Blogspot #3 Sunday in Southampton

After looking over old pictures and reading old letters, I was reminded more clearly of my first Sunday in Southampton. As was our usual, Eric and I wanted to attend church. We asked if there was a church we could walk to. Auntie Dorothy gave us directions, but was not encouraging about what we would find. She had not been there in years and did not intend to help out by taking us there! We ended up walking to little English church--just how you would picture it. Going through the wooden doors, we joined about a dozen gray haired matrons and the minister. We, as usual, carried our Bibles with us to church, expecting to have a need to follow along in Scripture with the pastor. But here we learned to pick up a song book and a prayer book at the back of the church and then follow the form chosen for that day. It was the first step on a path of learning about post-Christianity England.

After lunch, Eric, his mother and I walked across the large road toward the docks and spent the afternoon in the huge grassy sports field. Mum (While my mother was "Mom," Eric's mother was always "Mum," in good English style) was truly reliving her childhood for us that afternoon. She taught me to make daisy chains with the little wild daisys that totally covered the field. I learned to pick them with as much stem as possible, then carefully slit a "buttonhole" in each stem, sticking the stem of one daisy through the buttonhole in the stem of the next one.

It was a unique time in history that day in early June, 1966. Within sight were most of the ships of the English commercial lines--the cruise ships, etc. all tied up at docks and out into the harbor. The Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, had called a state of emergency as the Seaman's Strike caused each ship coming into port to join the strike. I had never seen so many ships in one spot, closely tied up like that. It made quite a stir in England, and evidently set records. We have some 8mm film showing us making the daisy chains with ships in the background.

At the end of the day, we headed back to 9 Mottisfont Close for high tea (supper). Often we stopped for fish and chips and carried them home for that evening meal. We were at a transition period of time where often the fish and chips, and sometimes a serving of peas, were wrapped in newsprint paper rather than the old way in yesterday's newspaper. In later visits to England many of the neighborhood fish and chips shops became curry shops.

In the next episode we will be off to London to find housing!