David Niven

David Niven

Memories of Life Part 6

May 2, 2007

Chapter Six,

In Edmonton where we lived in Forest Heights only Dusty the cat is allowed out when I go in the garden as she does not go far, I have to lie flat on a foam cover of a lounge chair and weed the garden with the cat lying on me. I can stay flat for hours, I had two hernia operations and do not want another one. So I lie there weeding and planting with Dusty lying on me. Once a car drove by and screeched to a stop and the person ran toward me thinking I had fainted. She was so kind and we chatted and I told her my reason for lying flat on the floor.

                                                      

It is amazing how we live world within worlds, when you are as close to the ground there is an amazing amount of life all working away, ants carrying leaves, beetles taking a walk, some bees that live in the soil and fly home and go down their hole. Something I did not know. The ants just seem to crawl over me and never bit me. Once I heard a buzzing and thought it was a huge bee but it was a brown hummingbird. I love God's creatures.

                 

May an unusual month, it can be hot and then we could have a snowstorm, there was one on May 17th after I put my flowers in. The survived thank goodness. People come out of their little holes when the snow goes and dig in the garden, especially vegetables I go to Wal-Mart I like to buy a couple of baskets to put on the step. We have four big pine trees in the front that makes it shady. In the summer when it is like desert heat conditions up in the 90's the trees bring it down a bit in the house. Weird the snow keeps you inside and the sun gives you heat stroke. Gen really is affected as she is fair with light hair. Half an hour and that is it for her.

                                                           
When Genevieve was a child we use to go to the Green Shack opened in the summer for the children by Parks and Recreation, there was a paddling pool and two adults who played games, painting and sometimes trips to the Water Park just out of town. Sometimes I would make Banana Bread and the children who had no food and were left to their own devices came for my bread. You usually knew the kids who were not left of their own and those who were. not. At least it was a safe place to have some fun and a few adults to look out for all the kids and there were many. Boy could it be hot, there were a few trees to sit under. So we picked our tree. There were some places you could you take a drink in the hall but some had nothing all day so we mothers brought what we could.

                                                          The Green Shack.

                

I was looking at the photo album and all the dance costumes I made for the girls when they took jazz and ballet dancing. Hats duck feet and many costumes. I cannot believe I actually did it I never thought I could, funny what you can do when you have to and find out you like doing it. I became good at it and Madam Pugh asked me to make headdresses for five planet dancers. Six people per planet. I made red, blue, green, gold, silver. I was actually paid for them. The show was at St Paul. Someone took my headdresses and made sure they would fall off. I loved doing it and seeing them on stage. I have to say that in the beginning I asked other mothers to help me out then when I saw how easy it was I tried it and became a speeding bullet.

                             Alcadav Productions Dance Edmonton Alberta Canada.

                                   

Madam Pugh had another school in St. Paul a few days a week and then came back to town for the other classes.

We sat in the audience and it was amazing how they actually sent a space ship above our heads hovering and it was very big and it moved toward the stage and then back again. Amazing what they can do. I took photos but they were far but at least the hairpieces looked good shining bright. Having children changes yourlife. Especially when someone comes up and says what charming and well mannered girls I have. I smile and feel good because I know they can be little madams at home.

We went swimming in the summer, for hours and hours and it really makes you tired, and sometimes we went to the movies, when it was wet. Sometimes I went just with Genevieve. Elizabeth was usually with her friend Leona Jean at the farm. They grew up together, potty trained together, had showers together, and went to Japan together as adults.

                                                     

                           Having children does not come with handbooks.

I was strict but knew they had to express themselves unlike my upbringing. Elizabeth said when you get angry I get frightened. I remembered that I was always worried and so remembered that I had joined the LDS church many years ago so I decided to go again as they have a good support for children and I needed that. The girls were instilled with virtue and the difference between good and bad. When they became adults they stopped going. False friends inviting them to the dances then leaving them on their own. False Friends pretending they cared and the girls eventually stopped visiting the church. It did not happen to everyone but there are rules and regulations that everyone follows, which are usually left to the last, minute and do not sound fervent when they phone. We do not go any more but my husband does. I will say that there are many wonderful people in the church, they have followed from the first day they were born. I do love many of them as long as they do not bother me and allow me my own free will as God allows. I am not a Catholic but I believe. Maybe the love of the convent school reminds me of the chapel and the times I would sit alone and pray. Scurrying from one room to another on a Sunday, Sacrament, Relief Society for women, Sunday school all three took three hours, often my husband was so tired. They took so many lists. Counted how many in church, Wrote down the names in Relief Society every week and in Sunday School. Then in Relief Society you had to put your name down that you had been there. God knew. I felt very uncomfortable. In the picture below I sat in the front on the left alone when I had to be alone. There are many choices in life and the Priests went away to learn and study, while in the LDS we are the teachers.If you are new you are given a little challenge to move you along. The Bishop could be farmer, doctor, lawyer, anyone who had been appointed by the President.  A different point of view, a different life. It is a life is takes your whole life, and I made friends, but the one I thought was a dear friend is so reclusive now and never phoned again after I did not go to church. I do have one friend from the church.

