…than to go out mapping with him in the face of an English soak-to-the-skin drizzle.

I’d gotten an invite to a “Shakespeare Schools Festival” for Friday 11 November at Gordon Craig Theatre (4 schools, with Micky’s Presdales School on first with an astonishingly good extract from The Tempest).

Friday was dry, but the following day was a classic English day (which is to say, it was wet). Just as the Inuit are said to have 32 words for ‘snow’, we English have 32 words for ‘rain’, and this one was “drizzle”, which is a light rain that looks ever so innocent, but will be running in small streams down the inside of your trouser legs in 30 minutes if you do not have the correct clothing.

I was fine. I’d bought a Mountain Warehouse Extreme ISODRY 10 000 fully-waterproof jacket (Mountain Warehouse have a store in Nottingham centre, so I could try it on before buying; it is not only fully waterproof but also breathable). After an hour I was perfectly dry, but their jackets were soaked through, poor little sots. We did both sides of one little road then quickly scooted back home.

I did take a photo of them & Buddy the dog, but their mum did not want them plastered across an international Diary page. So, instead, I present to you (ta-da-da-daa-da-daaa! (fanfare)) more Ware Khazis photographed on Queens Road, Ware:–

For those of you that haven’t kept up ([1] [2] [3]):–

English houses were built with outside toilets (‘Khazis’) from Victorian times right up through the 1920s & 1930s. That only began to change following WWII and finally stopped following the widespread housing renewal of the 1960s & 1970s, during which many properties in Britain got indoor bathrooms for the first time. Although my father had been brought up in a Victorian-era house with an outside-only toilet & no bathroom, I had not realised that such a situation was normal all the way up to WW2. It was due to constantly seeing Khazis whilst mapping the extensive 1920s housing in Carlton, then seeing the identical buildings whilst mapping in Ware, that I realised that Khazis were a normal feature rather than being an aberration. Indeed, a nearby neighbour & friend has read my first Diary on this & commented to me that the evidence at the rear of his (Victorian) house is also for a Khazi that has subsequently been demolished.

Finally, the area of Ware where my grandchildren live is called King Georges Fields & is named after one of England’s best-loved Kings (King George V, 1910-36), of whom it is said that he was king for one third of all the people then alive.

Extra:

Whilst putting the houses up on the map I discovered a shot of Micky & Buddy which illustrates perfectly how wet & dispiriting the day was & yet should also be acceptable to her mum: