A Finchden Experience

By Alan F. Wendelken

It wasn’t a school, it wasn’t a hospital, it was a “third thing”- an “adventure in living” said George Lyward, the founder and head of the therapeutic community Finchden Manor. In this fascinating account, Alan Wendelken records his experiences at Finchden Manor, as he knew it as both man and boy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9780244837242

Book preview

A Finchden Experience

A FINCHDEN EXPERIENCE

©2019 by The Mulberry Bush Organisation Ltd.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing: 2019

ISBN 978-0-244-83724-2

The Mulberry Bush Organisation Ltd.

Abingdon Road

Standlake

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OX29 7RW.

www.mulberrybush.org.uk

Published in e-book form only.

INTRODUCTION

There are some matters that are so serious that, if they are written about with the gravity they seem to require, the result is not attractive to the reader.  On the other hand, if a light and flippant approach is taken, the reader could assume that he is being dished up some imagined frippery and treat it with the contempt it seems to deserve.

In the early 1930s, at the same time as Hitler was working his way into a position of power and domination in Germany in order to produce a great engine of destruction and death, there was a man in England who was also working his way into a position of power and domination in order to produce a rather smaller engine, but one devoted to reconstruction and to life.  Nearly everybody has heard of Adolf Hitler; his name will be forever bracketed with other Monsters of History, but very few have heard of George Lyward.

Mr Lyward, as he preferred to be known, is by far the more deserving to be remembered – and pondered over.

When he discovered the house called Finchden Manor he knew it was the right setting for the work he was already doing.  The house had many aspects.  Enough for the many roles needed.  There was room for many to be together, room for those same many to be apart.  The house had atmosphere, a Past and Character.  Having been built over an extended period it had incorporated diverse styles into a curiously unified whole. The setting was to be a model for the community which lived there – diverse yet curiously unified.  The list of previous occupants included a large family and a Benedictine Monastery.  If the events which take place in a house affect the environment for those who follow on, then the atmosphere they bequeathed was beneficial.

Besides feeling very English, it was Romantic. It was neither practical nor made for easy convenience, as far removed from a purpose built establishment as it was possible to be.  Accordingly, it conferred on those of us invited to live there a sense of adventure instead of dull predictability.

Mr Lyward’s approach was to invite us to live with him in his private house.  It was his home.  We were his guests.  He remained free to run his house as he wished.  There was a risk we all had to take. We, because we might not like it and nothing would come of it.  He, because inviting the likes of us into his home was not a recipe for peace and quiet! It takes a brave man to tackle what George Lyward undertook, but he did, and many of us owe him our thanks for doing it.

This is not a History with a record of dates and influences.  Although events are given alongside the impressions and the ideas which they generated, they may not be presented here in their correct sequence.  Some incidents are recalled from memory, but many are pulled out of jottings made at the time.  Any inaccuracies are entirely my responsibility.

The boyhood scenes date from the early 1950s; the later depictions are from the late 1960s and early 1970s.  Finchden finally closed in 1974 having saved lives for over 42 years. 

The place first grabbed my imagination when I went there in 1948 and has never ceased to stir my thoughts since.  Previously I have tried writing about it in various ways and styles but the results have always been unsatisfactory. 

In tackling this broader vision I have followed a working brief to explore how trustworthy I felt Mr Lyward to be, how committed and caring he was, how his understanding was of a different order to other men.  For all his caring he, in some way, remained untouched.  He was a paradox; deeply involved, yet part of him remained coolly outside his work.  This enabled him to carry on for many years, when others would have burnt out.   Though challenged, sometimes thwarted, I felt he worked in a spirit of love and concern, which was why I could accept it. 

Living at Finchden Manor turned out to be a quest, an adventure charged with expectancy.  The place looked basic and scruffy, yet the energy of it made pale by comparison the quality of living outside.  The analogy used was of the sailing ship, with its basic and sometimes uncomfortable conditions that took you to places you could never have reached had you not been willing to work the ship with the rest of the crew.

Finchden boys still feel they have been given an important, unmistakeably precious legacy, a heritage that is too difficult to share, too elusive to define for others who did not have this experience.  It is not simply a case of the boys in the Army together; it is more like bonds formed between members of a gang who have shared a great adventure.  It was an adventure in group living, where we discovered that we were members one of another.

