as part of a street realignment to go with the new London Bridge opened about 1830. I have also made contact with the present owner of the one Cox home still standing and he has promised to get hold of the deeds [I didn’t get them].

F. W. Cox was one of 20 children William Cox fathered by two wives. The first wife, Ann, gave William 11 children, several of whom died as babies before she died. His second wife, Sarah, gave him nine children, including Francis. Francis was one of Isaac Pitman’s first shorthand students and used the shorthand to write down anything sensitive. He emigrated to Adelaide with Sarah, his mother, and became head of the Congregational Church in South Australia. He was prominent, not just in the church, but in political and social affairs in South Australia. An obituary can be found HERE.

The Cox home and shop, still there when we arrived in London, was later demolished to make way for a new entrance to London Bridge underground station:

The Guardian newspaper devoted a page to one of my family history articles in October 1997. It was written before just about everyone had a mobile smart phone/camera, but the central message is still relevant. It can be found HERE.

FAMILY ADDITION

We have a furry addition to our family — a kitten. Niall has been pestering us to get one for ages. We managed to get a four-month-old old tabby. Niall insisted on calling it (or rather, her) Tinkerbelle. Harley wanted to call her Starsky. Tinkerbelle it is. Anyway, she is a big hit with everyone (even me), although Rosemary has pointed out that it means yet another creature demanding affection. In addition to having her husband and two sons all over her on the couch, she now has a cat on her lap.

From a letter dated December 30, 1977:

EXHAUSTING CHRISTMAS

Christmas is over for another year. Wє came nowhere near having a white Christmas, with the temperature in the high 50sF, which is very mild for this time of the year. The kids were beside themselves with excitement, specially because of the big build-up at school. Harley was heard to plaintively remark on Christmas Eve: “I don't think I can stand this much longer". He was awake at six the next morning and valiantly did his best not to open his presents before breakfast. But in the end, the strain became too much for us and we let him get on with it. Because 1 had to work at the BBC, Bush House, from 3.30pm, we had our turkey dinner about 1pm. We opened a bottle of champers we'd been saving up for such an occasion and finished off with some home-made sloe gin liqueur. Didn't feel much like going to work, I can tell you.

I didn’t finish work until nearly 11pm and had to be back at Bush House at 8am on Boxing Day. I was probably better off at work. The kids were exhausted and scrapping over all sorts of trivial things. The excitement was just too much for them.

From a letter dated January 24, 1978:

LONDON STORMS

After a protracted period of very mild weather, we had some dreadful storms. The winds were hitting 90 miles an hour and caused enormous damage. The greatest threat to London was a flood. The Thames nearly burst through the flood walls. If it had, vast areas of the city would have been under water, including the underground railway system, and hundreds, if not thousands, of people might have died in flooded basements. A few days after the storms we had a cold snap, One day we had freezing fog (that's fog that freezes to everything it touches). Very cold, but also very pretty because everything, including spider webs, is covered in silvery frost.

TROUBLESOME TINKERBELLE

We continue to have a love-hate relationship with Tinkerbelle the cat. Perhaps it's because she stays inside all the time to avoid the cold winter blasts outside, but somehow she's managed to convince us that she's a fully paid up member of the Richardson family, rather than a mere pet. She overwhelms everyone with her affection. You can't even have a quiet sit on the bog without her coming and sitting on your lap. During the night she has recently taken to standing guard outside the bedroom door and periodically making the most awful whining noises.

Tinkerbelle, who we grew to love, died in 1989 and was given a funeral and burial in the rockery behind our fish pond. While I was attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference in Malaysia for the BBC in October, the family acquired two replacement cats that they jokingly named Kuala and Lumpur. This didn’t last long as Rosemary was concerned that our neighbours would think she was nuts standing at the door during feeding time and shouting “Kuala Lumpur”. So Kuala retained her name, but the other was called “Lostin” as in lost and found. Both have since died and joined Tinkerbelle in the rockery. Much as we like cats, we chose to be cat-less because of the problems of caring for them during periods away from home.

From a letter dated February 25, 1978:

BUK RAMSAY REJECTION

The “Sydney Daily Telegraph”, after telling me they would probably want my pop column, Buk Ramsay’s “London Rock Report” (ex “Spunky”), eventually decided they could live without it. A bit disappointing because it would have provided some useful extra cash. I'll try elsewhere in the next month or so. At the moment I'm too busy with Radio New Zealand to spare time for much else.

A POSH DINNER

In the course of my Radio New Zealand work I was invited to the recent NZ Day celebration dinner at опе of London's poshest hotels. The guest speaker was Prince Philip. There were 660 there and it would be an exaggeration to say I was sitting near the prince. The nearest I got to him was to have his bodyguard at my table. It was quite interesting observing how he gave the impression of being interested in all the conversation while really devoting his attention to what was going on in the vicinity of Prince Philip. He became specially wary when a drunk in the crowd began making idiotic noises during one of the speeches. The food was ghastly — mass-produced chaff, dressed up with fancy names.

