A little memory of Mum's
Mum always liked to sit down for an English tea with jam sandwiches, scones, crumpets and such like – on my visits to her I gladly obliged. It was always a good time for chats about the past and Mum had told us of many stories of when she was a little girl during the bombing in her area and the German V1 flying bombs and about hiding in the cupboard under the stairs during the night raids. However, this little story she told me came out very late in her life, in fact it was just prior to her going into the first Nursing Home and it was one that I had not heard before.
Her father had been a despatch rider during the First World War and driver of a staff car in the Second World War, but in civilian life he was the driver of a local ironmonger’s van making deliveries in the area. She recalled that just before he had left for service in the Second World War, he had got permission from Field Marshall Montgomery when delivering one day to his house at Isington Mill, for his family to be able to cycle out and fish for crayfish in the River Wey, which flowed on the boundary of Montgomery’s house. She described to me how, with her mother she had cycled all the way there with Lesley and Eileen too and had set up camp on the land bordering his garden. How they had passed the Mill on their right and then went over a very small bridge and then turned off right to the fishing ground overlooking the gardens of the Mill.
It was a memory that came back to her in that moment and she was quite precise about the details.
Going home I checked it out on Google maps – and it’s all still there just as Mum had said.
Needless to say, Mum left us with many memories of our own, but this was just a little childhood memory that came back to her and one that I shall never forget.
Graham
28th April 2021