A visit to Aunt Maud

Catherine’s blog – day fifteen

Sunday August 14th

And here is one of those little snippets of memory:

It is 1959 and I am 13, we are all living happily (or so I supposed back then) in Putney, the memories of sunny days in Cyprus far behind me, and getting harder to remember  by the day, stuck here in this pale and rainy city.  We are off to visit Aunt Maud in Cheltenham, we only go about once every two or three years; so at my age each visit seems like a little adventure.  We take a taxi to Paddington, heaven knows how we could have managed it all on the tube, as Grandma has insisted in taking not only clothes for every contingency, including tropical sunshine and monsoon rain, but also a whole suitcase of shoes, and one for towels too. (as Aunt Maud is not known for her generosity in that department)  We are only going for a week but we seem to have enough luggage for at least a month.  Added to that my mother disappears at busy-bustling Paddington , and catches up with the porter pushing our haphazardly loaded trolley just as our train is announced, clutching a veritable stack of periodicals and magazines and even a couple of paperback books.  As soon as she spots a W. H. Smith she turns into some demented reader who simply must empty the shelves of all the shop possesses.  Grandma is fussing with the two or three large hold-alls perched on the trolley, trying to locate the thermos and sandwiches, if only to reassure herself that, yes indeed, she had packed them.  “At least we don’t have to rely on the Buffet car.” She chirps.  I am lost in admiring the latticework struts and pillars which seem to disappear, high-high up above us amidst a whole cathedral’s worth of smutty green and black glass.  I am turning and turning slowly round and round lost in the kaleidoscope of engineering, and wondering how on earth they ever managed it.  Grandma is busy instructing the porter which carriage we are in, and my mother is already surreptitiously flicking through some gardening book.  We are just settled into our compartment, with Grandma’s assortment of Gladstone bags and hold-alls safely in the overhead string-woven luggage racks; my mother deep into one of her paperback books in the opposite corner, and me, testing out the bounciness of the long upholstered seat.  I rub a space out of the yellowed grimy window by spitting on a hanky and rubbing, the whistle blows three high pitched blasts, the guard’s flag is raised and slowly we lurch forwards and out of Isombard Kingdom Brunel’s masterpiece of iron and glass, out past the dirty blackened brick rows of London houses, and away.

Enough for now, but I will finish this piece later. (Promise)