"Do I know you from somewhere?" Daisy greets me as I arrive. It's been four days since I visited. It's late afternoon and she is busy entertaining another patient and her regular visitor.
"How's it all going?" I ask as we settle ourselves down in the familiar positions next to her bed by the window. "Well I'm still here." I notice the woman who was terribly ill is gone. "She died." says Daisy matter-of factly. "What about Doreen with the dementia?" "Dunno. Gone." I notice that of the six beds, four patients are new. Only one of them is young.
Daisy looks well, but it seems to me that she's getting thinner. "I helped that woman opposite get into bed earlier" she says, "there were no nurses around to help her." "Carry on like that and they'll have to put you on the payroll" I remark. "Well I've started using their toilet when the patients' one is occupied!" she says cheerfully.
We have a converation about her worry about her flat and her conviction that the people in the basement flat are stealing, even though a neighbour did visit with news that it was all OK. "I got a phone bill for SIXTY QUID" she says in horror "so they must be using me phone now as well".
I try to divert her back to her stories about her work. Daisy came from a family of expert seamstresses. She left school at fourteen to go and work for a top bespoke tailor in Savile Row, where she was all her working life. In those days tailors specialised in certain garments – either trousers, waistcoats or jackets and coats. Daisy's firm were jacket and coat tailors. She became a tailoress. "More like 'tailor-arses', they used to say" jokes Daisy.
"I did lapels and buttonholes. 'Course, the buttonholes were all stitched by hand like the edges of the lapels. I used to do all the interlinings and padding once the pattern was cut. Doing buttonholes was really intricate. You had to have every stitch the same, through thick fabric and it didn't get cut open right until the end. One small slip of the scissors and a stitch cut by mistake – and the whole thing was ruined."
"What was the money like?" I ask. "At first I got 13 bob (13/-) a week (about 62 pence in today's money). By the time I retired in 1959, I was on just over two quid." The idea that you could live on £2 a week is hard to compute – and the idea that she retired while I was still at primary school, even harder to grasp. "Was that enough to manage on?" I ask. "Well, I lived at home with me mum and dad but we still used to manage a hop picking holiday every summer."
To describe hop picking as a holiday is feintly ridiculous in this day and age. But Daisy was relatively lucky. "Me auntie lived nearby so we used to go back to hers at night." Those less fortunate, would spend their week or so, accommodated by the farmer in Nissan huts next to the hop fields with only straw bales to sleep on and cooking on open fires outdoors. The pickers would arrive in families, often from the East end and could earn a few pence per bushell for the picked hops, which came from the vines which were pulled off the lines of twine in huge tangles. Everyone would join in, even small children. Then the bushells were stacked up and taken to the oast house for drying.
I grew up in the area and I can remember playing in the oast houses, and hop pickers' children coming to our school for a few weeks if their parents arrived before the end of term. We thought them rather exotic, coming all the way from The Smoke like that. It might only have been fifty miles away, but to us, London was practically another country.
A nurse arrives to give Daisy her daily anti-DVT injection. "What's she asking?" Daisy asks me, playing to the gallery. I tell her. "Do I have to have it?" she asks "me arms are already like bleeding pin cushions, look." She rolls up her sleeves theatrically. "But we give you this injection in your stomach" explains the nice nurse, who is gracious and kindly. "Does she really have to have it?" I ask "No she doesn't," says the nurse. "I'll tell the doctor." Daisy looks relieved, although I'm not sure whether this is a threat or not. "You need to keep mobilising well, Daisy." says the nurse helpfully.
The food orderly arrives in the bay. It's time to get home for my own supper. "I think I better be on my way now Daisy, but why not come to the door with me and get a bit of extra exercise." She comes along and we kiss at the door. I watch her through the little window as she shuffles away with her zimmer frame. I think she is going quite fast... after all food awaits. I hope for her sake it isn't pastry. When your teeth are gone, it can be a challenge.
If you 're interested, there's more about hops here .