Most of the people described here are still alive. They will have no difficulty in recognising themselves, but I hope the important identifying details have been smudged sufficiently for them to retain their anonymity should they wish to do so.   I have changed nearly all the names but very few of the nicknames – those we used for each other.

I have learned that there is no single Finchden Manor to be found.  An objective view, which manages to encompass all, does not exist.  There are as many Finchden Manors wrapped in memories as there are people who had any contact with the place.  Their experiences are all subjective and personal.  That is how it comes to be real for them.

This book is about how it came to be real for me.

Alan F. Wendelken

Find out what it is you want to do most in the world – and then do it.

Richard Bach in  Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Editorial Explanation

If anything should happen to me, you will finish the book, won’t you? my husband asked, as we drove over the hills of the Isle of Wight in 1996.

How could I do that? I queried. It is all about you and Finchden.

It’s all there, the writing is done; it is more a question of getting it all in order.

Rashly, I promised, little thinking I would really have to do it.

Six weeks later he went early morning swimming, as was his habit, and dropped dead as he ran around the pool after his swim. A heart attack.

That was in 1996 I hear you protesting. In explanation may I offer the fact that a number of people I loved also died within a year of Alan’s death. Then, when I had found ways of living without them, I discovered that the book was in episodes, without any time line. Some of the material was written in two or three different accounts.  The whole came to around 250,000 words. Alan was a gifted photographer, and kept meticulous files and printing details on his photographic material. Remembering and writing were also strengths, but referencing and filing written material just didn’t happen, with the exception of dated entries in his journals.  Over the years I have found Finchden material stored in a variety of unlikely places; included amongst his gardening notes and in a journal of photographic printing details.

Alan chose to rename the boys at Finchden, using either their nicknames, or completely new names for them, acknowledging that their contemporaries would inevitably recognise them, but no one outside the Finchden community would need to know.  Where staff members were concerned he felt that they should be accorded the right to their real names, with the exception of two, to whom he gave nicknames to save confusion as their names duplicated those of other staff.

His material covers his years as a boy at Finchden Manor, his invitation by Mr Lyward to return as a member of staff, and his time on the staff until the community closed in 1974.  There was nothing on the years between, so in Chapter 13 I have endeavoured to give enough information to show the ways in which he gathered the additional skills he brought to his role on the staff.

Despite the length of the project, it has been an enjoyable although emotive way of hearing his distinctive voice continuing the Finchden anecdotes, as I computerized his typed and handwritten accounts.  My hope is that you, too, will enjoy his tale of an amazing work in a therapeutic community that was a stern loving way of life.

Claire Wendelken Ross    

PART I – At Finchden

Chapter 1 - Arrival

I arrived in a Daimler.  Not just any old car, but a dignified, upright, chauffeur-driven Daimler with huge, gleaming headlamps about a foot across standing proudly above the magnificent, sweeping sculptured curve of the front mudguards.  I sat up the front and the great lamp on my side provided the foreground to the changing view that passed before us. The car had been built ten years previously, before the War, but it had survived the bombs; its polished coachwork gleamed even in the dull light of a February afternoon.  The black leather upholstery spoke of a world of grace and luxury.  This car had style.

It was wonderful.  I was free.  I had left my constantly-fussing mother behind and I was going to where she could no longer nag-nag-nag at me.  I don’t remember anything about the journey except the keen delight at the prospect of starting a new life among a lot of very kind people.  I knew they were kind because my mother had told me so.  The irony of that escaped me at the time.

The Daimler was provided because my father kept the books for a local garage and this was their hire car.  The firm was just across the road from Merton Park film studios, then in their heyday, and the class of business demanded such a vehicle because the starlets wanted to behave like stars and the minor executives wanted to be taken for bigwigs in the post war rat race.

The car had been hired for me because it was convenient - convenient for my parents.  Neither of them would have to accompany me on the journey.  Not quite fifteen, I was large for my age, my chubby face frozen and unhappy, reflecting my muddled state of mind.  I was at that age when parents have very little toleration or respect for your feelings.  My feeble objections to travelling by limousine had no strength against their usual, ultimate deterrent that claimed I was always selfish and did not think of them.

Of course you want to go in a nice car, they said.  Won’t it be more fun to ride in a big car than lug your suitcase on the train? The car will cost less than a return fare and a single, so it makes sense.  Why won’t you be sensible?

