Am I through the ether yet?

The Perils of Being a Shrinking Violet

2009-08-02T08:40:00.000-07:00

Now anyone who knows me will agree I’m a shrinking violet, of the type to be voted ‘the woman most likely to get the vapors if asked to choose 7 succinct words to sum up all about herself’, so you can imagine my panic at being asked to do just that by Little Brown Dog.

Starting with ‘anxious’ and moving rapidly along to ‘youthful’ maybe stopping briefly at‘stout’ and ‘truthful’ on the way. Alright, maybe not youthful, but it is hard to choose, there are so many that would make an agreeable fit, so I go for the easy way out, but sadly, not the best way to avoid marital strife.

I give him my most winning smile.

ME Sum me up in 7 words, my personality, you know, what I’m like.

(Heart fluttering, this is a man who loves me, who’s known me for years and years. I hope for ‘cultured, calm, sophisticated’, maybe even loveable’.)

HIM (eyeing me skeptically) Hmm! Bossy, Assertive, Indolent, Sensitive, Creative, Reserved and Focused

ME What do you mean BOSSY and ASSERTIVE. You must be joking, Me! Tell me exactly when am I ever ASSERTIVE. Am I ever BOSSY I’d like to know?

HIM (Putting on his cycling shoes) Oh! I don't know. You just are. I’m off out for an hour. (Please remember this is a man who broke his thigh bone only weeks ago while riding like a maniac on his mountain bike.)

ME If you are going on your bike take care and keep to the road, don’t go up on the Downs it’s far too muddy. You’ll come off and this time remember to take your phone. Don’t ride through the village. It’s too risky, they drive like maniacs. And if you’re going past the shop, pick up…

HIM Anything else?

ME Yes I want to know why INDOLENT, why do you say I’m indolent? (I’m on dodgy ground here. I can think of many answers to this one, so I press on quickly before he reminds me, who always makes the tea in the morning, or washes up, or gets up to answer the phone?) And SENSITIVE, am I that sensitive?

HIM (laughing) O.K. perhaps not all the time, but you can be a bit woossy. Perhaps emotional might be better. You get upset easily.

ME Yeh! I GET UPSET ‘COS YOU THINK I’M BOSSY. I can feel the tears pricking at the backs of my eye lids. He knows me so well. Perhaps I am a bit sensitive at times. (I’m thinking sensitive, that’s not too bad and I positively like creative.

ME CREATIVE. Is that ‘cos of my beadmaking , writing and stuff?

HIM (looking at me quizzically), No, not really. The garden, you’re creative in the garden.

ME (I can be creative with the household accounts too. I'm thinking about the two new tops hanging in the wardrobe that he hasn’t seen yet and wondering if I’ve destroyed the receipt. Two for one, I’d call it thrifty though it’s possible HE might have another name)

ME What were the other two. RESERVED, yes I agree with that. As a child I was called shy, but I’m not really. I just like to keep things too myself, sometimes I just can’t be bothered to be more sociable. I’m too idle to make the effort. (Blast - idle/indolent what’s the difference.)

HIM Don't forget focused too. When you start something you go off like a rocket. You can be a bit obsessed. Like all the time you spend on Purple Coo, and writing and your other stuff, um! hobbies.

ME O/K. I’ll accept focused, reserved and creative aren’t too bad, even being sensitive has its good points, but bossy and assertive. You can come up with something better than that, but he didn’t. He escaped out of the door and went off on his bike.

2009-07-11T06:04:00.000-07:00

Arvon Calling 3 (for parts 1 & 2 see below)

Following on from the sheer relief of arriving after a long train journey on a particularly hot day, my very first impression was dangerously close to disenchantment and I puzzled why. I liked the tutors. They were supportive, witty and as kindly as they were specific in their criticism. I certainly expected and could have handled a much tougher approach. My fellow Arvonites turned out to be a cheerful friendly bunch, as frank and open as any I could wish to meet, but by the end of the first main day I was confused.

Maybe it was me. Had I expected something more rigorous and academic? I’ve always tended to feel isolated in a group. Was the gossip more than I was prepared to handle, the air of candid self revelation too unsettling? It took me a while to relax and accept I was there to write positive women’s fiction, about love and relationships, the cheerful entertainment often labeled ‘Chick Lit’ or more pompously ‘Popular women’s fiction’, so why not just loosen up and have a good time?

O.K. so sometimes it felt like I was on holiday with a group of friends, a hen party where we’d temporarily mislaid the bride. When emotions got too heavy maybe it wobbled into women’s encounter group territory, but so what? I needed to let go and enjoy myself and I did.

Katie and Judy were hugely generous in their support

The group may have been driven to write but we also brought our pasts with us, bound up as we were in the minor and profound, comical and weighty ins and outs of our everyday lives,. A few didn’t make it to the end of the week. Some women were so driven they confessed to getting up at five am to write before their kids woke up. Others admitted a significant birthday had left them clamoring for change. All seemed far hungrier than me. I love to write, it’s fun, but I can’t say I’m driven. It is as simple as that.

I finished the week encouraged and inspired. No longer were we a disparate group of learners and tutors but a bunch of friends; we’d cooked and eaten together, shared the wine, the laughter and the tears. After one particularly late evening carousing on the terrace, when wine and secrets were liberally shared, the tutors appeared as bright as ever the next morning, no one would have ever guessed it had been party time the night before, except Judy had forsaken her chic high heels for a pair of very comfy flatties and Katie, as elegant, well made up and cheerful as ever, somehow managed to put her cardie on inside out.

I leant many new things on the Arvon course and not all of them on the published curriculum.
There is such a thing as Obscrab (An obscene version of scrabble),
On a wild night out, a true friend will always carry a scrunchie in her pocket to tie your hair back when you are sick.
A slag bag is what you take with you on the off chance you may meet someone and want to stay out all night (contains clean knickers and a toothbrush apparently.)
Women of maturity are just as able to write ‘fluffy chick lit,' as those of twenty five.

But most important of all I learnt I’ve written a novel that, with luck and perseverance, stood a chance of being published.
My overall impression of the course? It wasn’t as intellectually tough and demanding as I expected, but emotionally it was much harder. I actually got far less real criticism than I deserved and I certainly was less critical of other writers than I anticipated, probably because they were all so very talented. Finally, all I need to do now is a spot of serious rewriting and find a high-quality Literary Agent who’s keen to take on a new author? A doddle!

2009-07-09T13:04:00.000-07:00

Arvon Calling, part 2 (See below for part 1)

Task 1
Do only gifted writers head off for Arvon? It certainly seemed like that on my recent Commercial Fiction course; everyone else was so darn talented. Now I have no qualms about reading my work to an audience, any old rubbish, if approached with the right voice and intonation, can be squeezed by as entertainment and I trusted my theatrical skills, honed by years of reading bedtime stories, would get me through the first task. When I finished reading out loud and looked about me, I felt a rush of relief, a few of my fellow students had been taken in, some even nodded appreciatively. Well I may have fooled a small number of my peers, but not those talented and charming assassins, Katie and Judy.

Following my first feedback I hung my head, the worst sort of failure, a female fiction writer unable to get a grip on her viewpoint. A woman who head-hops, constitutionally unable to imprint her reader on the main character, a heinous crime in popular fiction. I went into the next day with ‘Could do Better,’ weighing down my shoulders.

Judy in full flow.

Task 2.
Write about someone who is stuck in a lift for 6 hours with a person they don’t like. This time, despite severe misgivings at my stereotypical depiction of a teenage hoodie, a nice lady from the church and the perils of drinking too much tea, quite a few laughed and I perked up a bit for the next task.

Task 3.
Write a bad sex scene. A frisson of anxiety ran round the assembled novices.( Is frisson an o.k. word, I'm no longer sure) Our lone male, the alleged S&M pornographer from Edinburgh seemed calm enough, but I watched with interest as my female companions, almost to a woman, folded their arms and crossed their legs in the type of unison that would have done credit to a troupe of chorus girls. Arvon being an Internet free establishment, no one had been able to find out exactly what he dabbled in, but rumors are rife.

“Hmm! Pardon, You want us to write a sex scene badly?” I gawped. ‘Pulsating piston’ alliterating into mind.
Katie raised her eyes a little higher to heaven than strictly necessary, then Judy read out a scene I already knew, from ‘Blowing it.’ It’s good.

