F e a t u r e s
sister, a hardened army wife of 20 years, reckons she can do it in two weeks! I’m working on it. I was congratulating myself last year on having settled in at Halton in six months, and bang! We moved…
April 15. Humphrey is sent home from nursery with spots. He has chicken pox. There are lots of cancelled entries in my diary after this.
April 19. Andrew goes on a course for a week.
April 29. Henry has spots. Andrew goes to London. Lots more cancelled entries in the diary.
May 10. A HIVE Families Welcome Morning. I am gradually getting the hang of the acronyms but am told that the HIVE is no longer what it stands for. But it’s good to meet more neighbours and other mums.
May 16. Henry’s christening in Stamford. My Dad took the service (another vicar) but he’s getting on a bit and managed to turn over two pages of the service sheet at once, thus missing out most of it, and creating one of the shortest christening services ever. I hope the godparents didn’t feel too put out – they’d come quite a long way and never got to say their bit! I like to think that Henry’s subsequent behaviour has been as a result of this religious oversight… Having 30 or so people to lunch was something I wouldn’t want to do again on a base where every person and car has to be booked in with details of the vehicle and ID for the occupants. Drove me nuts.
May 19. The first of many, many visits to the local children’s farm, Sacrewell. In the 14 months we were at Wittering, I must have gone at least once a fortnight.
May 20. Weightwatchers. Time to take things in hand. I drove to Oundle, not because it was convenient, because it wasn’t, but because it meant 20 minutes in the car either way, by myself, listening to Radio 2’s country hour. Heaven. Worth even the public humiliation of being told how much I weighed.
May 21. Families Happy Hour. This was something new for me. I had hardly been in the Mess and didn’t have the faintest what was going on. After about a year I got the hang of ordering drinks and putting them on my husband’s bar book, knowing his number, and not being too scared to go into the bar in the first place.
May 25. Getting positively familiar with the Mess, I went to a Ladies’ Lunch. My first reaction on hearing about these was that it wouldn’t be my bag at all. But it was! With a crèche for the children, the most delicious lunch, and a couple of hours gossip with 10-20 others, it absolutely was My Bag.
May 31. Collect baby chickens from my sister. Four tiny bantam babes in my garden. Lovely.
June 2. RIP Chick No. 1. A cat had scaled the garden 14 Winter 2007
fence, made a daring dash across the garden, and scooped up a chick from under the netting. Only three now.
June 3. Weight Watchers…
June 5. Station Open Day. This sounded fun, so I invited some friends to come and stay for it. The only trouble was that, after looking for the Open Day for some time, we didn’t find the airfield until nearly four o’clock, when we were just in time to watch them taking the tents down. There must have been information somewhere but I obviously wasn’t finding it!
June 7. My chickens house arrives. But it is too big to get through the garden gate. Luckily the house next door is empty and their garden fence is accessible from the road. With difficulty the poor delivery man gets it over their fence, and then mine. Bad luck cats! They should be safe in there until they are big enough to fight back.
June 13. One of my neighbours visits my sister with me and collects some chicks also. It’s a craze! DE won’t like it!
June 15. Am invited by another chaplain’s wife to a Ladies Lunch at nearby Cottesmore. Again, it’s good fun – even with the children in tow.
June 17. Weight Watchers. It’s working. I chew a lot of chewing gum and make endless bowls of vegetable soup.
June 30. To the Mess to help with flower arranging for the Summer Ball. This is where things get a bit weird for me. Again there’s a crèche – fab – but in a 21st century IN-dependant feminist sort of a way, I am slightly reeling from the implications of what I am doing. Flower arranging???!!! Me???!! In the end it is, of course, quite a giggle, but it’s not something I think I’d tell my career- mad feminist mates in London about.
July 1. Weight Watchers. Will I get into my dress?
July 2. Summer Ball. Am staggered at the trouble that has been gone to for this. The Mess looks incredible (although I spend some time looking for the flower thing I’d ‘arranged’ only to find it in the Ladies…) There are three or four different places to eat different kinds of food, machines to play on, photographers, more gambling, a Neil Diamond look-alike entertainer; no effort has been spared. Now, all this may be taken for granted by long-serving people, and indeed, I overheard some amazingly complacent comments about how xxx had been better last year, or that xxx was a bit tacky, but honestly, I think that whatever else the Services are good or bad at, they really do know how to throw a party!
July 6. Hurray. After all those years afloat, when dishwashers were simply not possible, the dishwasher I have ordered arrives! The usual fun and games is involved trying to get a delivery van on to the base but, yes, it is worth it.
July 13. I learn something else. Apart from being registered with the medical centre on the base (apparently this is not always the case), I can also use the physiotherapist, and try and get my back sorted out. These things are not clearly written anywhere that I can find, and it seems to be a case of ‘always ask the question’.
July 24. Another aspect of Service life presents itself, as a neighbour who is moving brings round various items of furniture they do not want; a bed, some chests of drawers, a TV… I love the way things come and go between people, and that there’s always someone moving, and someone else who’ll give a home to something. (I think it was assumed that coming from a boat, we wouldn’t have any furniture, but as with the boat, we very soon managed to fill the house quite quite full.)
July 26. Summer holidays and I’m finding loads to do locally. My partner in chicken crime and I go north to the One Stop Chicken Shop with our chicks that turned out to be cockerels… I’m afraid it’s a one-way trip for them. Apart from the fact that they don’t lay eggs, keeping cockerels quite rightly annoys ones neighbours and oneself by crowing at antisocial hours. Did you know that ‘cockcrow’ is actually several hours before dawn?
September 20. Andrew leaves for a week’s course. The boys and I spend the day with my dad over in Northamptonshire, and return at 6ish, the boys hungry and fractious. There are two inches of water on the kitchen floor with plenty more pouring through from the attic into Henry’s bedroom, and thence into the kitchen. I cannot find the stop cock (in fact, I do not know what a stop cock is). With a baby and a bottle in one hand, and a toddler in the other, I venture out and start choosing neighbours…
This is when patch life comes into it’s own. Two lovely blokes come in and not only find the stop cock (which has to be turned with a screwdriver because some cowboy has stuck a pipe in front of it), but then, while I’m trying to feed a now screaming baby, start clearing up my kitchen floor, mops and all. They are anxious that their wives do not find out quite how handy they are with a mop! And said kitchen floor, since the chickens have discovered that after breakfast there are rich pickings to be had under the table, is not hugely clean. I can strongly recommend a little flood and some lovely neighbours for a thoroughly clean floor! I am told that all that most disasters are waiting for is your husband to go away and yes, reading over this article, it would seem to be the case!
So my first six months of being a RAF dependant were pretty action-packed and full of variety. Looking back through my diary, entries involving ‘Andrew away’, and ‘car reg. details’ are pretty much balanced by ‘Ladies lunch’, ‘Families Happy Hour’, outings with friends to Sacrewell, biking expeditions on the airfield at the weekend, bookclubs, picnics in the playground… and, of course, Weight Watchers! I don’t know what I was expecting but the friendliness of people, the feeling of all being in the same boat so making a good job of it and having a giggle, was and is palpable.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56