Jul
31
2008
3

The Lambeth Butterflies

Well, I thought I would take a brief interlude away from the Dame of Sark, and tell you about happenings in Lambeth.

I travelled down here with Peterson on Tuesday. A journey which was both straightforward and eventful. On the way down he decided to phone in Jeni Barnett at LBC radio station. She loved him of course. He is such a media whore.

Anyway, whilst down here I am staying with Tractor Girl and Third Party which is lovely.

OK, I can officially say, the Lambeth Conference is a bit weird. Admittedly I am not important enough to go anywhere useful, but there is something strange about seeing so many purple-shirted people wandering about in the same place. They seem very nice, but they look like purple butterflies fluttering around. It’s like being in a butterfly-world type of thing. You know these rare creatures exist, but to see them all together in one place is quite strange.

The other thing that amused me was that there is almost like a bishoply shopping centre here and one of the things that excited me is the beautiful textiles that you can buy. I am such an anorak when it comes to it. I even asked if I could take photos because I thought the colours were so pretty. I am terribly shallow you see!

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Anyway, I am very tired at the moment but having fun. Meeting lots of lovely new people, like the lovely William Crawley. We entertained ourselves for a while yesterday, along with Tractor Girl, and Peterson, drinking wine, sharing stories, and in William and my case, a little spot of shopping!!

Anyway, I must rush on. I have to go and collect His Ladyship before he engages in a little more media-whoring.

Ps) For full reports of Peterson’s shows, follow the links to his blog and enjoy 🙂

Jul
31
2008
0

The Dame of Sark – Undated

Undated

My Dear Nurse,

The twins are 1 year today and very flourishing! I did not write before because every mail day we expected your husband – we were all delighted to get news of you as I had heard from Nick of the serious op and all so very thankful you got there in time. They always say “Good comes out of Evil” so we must admit that the Evil of the evacuees having to go that particular day brought Good in the shape of a boat to take you over! Thank heaven for that. The twins have been very good, they “grizzled” a bit at the strange bedroom, otherwise they settled down at once. Mrs Bishops has been marvellous and Margaret has too, and I got her to sleep with them, so they were quite happy whenever they awoke, but they mostly sleep all night though.

I do hope you are comfortable now the first 11 days are past, I will go on fine.

I am finding life very lonesome now, but am always busy.

Yours with every good wish.

Sibyl Hathaway

Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized | Tags: , , ,
Jul
30
2008
1

The Dame of Sark – Oct 28 1941

Oct 28 1941

Dear Mrs Le Tissier

I have managed to get for you allowed from the States, a cask of T.V.O oil – about 40 galls. It costs £3-0-11

It can be burnt in Tilly Lamps, or others but is not safe in a glass container so I have borrowed lamps for you.

Our telephones have all been taken now.

I have arranged for you both to go to Mrs de Carterets, Espedase, The Avenue, Sark before the house if got ready – on your arrival I will send my horse and van down to bring up your belongings! When you get the bill for your transport, you can let me have it. I have written about your coal and coming over with you. I don’t think you will have any trouble – if any difficulty, get in touch with Mr R.O Falla at Hurzel House, as he will know, and it is by his kind efforts we are having the oil allowed for you.

I think it would be best to bring your rations with you for the current week and then our Food Controller will deal with the new registrations for you here. Kind regards.

Yrs sincerely,

Sibyl Hathaway

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Jul
29
2008
1

The Dame of Sark – September 11th [1941]

September 11th [1941]

Dear Mrs Le Tissier

Thank you for your letter – The House is the M.O.H’s house usually. It is quite comfortably furnished – It has a petrol gas plaut, with cooker, geyser and light but we are not now able to get the quality petrol for this, it also has a good coal range and bath water boiler. The allowance of coal here is ½ CWT a month as in Guernsey. There are paraffin lamps. We do not yet know what the paraffin ration is to be from October.

There is everything in the House including plate and linen. The garden is just a lawn and a few flower beds and a few perches of Kitchen garden at the back. Water is both main water tanks and also a well for drinking water.