“Now, all you have to do is write a scene about bad sex, either funny or sad, but try to keep off the clichés.” The last part was said with unnecessary emphasis in my direction, but it could have been me being touchy.

I completed my piece of writing that afternoon, keeping it serious and brief,

"A one night stand with a resulting pregnancy should do the trick.Get it all finished in a couple of paragraphs and a bit of dialogue. Best to get it over and done with quickly." Next day I maneuvered into a position where I’d be among the first to read and it passed off reasonably well. One or two other writers were serious, the rest hilarious. If you ever come across a timeless love scene involving intimate massage oil, passion in the sand dunes and something I won't mention, having the appearance of breaded haddock, I heard it first at Arvon, far too rude for a family friendly blog, probably not very funny the way I’m retelling, but hysterical at the time.

As for our man from Edinburgh, left till last he was surprisingly tame. Young lovers and a tryst in the heather and a nasty encounter with midges just outside Oban, so there were sighs of relief all round.

(I'll tell the final truth tomorrow)

Arvon Calling

2009-07-07T07:45:00.000-07:00

Ted Huges looking down on us all

After the relief and euphoria of arrival, Earl grey tea with walnut cake, a pretty bedroom, stunning views and rain on what was proving to be one of the hottest days of the year in every other part of Britain except Heptonstall in Yorkshire, I decided it was worth booking into Lumb Bank if only for the scenery and ambience. If I managed a spot of writing, so much the better, and all under the watchful eye of a faintly disapproving Ted Hughes.

Looking around we were a mixed bunch. In age somewhere between thirty and sixtyish I guessed, with a fair smattering of rural and urban, from Orkney to Stoke Newington, with at least two Welsh farmers, (one retired), a surprising number of chain smokers, a smattering of hard drinking journalists, keen to write fiction of more than 2000 words, a sad faced accountant, a brace of bright young lawyers and a lovely girl who confessed to having once set her laptop on fire when she opened the lid onto a scented candle. All women except for a quietly spoken pornographer from Edinburgh who dabbled in web based errotica of the S & M variety. I was told later by a regular Arvonite that you always got one of those. She maintained their inclusion was so common as to be compulsory.
The two contrasting views from my room
Though not an outgoing type myself I was on nodding terms with the woman I’d shared a taxi with from Hebden Bridge, who at sixty feared she was too old to write fluffy chic lit, so had opened a farm shop just in case. (Later to prove the unlikely author of a witty sex scene involving an over enthusiastic lover called Bill the Bonker, nail varnish and a chicken shed, but more of that another day.)

At the end of my first meeting with the other Arvonites, before we’d even been introduced to the tutors or explored the possibilities of the garden, I realized booze would prove significant.
“Wine to accompany supper is provided on the first night,” we were told, and any more had to be ordered from the village.
Julie, later known as The Wine Monitor, grabbed a sheet of paper.
“Jot down what you’ll drink over the remaining four days and add your money to the kitty accordingly.” Determined to remain clear headed for the tasks to come I scribbled ‘2 bottles, red’ and handed in my cash, feeling hopelessly outclassed by the 6, 8 or even 10 bottles noted down by the majority of my fellow students. Clearly writing exciting commercial prose wouldn't be the only pleasurable item on this Lumb Bank agenda.

The garden
Our tutors, Judy and Katie, joined the group for dinner and after coffee and a few mutterings as to the meanness of the evening's wine ration, we settled back to take in the week’s programme.
An early riser, I was surprised to find morning sessions weren’t to start before 10 am but I kept this to myself, allowing us time to write in the morning I presumed. We were to start with dialogue, viewpoint and other general stuff. Our intoductory task, to write a first meeting between two characters, getting over a sense of scene and place, with dialogue…. Show not tell and steer clear of adverbs, we were warned. A doddle I thought innocently, unaware my 'viewpoint' was about to be slapped down in no uncertain manner. Never again will I include 'shiver' and 'pleasurable' in the same sentence.

Reasons to be cheery

2009-06-15T02:23:00.000-07:00

A few pictures from my garden with never a word in sight.

Get your kicks on route 6

2009-05-18T09:41:00.000-07:00

‘Should you ever plan to motor west’ well north actually, but I was staying at Wester Lix, just off the A85, before you get into Killin (Perthshire) and it was route 6 not 66, and I was on a bike, but hey, when you’re on holiday your allowed a bit of poetic licence.

Not long ago we had a few days in a cottage to dream of, one that comes complete with sauna, deer in the garden and red squirrels looking cute in the larches, but best of all it has almost immediate access to the Sustrans National Cycle Network, the bit that goes from Killin to Callander. That’s nearly thirty miles of traffic free cycling, mainly on old railway tracks across the highlands.

Now I’m a bit of a fair weather cyclist. I’ve got all the kit, the bike with myriad gears, cycling tights, jaunty red cycling helmet. All I’m lacking are the big strong calves and lungs like a pair of organ bellows, and you can’t buy them in Halfords, but whether you’re a rush at it, macho, keen mountain biker or a more sedate pedal plodder like me, the Sustrans Cyclway is brilliant. (The whole route goes from Inverness to Glasgow, but give a woman a break, I’m not quite up to that level yet.)

From the Wester Lix/Killin end we started off downhill into a chilly east wind; within a few miles we were whizzing through a beautiful fern draped railway cutting and then on to the most romantic old viaduct with spectacular views over Glen Ogle. On the return journey, that same breeze was to prove very helpful. Not having the time (or the legs) to go the whole way to Callander, a round trip of nearly sixty miles, I’d intended in doing about twelve miles before returning. Being downhill for most of the way to begin with is a bit disconcerting, and the faster you go downhill, the more alarming is the thought of the long haul back. Maybe it was an illusion but apart from the very steep bit coming into Lochearnhead, where on the return journey even the ‘Keen mountain biker’ I’m married to, was heard to gasp, “It’s bl**dy steep!’ it seemed to be downhill on the way there and almost as easy on the way back, but maybe my calves were getting used to the pain by then.

Fortunately there’s a convenient refueling stop at the Old Library Tea Room, in Balquhidder, so I made time for a huge slice of poppy seed cake and an Earl Grey tea by the open fire, before making a short detour to pay my respects at the grave of that old reprobate Rob Roy MacGregor, before an unhurried cycle back to our cottage. I know if I was a hard core cyclist I’d have gone all the way, but doing the ride in little bits does leave the remaining twelve or so miles as an excuse for another visit to the lovely holiday cottage, as if I needed one.

(We stayed in one of the lovely Wester Lix Cottages http://www.westerlix.co.uk/)

Disability Rights for Mice

2009-04-04T01:14:00.000-07:00

Now I could never be accused of over sentimentality when it comes to animals. I feed the birds, chase squirrels out of the garden and sometimes pick up the pieces my spiteful old moggy brings home. Not birds, they’re not his scene, he catches mice, in all shapes and sizes, but as far as I’m concerned there are only two sorts, the very quick and the dead.

If alive, he drops them on the kitchen floor, and then calls me. That distinct yowling noise has me running for the cardboard tube, the mouse scuttles up the tube and within minutes is back in the garden, bragging of its adventures, ready to be caught another day.

Dead, they’re picked up by the tail and slung out of the back door, a salutary reminder to others of their kind that, if you’re a walking dinner and only half way up the food chain, gardens are dangerous places. Only this time the dead mouse hanging by its tail about to be slung out, wriggled. If not dead, then maybe injured, fainted, shocked? Into a box for observation and a bit of apple, death anticipated within the hour. But it didn’t do the expected, and we forgot the granddaughters were coming.

“Can we keep it,” they squealed, donning metaphorical doctors’ outfits as they rushed through the door. Two blond heads together over the box, much discussion, a few sunflower seeds and a peanut later,
“We know what’s wrong. It’s sprained a leg.”
“Maybe we should…” I was reluctant; the word euthanasia was left hanging in the air.
“But you can’t, it’s disabled,” they wailed in shocked disbelief at my callously practical solution.

Heads together once more and soon, blu-tacked to the freezer, our instructions.

Anyone know what a wood mouse likes for dinner, ‘cos this one’s no longer stuck half way up the food chain? It fallen on three of its little feet, and busy resting the sprained one. I’m hoping for a miraculous recovery, otherwise it looks like we’ve got a pet.