They were not interested in my view of how silly it would be to turn up in a huge limousine, like a member of the aristocracy, and they refused to allow me to ride alone on the train.  That was selfish because it would mean they would worry about me.  I lost the argument as usual.  I would have liked to walk in with just a small suitcase and a pair of football boots and be accepted for what I was, without any parental trimmings.

I was being taken to what I then thought of as ‘school’ although I was soon to find out that Finchden Manor was nothing like any other school. Nor could I possibly have guessed how it was going to influence and dominate my life for another thirty years.   I knew it was inappropriate to make such a grand entrance to this place.  At the interview I had grasped how the boys were held in much greater esteem than their possessions.

I wanted to enjoy the ride.  Travelling in a car was a novelty for me.  I was proud to be surrounded by such magnificence, yet ashamed, at the incongruity of it.  I was preoccupied with what effect my arrival in this completely inappropriate vehicle was going to have on how the other boys treated me. I was going to step out of this car as if I were some high class rich boy with wealthy parents and this was very far from the truth.  Even if they had been able to drive, my parents could not have afforded even a Baby Austin.

Because my parents had arranged it, I wanted to convince myself that it was all right and they really did know best. Didn’t they?  Somehow I already knew that was nonsense.  If they really had known what was best for me then I did not need to go to Finchden to get sorted out.  I had done nothing wrong; I was not a criminal.  They had branded me a failure.  They had taken care never to use the word, but the message was unmistakeable.  If it wasn’t my fault, that made them the failure.  They had failed to be proper parents.  Perhaps?  It was still a Perhaps.

My view of the road ahead, dominated by the headlamps, obstructed the sightline of what we were approaching.  In my recollections of the journey this inordinately large luminaire became a symbol for me. There is an irony in finding that what is meant to illuminate has become the means of blocking a clearer view.  It seemed to typify my life at the time.  So much of what had been intended to improve my understanding – my education, my parents’ concern for me – had ended up serving only to block and obscure my thinking.  Instead of being a bright and happy youngster I was withdrawn and inactive, trapped in my thoughts, which beavered away endlessly at how to get out of my muddle, but got me nowhere.

Dusk was already closing in on that damp February evening in 1948 when the wheels crunched on the gravel drive and we stopped in the courtyard.  I thanked the driver and climbed out with my suitcase, football boots and a big paper carrier bag containing a lot of sweets and home-made cakes.  I was a perpetually hungry teenager who had grown up during the war time shortages and was highly appreciative of the new found extras which were becoming available. All the same I recognised that this food was my mother’s way of bidding for me so that, much as I enjoyed the treats, I squirmed at what they represented.

The car having gone, I took stock of my surroundings.  The great timber framed house stood on two sides of the courtyard and the picturesque stables building slanted away on a third.  There were tall trees and dark hedges still visible in the gathering gloom.  Some of the windows were lit and many had faces looking out just pretending to be admiring the evening.  There was a lot of noise from inside the house, particularly from what I learned afterwards was the boys’ kitchen.  It sounded like a lot of shouting, banging of metal trays, and running around in heavy boots.  By contrast, outside all was silence.  The ceaseless faint background of noise which a town dweller barely notices was now absent for me.  Although my head told me it was peaceful, my gut reaction was to find the prospect vaguely threatening, particularly with the racket coming from the kitchen.  I feared what unknown things were about to happen.  That damp silence was sharpened by the alarm call of a blackbird as it crossed an open space only a few feet above the ground and settled in a bush out of sight.

I knocked at the great front door.  One of the older boys, Jimmy, was fetched to take me to my room.  I was led along what seemed to be an impossible maze of passages and stairways, all lit with dim bulbs and full of large, rushing, noisy figures.  I found out afterwards that the arrival of a new boy usually resulted in a lot of rowdy behaviour.  New boys did not arrive every day.

A short flight of stairs led us at last to the Peacock Room, so called because of the pair of birds carved on the doorposts.  A heavy oak door, studded with nails, with a big forged handle that lifted a latch on the other side, swung open to reveal a large and lofty room, lit only by a 60 watt bulb.  There were five beds around the walls and some battered wardrobes and chests of drawers wedged in between them.  My bed was a simple folding one and was definitely an afterthought in the scheme of things.  There were three blankets provided but nowhere to hang my clothes.  Jimmy said they were hoping to get another wardrobe at an auction in town the following week and to pass on one of these to the occupants of another room which did not have a wardrobe at all.  I was given a drawer which took the contents of my suitcase.

