Old Broadway Families

The Averill family were known to have lived in Broadway, a pretty Cotswold village, since the sixteenth century at least.   Alfred Averill, born in 1840, became a surgeon and doctor to the Wedgwood Factory. I believe it is his wife, Maria Ann, who wrote the cook book I own.

In summer the meadows around the village were filled with lime green spurge, daisies with centres gold as duck egg yolks, pink jewelled clover and golden buttercups. On the hills, long woolled sheep, known as Cotswold lions, grazed, bringing prosperity to the area.
By the end of the fourteenth century the woollen industry had become England's most important trade.
Wealthy merchants invested their riches in large manor houses, which still delight today.

Sir Thomas Phillips, the antiquarian, lived in Middle Hill Park Lodge.
Born in 1792, he developed an obsession for books.  By his mid thirties he had collected over fifteen thousand books and eleven thousand manuscripts.
'I am buying printed books because I wish to have one copy of every book in the World!!!', he declared.

His passion, or mania, for books drove both his wives to distraction.  One became alcoholic and the other left him.

The house was stuffed to the gills with books, making it a comfortless place. Only at meal times was it possible to enter the dining room and one of Sir Thomas's wives complained she could not get near her dressing table.

Eventually, he agreed to move to a larger house to allow the family more space, but the inevitable happened. More books were bought to fill the extra space available.

Sir Thomas set up a printing press on Broadway Tower, putting his daughter in charge of subscribing the manuscripts. So irksome did she find the task that she left her post, to the approval of the whole village, who sympathised with her.

Generous in sharing his books, Sir Thomas attracted many intellectuals to his home.
Though he died in 1872  his books were still being sold at auction in London in the 1970's.

Mugs and Jugs

Serenity by Rock-Well on Aviary

Teachers and schools are always in the news. Tomorrow, some teachers go on strike about changes to their pensions at a time when Michael Gove, Education Secretary, is calling for more teachers with first class degrees.

All this reminded me of  my grandmother who, when in her sixties, used to enjoy doing my Latin homework. She was quick and got full marks, so I let her.

The teachers in Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Carmarthen, which she attended, must have been good.  The formula was simple: they taught and she listened. More than that, she admired them.  Some could sing Nursery Rhymes in Latin, thereby making learning fun and it lodged in her mind and later, she taught, too.

Will more teachers with first class degrees mean better results? I wonder, I wonder and the reason I wonder is this. Knowledge of one's subject is vital. No one can teach what they don't know, obviously, but here's the other side of the coin:  many teachers don't like children and surprise, surprise, the children don't like them.

A teacher should have some empathy with children first of all, then the necessary knowledge needed to teach and to teach in an interesting way.

Dickens's Mr Gradgrind believed in the 'mug and jug' method of education. The teacher was the vessel of knowledge who filled up the empty mugs with information. There was no interaction with the pupils.

Sadly, this mechanistic view of education encouraged the 'scholars' to view themselves as nothing but cogs in an enormous wheel.

I have no advice to offer and I'll let you draw your own conclusions but I shall quote Freud, who usually gets it right.

According to Freud, adolescents have two developmental tasks to accomplish:  they must learn to love and they must learn to work. The rest is simple.

Gillian Morgan - United Kingdom - Email, Address, Phone number, everything! 123people.co.uk

Gillian Morgan - United Kingdom - Email, Address, Phone number, everything! 123people.co.uk



I live in the County Town, Haverfordwest and, like all old towns, it has a deep, rich history.

Today, I walked passed the house in Hill Street where Gwen and Augustus John, the painters, lived for many years when they were children. Situated at the top of the town, the house displays a blue commmemorative plaque.

All his life, Augustus John was deeply fascinated by the gypsies, seeing in them a superiority not possessed by ordinary people.

In 'Chiaroscuro', Augustus tells how, when the fair came to the 'Green', he and Gwen were told to be wary of the travellers, for they stole children. The young boy pondered these words, failing to understand why gypsies would want anyone else's children when they had so many of their own.

Although their mother died when they were young, Augustus remembers happy times when he and Gwen were taken for walks by their father.

In the spring time they picked primroses in Scotchwells. There was a water-mill along the way and the children entered the mill through an iron turnstile which played a tune. Sometimes the miller would appear, dusted in flour and resembling a character from a fairy tale.

The John family went to Bethesda Chapel. Often, two ladies who also attended, would remark that the children would miss their mother more and more as time went by. So irksome did Augustus's father find their behavious that he moved the family to Tenby.

A Little Learning

It was a few months ago. I was in a cafe in Fishguard, all Laura Ashley wallpaper, with a silver sheen, porcelain chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and turquoise leather banquettes in the corners.  Handmade chocolates were decorated with crystallised violets and squiggles of gold.Under a glass dome a ginger cake with lime and coconut frosting winked enticingly at me.

I was feeling contented and indulged, stirring the tea leaves in the pot, when suddenly I heard something that nearly made me burp. Two couples were sitting at a nearby table, middle aged, middle class, middle England. One of the men was speaking: 'The educational standard of most people around here is that of  the average eleven year old'.

One of the women hissed, 'Hush'.

At the time I thought they were holidaymakers who probably imagined they were in a foreign country where the indigenous natives were backward and wild. What had been said seemed so preposterous I had to stop myself laughing out loud.

After this week's revelations that twenty per cent of Welsh eleven year olds are behind in key skills,
perhaps there was more than a grain of truth in the holidaymaker's observation.

Apparently, since the abolition of league tables showing the position of individual schools, standards have dropped.

I'm not sure who is responsible for this state of affairs, though politicians will, obviously, blame the previous government.

A small, educated elite rules this country but a recent report showed that many MP's, whatever  they're political persuasion, are privately educated.