P.S Grandad is at this moment up the workshop, making a cage.

Diana and Actaeon

2009-02-06T13:10:00.000-08:00

Well a spot of good news in these times of financial crisis, the painting Diana and Achaeton is now jointly owned by the National Galleries of Scotland and England. A sigh of relief all round then, the cash strapped 7^th Duke of Sutherland is better off by £50million, a snip by all accounts; he could have asked for more.

Now Titian does a powerful painting, and I’ve no objection to us all owning the divine femme fatale and her doomed youth. It’s not the purchase of the saucy picture that smarts, but the irony that, in 2009, the year of Homecoming Scotland, when Scotland is doing its utmost to encourage its own diaspora to return to the motherland, it pays a large fortune to the descendants of the very family that helped to kick my lot out in the first place.

I’m talking Highland Clearances now, in particular the scattering of the Mackay’s of Strathnaver, from whom I am descended.

It seems a lot of dosh to pay to the descendants of the family who burnt my ancestors out of their homes, dispersing the Mackay’s of Strathnaver, Sutherland, far and wide across the world. O.K. my grandfather’s grandfather didn’t move far, to Betty Hill to be precise, but everything his family cherished and had worked for over for countless generations, was torn from them. Even the roof of their house was burnt over their heads. A piece of charred roof timber remained in the family for years, a harsh reminder of what cruelty and exploitation, in the guise of land improvement and agrarian reform, can do to a tenant people.

Starting in the early 1800s, the idea was to clear out the slothful, self sufficient, peasantry to make way for sheep, thousand of Cheviots, the profits of wool and mutton a far more tempting prospect than the low rents that could be squeezed from the tiny townships that nestled along the River Naver. Over a period of less than twenty years, the thriving population numbering almost two thousand, was reduced to 257, and many of those were shepherds brought in from the borders, hardly a Mackay was left in sight. They were all dispersed to Canada and other New World settlements, or crammed into tiny allotment plots on the coast, with quaint names like ‘Betty Hill’. There these oat growing, cattle farming, drovers were told to be fishermen, off a coast with some of the roughest seas in the world and with no natural harbors.

Countess ‘Betty’ Sutherland is reputed to have written to a friend, after being told of the plight of the people who’d been cleared from their homes in her name,

“Scotch people are of a happier constitution and do not fatten like the larger breed of animals.”

When this outrage was carried out, the Sutherland family owned one and half million acres of land, the Mackay’s of Strathnaver were left with little more than the clothes on their backs and a few charred belongings, and the unfamiliar smell of sheep in their noses. So you can see, art lover as I am, I won’t be visiting Diana and Achaeton in their new home in the near future.

There's little left of the once thriving townships.

St Columba Parish Church. From the pulpit of this church the Mackay's were told they had to leave their homes. It's now Strathnaver Museum

Mystery Attacker Bumps off Pigeon

2009-01-26T08:38:00.001-08:00

Mystery Attacker Bumps off Pigeon

Sometimes bad luck takes more than one form and what is mild irritation for one, turns up as catastrophe for another, as in the case the unwary wood pigeon, tempted by the peanuts in my garden. For this unlucky bird, bad luck took the form of the bolt from the blue. Well I think it did but I can’t be sure, you see, I didn’t see it any more than the pigeon did.
Not very clear? I’ll explain. Last Saturday was the RSPB bird count day. In my case this entailed an hour at the upstairs bedroom window, cat firmly by my side, peering out at a laden bird table.
The usual everyday stuff flutters in, a handful of chaffinches, the customary squabbling greenfinches, and then five, or was it six, long tailed tits dash past, nothing to excite the rabid twitcher. The only rarer visitors are a pair of brambling overwintering in the plum tree, and a rather cocky bull finch.

Forty five minutes into the bird watch and I’m getting bored, with nothing in the garden now except three obese woodpigeons, plumped to perfection on the last few greens left in the vegetable patch. Normally their appearance would have me running up the garden waving my arms, but I let them be, and tick them off on my list.
A quick cup of tea is what I need. Stopping the timer I dash down to the kitchen. I swear I was gone for just a few minutes, but back to my post I find a completely empty garden, the only evidence that any birds have ever visited, a pile of pale grey feathers neatly ringing the bird table, one or two still drifting softly in mid air.
And I missed it. Some great big bird of prey snaffled one of the woodpigeons and I wasn’t there. The only bit of avian excitement since I saw the chiff chaff last summer and I was out of the room. How do I know it was a bird of prey? Well for once the cat had an alibi, and on close examination, many of the feathers had definite beak shaped chunks torn out.
Perhaps I should have ticked off eagle after all, but we don’t get many in West Sussex, and there’s the further quandary, should I enter two woodpigeons or three?

Does Everyone Have a Story to Tell About Woolworths?

2008-12-29T10:18:00.000-08:00

Does everyone have a story to tell about Woolworths? It's that sort of place.

“Meet you outside Woolworths,” was a familiar cry when I was a child. In the small country town where I grew up, Woolworths, with its distinctive red and white sign, was the place to meet up with friends, catch the bus, even shelter from the rain, but I seldom bought anything, not enough money, until my sister, a sophisticated five years older than me, thought up a cunning plan.

Then, Woolworths had the most wonderful broken biscuit counter. For 9d (less than 5p) you could buy a huge bag of broken biscuits. When we went to Saturday Morning Pictures, if we paid 6d (2.5p) and sat in the stalls along with the rough boys, instead of upstairs in the more expensive circle, with the ‘much nicer children,’ as instructed by our parents, we came out with a full shilling profit, enough to buy huge bag of broken biscuits, with a little cash to spare.

I once had a Saturday job in Woolworths. It morphed into the promise of employment for a whole summer and might have been the start of a wonderful career, except I got the sack.

I missed out on the offer of employment on the biscuit counter, fortunately my hair was too long to stuff into the hairnet, so ended up queening it over haberdashery. Tape measures, lustrous embroidery silks, pins and cottons were my domain. I’d jump off the bus, rush in through the door and grab the drawer to my till, just as the store cleaner finished mopping the wooden boards around my counter.

Tall, slow, harmless and monosyllabic, all us girls were scared of Garth the cleaner. He lurked deep in the stores along with his mop and huge wide broom, wearing a muddy brown overall and he longed to be friendly, but it wasn’t the done thing to be seen talking to Garth. He was considered far too weird.

Woolworths attracted hoards of eccentric customers, but my favourite memory is of a charming woman who sidled up to my counter almost every day and lifted small items, a paper of pins, a reel of sylco thread... Where ever she lived must have been full to bursting with filched stuff, but I never had the heart to report her to the supervisor.

But it wasn’t my tolerance of petty pilfering that got me the sack. I was asked to leave over a boy. My crime? One of the regular girls accused me of trying to get off with her boyfriend. Apparently she’d seen me smile at him, which was news to me. (Would it be too nasty to say he was probably one of Garths’s less appealing close relatives?) Assisted by two of her chums, this young lady trapped me by the staff lockers. I’d have probably been well and truly thumped if I hadn’t been rescued by another member of staff.

Even though I made it very clear that she was more than welcome to keep ‘her feller.’ I wouldn't have touched him with the end of Garth's mop, I was deemed not suitable for the job, told to collect my coat, pick up my wages and asked to leave. I never really felt the same about Woolies after that. It was a long time ago and, now that particular branch is about to close, I'm sorry for all of those who are about to lose their jobs, except for one of course, but I doubt if she still works there.

A Tale of Pink Sheep and the Dispossessed

2008-11-17T09:31:00.000-08:00

Should you ever visit the seaside village of Porlock Weir in Somerset, leave time for a very special walk. Don’t be put off by the steps leading up from the back of the Anchor Hotel, or the wafting smells of ducted fat and dustbins, a climb of a few feet takes you onto the edge of a sloping meadow dotted with surprisingly pink sheep.

A short stroll and you meet the toll road to Worthy, but don’t be tempted along that way, to the right is a little gate where walkers, free of charge , may gain access to the darkly brooding Yearnor woods.