A one-subject letter to the family dated March 27, 1978:

A FAILED HOUSE PURCHASE

As mentioned in the previous chapter, buying a house in England is often a nightmare experience that can takes months. Nothing is settled, i.e., has reached the point of no return until very late in the process. At any point, before contracts are exchanged and a 10% deposit paid, the buyer and the seller can pull out or change the price and everything else that has been agreed by the shake of hands, or not even that. This is the story of our nasty experience trying to buy a house a few streets away from where we now live:

Rosemary was reading through the evening newspapers just before going to sleep when she spotted what looked suspiciously like “our” house being advertised -- at almost £8,000 more than we were supposed to be paying. I checked the phone number given -- and sure enough, it was the same house. Even though it was 11.30pm I was in such a fury that I rang the seller, hoping that I would get him out of bed. Unfortunately he was still up. He sounded rather embarrassed to have been caught out, but was unrepentant. He said he now felt he could get more for his place. He said he had intended to tell us “next week" that he had put the place back on the market and added that if he couldn't get а better price, he would still sell it to us.

It completely ruined that night's sleep -- specially as earlier in the day the surveyor for the buyer of our present house had phoned to make an appointment to check it over -- the last major step before contracts are exchanged and the deal reaches the point of no return. If you don't know the bizarre way the English house buying process works, it's difficult to explain just how disastrous it is to have your own purchase fall through. Because contracts have to be exchanged at the same time, we may well have to tell our buyer that we can't proceed and he, in turn, will have to tell his buyer the same. In the process, we all have spent money on legal and advertising fees, with nothing to show for it. The estate agents had also seen the new advert and were equally furious, especially as they stood to lose their commission of about £600.

What particularly upset them -- and us -- was that the chap had not even had the decency to inform us that he intended putting the property back on the market. Our only consolation is that the estate agents were so annoyed that they got their “dirty tricks" department onto the job. They made ten fake appointments to see the house -- including one from a “cash buyer who would be bringing along a surveyor and would make an immediate offer". This person is supposed to turn up tomorrow and we know the seller has been taken in by the appointment because a friend of ours posing as a possible buyer was told that the house was all but sold to this so-called “cash buyer”. I had no part in these “dirty tricks", nor would I have done anything like this. Nonetheless, deep down Rosemary and I have to admit we are enjoying the thought that this chap is eagerly awaiting the arrival tomorrow of a non-existent sucker who he thinks is about to pay a grossly inflated price for his house. As for our next moves, it’s difficult to know what to do except to cry. I will be contacting our solicitor first thing in the morning to see if we have any recourse — or will just have to write it off as an experience.

In the event, it was good news. We promptly discovered 26 Ascott Avenue was available at a good price, was empty and immediately available. Hence, we were able to buy it. Meantime, the seller of the other house was left stranded — apparently because his own purchase of another house fell through.

From a letter dated April 5, 1978:

POP STAR FRIEND VISIT

We had a visit from Cheryl (or Samantha) Sang a few weeks back. She was on a promotional visit here concerning her single "Emotion" which got to Number 12 on the charts. She spent the afternoon with us. She hadn't changed. Harley was delighted to see her again. specially as he had seen her on television a few days beforehand.

A YouTube version with an all glammed-up Samantha singing “Emotion” is HERE

From a letter dated May 18, 1978:

CRIME REPORT

Rosemary nearly got caught up in an armed hold-up in Ealing the other day. As she arrived outside one of the department stores in Ealing Broadway, police swarmed all over it because two men carrying sawn off shotguns had robbed the security guards collecting the store’s takings. One of the men escaped through the Ealing Broadway tube station, from where she had just come, while the other guy escaped by hailing a taxi. They got away with about £5000.

From a letter dated May 24, 1978:

HORRENDOUS HOUSE MOVE

Well, we are slowly settling into the new house in Ascott Avenue. It takes time of course. We’ve found the most frustrating and time-consuming tasks are buying all the bits and pieces that are always needed when taking over a house. You know, light plugs, wall brackets, screws, nails, etc.

We moved in on May 26 but not quite as planned. The afternoon before, we learned that our buyer’s buyer didn’t have the purchase money due to a cock-up by his solicitor. Eventually, the solicitor arranged an emergency bridging loan on the 26th, but we didn’t get confirmation that we could move or hand over the keys until 1.30pm. By that time, the new owner already had one van-load of stuff in the house with another van outside. Our own van didn’t turn up until 2pm, so chaos reigned. It took seven hours to complete the move to Ascott Avenue – a distance of two miles – and I don’t recall working so hard. I saved £30 by not asking for an assistant, but I probably shortened my life by a year or two.

