2010 has not been without its fair share of knitting action. The season doesn't start until April but early March saw us heading off to Worthing in Sussex to take on the "Worthing Worthies" or the "WWs" as we call them in a "friendly". The WWs have a formidable reputation in competitive knitting circles with the late Mrs Brocklesbury-Sprogbracket holding the World record for the fastest matinee jacket. This pale pink delight was completed in just seventy five minutes! Indeed the local hospital was the recipient of so many matinee jackets as she prepared for her title; that they had to publish a notice requesting that no more knitted articles be sent to them for a whole year. That was in 1957 of course and time waits for no man or woman.
My recollections of Worthing are largely childhood ones. My parents would take rooms in a small hotel on the seafront for a week. Worthing, like most south coast seaside resorts was a potential place for any invasion by the Germans in the Second World War. Churchill did not order the evacuation of such places, probably because he knew that the onslaught of Blitzkrieging troops would rapidly dissipate once they came up against Britain's first line of defence - the seaside landlady! With her grey permed hair, her no nonsense pinny and "I take no prisoners" attitude; the enemy would have swiftly fallen back into the sea and been grateful for the long swim back to France or wherever it was that they came from. Unfortunately, despite the cessation of hostilties, the landladies had not softened one jot and treated us, their paying guests, as if we were also hostile intruders. Breakfast was chiefly molten animal fat if I recall correctly. There would be something floating in it that vaguely resembled bacon and egg, perhaps a mushroom and a sausage too. But chiefly the whole repast was something to get over and done with as quickly as possible before setting out for a day's adventure on the scratchy shingle beach.
A short walk along the front brought those girlhood holidays flooding back. Flooding is the correct term too. The rain poured and the wind howled. Walking with it to your back gives the average 5'4" female sexagenarian the acceleration of a race horse. Groups of elderly ladies, plastic macintoshes flapping wildly in the wind speed past those sensible folk that grip tightly to the benches thoughtfully provided by Worthing Borough Council, their feet trying desperately to keep pace with the unexpected velocity that the gale brings to them. Walking into the wind..... well you cannot walk that way. The effect is rather like spending time on a walking machine that can be found in gymnasia up and down the country. You walk and go nowhere. But in Worthing you have the added advantage of being wind blasted as well. Perhaps they should market it. After all ladies pay good money for plastic surgeons to do the same thing at much higher cost.
Have you ever noticed that in any group, it is the same small number of people that do all the organisational work. As you know, I am not a knitter, I leave all that to Mildred, but I do make edible cakes and sandwiches and am the official caterer to our knitting club. Getting to Worthing with all my comestibles is so much easier with cake tins and Tupperware boxes - aren't they a boon to the modern woman? I don't know who Mr Tupper was, surely he was a SHE, but I bless the day that bottom was put to top and the storage and transportation of cakes became instantly so much easier. Lady Dorothy simply asked to be told what time and where she should meet whatever transport would ferry her. She clearly expected a limousine. The rest of us knew that if she was lucky she might get the front seat in the Scouts minibus with all the attendant detritus of camps and football matches that littered the interior. Mildred once found three odd socks and sewed them together for devilment. Unfortunately the socks were owned by the son of one of our knitters - a large and somewhat belligerent lady named Beryl - who took great offence to Mildred's fun and gave us all a lecture on the cost of soccer hosiery. Beryl has, now I must be delicate here, trouble with her organ pipes. Let's just say that often, especially during moments of great concentration, she provides a musical accompaniment from deep beneath the heavy denim skirts that she always wears. 'Better an empty house than a bad tenant" she'll say if anyone has the temerity to look her way.
The trip down had the air of a school outing. I had packed travel supplies as well as food for lunch. Although the host club usually provides the food, the WWs reputation for a mean spread went before them. Who could forget the horrified reports from the Bournemouth "Bashers", all good trencherwomen, that all that they had been offered when they visited the WWs were some very thin overdone beef sandwiches and a Crawford's Teatime Assortment of biscuits. Gloria B'aadsmell, Captain of the Christchurch Crocheters had refused point blank ever to travel to Worthing when she heard the story. But we are made of sterner stuff.