Dark secrets cling to those wooded slopes and linger in the shadowy coombs, so it is just as well the leafy canopy also shelters Culbone Church, reputedly the smallest parish church in England. It nestles far into woods that were once home to the desperate and the dispossessed. A place of murky secrets where even the church leaflet tells of a chaplin, who in 1280 was indicted for clobbering a certain Albert of Esshe over the head with a hatchet, killing him.

The way is steep and treacherous and, despite the early morning sunshine, surprisingly gloomy as it winds through mysterious tunnels and whispering woods. It is the sort of place where wary walkers, if they tread lightly, look over their shoulders, ‘Just in case...’

As the path climbs upwards, precipitous slopes drop down to a hidden sea that can be heard but seldom glimpsed, though seabirds cry overhead. Occasionally the way is barred by a landslide and, as the detours point up even steeper slopes, the ghosts of the blocked paths twine secretively in the opposite direction with dark hints of fallen rocks and rotting trees, or something a little more more sinister.

These woods were once home to outcasts, those who had so offended society, or the church, that they were banished to a life clinging to these shelterless and inhospitable slopes. Once the homeless rebels had died out their place was taken by a colony of lepers, abandoned without hope or help. Apparently the last one died in 1622. No wonder the woods whisper and sigh to walkers as they pass.

Eventually, nearing the summit of the woodland climb, the leafy canopy opens to reveal Culbone Church. No road leads to this church but the path creeps alongside the church wall. As we opened the gate, two cats eyed us suspiciously from the base of the churchyard cross before slinking off into the long grass. Once inside, the church feels quaint, and cold and very holy, with that not quite Christian feel so common in many ancient places of worship. As we lingered in the nave, absorbing the atmosphere, marvelling at the 13^th century chancel and Norman font, the door rattled. Thinking another visitor struggled to enter, my companion opened the door and in slid one of the cats.

The next fifteen minutes were spent trying to catch the animal as, obviously no respecter of holy places, it scrambled cheerfully over areas where we were not prepared to trespass. At last, after much scrabbling under pews and keeping curses to a respectful minimum, the cat was cornered, caught and carried outside.

It was mid-day and the mood broken; any whispering in the woods banished as a huge party of ramblers announced their arrival long before they could be seen. We left the churchyard to its secrets and walked back the way we had come and lunch in Porlock Weir.

(With lots of thanks to Exmoorjane, who told me about this special place)

Salome up close and personal

2008-10-13T03:27:00.000-07:00

I'm not a frequent visitor to the opera, but last Saturday found me at the Met. No I haven't won the lottery and taken to spending my weekends in New York, I saw Salome at a backstreet cinema in Brighton, but she was live and in high definition from the Metropolitan Opera. Too high for my liking. Can you imagine a thirty foot soprano, a hefty woman of over forty, built like a Valkyrie but doing her best to impersonate a sixteen year old temptress. There were many moments when disbelief just couldn't be suspended.

Karita Mattila, with the voice like an murderous angel, sung her socks off. Well perhaps not socks, but during the dance of the seven veils, she did have two of her attendants remove her stockings with their teeth. Excuse me, but I don't remember that bit in the bible; but then it is a very modern interpretation of an old story, where a voluptuous Judean Princess dances for her lecherous old step father, on the promise of anything she wants. The hussy gives up the chance of half his kingdom and a whole hatful of jewels, in place of the head of John the Baptist on a platter. Well I ask you, what girl wouldn't?

Karita Mattila's voice is unbelievable, the production passable; it was the filming that was at fault. It is unwise to give tonsil inspection shots of a soprano in full volume. As Karita simpered and fluttered her false eyelashes in a girlish manner, begging kisses from the ever wrathful John the B, the close ups made her look more like a camp female impersonator, rather than the seductive temptress.

Wardrobe malfunctions didn't help. Whoever dressed the strapping soprano in a figure hugging satin nightie, outlining every cutting undergarment and bulging surface, deserves to be back dressing the Teletubbies. Even the KMB, never one to remark on women's clothing, was heard to whisper cruelly,

'Trapped cellulite.'

At the climax of the dance of the seven veils, the opera lovers in the theatre were treated to a full frontal Salome, presumably on the grounds that they were far enough away not to notice any details, us lesser mortals, gawping in the cinema, were spared. The family friendly version merely zoomed in on a close up of her muscular back, then swung to Herod's lecherous face. Until then, one of the better moments.

It was only when the severed head of the murdered John the Baptist was brought onto stage, that it was possible to forget all the grisly details of the too close camera work. When Salome sang passionately of her dark longings, all the flaws of the production ceased to matter. It was electrifying. Dwarfed by the ominous angels of death, as Salome sang,

' I have kissed your mouth, Jochanaan,'

the discrepancy between role and woman didn't matter. No stripling of a girl could have sung like that. I guess the entire audience tingled all over, I certainly did. As the curtain came down, there was a burst of spontaneous applause, and that doesn’t often happen in a cinema nowadays.

(There's a brilliant clip of Mattila performing Salome on You tube, if I had the skills I'd have loaded it for you, but I haven't, so I didn't, Sorry.)

The Garden in September

2008-09-22T05:19:00.000-07:00

Tiny golden leaves from the silver birch tree are on the lawn this morning. Soon all this will be gone. How sad.

You can never be too careful with Hedgehogs

2008-09-07T04:15:00.000-07:00

Deep shame. I nearly polished off a hedgehog and all through my own carelessness. When the peas were finished and getting into a manky tangle, I chopped them off at ground level. Apparently if you leave the roots in the ground it helps to fix the nitrogen in the soil, then I untangled the spent plants for the compost bin and, in a moment of thrift, rolled up the pea netting for use next year. Ever short of space, and of a slightly slovenly nature, I bunged the pea netting out of sight in the handy little gap between my workshop and the fence and there it stayed forgotten, until a couple of days ago, when I heard a,

'Thump, thump', coming from behind the shed.

KMB peered into the gap, then gave me a stern look. A hedgehog, one of four that very sensibly live in next door's garden, was completely entangled in the pea netting.

'It's going to die' I wailed, 'And it'll be all my fault.'

'Get the kitchen scissors.' I was told.

It took ages to snip him free. The poor little chap kept trying to curl up while we prised him open gently and pulled off each piece of nasty green plastic.

Once de-stringed, we laid him gently in a shady part of the garden with a bowl of water by his side.

'He's dead,' I muttered, consumed with guilt. When he uncurled slightly this changed to, 'He's gone all floppy; he's fainted from shock.'

I won't share what KMB said to me, as it was very uncomplimentary. So I left the hedgehog alone, already wondering where to dig a deep hole to get rid of the evidence of my stupidity. A short while later slurping noises told me he'd recovered and was draining the bowl dry. It's amazing how fast they can move when they want to. One look at me and he headed for safety and was last seen squeezing through a broken fence panel, wisely heading for next door.

The green plastic netting? In the bin. One positive thing. I know now the smelly mess on the lawn each morning isn't fox poo after all. That was one nervous hedgehog I can tell you. Did he have to do that all over the kitchen scissors and my gardening gloves? After all I was trying to rescue him.

A Cliché Too Far, or how to benefit from a ill wind

2008-08-13T03:48:00.000-07:00

The Keen Mountain Biker has hurt his back, but it’s an ill wind as they say. The first twinges were felt as he made hay in the Millennium Garden (see previous blog) and the coup de grace arrived as he hoovered the bedroom. carpet. Yes, my old man, is a new man, I’m pleased to say.

‘What are we going to do?’ wailed the granddaughters in unison. ‘Granddad’s slipped a disc and we won’t be able to go camping.’

But he would never let a simple thing like severe pain stand in the way to our annual trip to Derbyshire.

‘Now don’t get all stressy,' the elder one advised as we sweltered in the second hold up on the M1. We’ll stop in a minute and you can have a cup of tea and one of your little tablets.’ The little one nodded at her sister’s wise words. I kept my mouth shut. I’d never heard him swear in front of a child, but there’s always a first time.

Five hours later we arrived at the camp site in the pouring rain. In the old days, BG (before grandchildren) we’d have had our two person tent erected and the kettle on, in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, two bedroomed luxury with added kitchen takes a little longer, but we managed.

The camp site, more a farmer’s field with adjacent loos, is the closest place to paradise when the sun shines. In the rain you have to use your imagination, particularly when the mountains are completely obscured by dark clouds. We spent the rest of the evening doing French knitting with damp wool and playing cards.