                                          

When we lived in England Don said he was very happy living there, and felt so free. He loved the people who came up to him and talk to him and we would sit in a pub and have a drink. He once put in a window for the old lady who lived below us and she paid him with some of the best lemon curd we ever tasted. He took her to Christchurch for a foot operation and brought her home. Yes she did have family. What characters we had living in the three flats. We were sitting on a bench eating sausage rolls and this tramp walked down the street. He stopped and sat on the bench with us. The smell was quite something, anyway he moved on and I said to Don I hope he does not live near us.

                                              Christchurch Dorset UK.

Well when we moved in to our new flat we were outside and the tramp came through the gate and I was speechless. I wondered what was going to happen and he opened up one of the doors with a key and turned to us and said hello in a posh accent and told us that his name was Mr. Robinson. I nearly fell down but said hello and nice to meet you. So that was Mr. Robinson. We knew very little about him, he had a large pension the bank gave him every month to live on. The Bank paid all his bills. During the war he was bombed and survived and his father who was well off put money in the Bank and they were his guarantor and looked after him. Every now and then cleaners would come in and clean his flat. It was so disgusting, old food, dead flies, dirty sheets, brown toilet and other things on the floor. The smell was terrible. They would also remove the clothes he wore and get new. He liked to wear them for a long time. When we did talk he was a gentleman. We sent him a Christmas card and chocolates and he sent us a card and in it said that it was the first one he had.

              Freda                             Miss Halliday Mrs. Selby                       Pat.

      

Miss Halliday was 84 yrs old. We called her Sterling Moss a famous car driver. Miss Halliday had a mint condition mini in the only garage she had made. She would rush down the street to the shops. She had been a teacher all her life and would bike at least 8 miles to the school. Not married she lived below us. When I was in the hospital having Gen Miss. Halliday and Mrs. Selby would leave gifts of jam, beer, and lemon curd just for Don, yes they would look after him.

Mrs. Selby was very concerned about our garden and the weeds at that time we did not take care so we had a gardener and we paid him to our bit. She did show us our asparagus, which we thought was a whispy plant! She could be a bit of a pain, we had special days for putting up our washing on the line and when I had Gen I looked out the window and saw nothing on the line so I did a baby wash and put the stuff on the line and she came out and told me it was not my day which was Tuesday and Friday and I apologized and she let me use her day!

We had been married five years and had no children. We were free and had many adventures .We would visit London and our friends. I watched HRH. Diana and Charles get married on the TV at a friend's flat and Don had to make it across London on the day as he had arrived back from Libya and it took him awhile.

When we first came to New Milton we stayed with Dad and Margaret, the one who left three sons? We loved New Milton, we loved the people and the beaches and how easy it was to get to London. We were not mad living there because my father was near. We stayed to ourselves when we bought the flat and we tried to be on our best behavior when we stayed with them and went out all day.

    New Milton Shopping Hampshire.                            Barton- on- Sea Hampshire.

   

We did have a look for flats and one came up, and we went to the Bank, we saw Mr. Woodsford and the Bank Manager Mr. Cox. We had a bank account but nothing to let them know that we were able to pay the mortgage although his work gave him a great reference but we had to put 2.000 down and we had to have guarantors so we asked my father but her refused. So Don phoned his Uncle George and without question he sent the money and now all we needed was a guarantor. There was no one so we went to the bank and Mr. Woodsford said we would have to Mr. Cox , the bank manager. We waited and went into the office and we told him we had no guarantor, he looked through our references then looked at us and said he would give us the mortgage. God works in many ways and this was one of them and thank you Mr. Cox. and Mr. Woodsford. I would later be a good friend of his wife who was in the maternity home when I had Genevieve and we became friends and go to each others homes.

Thank you Uncle George. Thank you for being there for us when we needed it, and always have been. Kate and George bought us a chest to return to England; they were above and beyond.

