We went to see Rip It Up on 29 March 2019 from seats in the front stalls; Gill, Steve, Simon, Emma, Becca, Elaine and I. It was a celebration of the 60s, my time, and led by the fab four, Harry Judd, Jay McGuiness, Aston Merrygold and Louis Smith, all of whom had learned to dance with Strictly which they had won in 2011, 2015, 2018 and 2012 respectively. They not only included superb dancing in their activities but also gymnastics, Louis being the British gymnast men’s captain in 2012 when they won a medal for the first time since 1926. Louis performed at the 2012 Olympics in London on the pommel horse for the silver medal followed at the 2014 Commonwealth Games by a gold and bronze and a silver at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
My mother was 28 and my father 47 when I was born 16 July 1929 in the
Kidbrooke nursing home on what my mother always said was the hottest
day of the year. We lived in Blackheath Park Rd which being West of the
river Medway makes me a Kentish Maid. I was third in the family since I
had a half sister, Isla Helen from my father’s first marriage and a half
brother Dennis Henry who came with my mother, Florence Rose Birch. When
they married in 1928, my father, Alfred Ridler, did his best to even up
their ages by adding four years to my mother’s age and subtracting four
years from his age on their marriage certificate. From the age of 18,
my father had been a regular soldier in the Middlesex Regiment, serving
in the Boer War and in Hongkong before receiving a severe leg injury in
WWI in 1915 which finished his time in the army. For a while he worked
in London in the National Bank of India but he hated working indoors and
took on the post of groundsman at the bank’s sports ground at
Blackheath. His first wife died after an accident which led to his
second marriage and my birth as a Kentish Maid. In 1930, when I was 1,
we moved to Beckenham where my father was the groundsman of the Japanese
Sports Ground of the Yokohama Specie Bank.
Prince Chichibu, the brother of
the Japanese Emperor Hirohito came to visit in 1937 at the time of the
coronation of George VI. The Prince was English speaking having studied
at Magdalen Oxford in 1925, a patron of sport and of good rapport with
our Royal Family. He was an officer in the Imperial Japanese Army and
had held the title Prince Chichibu since 1922. We had a wonderful
display of tennis by Fred Perry who had turned professional after his
1936 Wimbledon win and of course we had to wait until 2013 for Andy to
give us another British win.
Here we see Michael and David on their bike outside 163 Copers Cope
Rd. When the Japanese entered the war after Pearl Harbour, 7.12.1941, we
moved to Copers Cope for the next 24 years! Michael and I married at
St Paul’s church on 1.9.1951 and three weeks later he went to sea for
Ellerman Lines as an engineer. Philip, Peter and Gill were all born here
at 163.
It was 4.00pm on Saturday afternoon in
April 2018 at Heathrow Terminal 5. Gill and Steve had to wait for me
at security as my titanium steel femur sounded the alarm but it was
not long before we were sampling the delights of the executive lounge
since we were travelling Business Class! This was the start of eating
too much for the next few hours ending when I finally refused ‘tea’
at what to me was 12.20 am but by Boston time was five hours earlier.
On landing we received the sad news
from Becca that she had been unable to join the flight from Mexico to
Boston to be with us. Then a second piece of bad news was that
between us, Gill and I had managed to leave my iPad on the plane.
Finally the third misfortune arose when we left the airport bus too
soon on our way to pick up a hire car, but eventually leaving with a
magnificent new white Mazda with fewer than 500 miles on the clock.
By our 5.00pm but Boston’s midnight, we drove into Winthrop by the
light of a brilliant full moon and stopped at Harrington House right
beside the shore.
Maggie and Joe made us very welcome and immediately showed us how to work the coffee machine before taking us to our very comfortable rooms, mine pink, Gill and Steve’s blue, both overlooking the sea. The only trouble was that the easy chair in my room was too soft and I slipped out of it, needing to crawl to the stairs to get up on my feet. In the morning, we were introduced to the two dogs, 14 year old white poodle called Fiona and 6 year old Rosalita, a black and white rescue chihuahua that took an immediate liking for Steve. The house was full of desirables to take one’s eye, half a pig doorstop or a a life like pear.
After a magnificent
breakfast at the hotel, we departed for Conway but dropped in at
Walmart’s again for two peaked caps for me, one pink and one
flowery and a blue table cloth before we were off through the White
mountains to find the highest, Mount Washington at 6288 ft. No
chance! The road for self drivers is closed until the middle of May
and the snow coaches were not yet in operation. As we took the road
to Conway, it was not only raining but covered in mist and where we
could see Mount Washington it was still covered with snow. The Ellis
river running beside the road was flowing fast and roughly through
the rocks as it received the melting snow.
I watched TV with Steve’s tuition for Boston Red Sox just lose the
game of baseball against Kansas City. Then there was the promise of
watching a live game on Wednesday night, when the local team Sea Dogs
were playing Trenton Thunder from New Jersey. I was given a large badge
in memory of my first live baseball game in US and both Steve and I
received a cuddle from the dog SLUGGER.
My first ever business class trip took me to Washington where the bus stopped just up 29 St and round the corner at stop 39, close to the ice-cream shop and one for secondhand books (visited later of course). We could have turned down the road from the hotel, the Washington Suites Harbour Hotel, to join the bus at stop 38 and to board a boat at the harbour (not yet running). This was in Georgetown established in 1757 as the furthest town upstream of the Potomac where ocean going boats could navigate. The oldest house in the district was The Old Stone House built in 1765 now in M St NW.
The yellow route turned through a right angle at the roundabout by the George Washington University Hospital which was where Ronald Reagan was taken to recover after his attempted assassination in April 1981 outside the Washington Hilton. After a long straight run down 23 St, we turned left into Constitution Ave from where we could see the Lincoln monument, the WWII memorial and the Washington memorial in the parkland on the right side of the road.
Phan Than Kim Phuc was born 2.4.1963 and lived in the S. Vietnamese village of Trang Bang. The dreadful incident when she was burnt happened on 8.6.1972. She was not expected to survive the burns on her back and arm. She had 17 operations in the hospital at Saigon in the next 14 months. When she married, the couple took refuge in Canada where they now live in Ajax with their two children. Kim became a Canadian citizen in 1997. Her scars still cause her much pain until recently when she started a series of laser treatments to smooth them out.
Her Biography, ‘The Girl in the Picture’ was written by Denise Chong.