It rained all night but the morning came with a slight breeze and bright sunshine. We put our best feet forward. The girls and I sauntering along at our own speed, KMB staggering manfully behind, a look of determination on his rugged face.

‘Sleeping on a hard surface is meant to be good for bad backs’. I suggested helpfully. ‘And you’ve got three doting females to help you on with your socks.’ He wasn’t convinced, as I was one of the females and I’m not much good at doting.

‘Where does the ill wind come in?’ I hear you ask. No the tent didn’t blow down. No tent erected by the KMB would dare. Despite horrendous weather forecasts the rain fell only at night. I had a lovely restful break. The girls carried their own packs and didn’t argue once, or lie on the ground saying they were too tired to go on any further. Neither did I beg for a short cut home.

For the first time in the twenty years I’ve been staying on this site, I was able to relax and lie around in the sun. Not once did I have to do a route march, one eye on the compass the other on a gathering storm.

Along with a bad back came humility. For the first time KMB realised what a mere mortal feels like in the mountains. He was grateful when we stopped for a snack. He didn’t sigh or look at this watch when we stopped to build a dam by a mountain stream or paused to take in a view, or admire the flowers. There were no complaints when we walked back via a quick route. So you see, ‘It’s an ill wind...’

The man is a hero and I love him to bits. Now we're home I promise I’ll make it all up to him. I’m pampering his every whim, while he watches the Olympics, flat on his back on the front room floor. I'm rushing around making tea. We even had a pudding last night. I hope this bad back business doesn’t last too long though. The potatoes down the allotment haven’t been harvested yet and the lawn needs cutting.

‘What’s sauce for the goose....’ I hear him mutter, as I struggle to get the lawn mower out of the shed.

(If you fancy the campsite look at www.upperboothcamping.co.uk. The picture is of KMB giving helpful advice on how to build a dam)

Snakes and Hay

2008-07-27T12:10:00.000-07:00

What's the most relaxing way to spend the hottest day of the year? Sunbathing by the pool, cool beer and barbeque, stroll in the country? Certainly not raking hay in the village millennium garden.

The call came by email a couple of weeks ago,

‘Volunteers wanted, Sunday morning, 9.30a.m. sharp, bring your own rake and gloves.’

The millennium garden, an old orchard saved from developers when a local mansion was converted into flats, is a small patch of paradise and my shortest route to the shops.

In spring I skip along under clouds of apple blossom, summer and there’s a shady path to follow. Autumn? Apples to scrump of course and smoky bonfires of leaves. In winter there’s a mud free path with fine views over the surrounding fields.

So, duty bound, I joined my mainly grey haired co-workers, to do my bit for the village. As we stood in line, raking and piling up the hay into mounds, the talk was of how the garden, once a scruffy patch of waste land, was improving local biodiversity.

‘So much more wildlife‘, they all agreed, giggling nervously when a very small slow worm was found.

I pondered, should I mention the large snake my neighbour had spotted basking on the path as she walked her kids to school one morning?

‘Best not,’ I decided, no need to frighten off any of the workers, Many hands make light work on such a hot day. From the reported size of the snake, it was probably only a grass snake, though I’d worn my boots just in case.

Mistaken Identity

2008-07-02T12:47:00.000-07:00

When the leaves started disappearing from my indoor pepper plants I looked for caterpillars. After the whole top section was chewed off my dragon palm, I guessed huge nocturnal caterpillars were to blame. Who was I kidding?

Then there were other clues, caterpillars don't invade a spice cabinet and chew up all the stock cubes or leave large black droppings on a window sill. They don't nibble holes in apples left in a fruit dish. We had mice.

The Garden Tiger often brings mice home but, being dead, they aren't difficult to catch. This super mouse was very much alive. I hadn't seen it but it was definitely around in the house somewhere. When my man, nodding in front of the 10 o'clock news, was shaken awake as it thundered over his shoulder and down his leg, serious action was called for and off he went on an urgent trip to the hardware store.

He returned with a whole bagful of humane mouse traps. Once baited with peanut butter and apple, an allegedly winning combination, we went to bed and waited. In the morning the traps were wrecked, bait gone, hinges chewed, mouse nowhere to be seen. I trembled.

'This is no super mouse. We've got a young rat in the house,' I sobbed.

Another trip to the hardware store, this time he returned with several inches of cruel steel trap in a plain brown wrapper. We meant business. More peanut butter, more apple, more guile...but this time we would be the winners.

The next morning I catch my man leafing through the pages of, ‘The Complete British Wildlife’ a field guide to the mammals of Britain, a slight pallor on his rugged cheek. No common brown rat was in the trap, we’d flattened a yellow-necked mouse. (Apodemus flavicollis) At nearly 12cm one of the largest of our British mice. A competent tree climber and frequenter of woodlands, formerly common and widespread now, comparatively scarce, but not yet endangered, unless of course it happens to end up in my kitchen.

Put a cork in it.

2008-05-31T13:41:00.000-07:00

When you're tugging out your plastic corks and unscrewing the caps of those so satisfying bottles of wine, give a thought to the cork forests of the Alentejo. Portugal's cork oaks are threatened each time you buy a bottle of wine that isn't stoppered by natural cork.

If the local communities can no longer make a living through harvesting cork, other less environmentally sound uses for the cork forests will be found. If cork groves are abandoned or ploughed up for intensive agriculture, vast species rich areas will vanish. Acres of flower dappled grasslands, home to a unique eco system, will simply disappear or be swamped under invasive scrubby vegetation.

Cork has been harvested for at least a thousand years, many of the cork forests of the Alentejo may be hundreds of years old and are one of the few truly sustainable forms of agro forestry; it's an indigenous resource that is used without disturbing the natural biodiversity. Cork trees flourish without irrigation, fertilizers or chemical herbicides, and they regenerate after harvesting.

If cork can't be sold the local communities will have to find other less environmentally sound uses for the land, bringing the added risk of wild fires or the creeping desertification now present in Spain.

So spare a thought for the cork and when you next buy a bottle of wine. Make sure the wine produces have 'put a cork in it'.

The photographs were taken in the Alentejo, Portugal, May 2008

Monserrate Gardens

2008-05-23T14:37:00.000-07:00

I first visited the town of Sintra in Portugal nine years ago. Then I was avoiding a significant birthday, working on the principle, if it happened when I was out of the country it wouldn't count. On that day I stumbled across a gift wrapped palace in a garden every bit as secret as Helligan.

At the time the Monserrate Gardens and their crumbling palace were teetering on the edge of ruin or restoration. Once the home of the louche gothic author and friend of Byron, William Beckford, its elegant filigree plaster walls and ornate marble staircases showed many years of neglect.

Though officially open as a public park, few people ever went there. The paths were broken and it was hard to find a way through all the overhanging greenery, but the romantic hidden treasures were well worth the struggle: a strange semi Christian temple locked tightly in the grip of a banyan tree, elegant groves of tree ferns, towering palms and bird of paradise lilies sprouting weed like out of every crevice.

This time, instead of wandering in through a broken down gate, I paid a fee at a neat little kiosk, Well scrubbed lavatories and even a few plants for sale indicated a whole new order. Would E.U. funding and renewed civic pride have robbed this horticultural gem of its secret and brooding beauty?

The morning may have been overcast but the garden was the same; as mysteriously lush and green as ever, slightly more accessible but still bewitchingly beautiful. As the heavy rain started the tiny number of other visitors vanished and once again Monseratte Gardens were mine.

On my first visit the palace was wrapped bizarrely in polythene pending restoration. Then the careless guard had allowed us in and we wandered around in secret, marvelling at a fairy tale beauty, even half fallen ceilings and damp green walls couldn’t disguise.

Now the outside is repainted and a polite attendant checks tickets as you enter, but even E.U money had its limits. It will be while before tasteful restoration takes over completely and turns it into a splendid teahouse or museum. Give me romantic decay with a hint of decadence anytime.

What Would You Do With a Flat Iron?

2008-05-10T14:43:00.000-07:00

What would you do with a flat iron?

My mother, a lady of some eccentricity, possibly bordering on madness, always preferred to use a flat iron rather than an electric one, insisting,

'You get a much better finish on your linens.'