                                                     

Our lawyer was Mr. Walker, what a character sitting in a beautiful office that looked over a lush garden. He went to Oxford University. He was so kind and went through our mortgage only we were lost with one part with the jargon. We sat on the beach trying to make it out. He said it was a lease flat but the four flats held the lease. It took five pages of jargon to put that in a nutshell.

We moved into our new flat and the man who had lived there painted around the furniture and we could see where the coach was and the chair it was really funny. We had no curtains or carpet and the wallpaper was brown and beige with palm leaves on it. We did have carpet in the bedroom and a mattress on the floor. We took the paper off the wall and Don thought he would smooth the walls with plaster, the only thing was he could not and I swear the room got smaller. We decided it was best to stop. Before children I worked in London as Deputy Director. The very thought of staying alone near Dad made me really upset, I cried holding Don's hand at the duck pond, when push came to shove I called the YWCA I once lived there and it was the summer people go on holiday and I had worked there in fact it was where I got married. I got a job what a break. It was so weird returning and they were looking for a deputy, there were a few others but I got it. I had one weekend off every other week and Don was allowed to stay. I say this, as this was an all girls YWCA. What a dream living in London, being young, and then having our own place that are friends could visit near the beach.

Don worked in many countries on the rigs. When he came home it would be at night.I could hear the train miles away. It was usually 2.00 am. I would wait at the gate for him and a man always walked his dog that time of night, he tipped his hat and said that he would soon be hear. He knew who I was waiting for.

I made friends easily in New Milton. I sat next to a lady who was sitting under an oak tree. We started talking and the rest is history. Freda asked If I would like a cup of tea and so off we went and we became life long friends.

Next door lived Pat and Mike lived with their two sons Anthony and Philip, Pat was my buddy, she is now a recluse with her husband, I love her and Mike. Pat liked the same music as I did jazz. She could be very mean to me buying pastries when I was on a diet. She looked Chinese to me but she was not and came from Jamaica. Both are still going strong.

We use to see a Jewish lady nearly every day if we went to the village walking to see her friend. One day Don had a cold and went to buy something from Boots. When we met we told her not to get too close because she might get his cold. When she saw what Don had bought. She said "Rubbish what you need is saline water, and spray it up your nose." We had never heard of such a thing, now days it is sold and I always remember her when I see the ads.

She worked in the garment district in London. I never asked her name but she knew us.

We use to go to a little café opposite Bradbeers the department store. It had a set lunch for about 1.60 . Soup or salad entrée and desert. We met Madeleine. She lived above the shops and asked us for tea. What an amazing person she was. She was a teacher in India for a Maharaja's son. What stories she told us and we told her to write a book. She said she might; now she would be over a hundred years old. Sometimes the Maharaja's son would visit.

David Niven's son had a Nanny who lived in New Milton. As you may of guessed our friends were a lot older.

There were two sisters one would push the other in a wheelchair, and we always stopped for a chat and once we went for tea. Yes tea what would the British do without it.

One day my father and Don were in the car and the road is long and I was hanging over the gate and my father said to Don" Look at that old woman hanging on the gate". He definitely said something and he was fuming when we met. What he said he would not say. For my father it was like water off a ducks back..

Yet I could never break the tie with my father, when I was an adult he stopped everything, I asked for five pounds, which I did not have to mend a clock, which I accidentally broke when I lived in Jersey. He said I was on my own and that was life. He was spending millions and selling off all my mothers' treasures at the time. Silver, paintings, furniture, he had to be flash for his girlfriends.

I felt alone, and unhappy. Family a strange and wonderful part of life. Had I been rich I would never let another family member struggle.

About the Author

 

I do not have a homepage of my writing as I am totally new at writing online, and absolutely hopeless at selling online too.I think I have spent more money optimizing than making money so there we are.

I do love writing and have written in books and kept them so I thought I would make a book and see how it goes. I love my family, who are living stories.

I am dyslexic and it has driven be mad at times. My second school came out of Charles Dickens, and never encouraged or had the teaching skills to even see that some of us were having trouble, "Stupid Girl", was my name as were many girls. Only the girls who were brilliant were the chosen few who were gently nudged to go to Oxford University or Cambridge University, The Head Mistress actually cried when one of her girls decided to go to Cambridge, now how sad it that?

I have met people in my life that have lifted me up and taught me many things. Had I not met them life would have been very sad. In fact they saved my life.

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was David Niven a tough guy?

The british actor David Niven since he was a war hero and very stohic and very much for the military wouldn't he be considered a tough guy. What does everyone think?
mydogsal, why do you say not rally please give more detail.
Jeff S, someone can still have lots of money and be from a certain social class and be a tough guy.

i really don't know!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

DAVID NIVEN. Telling his prawn story