Telephone.

The salary is £150.

I could see that your husband has more garden if he wishes. There is an unoccupied House (Le Manoir) which has a good garden free. There is a very ready sale here for vegetables as there is no market garden in Sark.

The 2 sitting room fireplaces are modern Devon type grates and burn wood or anything.

We should be glad to do all we could for you, as it is anxious work having so many people without trained help in illness.

Yours sincerely

Sibyl Hathaway

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Jul
28
2008
5

The Dame

I have had a blissful week in Guernsey with Peterson although it has been quite strange to be staying in my Gran’s house without her being here. It still feels like her place and the memories are so strongly connected with her that it almost feels disloyal to be having such a lovely time.

However, one of things I have been able to do is to take a sneaky look at some of Gran’s letters. When my Mum and my aunts were clearing out the house they found a couple of suitcases stuffed full of old letters, receipts and other paperwork. I found Gran’s love letters to Grandpa which she sent in 1939 whilst she was completing her nursing training at Birmingham General Infirmary. They made me cry, partly because her writing had hardly changed and she wrote such beautiful, gossipy letters about general nursing and the things she had been up to. I always knew she adored Grandpa, but these letters make it clear just how much she loved him and is saddens me that after he died in 1984 she had to spend another 24 years without him before she was reunited with him in heaven.

In these treasure-trove suitcases there were loads of newspapers, ‘Thought for the Day’ cuttings, photos etc. but the things that really interested me were from the German Occupation of Guernsey. From June 1940 – May 1945 the Channel Islands were occupied by the Nazi’s. Many of the children from the island were evacuated to mainland England and the adults and children that stayed lived under unbelievable hardship. This week I took Peterson to the Occupation Museum. It’s an unbelievable little place and would appear to be to life-work of one man who seems to run it single-handedly. The museum is stuffed full of information, memorabilia, German uniforms, guns, cooking equipment, photos and basic equipment that was developed by the local islanders to try and keep their lives running as normally as possible. There are cooking pans fashioned from tin-cans and recipes for delicacies such as Parsnip Coffee as the islanders were on such limited food rations they had to be creative. This period of history fascinates me as I know my grandparents lived through the Occupation years and somehow I feel drawn to try and understand their experiences.

My Gran was dually qualified (midwifery and general nursing trained) and as a result she was asked to go and live in Sark as they did not have any medical personnel over there. So, sometime at the end of 1941, despite the fact that she was in the early stages of pregnancy, she and my Grandpa travelled over to live on Sark.

So, back to Gran’s suitcases of goodies. The suitcases contained some letters from the Dame of Sark, Sybil Hathaway who, by all accounts was a real character and did not take too kindly to being bossed around by the Germans. Over the next few days I will try to share some of these letters, as they are fascinating, the early ones have a distinctly business-like feel to them, but these clearly develop into a fondness for my Gran, or “Nurse” as the Dame likes to call her. I found them to be an interesting perspective on what was a truly horrifying time.

Anyway, here are some pics from the week away.

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Jul
28
2008
4

RC Part 49 – The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

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The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer is a fabulous book, made even better by the fact that I read it whilst in Guernsey. It was recommended to me by Jack the Lass and I purposely went into the bookshop in Guernsey to try and find it and I found that they are launching it on the island on the 9th of August.

The book is set in 1946, a year after the liberationof Guernsey from the Nazi occupying forces. A writer, Juliet Ashton, is looking for a subject for her next book when out of the blue she receives a letter from Dawsey Adams, a farmer who lives on Guernsey who has recently acquired a second-hand book which used to belong to her. They start corresponding and Dawsey tells her that he is a member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and so begins Juliet’s quest to find out more about this society. She starts to receive letters from other members of the society and as a result she decides to go to Guernsey to find out more about it.

This book hit the mark for me on so many levels. Of course being born and bred in Guernsey it features my beloved island and it describes the nuances of this tight-knit community so beautifully. Also, the book follows Juliet’s love affair, not only with the island, but also with the characters she meets and the generosity she encounters amongst the islanders. The book has a strong undercurrent about the Occupation and talks about the experiences of the locals living the 5 years of Nazi rule.

