Tuesday November 24th 1992
Phone calls from old friends, a draft poem, and a strange coincidence.
Spoke to John Norris1 from Crookhey on Friday - rang to congratulate us on Joseph2.
Said Crookhey was to be turned back to a school, but they’d knocked the gym block down.
John and EileenMorris3 rang tonight to wish us all the best. Eileen said she was having all the family for Christmas - I said does that mean she spent the whole time trapped in the kitchen with a turkey?
‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m not that kind of woman anymore - John does a lot of the cooking...’
‘Yes,’ I heard John say, ‘Pheasant, pheasant, pheasant, salmon, pheasant, pheasant......’
Present
She came years ago
to give me a present.
I hardly even noticed.
Yesterday she came
and brought me her present.
Perhaps I’ll look at it tomorrow.
She came today
and gave me the present.
I open it now.Later a strange coincidence: Omnibus programme on BBC - Leonora Carrington4 was brought up at Crookhey Hall.
John Norris was a wonderful child care officer at Crookhey Hall School, near Cockerham, when I worked there while a student. He had been a mining engineer working all over the world. He had a flat at the top of the school where he lived with his son Keith who had Down Syndrome.
Joseph was born on 29th October 1992.
John Morris was Assistant Headmaster at Crookhey when I worked there. He was a great countryman who believed it was his god given right to walk directly from A to B across the Lancashire moors no matter who owned the land – and he knew most of the landowners anyway. He was an expert fly fisherman and a Warden on the Lune for a while. I spent several cold nights in waders watching his skill. He was also a keen shooter. He would hunt hares across the fields near the school. One day, through the toilet window, he saw a large rat in his backyard. Pulling up his trousers, he grabbed his shotgun and fired both barrels at the rat, blasting away most of the windowsill at the same time. He probably shot all the pheasant himself.
I wrote about Leonora Carrington here: