The Mulberry Bush
I was apparently not yet ready for Caldecott, as I was then sent to the Mulberry Bush at Standlake in Oxfordshire for ten months [I still had no idea of the overall plan, of course]. Strictly, this was not part of my time at Caldecott, but I am including it as there may be some reading this who also went to the Bush.
I remember being happy there. Life was very free and easy and my eccentricities, and those of the other children, were readily accepted by staff and children alike. On my first day I was subjected to some aggression [not really bullying] from one of the boys, and the other children promptly chased him around the field. He and I got on well enough after that.
My one disappointment was that academic work was very limited [that was probably the point]. I remember that we had printed booklets with questions and spaces for our answers and would all gather round a large table to work, for no more than about one hour per day. The other children nicknamed me ‘professor’. I see from my file that Mrs D feared that I would find this insulting, but in fact I enjoyed it.
More important, of course, was the time spent one to one with Mrs. Pip Drysdale [Mrs. D], who of course had several qualifications in psychology, and ran the Bush together with her husband [Mr. D]. In late middle age I found it really interesting and informative to read her notes of our conversations in my file.
I have never lived anywhere else as cold as the Bush. As winter approached I announced that I was not going to set foot outside until the weather was warmer. This was accepted without demur, and I did not go out of the house until the spring.
Every evening we took to bed with us a drink of hot milk or cocoa. During the winter some of us would put our drink outside on the windowsill overnight, so that we would have a milk or cocoa ice lolly in the morning.
Most of us liked to help prepare breakfast in the kitchen, mainly in preparing and buttering umpteen rounds of toast. In the winter the butter was rock hard, so it would be put in the oven to soften up. It would come out melted and sickly yellow and very easy to spread.
When the weather became warmer and I began to go outside, I discovered plimsolls. This magical footwear was said [by other children] to be so strong that you could stamp on broken glass and the glass would not penetrate the plimsoll. Of course I had to try this and learned the very important lesson that other people are not always right.
Many hours were spent playing in the pond in the front garden and on the island which took up most of it. Without any formal teaching the pond provided a basic education in nature studies, bringing us into contact with frogs, frogspawn and tadpoles, water boatmen and other water insects, and sticklebacks [ I have never seen a stickleback since I left the Bush]. We also became familiar with several species of butterfly, which could be found in the fields at the back during the summer.
After coming to New House I did not see my parents for several months, and when my father came to the Bush to visit me in the summer of 1951 I hardly recognised him. I still have photographs that we took of each other at Witney, Eynsham, and in the lanes around Standlake.
Among the staff at the Bush was Desmond Draper, who much later came to Caldecott. He would tell us shaggy dog stories when we were having our tea. Also Clem Murphy, who sported a moustache and a pipe. In later life I came to wonder whether during the time of the first post-war Labour government he was modelling himself on a rather better known Clem.
I was always a bit of a goody-goody, and did not usually have enough nerve to break the rules. There were few rules at the Bush, but one rule was that, if we woke early in the morning, we were to stay in our room and not wander. On one occasion, I cannot remember why, I wandered out of my room early one morning while everyone else was still asleep. I felt a sudden thump on my back, and looked up and saw Mr. D, who told me to get back to bed. The blow did not hurt me, but was quite a shock.
Nowadays that might well be considered child abuse, but as far as I was concerned it was a well merited punishment.
In September 1951, almost exactly a year after I had first come to Kent, the time had come to move on to somewhere new. I was told that it was near New House, and was probably told that it was Caldecott [ a name which then meant nothing to me]. I suspected and feared that it was “Hatch”, and I was proved right. I cannot remember why I should have been worried at the prospect of going to Caldecott, but I suspect that, having become used to the smaller communities at New House and the Mulberry Bush, I did not relish becoming part of what my visits to play on the lawn had suggested was a much larger and perhaps more formal establishment.
Mr. and Mrs. D drove me down to Kent. I had recently discovered Horlicks tablets, and I remember that during the journey I stuffed myself with these until I felt sick.
Photographs, from top:
The Mulberry Bush
Me near the Mulberry Bush [taken by my Father]
Me at the Mulberry Bush [taken by my Father]