Marie’s September Article

  I never thought I would want the sunshine to go away and the rain to return but after a hot, dry July and then the first 3 weeks of August being sweltering hot, the slightly cooler weather was a blessing.  The gardens suffered and we were told not to weed as this left a space for the sun to beat down and make the plants even dryer.  However, the weeds seemed to flourish.

I found a magazine from 2006 when Peter Allan was our Vicar and in my letter I mentioned we had amazingly hot weather in July and there was a real worry about lack of water. Does that ring a bell? But that year it started raining in August with violent storms and torrential rain. 

When we were children at the end of the tomato season our Dad cleared the greenhouse to make room for his Chrysanthemums.  We each had a cardboard box and an old woollie to ripen the green tomatoes. Did you know that if you put a red tomato in with the green ones, it encourages them to ripen.  This reminds me of our teacher at Hartshill Junior school when she sat a boy next to me as although he was a clever boy, his work was so untidy, covered with ink blotches.  The teacher thought that as I was so neat and tidy, it might rub off on him, but I don’t think it did.

Have you ever thought what you would save, after your loved ones, if you had a fire or flood?  I would save my photograph albums because they contain all my memories.  When we went down to the air raid shelter during the war, our mother had a tin box and a large purse containing our birth certificates, insurance policies and her bible.

There can’t be many of us who walk a trouble-free path through life but an American Pastor, William Arthur Ward, said, “We can throw stones, complain about them, stumble on them; climb over them or build with them.”

Marie Cove.