"Do I know you from somewhere?" Daisy greets me as I arrive. It's been four days since I visited. It's late afternoon and she is busy entertaining another patient and her regular visitor.
"How's it all going?" I ask as we settle ourselves down in the familiar positions next to her bed by the window. "Well I'm still here." I notice the woman who was terribly ill is gone. "She died." says Daisy matter-of factly. "What about Doreen with the dementia?" "Dunno. Gone." I notice that of the six beds, four patients are new. Only one of them is young.
Daisy looks well, but it seems to me that she's getting thinner. "I helped that woman opposite get into bed earlier" she says, "there were no nurses around to help her." "Carry on like that and they'll have to put you on the payroll" I remark. "Well I've started using their toilet when the patients' one is occupied!" she says cheerfully.
We have a converation about her worry about her flat and her conviction that the people in the basement flat are stealing, even though a neighbour did visit with news that it was all OK. "I got a phone bill for SIXTY QUID" she says in horror "so they must be using me phone now as well".
I try to divert her back to her stories about her work. Daisy came from a family of expert seamstresses. She left school at fourteen to go and work for a top bespoke tailor in Savile Row, where she was all her working life. In those days tailors specialised in certain garments – either trousers, waistcoats or jackets and coats. Daisy's firm were jacket and coat tailors. She became a tailoress. "More like 'tailor-arses', they used to say" jokes Daisy.
"I did lapels and buttonholes. 'Course, the buttonholes were all stitched by hand like the edges of the lapels. I used to do all the interlinings and padding once the pattern was cut. Doing buttonholes was really intricate. You had to have every stitch the same, through thick fabric and it didn't get cut open right until the end. One small slip of the scissors and a stitch cut by mistake – and the whole thing was ruined."
"What was the money like?" I ask. "At first I got 13 bob (13/-) a week (about 62 pence in today's money). By the time I retired in 1959, I was on just over two quid." The idea that you could live on £2 a week is hard to compute – and the idea that she retired while I was still at primary school, even harder to grasp. "Was that enough to manage on?" I ask. "Well, I lived at home with me mum and dad but we still used to manage a hop picking holiday every summer."
To describe hop picking as a holiday is feintly ridiculous in this day and age. But Daisy was relatively lucky. "Me auntie lived nearby so we used to go back to hers at night." Those less fortunate, would spend their week or so, accommodated by the farmer in Nissan huts next to the hop fields with only straw bales to sleep on and cooking on open fires outdoors. The pickers would arrive in families, often from the East end and could earn a few pence per bushell for the picked hops, which came from the vines which were pulled off the lines of twine in huge tangles. Everyone would join in, even small children. Then the bushells were stacked up and taken to the oast house for drying.
I grew up in the area and I can remember playing in the oast houses, and hop pickers' children coming to our school for a few weeks if their parents arrived before the end of term. We thought them rather exotic, coming all the way from The Smoke like that. It might only have been fifty miles away, but to us, London was practically another country.
A nurse arrives to give Daisy her daily anti-DVT injection. "What's she asking?" Daisy asks me, playing to the gallery. I tell her. "Do I have to have it?" she asks "me arms are already like bleeding pin cushions, look." She rolls up her sleeves theatrically. "But we give you this injection in your stomach" explains the nice nurse, who is gracious and kindly. "Does she really have to have it?" I ask "No she doesn't," says the nurse. "I'll tell the doctor." Daisy looks relieved, although I'm not sure whether this is a threat or not. "You need to keep mobilising well, Daisy." says the nurse helpfully.
The food orderly arrives in the bay. It's time to get home for my own supper. "I think I better be on my way now Daisy, but why not come to the door with me and get a bit of extra exercise." She comes along and we kiss at the door. I watch her through the little window as she shuffles away with her zimmer frame. I think she is going quite fast... after all food awaits. I hope for her sake it isn't pastry. When your teeth are gone, it can be a challenge.
If you 're interested, there's more about hops here .