If we look at fee-paying schools, we'll find that they are not failing. On the contrary, their pupils continue to do exceptionally well.

Why is this? Smaller classes and better equipment all help but these schools attract enthusiastic teachers who know they are teaching motivated pupils. And why are the pupils motivated? Because when parents pay they want to see results. Therefore they take an interest in what is happening in class and support the teachers to ensure success. Homework is done on time and pupils take part in extra-curricular activities such as sport, music and drama.

If there is one equation that always works it's this: Teachers plus parents plus pupils=Success.
There's your answer. Simple. QED. Taken as proved.  

 

 

Mamgu's Tambourine

Even when she was eighty, my grandmother was able to paper the ceiling, standing on a dining table to do so. She dug potatoes from the garden and prepared vegetables for four each day.

Her pastry was a mixture of lard and butter and she made blackcurrant, gooseberry and rhubarb tarts, all fruit she had grown and picked herself. Rice puddings were baked, using a mix of full cream and condensed milk, with rice, syrup and raisins. Fruit cakes had a wine glass of brandy added to them. She took pride in her skills and they were not just practical. I called one evening and she was studying a French dictionary. A visitor was calling, from Paris, and she was revising.

She was not unusual by any means. A lady of eighty three, a one time neighbour of mine, climbed onto her cottage roof and hammered a loose tile back into place,  when a windy day had dislodged it.

I say all this because in Cardiff Royal Infirmary, patients who needed a nurse were told to shake a tambourine. One of the visitors tried the system and he shook for sixteen minutes before someone appeared. ('If the tambourine fails, try the maracas instead', they were told). Sounds like something out of 'Carry on Nurse'.  It would be laughable if it wasn't so sad. It's like giving the nursery class a percussion lesson, treating older people like infants, teaching Mamgu to suck eggs.   It's the sheer effrontery of it.

My grandmother's generation had no labour saving gadgets, yet the chores, though sometimes arduous, gave them a purpose in life.    

I have another gripe about some hospitals: the menus.  My contention is this: when people are convalescing, they do not want to be presented with 'healthy' food if they don't like it. I'm talking about a hospital that served brown rice, brown bread, margarine, apples and salad. Food should be appetising to the individual if it is to be enjoyed. This applies to all ages but especially to the elderly, who often won't complain. 

No, I haven't got a degree in nursing and I don't need it to state what should be blindingly obvious.

Books and cooks

Old books, handwritten books especially, interest me. Twenty five years ago I bought a handwritten cookery book at an auction in Bristol. 

Though no information was available about where the book had come from, I was still pleased with my find. I took it home and read it carefully. Copper plate writing flowed over the thick yellow pages, horizontally and diagonally, too, in some places. (Past generations had a habit of 'saving' everything, writing over notes they no longer required).  Unfortunately, the cook had not written her name but, evidently, her family was well fed. I could smell the old, floury kitchen and long ago meals.

There were recipes for 'Breakfast Cake', mayonnaise, kedgeree, wines, jams, jellies, pickles and even cough mixture, emetics, hair colouring, bees wax polish. 

As I carefully turned the pages, some of which were coming away from the spine, I encountered a recipe dated 1745!  This book had been a family treasure and the last entries were in the twentieth century.

Accompanying the book were some loose recipes, known as receipts. Examining a torn envelope, I found the name, 'Mrs Averill', Broadway. On the back of the envelope was a recipe for soup, for the attention of the overseers of  the 'Poor House'. (The soup required gallons of water and just a few vegetables).

This was a find. I had a name and, by sheer chance, I had recently spent a holiday in Broadway, not far from Stratford on Avon.

I asked the then Vicar of Broadway for his help and he was excellent, copying the Averill names on gravestones and sending them to me. Going one further, he asked an elderly relative of the Averill family if she would like to correspond with me.

This resulted in contact with family members in America and an invitation to stay with them in New England.  

All I have is words

I studied English at Advanced Mains level in college and I have an MA in Creative Writing. I have taught Creative Writing, too, but, shall I tell you what? You cannot teach anyone to write creatively. You can mark their work, make suggestions, advise some serious editing, point them in the direction of books  that might inspire them, but . . . 

Writing has a lot to do with the way we think.  E.M. Forster, the novelist, said that you do not know what you think until you see what you say. That's putting what I said back to front. Let's think again.

A student said to me that any words put on paper are an act of creation. Ye-es. So. We'll try it.

You got out of bed this morning, visited the bathroom, made some tea? Interesting? I don't think so. Why? Millions of others did the same thing.

But, you woke up this morning and there on your pillow was a frog with a rhinestone collar around his dear little neck (or whatever passed for his dear little neck)  and standing behind him was a snow leopard? Getting better?

The problem with many students is that they love their own work. I had the opposite problem. I was too critical of myself, destroying much of what I wrote. Perhaps this is why it took me so long to write my novel 'Salt Blue'.

Although I could write, I felt the need not just to tell a story, but to use words 'creatively'. We'll look at  Page 173 in 'Salt Blue' and see how I handle this:  Stella, the heroine wakes up on the day she is due to fly to America. She's not been further than London before.

'I wake early. An ice candle crackles against the sleep-warm flesh of my thighs, claws at my belly, scrapes its way to the polished tin knocker guarding the quiet chambers of my heart and rattles hard.

"Wake up, little kiddie. Today you're off to find you're Great American Dream and you're going, frit-frightened or not."'

I might have said, if I'd listened to the student; 'When I woke I felt frightened about going to America and I had to force myself out of bed.'

What's the verdict on the last sentence? I've placed words in grammatical order and they make sense but would anyone want to read more or would thay have nodded off to sleep before reaching the next sentence?

You be the jury.