Dowlish Wake revisited.

Yesterday we went on a sentimental journey to our old Wednesday haunts, stopping off at Dowlish Wake where there is a memorial to John Hanning Speke, the famous Victorian explorer. We had visited the church at least twice with R.B. and I looked through the visitors' book to see if he'd written the date and  signed his name. Sure enough there was a ghostly signature, much fainter than it would have been ten years before.  It prompted me to look up my diary entry for that day: 

Wednesday 4 July 2018

Just back from a visit to Barp on this damp, warm afternoon. We took him a small record player bought in the charity shop – and he seems delighted, having put on an ancient L.P.  Crack crack crack it went.... perfect. Went into Ilminster ('I have a letter to post to Australia') and then back to Dowlish Wake to have a look in the church for the Speke memorial which was worth seeing. A very Victorian church in a very English setting. Then we visited Perry's, the cider place, where B was pleased to find sugar cubes – a few of which he popped into  his top pocket with a look of triumph. Judy Trott was on duty when we got back. She showed us where Andrew Lyle's prep school (Jordan's) had been. He told me in an e mail that they had Speke's elephant gun on the wall there, just the sort of detail to appeal to old Barpot.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Richard Barttelot, by Stephen Carroll

  I first set eyes on Richard Barttelot nearly forty years ago when I moved into Stopham House, a rambling country house formerly the seat of the Barttelot family who claimed they had come over with the Conqueror. His cousin, the local baronet, had sold a leasehold interest to developers and the house had been converted into eleven flats. There were two entrances: the main entrance where the grand apartments were, and the servant's entrance (named by estate agents as 'the North Entrance') where the humbler flats were situated. Mine was round the back on the top floor and had once been the nursery. There was a fire escape leading from the bedroom which looked out on several acres of parkland and gardens and on summer evenings I liked to open the door and sit out on this when I got home from work. I noticed that regularly at dusk, a slight, nervous-looking man in late middle-age in a white shirt, cloth cap and gloves would hurry over the grass and make his way to some out...
Read more

'Jack' Lewis' Lament for Mrs. Minty Moor

Image
Today is the anniversary of the death of my friend R.B. and to mark the occasion here is one of the many poems he sent me over the years,. It's to do with C.S.Lewis, who is not a favourite with me and it is in manuscript form so I may have misread the odd word. I know that C.S.Lewis was known as 'Jack' and his brother 'Warnie' and I remember being told by Richard that Lewis' dog was called 'Mr Papworth' but I am not at all sure about the reference to 'Barboes'  at the end. If you can correct or add anything please do. When Richard was at Oxford he did briefly to tear himself away from the steam trains to hear C.S.Lewis lecture and I know he was an admirer, even managing to smuggle a copy of The Screwtape Letters  (which he knew I detested) into my house, via my wife. The poem has its weaknesses but is laced with the sadness that, as a lifelong bachelor himself, Richard shared with his subject. He signed the poem 'T' which he often used as...
Read more