The Peacock Room was unique; it had two oriel windows which looked out into the Great Hall, with its heraldic shields on a ceiling designed by Pugin, the architect of the Houses of Parliament.  There were hints of style, culture and history all over the house; no wonder it had such an atmosphere.  The bare boards were kept dark and shiny with polish.  My first impression was a place where life was kept welcomingly simple.  I did not see it as bleak.  The only thing that puzzled me was the dim lighting in the bedrooms.  I was told that The Chief would not allow stronger bulbs as it encouraged us to linger in our rooms instead of mixing with the others downstairs.

As it was now suppertime, I was taken to the Dining Room.  The lighting was certainly brighter here.  There were two big bulbs in a two way adapter in the middle of the ceiling.  We sat at the trestle tables on wooden benches which tended to fall over with a loud crash if pushed.  There was no heating at all.  On one wall there were some paintings of sailing ships done by a boy who had since been lost at sea.  One of them showed Captain Joshua Slocum sailing single-handed around the world in his sloop Spray.

Sitting opposite me was a very tall man who was a member of staff.  We were introduced.  Peter extended a large, work-hardened hand with an air of complete disinterest and went back to eating his supper.  In those days staff members were served first.  I looked at what he was eating.  There were two small round meat pies and two potatoes baked in their jackets.  That was all.  No gravy on the pies or butter on the potatoes.  Butter was still scarce and rationed.  When my supper came it seemed so dry I was afraid I was not going to be able to eat it all.  I managed to get one of the potatoes and both of the pies down but could not face the second potato.  When somebody noticed I had left it he asked if I wanted it.  I marvelled at how eagerly it was consumed.

During the meal I was amazed at the noise.  Two boys were bringing in the food but looking around I could not tell who were boys and who were staff.  The favoured style of dress was ex-Army khaki trousers with thick leather belts and blue battledress jackets, the kind which had breast pockets with flaps, worn over a rough-knit sweater.  Shirts were a rarity; heavy hobnailed boots were commonplace, with plimsolls a second choice.  Everyone looked very big and strong.  It seemed I was one of the youngest boys there, with only a few around my age.

One boy in particular caught my eye.  He spent most of the mealtime in the centre of the floor exchanging raucous witticisms with whoever would rise to his taunting.  He was very tall and thin, with an enormous head emphasised by a flyaway mop of hair; he made me think of an animated lamp-post. He evidently did not mind the cold as he was wearing only a short sleeved shirt and a scanty pair of shorts with a wet behind where he must have sat down in the mud.  I later learned he had a vast collection of good clothes, including four suits, over twenty high quality shirts, and fifty ties.  This was Spider Webster.  His father was the scrap metal King of Newcastle-on-Tyne.

Suddenly a more restrained note fell upon the gathering.  Mr Lyward, the Chief, had come in.  At interview I had only seen him in his own part of the house and was surprised to find him wearing an overcoat, scarf and trilby hat indoors.  On that first evening the significance of most of what he said was lost on me.  He took no particular notice of me, neither ignoring me nor singling me out for any special attention.  It was his way of showing me I was now another member.

I was embarrassed still by the way in which I had arrived and felt I needed to live this down.  I was sure I was getting a cool reception as a result.  It seemed courteous but minimal.  I believed I had made a fool of myself and that everyone was waiting to see what else I would do.  In fact this was nonsense.  I was merely the latest newcomer to a group which had a well established network of relationships and attitudes and it was up to me to learn to find my way around.  I felt very young and very scared.  I did not want to show either.

I was taken down to the Guildables Room. The what? I asked, not catching the unfamiliar name at the first attempt.  We walked through the long echoing Hall with the ceiling I had looked at from the windows in the Peacock Room; there was a very makeshift and temporary looking stage set up at the far end; we turned down yet another long passage.  The walls had life sized pictures of knights, lords and ladies in mediaeval finery drawn on them.  Spider Webster had done them.