From a letter dated July 24, 1978:

FOUR ADDITIONS TO THE FAMILY

A closely observed pregnancy of Tinkerbelle The Cat has come to its expected conclusion with the arrival of four kittens. Three arrived one day and the fourth the day after. Mother and babies are well. The whole affair has been of great excitement for the kids. Almost every child and teacher at West Acton has been regaled with the sordid details of Tinker’s impregnation by the neighbourhood toms. The kids love Tinkerbelle and are delighted to see the kittens. It has been an enlightening experience for them. Not that everyone has been delighted. Harley has a couple of girl friends whose mother insists that children are bought from a hospital after being born in a bed of roses. Anything that might indicate that her account is less than true is unwelcome.

The white kitten was taken by a neighbour, but I have no idea what happened to the others.

A NEW SCHOOL

When school resumes at the beginning of September the kids will be moved to Grange First School about five minutes or so away. The headmistress recently showed us over the place and we were most impressed with the happy atmosphere and the academic standard. The school is very mixed both racially and socially, which we feel is good for the children. The head is a Polish woman who walked across Europe to escape the Nazis in World War Two. Harley was thrilled during our escorted tour to discover ап old mate of his in one of the classes. His mate (a boy who moved away from West Acton about two years ago) lives within easy and safe walking distance of our new house. We were a bit worried that Niall would find it difficult to adjust to the new school, but he has become much more outgoing lately and the fact that Harley and a friend will also be there has given him some encouragement.

By the way, there is another Harley at the school. The headmistress says our Harley is the third boy of that name she's had in the school in recent years.

SCOTLAND? WHY BOTHER

We are having our first visitors to 26 Ascott Avenue -- a mother and daughter from Rosemary’s side of the family. On their first day here the mother kept talking about how important it was they visited Scotland. She mentioned that while there she wanted to buy an angora twin set for a neighbour. Rosemary suggested she might find it cheaper to buy that in London. "Oh well,” said the mother, “there's no reason to go to Scotland now is there!" So much for one of the most beautiful scenic areas in the world.

The mother gets a bit wearing. Her tongue is always in top gear but her brain suffers from fuel starvation. She didn’t ingratiate herself with Rosemary by making such comments as “Isn’t Harley a clever boy. He must take after his father”.

From a letter dated February 11, 1979 on our return from a family trip to Australia:

Well, here we are again in wintry Britain. It is about five degrees centigrade outside with drizzling rain. In 24 hours we have switched from 38 degrees to zero.

SWEETIES PRIZE

Apart from the sleeping problems after a long flight, the kids have settled back in their home with a minimum of fuss. We gave them one day off from school to help them get adjusted to the changed times and weather. They were both keen to get back to see all their mates, and I got a thrill to observe how enthusiastically they were welcomed back into the fold. To cap the week off, Niall was delighted to be named on the Good Workers’ List. The Good Workers are named each Friday during the Family Assembly. Each award winner steps forward onto the platform to be congratulated by the headmistress and to be presented with a handful of Smarties. Such are the things that make a little boy's life worth living!

From a letter Rosemary wrote to my mother, Rena Wood, dated March 6, 1979:

SHOW AND TELL

Niall is so proud of your picture of the crab, Rena. He took it to school and the children talked about crabs. He wants to take it again when his old teacher returns for a chat. We have borrowed an encyclopaedia of animals from the library which he's rapt in. He remembers the names of all the animals. There's a marvellous wildlife program on TV called "Life on Earth” presented by David Attenborough. I wonder if you see it?

HARLEY’S CLUB

Harley has formed a Micronaut Club and has been busy organising that. The membership fluctuates from day to day, almost from hour to hour. Harley's now talking of having a ‘Bad Books’ list for the drop-outs.

VINTAGE FASHION HUNT

Rosemary went to a jumble sale at the Ealing Technical College (around the corner) on Saturday and found some bargains for Anastasia Lewis's costume hire business, Clothes Peg. The prize find was an early fifties Hardie Amies suit in navy silk - a really beautiful outfit. She also found hats, jewellery and gloves, and another fifties suit in fawn gaberdine — one with shoulder-pads and a long jacket. Rosemary enjoys buying for Anastasia and making a few pennies as well (“not that I'd get rich quickly” she said).

Anastasia’s business was set up to provide genuine clothes from the 40s, 50s and 60s for actors in films, television and stage plays. Some of the items Rosemary bought for pennies at jumble sales were later seen on actors in famous films, such as Agatha Christie’s “The Mirror Crack'd” starring Angela Lansbury, Tony Curtis and Rock Hudson. When Anastasia and husband Nick were divorced the business was sold. She is now an artist married to the famous award-winning actor Jim Broadbent.

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Other chapters can be found HERE