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Lifestory Showcase - Chappell
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It was winter time and I was still very weak, I wasn't able to do much and had to be left on my own with a very big open fire. One night a log fell out of the fire, I had a job to deal with it and if mother had not come home just in time, the bungalow and I could have gone up in smoke. We were right in the middle of a wood with no one else living anywhere near us.
Mother's plaster came off and the people she was working for up at the big house never knew that she had been in a plaster jacket. Madam did remark one day, that when she interviewed her for the job. she thought she had been a bigger woman than she was. In early spring, the family went away so we moved in as caretakers for several weeks.
My loom was set up again in the bungalow and I got my legs moving again. I was put in touch with the nearest chapel and one family took me under their wing, fetched me every Sunday afternoon took me to the Service then back to their home for tea. They kept a village shop and were a large very united family who got together with others for tea.
There were about twenty of us in all and afterwards they took me to the evening Service at chapel and then took me home afterwards. We did not stay there for very long but I often went back for holidays and watched their family of four children grow up. We still keep in touch, after so many years the family is all married, increased and doing well. We all thought the Grandma was going to reach her hundredth birthday but she died at ninety-nine. After leaving Alderholt, the next few years we were like travellers. wandering around from new home to new home.
At Blandford Forum we moved into a flat, once again it went with the job for mother. It was a similar job to that at Alderholt, cooking and cleaning in the house next door. Now we were under the same roof which was safer and at least we had a roof over our heads. But the women was a bit of a tartar, and the doctor got us our first council house with stairs at Milborne St. Andrews until a bungalow was available for us several years later.
It was while we were at Milborne that we had our first real holiday together when we went to Jersey for a fortnight. Mother celebrated here 60th birthday while we were there, also the six day war in Israel took place while we were there, so we did not know much about that until afterwards.
It was while we were there, that I read an advertisement about Knitting Machines, so enquired more and bought one. We thought that it would be a change from weaving, my loom now being in my new workshop in the garden. The ‘Knitmaster’ was soon taking us both over, in more ways than one both as a friend and a brutal enemy.
We both learnt how to use it, for just as with the weaving, without Mums hands to do the fiddling work, I could do nothing and never would have without her help and encouragement. Still, but as always, with her hands and my brains we used knitting machines for about fifteen years and made a lot of garments between us.
She would sew them up in the evenings, iron and pack them ready to take out in the car to the next show or exhibition where they always sold well. We rarely took advance orders, as a knitting machine causes a lot of trouble when things go wrong, and we did not want to let customers down. We preferred to take our time, conquer all the many troubles and press on.
It was a challenge that paid off very satisfying1y in the end. After Milborne we moved to Winterborne Stickland for about six years to a bungalow and carried on weaving and knitting. My workshop always went with us. This bungalow was very damp and had no proper kitchen , it was literally a cupboard. Like all these places we moved too, mother would have to clear the garden, overgrown in weeds and rubbish, before she could grow vegetables and flowers.
She has always enjoyed gardening, but here we had very high hedge with no outlook at all. We left this home after someone from the Spastics Society called on us to take photographs of me and the knitting and weaving. While he was with us, he spotted how damp and inconvenient it was for me. I was by this time having great difficulty in getting over the doorstep as by now my right hip was wearing out.
He went back to the Spastics Society, and reported that ‘this wasn’t right’ for us. We had never complained to anyone. Unbeknown to us he made a real feature right on the front pages in ‘Spastics News’. This did not please the housing authorities who at last came to see it for themselves with horror. So we moved again, for the fifth time but we were still in Dorset.
Now to a village called Marnhull, to a modern bungalow with a really lovely view from the living room window. I made a few more friends there at the chapel, there was a club for disabled people nearby, but nowhere could I find other people with the same interests as myself. We lived there for nine years, when again so much was to happen to us, for better and for worse.
Since we left the farm, mother and I had had some very exciting holidays travelling at home and abroad for several years, while she was able, and I was still able to walk a little. Looking back, we did extremely well, our first real holiday was in Jersey. Derek had come back into our lives again and helped us out with money, that surely we had earned, so as to be able to enjoy ourselves while we were both fit and able.
Then we did a car trip for another two weeks through Dorset, Devon and Cornwall staying at a different suitable place for bed and breakfast every night. Some nights we dropped in on friends along the way, ending up at Jamaica Inn on mother's 64th birthday before returning home the next day.
Then we really took off, Canada was our first trip by plane, staying with mother’s aunt for a month, the biggest mistake we ever made. Having passports we spent the following Christmas in Majorca and had a lovely tine. We were to go there three times altogether and later to Benidorm and Llorret-de-mar.
These were all very much enjoyed for we always found other people so kind and helpful when they are on holiday. I have spent weeks away with friends, but my week at Woodlarks every June is my annual event now as mother’s travelling days are now over I rarely spend mother’s birthday with her now as it always clashes with that week in camp.
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