'Yes Mum. Yawn!' At the same time vowing never to buy anything that ever needed to go near an iron, least of all one that my mates were only ever likely to see in a museum.

This was the same woman who owned curling tongs that had to be stuck in the fire to be warmed up, then tested on a piece of newspaper. As a small child I went to many birthday parties smelling of slightly singed hair. Once, in a moment of abstraction, and to my great glee, she frazzled my sister's hair so badly a huge clump had to be cut off.

Let me explain. I was seven the year electricity came to our house and by then my mum, in her late forties, was very set in her ways and saw no need to make any alterations to domestic arrangements that had seen her through over twenty years of married life, three children and a world war. She was also seeing visions in the trees, but that's another story entirely...

I've just come back from a few days visiting my big sister. Even before I'd undone my coat and sat down to the statutory tea and cake, she's a stalwart member of the Scottish W.I. and proud of her baking, a competitive sport in her village, where cake mixes are the equivalent of performance enhancing drugs, she dumped a flat iron on the table in front of me.

'There you are. You said you wanted one.'

My man turned towards me, his eyebrows raised in enquiry and surprise.A little wide eyed myself, but ever the adept liar, I smiled brightly and said,

'Great, thanks.'

Then it dawned, many years ago, after Mum had gone into a nursing home and we girls had to clear out and pack up her cottage, I was mildly annoyed when another sister grabbed the old iron griddle Mum had used to make wonderful drop scones. When I unearthed the family recipe for 'scotch pancakes' a couple of months ago, I asked my sister to look out for an old iron griddle, just like mum's. She's always involved in bring and buy sales and, as these griddles were once an essential tool in every Scottish kitchen, I thought it likely one would turn up.

Ah Well. At least I'll be able to get a good finish on my linens. If I had any...Could I use it as a camping iron? Perhaps not.

Where I Live - A village under threat

2008-04-10T15:54:00.000-07:00

Where I live is under threat from developers. There are plans to build an unbelievable 1500 new houses not far down the road, tearing through our parish, bulldozing ancient woodland, blotting out tiny single track roads and tranquil green lanes, interrupting wild life corridors and filling in ditches and ponds.

The intention is to build on one of the few remaining areas for miles where it's possible to ride a bike in safety, where the only other traffic you'll meet is on horse back or the occasional tractor. Where it is possible to walk a dog or tramp footpaths far away from the noise of cars that threaten to swamp us all.

The fields destined for this outrage are home to a huge variety of flora and fauna. I know this as, for the past four years, I have been part of the village biodiversity survey. We've now surveyed 70% of our surrounding parish. No mean feat as the area is huge.

Our owl box project has encouraged barn owl and tawny owls into the area, we've discovered and recorded all sorts of rare and unusual plants and trees, including several previously unrecorded Wild service trees. We have ponds with crested newts and possibly even a colony of water voles. But when this large scale housing project goes ahead, and it’s likely it will, this will mean nothing.

This urban expansion isn't for local needs, there is actually a small surplus of homes in the local town; the people who will live in these houses are likely to work in an ever expanding area of urbanisation over ten miles from our parish. To get there they will have to drive on unbelievably congested roads as the trains are full and nobody relies on the buses.

We've wheeled out our local celebrities, marched in the rain, petitioned and written letters of opposition, now all we can do is sit and wait, dreading the result. Watch this space, you may yet see Lampie chained to a tree trying to hold back the bulldozers.

(The picture is of a Wild Service Tree, often an indicator of ancient woodland)

Strange Little Visitor

2008-04-02T02:52:00.000-07:00

I spent last night paddling in fog shrouded backwaters narrowly avoiding crocodiles, snakes, rapids and creepy crawlies, deep in Africa's Heart of Darkness. Sadly it was only in my mind. As an avid reader of travel literature, I've been hooked by 'Facing the Congo', a brilliant account of paddling the Congo River in a hand built canoe.

My evening of sofa exploration had me curled up and shivering as fist sized beetles, electric catfish and whistling cockroaches the size of a baby's foot, coloured my imagination. ( Well I have actually stroked a cockroach that whistled, but that's a story for another time.)

On finishing a really squirmy passage where the author camps in the underbush full of snakes, ferocious bees, black flies that leave bleeding holes in exposed flesh and every other kind of predatory insect imaginable, I jumped up to make a cup of tea and gave the most almighty scream.

A scary beast was creeping towards me. Don't ask me why but somehow, after breaching two closed doors and a sleeping cat, a newt was heading purposefully across the carpet, heading towards the Turkish rug. Where the tiny creature came from is a complete mystery. There isn't even a pond in my garden and why it chose to brave the kitchen floor and start a journey across an expanse of carpet instead of a cosy night on the damp lawn is a real puzzle.

It can't have been brought in by the cat as he's not that gentle, and this little creature was completely unharmed. It's more than welcome. I'm wildlife friendly, but I want more warning next time. It took ten minutes before my heart stopped racing and I could repatriate it back to the garden.

A few things about me

2008-03-17T09:29:00.000-07:00

Tagged by Elizabethd, so here they come:

I have a naturally indolent nature that's why I've taken so long to write my 7 'Things about me.'

I have often been accused of being aloof but really I'm just shy and reserved until I get to know people.

I'm a listener rather than a confider.

I always tend to think that I am right. (Well I know I am right, but if I'd written that you'd all think I'm big headed as well as aloof!)

I use exclamation marks too often in my writing!

I hate being the centre of attention. The thought of any sort of party in my honour fills me with absolute horror. (Don't worry, I've warned my large family.)

I HATE crowds and cities. I love high and wild places, particularly when I've walked there with my tent and my man of course, he has to carry the tent.

Daffodil Envy Strikes Again

2008-03-16T06:51:00.000-07:00

It's a sad truth, but daffodil envy has struck again. It got me at the village show. Yet again my 'Pot of Growing Daffodils, division 1' got a 2nd place not the 1st it so justly deserves. I mean, what does a woman have to do around here to get first prize? Noooo! Have you seen the judges!

Two second and two third prizes and, well, my poor little camelia, the only one left on the bush after nearly a week of storms, didn't even get a second glance.

And if I ever find out where that old bloke in the checked shirt, who scoffed because my 'Bravore' have nibbled edges, keeps his polly tunnel, I'll be at his precious blooms with my pinking shears.

Competitive? Who me?

The True Story of how I reached the dizzy heights of a prize winner

2008-02-10T14:01:00.000-08:00

It’s official. I’m a prize winner. Perhaps I should explain.

Our local bookshop, a tiny little place hardly bigger than a front room, is running a monthly competition. Starting this January it’s invited anyone with an interest in books to write a review (maximum100 words) of any book that may appeal to others.

All entries are displayed on the Special Review Board. (Just behind the door as you go in if you want to take a peek) As a keen supporter of this rare and dying breed, the independent bookseller, I was up there with my review of Lollipop Shoes by Joanne Harris, almost as soon as I saw the competition announced in our local free magazine.

I am pleased to say that my hard work has paid off. I’ve won this month’s prize. Dizzy heights indeed, considering the last literary prize I won was when I was still in school.

Sadly my triumph is a little sour. There was only one entry displayed on the board, mine.

Still, a £5 book token’s not to be sniffed at , is it?

Hang on a moment!

I’ve been Memed - I guess that’s a sort of prize too.

Pg123, 5^th sentence from the book nearest to me, then the next 3 sentences:

Photography, A Concise History

Photography enabled the exchange of authentic - but also selective - information on the course of the war.

Interest in war reporting grew stronger as more nad more people were directly confronted with the war or were directly affected by war activity. On the one hand, was photographers provided visual information to people who were not directly involved, but whose family members might be at the front. On the other hand, war photography naturally served the propagands interests of the political powers.

On reflection...A day in the life of Lampworkbeader, with no beading involved

2008-02-06T11:15:00.000-08:00

On reflection I’ve been dreading this summons. A couple of years ago I’d have said, “Busy, busy, busy,” but then I wouldn’t have had time to write. Now my life is calmer, each day a bit different, but rather dull, so I’ll pick Monday.

7am The alarm. John Humphries nagging someone in the government, as usual. The Keen Mountain Biker has a kinder heart than me so he gets up to feed the cat and make me a cup of tea.