But what was this Guildables Room?  Was this some French sounding game which been introduced into this country at the time of the Norman Conquest, and  preserved in little-known pockets around England ever since?  Momentarily I imagined a Tudor game of nine-a-side Guildables.  It would be played with a large and heavy ball which didn’t quite bounce enough.  The boys looked as if they let off steam by playing very rough games of a kind rarely seen elsewhere. I was caught between the dread of being obliged to play some awful game and the delight that this was a place where you were allowed to draw pictures on the walls.  Already, on my very first evening, I had got the right idea; at Finchden Manor I could try out and enjoy all sorts of new exploration – if I had enough guts.

The Guildables Room turned out to be somewhere I had seen on the day of my interview.  It was a lofty barn of a room, with blackened beams in the roof, furnished with bus seats grouped around a pot-bellied Esse stove, which roared invitingly, glowing cherry-red at the bottom.  There was a pile of logs stacked beside it. When the lid was lifted to add more, a gush of blue smoke wafted to the ceiling to feed the fragrance already filling the room.  In the corner a group were sitting round a table playing cards.  Another group threw darts at a board hung on a door always kept bolted to avoid any accidents.

Everybody here was calm and quiet.  Compared with the hubbub of the Dining Room and the rushing around the passages this was another kind of place; the atmosphere one of cosy, contented peace.

Guildables Farm at Edenbridge on the Kent/Surrey border was where in 1930 George Lyward had begun the venture which later moved to Finchden Manor.  The Guildables Room kept not only the original name alive but also the community spirit.  It was mandatory for anyone not engaged in tidying up after supper to attend the evening gathering held in the Guildables Room until bedtime was called.  Thus boys and staff were together during that period at the end of the day when the mood was often set for the night to follow.  In those days we accepted this.  Twenty years later the boys did not, and the style and tenor of Finchden was changed irrevocably.  To discuss that here would be to look ahead too soon.

The mood of peace was abruptly cut into by a distant cry of Cocoa, producing a general drift to the door to get a mug from the Inner Washup.  This was a scullery where the mugs and plates were washed and stored.  It had a coke fired domestic boiler for making all the hot water used in the house.  The boiler seemed tiny. I soon discovered that, with over thirty boys in our side, and the Lywards in the Chief’s side, it could only cope by running flat out.

The kitchen was a spacious room with a concrete floor and two Aga cookers forming one unit.  The only furniture was a scarred table on which one could have butchered an ox.  Both floor and table were damp from having just been cleaned by the cook of the day.  The cocoa was in a tureen on one of the hotplates and we helped ourselves with a ladle.  In spite of the air being sulphurous and filled with a fine sifting of ash, as the Aga had just been riddled and stoked, we hung around because it was warmer there than elsewhere.  There was room for only a few around the boiler in the Washup and cocoa was not permitted in the Guildables Room.

As I sipped the scalding, sweet liquid my attention was only partly on the pesty young fellow trying to hold me in conversation.  I soon found he tried this with all newcomers; everyone else had got wise to him.  I was far more interested to watch the interaction between the others in the room.  In a wordless way I was trying to get the hang of what was going on, what sort of people had I come to live with?  I wanted to get a clear impression.  The place was too confusing and unfamiliar to leave it all woolly.

These boys were not like schoolboys.  They were bigger and seemed more adult; what passed between them appeared as much tacitly understood as actually said.  By contrast, I felt that those who were locked into trivial bickering had separated themselves from the rest. I could not place this feeling, only that such petty quarrelling was out of step with the quality of life here.  I would have forgotten this first impression as some mere imagining, had it not been that a few days later the Chief referred to the depth of life lived here.  It was that of which I had caught a hint.   I had picked up the atmosphere of a secret life that was shared between them, secret because its nature was hidden from me.  Soon, I myself would be moved by its force.  It reached inside you and slowly changed you.

That first evening, cocoa finished, I went upstairs.  I had my bed and I was staying.  What was more I could get to bed without losing my way.  Already this was home.  It had to be home.

Now I could sort out who my room mates were.  I found I had already met them without identifying them.  Jimmy was eldest.  Compactly built, he moved with a spring in his step.  He had a large nose, a receding forehead, wavy hair and the tense face of a perpetual worrier.  I was not surprised to find he was short tempered.

The best position in the room was taken by Todhunter.  He was known by his initials A.C.  He seemed to like it.  He was fair, athletic and walked with a swagger.  He saw himself at the top of the pecking order.  If there was any pecking to be done, then he did it.  It was he who called the tune; he decided what we should talk about, whom we should talk about and when we should shut up. He took his role as an unquestioned right.

