One Life - Live It

Have just spent a wonderful weekend with my Dad’s cousin and his wife who live in Watford.  Sunday lunch also involved a visit from another cousin and her husband and then finally the younger son arrived home Sunday night from his weekend out in town.  They live in an enormous house that was originally part of the Cassiobury Estate belonging to some Earl or other – there was a large manor somewhere across the back fence – long since gone to make way for houses in the 1920’s but we noticed that the neighbour across the back has just unearthed a large cellar from the original manor that has put an immediate stop to any building works while the archaeologists come in to investigate. – We thought we had planning problems!!

The area is on the very fringe of London – last stop on the Metropolitan line but there’s a beautiful parkland and woodland just across the road where I went exploring this morning in the name of fitness.  I came across a canal with house boats on it and a lock.  On one of the houseboats was written “One Life – Live it” which made me smile.  The park this morning was full of happy dogs swimming in streams and gambolling about.  The Labrador seems to be the dog of choice but I’ve also seen more corgis in 2 weeks here than I would have seen in a decade in Australia.  The corgi enjoys a certain popularity as well as a fair smattering of whippets, dachunds, and of course the ever popular random black dog.  Not so many staffies here but a few boxers and bulldogs to be seen too.  I love watching dogs in the park as they seem to get off on just the sheer joy of existence, and they all have such personality.

Yesterday we went for a drive to Windsor and looked at the outside of Windsor Castle – the inside seemed like too much of a commitment especially as the weather was actually quite nice.  Windsor was incredibly crowded and then we wandered to Eton – the adjoining town which was rather charming and we even saw Eton boys changing out of their rugby gear (not as thrilling as it might sound) and one walking the street in school uniform which is still a bowtie and tails – extraordinary – and slightly more thrilling.

Back home to liberally poured gin and tonics followed by French wine courtesy of my mother (a guest here last year).  A delicious dinner and a late night.  I feel fully rested after doing very little today and ready to tackle another week as a traveller & occasional filmmaker in London – this time with children.  Geoffrey and the children arrive Monday lunch time and my next challenge is to get them to the hotel in an accessible and affordable manner.  The Heathrow express train for 4 people costs nearly as much as a taxi so I’m thinking a trip on the tube might work to Kings Cross (a station with lifts) followed by a shortish taxi ride. – stay tuned for the success or otherwise of that plan.

Chez Watford

Over lunch today we did the obligatory delving about in family history and I found out that apparently my great grandfather “was the organist at St Pauls” – no one seemed to know if it was the St Pauls or not – until he had a nervous breakdown and was incarcerated in a mental asylum I think for the remainder of his life.  The story goes that my great grandmother said he had died but continued to visit him in the asylum until he did actually die many years later.  I’m guessing that it was his son’s death on the battlefields in France during WW1 that pushed him to the edge and lead to his “breakdown” which was at that time a shameful secret.  My great grandmother was a tough woman who lived well into her nineties in her house in Holloway and was known to always descent the stairs backwards because of her severe arthritis.  She outlived another son – my grandfather who died of a cerebral haemorrhage while selling a packet of cigarettes to a woman in the tobacconist in Mildura where he worked.  He handed her the cigarettes but collapsed and died before she could hand him the money.  He was 56.