7.30 I’m up and stirring my own porridge.

By 8.10 I’m clean, dressed, lipsticked and sipping another cup of tea. Thankfully at the moment I only work two mornings a week. Monday is one of those mornings. Twenty five minutes of driving through country lanes and heavy traffic gets me to work. Radio 3 all the way. It calms me.

I do supply teaching with Special Needs kids. At the moment it’s two mornings at a PRU (Pupil Referral Unit) These young people are taught one to one in a unit well away from other teenagers. There’s always a reason.

My pupil arrives at 9.15am. I make her a cup of tea, she says it tastes like p*ss. I look surprised and say I’ve never tasted …… That raises a smile, a good sign, she doesn’t smile much.

The morning is satisfactory. It passes quickly for me. I sense she feels time moves at a slower pace.

The session finishes at 12 noon. I write my notes and I’m driving home by 12.30

It’s sunny and I’m in a good mood. Radio 4 this time.

KMB isn’t back yet. Since retiring he’s been involved in owl boxes (If you are interested I wrote about this back in August.)

He’s been checking the boxes and fixing them up ready for the nesting season. He’s back by 1.30, cheerful but muddy. We lunch together.

He’s been painting the hall. This involves a lot of huffing and swearing, as well as paint. I usually ignore this, I don’t want to get involved or I might end up doing it myself.

Since Purple Cooing started I’ve been writing short stories. To keep KMB company, and to act as a painting advisor if required (which it isn’t) I bring my battered old laptop downstairs and plug it in at the kitchen table.

The ‘good’ computer is upstairs in the spare and chilly bedroom, the kitchen is bright and sunny with a view of the garden.

Two hours fly past. My ‘short story’ grows alarmingly.

5.30 ish I start the evening meal, relying on what’s in the fridge. A huge pile of vegetables, a few of them home grown. These eventually turn into thick vegetable and lentil stew with sage dumplings. Fruit for desert. No wine tonight. I’ve been overdoing it recently and I’m rather weak willed.

Just time to log onto ‘Coo’ and see what’s going on. Hmm! Glad ‘In the mud’ is O.K.

8pm ish We’ve still time to watch my ‘new’ d.v.d. Thunder Road with Robert Mitchum. I’m a bit of a black and white film buff. KMB says he remembers it when it first come out. I deny that I do. He’s a bit older than me.

10p.m. I watch the news and weather.

We head for bed around 10.45 I read. I’ve nearly finished ‘Mad, Bad and Dangerous’, Ranulph Fiennes autobiography, interesting man if a bit of a twerp at times.

KMB snores. I lie awake thinking of endings for my short story. Might do some beading tomorrow or go down the allotment if it doesn’t rain…..

The Plunderers (A short story - constructive criticism welcome)

2008-01-17T03:58:00.000-08:00

On sunny days in early summer, if he was working in a field nearby, their father would drop them down by the river. Sometimes the two girls would play there all morning. With their two heads bent together over the water, they had one aim, to catch the elusive little river creatures swimming in the shallows. Up to their knees in the clean brown river, their favourite place was on a shallow bend, where sharp gravel washed between their toes.
With home made fishing nets in hand, (the top of an old stocking fitted craftily onto a short bamboo cane), they stalked like herons, stealthy little hunters after fish.

They found the sleek, dappled stone loaches easy prey. These lay on the stream bed with their tails pointing down stream. A crafty net could creep up alongside. Then all that was needed was a quick movement, a little panic, a tiny disturbance in the water, a flick with the net and the captive could be popped into the waiting wide necked jar.

Miller’s thumbs were the real favourites. Hunkered down between the stones they were hard to spot, but once moving, they proved a small, fast and exciting prey, and much harder to catch. Miller’s thumbs were thrilling too because they were dangerous. Their dad had told them of kingfishers found choked to death with their spiny prey stuck fast in their throats. These little terrors tended to huddle their tight triangular bodies in the smallest crevice. Neatly camouflaged unless nearly trodden on, only a sudden movement, some disturbed stones and a wisp of sand in the clear water, showed where they were.

When the tell tale movement was seen, the hunt could begin. The girls followed eagerly, with little shivers of anticipation, moving stealthily through the water, net kept low and behind the fish. Careful to keep their shadows out of sight they stalked their prey. With two it was easier. One to startle, one to catch. When one panicked the creature so that it darted away, the other positioned the net in the path of the panic.
Once caught, with heads close together, they examined the fish. They were always disappointed by their tiny captive, flattened and vulnerable in the bottom of the net. They felt a little disgusted by it’s gasping form, so much smaller out of the water.

In the middle of the river the girls felt safe. Socks and shoes piled neatly on the bank, they stood motionless, with water swirling round them it was a place for quiet concentration. Occasionally a thirsty dog muddied the water, to be called away by its strolling owner passing along the bank. Once a tramp, pushing a bicycle, muttered to himself as he walked past, but he ignored them. They stood and watched him warily, ready to flee, but quickly returned to their game as his hunched form departed along the narrow river path.

When their father called them to go home, they carried their big glass jars carefully, and set them firmly between their feet on the floor of the Landrover. He passed no comments except to tell them to make no wet.
Mostly the cramped and agitated captives, swam up and down, thwarted by the glass, but the millers thumbs sulked square on the bottom, making no bid for freedom. Occasionally a loach would make a wild jump, leaping through the neck of the jar only to find no waiting river, only dust, debris and scorching air, before being scooped, bruised and damaged, back into the jar.

Once home the little fish were released into the confines of an old water tank in the garden, or left to slowly suffocate in torpid water on a sunny bedroom window.. Fed copious pinches of fish food they seldom lasted long. One or other of the girls would be disappointed to find their small catch, belly up, reddening gills gasping on the surface. Then they would be sad. They loved the little fish and were sorry when they died, but a matchbox made a lovely coffin and they decorated the little burial places with heads torn thoughtlessly from their mother’s garden flowers.

The river trips came to an abrupt halt after their father, preoccupied with his own cares, forgot them when he went home to his mid-day dinner. It was only their mother’s shock at their absence, that made him go back to fetch them. He was guilty and angry with them for his mistake. The girls had been so engrossed in the water that that time passed quickly, They had not noticed they had been forgotten and stared in amazement at his anger.

Although they pestered, from then on their father was always too busy to take them to the river. They stood at the window looking longingly up the lane, their noses pressed against the glass, irritable with each other and dismissive of their mother’s pale and tentative suggestions for play. But one evening, towards the end of summer, their father relented. A stile needed fixing in the water meadow and, if they were ready early, he promised he would take them the following day.

It proved promisingly warm and when they arrived the river was calm and peaceful, their own stillness adding to the quiet. Father and daughters stood together on the bank as wisps of mist camouflaged the surface of the water. Together the girls stepped cautiously onto the narrow bridge and looked down to where the river flowed deeply between the high banks.

Without warning an eerie whistle pierced the mist. It came again and again. Transfixed for a moment, they shivered collectively and pulled closer together, their flesh goosy. The chilly mist seemed suddenly to penetrate under their arms and down the centre of their backs. Their dad laughed.
“It’s only an otter,” he said, “It’s calling to its young.” He told them they were lucky as the little beasts were rare. Not many of them left.

With the spell broken he went to his work and they to their sport, but it wasn’t a good day. They were restless. Soon tiring of the fishing they built damns in the shallows instead, using the sticks and rubbish swept down in the summer storms. Growing bored with this they invented a new game, climbing the slippery river bank and swinging on the curtain of tree roots overhanging the water.

Before long the peace was interrupted by a group of boys, Foul mouthed and rowdy, they stood on the stepping stones just up river and amused themselves by throwing stones into the water but, on seeing the girls, they bared their bottoms and pretended to pee into the water. Intimidated, the two sisters retreated, cringing at the humiliation of climbing the bank and running to safety across the bridge, with the boys howling and laughing at their backs. Once with their father they pestered to go home. Annoyed, he eventually packed up early and all river trips were finished.

The following year brought changes. Her sister no longer wanted to play last summer’s games and spent her time with new friends. The old tank in the garden, once home to their lovely little fish, had become dank and smelly .
Her father, always difficult to approach, was increasingly quiet and stern. Unsmiling, his work often kept him near to home, where mother sat quietly in her chair looking out at an overgrowing garden and sighing. Time hung heavily in the air. At the weekends both girls were allotted household jobs and, when the youngest had finished hers, she found some solace in collecting garden creatures. But, when garden snails escaped in the house and her mother cried, this new collection was banned.