Mildred had to embarrass us of course. Somewhere round Chichester she announced that if she didn't have a drag of her cigar then she'd be fit for nothing. She also managed to make a further spectacle of herself by entering into a local pub and demanding to use the toilet. "Are you a customer Madam" the barman asked. "I've been before" came her reply. Wisely he let it go at that. If she had been before it must have been 30 years ago, because she's not been there since I've known her. Soon we were on our way again and found ourselves dropped off at the "Bide a while" Hotel right on the front.
The hotel had seen better days. On a sign beside the door there was the message that they are delighted to accept "Benefit Agency sponsored Residents". The sounds of what can best be called World Music filled the dimly lit and wee smelling corridors. Tense, pinch faced East Europeans pushed past us as they came and went from their "delightful en-suite rooms all with sea view" and a large African looking lady pushing a baby buggy screamed "Ouuta f....ing way" as she thundered down the corridor and out into the wide world. A lady in a too tight black skirt and a boiled white blouse that now took on the grey hue of the sky outside ushered us into a room somewhat optimistically entitled "Ballroom". With its dingy deep blush carpet and velour chairs stacked up against the grubby of white walls I felt that it was some years since a ball had been held in this room. The sign was a triumph of optimism over reality. At the far end we spied a group of ladies sitting round a trestle table upon which stood a tea urn and some rather sad and chipped green Denbyware cups and saucers. I had stepped back forty years. This place was the quintessential British seaside hotel. Elderly, unwelcoming and desperate for love.
Polite handshakes were made all round, although one lady looked over her pince nez at me and said with a precise and strangulated voice "so you don't knit then?". When I explained that I looked after the refreshments she glared at me saying "we don't bother much with that sort of thing", and tottered away.
The competition got underway with bed socks. I am told that these are not as easy as they sound and a good pair are the mark of a first class knitter. Mrs Perleun took the honours with a perfect sky blue pair in forty five minutes. The next two classes, bobbles (for hats) and tea cosies came and went with the honours going to the home side. A rather superior looking lady wearing a long woollen house coat into which she had stuffed her balls of wool produced her tea cosy in double quick time. We were all suitably impressed. However, Mildred whispered
soto voce to me that she thought that most of the cosy had been started at home and simply finished off in the competition room. I told her not to say such things. Such ill mannered comments could result in us never being invited back again. "Suits me" muttered Mildred before getting back with her bobble, much of which seemed to lie unravelled on the floor before her.
Pausing for tea, where I noticed with quiet glee that it was MY sandwiches and cakes that seemed to go well before the WWs meagre offerings, I managed to get a sneak peek of the competition sheet for the rest of the afternoon. Matinee jackets or cable stitch jumpers. I knew that we would get the choice. As I mentioned before, the WWs hold the record for the fastest matinee jacket, but cable stitch was more complex.
Of course it was the jackets. "Stick to what your good at" Mrs P retorted when the decision was made. Each knitter drew a twist of paper with the words "Jacket" or "Jumper" inscribed thereon from a tin. The majority article would be what they knitted. One jacket body and one sleeve by 5 o'clock. The starting time was 3pm and soon silence reigned as twenty concentrating brows studied the work at hand. Quietly I packed up my tins and boxes. My Battenburg cake had been a tour de force. It is fiddly to make, but that's only because you have to make four sponges (or two depending on how many colours you use) and then construct them using apricot jam as glue before wrapping them in their marzipan jacket. As I walked past the open bag of one of the WW ladies I saw the ill concealed evidence of one of my apple turnovers too. Clearly someone knows a good thing when she sees one!
Unsurprisingly the matinee jacket competition was won by the hosts. "Well, that's all they do. No difficulty in doing what you always do is there?" said Mrs P. I won the tea though. On the way home, when I "discovered" the box of biscuits and cookies that I had accidentally left on the bus; our team all agreed that it had been a different day and that if matinee jackets were to be our hardest competition this year then we had little to worry about.
Reaching home Mildred was delighted to find one of Henrietta's eggs waiting for her in the bath, which together with the one that she'd laid the previous day in my winter boots gave us the perfect boiled egg tea. Parshul dropped in later and asked whether we both would like to go racing at Epsom. I'd never been to a horse race so of course I squealed with delight. Mildred gave a somewhat ungracious acceptance and Parshul strode off into the night air giving me a peck on the cheek as he left. Horse racing. At my time of life as well. What larks.