The one thing I did not expect when I started reading the book was the strong sympathy I felt for some of the German soldiers, in particular one called Christian who falls in love with a Guernsey woman. It is very easy to think that all the Germans who were sent to the island were hard-hearted, callous individuals. In reality many of them left their own families and children and were missing them as much as the islanders were missing their children who had been evacuated. One of the characters says in one one of the letters…

”To tell the truth, as long as the Occupation was to last, I met more than one nice German soldier. You would, you know, seeing some of them as much as every day for five years. You couldn’t help but feel sorry for some of them – stuck here knowing their families at home were being bombed to pieces. Didn’t matter then who started it in the first place. Not to me anyway. Why there’d be soldiers on guard in the back of potato lorries going to the army’s mess hall – children would follow them, hoping potatoes would fall off into the street. Soldiers would look straight ahead, grim-like, and then flick potatoes off the pile – on purpose. They did the same with lumps of coal – my, those were precious when we didn’t have enough fuel left.”

I love this book for so many reasons but not least because it helps me to connect with my past, and not many books do that for me these days.

Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , ,
Jul
28
2008
0

RC Part 48 – The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton is a really clever book and is about a woman called Nell trying to trace her roots and discover who she really is. Her lack of ties to the past trace back through her grandmother’s strange history of being put on a boat to Australia from England without any parents or legal guardians. After her grandmother dies Nell discovers that she has been left a house back in England and this is her story of trying to work out where she belongs.

Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized | Tags: , ,
Jul
24
2008
1

An island adventure

Well, we arrived in Guernsey on Tuesday and since then we have had pretty much wall-to-wall sunshine. It has been absolutely gorgeous, even if I have managed to get sunburnt. Yesterday we met my aunts and cousin and various children at the beach for a swim and then we went for a wander around town, before cruising around the island in my Mum’s sporty little car. In the evening we went to the open-air cinema by the beach to watch a truly crap film, but it was nice to be outside and relaxing.

Today we took a boat ride to Herm which was absolutely lovely and we sat in the beach and chillded out. The island is beautiful, sunny and relatively quiet as there are no cars. The sea though is bitterly cold, but we did manage a quick swim.

This is one of my favourite photos so far this week. This guy was on the boat to Herm and I noticed that he had a bottle of Coca Cola attached to one of the bottle holders on one side of his bag, but when he turned around I noticed he had a bottle of Bacardi the other side. Kind of perfect planning I reckon!!

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As we are staying at my Gran’s house we have some amazing views, and in particular the sunsets are just fabulous. We are truly spolit indeed.

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Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized | Tags: , ,
Jul
21
2008
2

Hip, hip…

Hurray!!! My holiday has finally arrived. I am off to Guernsey with Peterson tomorrow and I intend to show him the wonders of the rock on which I was born. It will be lovely to have some time off and I intend to chill out, sleep, read and drink copious amounts of wine – in fact I might go and raid Mum and Dad’s wine cupboard. I bet they wouldn’t notice a few bottles going missing!! 😉 It might be slightly strange though as we are going to be staying at Gran’s house because Mum and Dad are on holiday and they have people staying in their house. I am looking forward to it, but it will be weird to be there without her.

Anyway, I might get a chance to blog, but I might only be able to do it if I can pick up someone else’s wi-fi… if not I will have to take a little trip to Mum and Dad’s and use theirs! So, see you soon everyone. Behave yourselves whilst I am away.

Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized | Tags: , ,
Jul
20
2008
0

RC Part 47 – Mystic River by Dennis Lehane

Unusually for me I have failed to finish reading a book. Mystic River by Dennis Lehane is a book about something or other with a story-line that goes on and on with pointless twists or turns. I literally lost the plot about 3 chapters in and wasted another 100 pages or so before I decided that reading this book meant I was wasting hours of my life I would never get back again. I was so bored with it I couldn’t even be bothered to finish it.

Written by Anna Williams in: Uncategorized | Tags: , ,

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