Then there was Ivor.  He was a blond haired, hairy chested, placid hunk of a guy who didn’t have a lot to say; he was agreeable and inoffensive.  His favourite reading was any magazine containing pictures of women.  The fewer clothes they had on the better he liked them. If he couldn’t find girlie magazines he devoured pulp fiction, usually Westerns.

Finally there was a Quigley.  I have to say a Quigley because there were two of them – identical twins.  I had seen them together that evening and could not tell them apart.  This was Ian.  He came over better as an individual when away from his brother, just as I later found his brother did.   Together they produced a Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee effect, each one reinforcing and mirroring the other.  They were both naïve and ingratiating, but followed quite different pursuits.  Ian was the more genuine of the two and less prone to assuming fancy airs to conceal his ignorance.  If Ian didn’t understand he usually said so.  His brother Paul was notorious for asking the daftest questions.  I got to like them both.

Fitz, the member of staff I had met at my interview, came round to turn our light out, but we talked for a bit longer.  I was at pains to point out that the Daimler was not a family heirloom but a perk from Dad’s work.  That wretched car no longer mattered.  Already it was an episode in the past.

Chapter 2 - Parents

I was born on the 27th February 1933, the day of the Reichstag fire, a key event in the establishment of the Nazi Dictatorship when the German Parliament building was gutted. Hitler used the ensuing upheaval as the means to personal power.  I was a small boy when the Second World War began, so I grew up through the Blitz, the flying bombs, rationing and post war shortages.

Yet I know I have been more deeply affected by the First World War than by the Second.  My father, then in his late twenties, served in the Royal Artillery in France for four years, when men had to live in the mud of the trenches and were maimed or killed in their tens of thousands.  Dad was wounded twice, but was returned to the Front as soon as his physical injuries were sufficiently healed.  He saw almost all his friends and colleagues destroyed before his eyes.  Then their replacements, and the replacements’ replacements, in an apparently never ending cycle of carnage.  How or why he survived he never knew.

My mother, who had known Dad before he was pitched into this horror, described him as a changed man on his return.  One of my earliest childhood memories is being awakened by Dad shouting in his dreams, back on the battlefield as some disaster struck.  Those dreams were frequent.  Mother would rouse him to release him from the nightmare.  Dad’s war experiences haunted him.  Even subdued by blindness and old age, he would talk of those years as if they still surrounded him.

When I look in a mirror there is an echo of my father’s face.  I see made visible some of the things I have inherited from him; his quirky sense of humour and his quiet patience.  Above all I am reminded of the love he had for me, which meant he stood by me in my times of need, when my mother could only be critical of me.  He was a good father because he cherished the gift of life, having seen so many lose theirs.  I am glad I was able to be with him when he died.  His last words were When I last saw you, you were a boy and now you are a man.  He had then been blind for fourteen years.

My mother, who was seven years younger than Dad, came from a large family.  Her mother, already with four children, had married for the second time, only to discover that her new husband was a drunkard whose behaviour brought fear and uncertainty into the lives of them all.  Mother was the younger of the two born to the second marriage.  By her own account she was wilful and rebellious, clashing with most of her much older half-brothers, despising her half-sister and defying her mother, who called her a wicked girl.  I feel her rebelliousness was that of the cowed conformist, the kind that says Yes, teacher, to her face, and cocks a snook at her when the teacher’s back is turned, feeling very daring.

At no time did my mother seem able to enjoy what life had to offer.  She believed it was always somebody else’s fault when she could not have what she wanted.  Yet if she were offered a treat or a gift she would rather decline it than accept the burden of obligation which would result.

There was no peace in her and she cultivated anxieties as a kind of duty.  She claimed that if she were not worrying, she was not preparing for the future.  I never discovered what this imaginary future was, which would overtake us if she did not fend it off in this obsessive way. Nothing would shake her from the certainty that if it were not checked by her forethought, it would creep up and devour us.

She was trapped in a sense of duty.  It was for her a source of frustration as well as a means of wielding power.  Sunday lunch was a good example, a ritual of roast meat, potatoes, another vegetable and gravy.  She would spend the whole of the morning preparing and cooking it.  I don’t know why it took her so long. My wife does the same job far better and with a quarter of the effort.  Dad and I usually spent