Shed Sheds", which argues that a "place of retreat" is a "male necessity" which provides men with solace, especially during their retirement. In contrast, in the novel "Cold Comfort Farm" by Stella Gibbons, Aunt Ada Doom saw "something nasty in the woodshed" and retreated to her bed for half a century. To woodshed, or 'shed, in jazz jargon, is "to shut oneself up, away from the world, and practice long and hard, as in 'going to the woodshed'." The word is recorded in English since 1481, as "shadde", possibly a variant of shade. The word shade comes from the Old English
Stella Gibbons Malden Crescent, Kentish Town, a working-class district of North London, where Telford established the medical practice in which he continued for the remainder of his life. Stella, the couple's first child, was born on 5 January 1902; two brothers, Gerald and Lewis, followed in 1905 and 1909 respectively. The atmosphere in the Kentish Town house echoed that of the elder Gibbons's household, and was dominated by Telford's frequent bouts of ill-temper, drinking, womanising and occasional acts of violence. Stella later described her father as "a bad man, but a good doctor". He was charitable to his poorer patients and imaginative