As the summer progressed and the holidays came, she thought again of the thrill of cold water round her ankles and the scratchy, slippery feel of gravel between her toes. She thought of the river.
A short cut through the woods wouldn’t be too far. She could get there and back and still do some fishing before her father noticed she had gone. It was such an inspiration she wondered why she’d not thought of it sooner.
The plan of action started the evening before. After clearing the table and hurriedly rinsing the plates, she left her sister to dry them and, collecting her jar and net from the downstairs hall cupboard, she hid them in the long grass half way down the lane, just where the path entered the wood.

The next day, her sister was splashing in the bathroom when she slipped out of the side gate. With her mother still in bed and unlikely to get up until the afternoon and her father hammering in the barn, only the cat saw her go.

The walk to the river was further than she anticipated. What took only ten minutes or so in a car seemed a long way to her, alone in the wood. She was jumpy and the overgrown path snagged her clothes and caught at her net. Waist high nettles stung her legs and arms and a bramble drew blood on the side of her knee. Once, on stumbling, she let go of the string handle of her jar. Her heart lurched but the jar didn’t break.

On reaching the edge of the water meadow, where the woods tailed off into rough wet grass, she felt exposed. She crept round keeping close to the hedge, jumping when she startled a rabbit, her socks and shoes soaking in the long wet grass. Awkward as it was climbing with her hands full, the stile felt reassuringly familiar. She could see the lighter wood on the top bar where her father had mended it a year before. She touched it for its comfort and familiarity.

Once over, a loneliness welled up inside her, she thought of last year and the sound of the otter. Cautiously she listened again but all was silent, just the odd ripple and gurgle as the river flowed under the bridge. She wished she’d told her sister where she was going. Maybe she would have come with her, just for the adventure. Alone she felt her smallness and was no longer brave.

On crossing the narrow bridge the water looked leaden and uninviting, but the old thrill of excitement returned as she sat on the high bank looking down at the familiar fishing place. She removed her shoes and socks, putting them to dry on the roots of an old tree that lurched over the water. Gripping the jar tightly she slid the net, handle first, down the bank and slithered behind it, using an overhanging branch to steady herself.

Gasping as she entered the water, she waded out until the river eddied round her knees. It was deeper and browner than before, The opposite bank had caved in and the gravel was almost completely covered by silt. Feeling nervous and alone she moved back a little closer to the bank. A line of debris hung and flapped on the exposed tree roots hanging out over the stream. Under the shade of the bank the water seemed slimy as the mud oozed between her toes. In her heightened awareness its oily movement seemed threatening and sinister.

When a cheering shaft of pale sunlight hit the water, she edged up stream to a brighter pebbly shallow. Standing on this unprotected patch, close to the middle of the river, she heard voices coming down the path. Yells preceded thuds and splashes, stones and tussocks of mud and grass flew into the water. From her exposed position she could see a group of boys running down the path on the opposite bank. They halted at the stepping stones, jumping and pushing each other from stone to stone. The largest of them carried a fishing rod, the others had triangular nets on sturdy poles or large plastic containers that clunked together as they ran.

She was trapped in the water. If she retreated to climb back up the bank they would see her and would be across the stones and upon her before the narrow bridge could be reached. She realised with a shiver how chilled she was. Cautiously she shrank in towards the bank. She held her net tightly in defence but let her jar sink and be carried away in the stream. Under the shelter of the bank she was no longer able to see the boys but she could hear them laughing and yelling just round the bend in the river. The water in the shadow of the steep bank felt cold and the mud oozed clammily round her toes.

From her hiding place she could hear the excited whoops warning her that fish were being caught. She felt sorry for the fish, trapped like herself, unable to escape. She imagined the boys’ unspeakable cruelty. In the past she had seen the stones smeared with blood and scales where the little silver bodies had been stamped on and smashed. She looked down at her pale legs distorted by the water and shivered with vulnerability. A breeze rippled the surface as a fish floated by, looking alive as it spun in a slight eddy, but it was broken and helpless. It floated past her, belly up. Panic rose within her and she gathered herself for a wild bid for freedom.

Before she had time to move, there was an excited yell and thudding foot falls vibrated along the bank. They stopped above her head. The older boy’s voice was cracked with triumph and she remembered with horror that her socks and shoes were drying at the base of the tree. She shrank as far as she could into the bank where the looping tree roots hung out over the water. Some were like spindly fingers dipping into the water, others were thicker than a boys arm, but together they formed a tightly laced curtain. Hardly daring to breath she silently pulled herself further under the protection of these roots and held her breath. All thoughts of a panicky flight left her as she crouched completely motionless. She could hear the boys running up and down the bank. They sounded feverish in the excitement of the hunt. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut to blot them out, but one splash followed another as her shoes were hurled into the water.

One of the smaller boys started to climb down her protecting curtain. She opened her eyes in fright just as a muddy trainer came crashing down on the roots above her head. She knew if the boy scrambled any further down, her hiding place behind the roots would be revealed. Instinct told her that if she was startled out of her hiding place, she would soon be caught.

Almost on the point of discovery, a squeal of dismay from the direction of the stepping stones came to her rescue. Evidently one the boys had not taken an interest in the chase. Soon, his wailing and sobbing indicated the nature of the hurt. He was caught by his own hook. It had snagged him cleanly between the soft web of his fingers. She heard screams as the others tried unsuccessfully to remove the barb. His agony brought her relief. After a brief scramble, there was silence above her and she realised the hunt had been abandoned. They were gone and her immediate danger was past.

Very cautiously she ducked out from under the roots and hobbled through the water, staggering on numb feet and ankles. She didn’t turn round, but a commotion on the far bank told her the boys were retreating back up the path the way they had come. With care she waded through the shallows then slowly climbed the bank. Her shoes were gone. One sock still lay where she had left it, the other was snagged on a bush nearby. She balled them up into her fist and painfully started the long walk home.

On crossing the bridge she heard the boys call out. They ‘d spotted her retreating form but had no real heart for a chase. She knew she wouldn’t be followed but the thought of them behind her quickened her flight.
Once over the stile, she flew across the wet grass of the water meadow and hurled herself back into the safety of the trees. Not slowing until she felt the cover totally envelop her. There was security in the dry warmth of the wood as she ran under its protecting branches.
Only when well out of sight of the hated river did she stagger to a halt, gasping to catch her breath. Almost choking with fear and effort, she sank to her knees then rolled on her back and stared glassily up at the sky. She lay there a while, gulping in air before continuing the painful journey home on soft and bleeding feet.

The photo is of a Miller's Thumb or Bull Head

The Invincibility of Innocence

2008-01-08T05:39:00.000-08:00

I’ve mentioned before that my sister lives in a remote village in the very far north of Scotland. Over the years she’s become deeply involved in the running of a drop in centre for the local elderly. Each day a lively assortment of old ladies gather there for lunch. These senior St Trinians are a chipper bunch.
A couple of days ago one of her fellow volunteers, a vigorous woman in her early eighties, phoned my sister. Apparently she was supervising the daily lunch club when things got rather racy.
The discussion had somehow got round to swear words. The ladies were trying to decide what makes a swear word such a bad thing when many of the words are to be found in the dictionary. The talk at the table ranged far and wide until, Gee, my sister’s friend, gradually began to realise she didn’t know the meaning of many of the words that were being so gleefully discussed.
On arriving home she decided to look them up in the dictionary.
“And do you know,” she told my sister in a shocked voice over the phone,
“Many of the words were marked with the word taboo and most of those words are to do with sex!”
My sister, glad that this was a telephone conversation, struggled to control her smiles,
“Yes” she agreed, she believed that was true.
Gee continued conspiratorially,
“I told my husband about those words and what they meant, and he was so shocked he threw his bible at me.”

Such is the invincibility of innocence.
I guess it isn’t only miles that separates her world from mine.

The photo is of some of my sister's other neighbours.

The Old House

2008-01-03T02:47:00.000-08:00

If you are a guest in an old house it doesn’t pay to be too fanciful. I’m very sceptical about the supernatural but sometimes strange things do happen. I’ve just spent New Year with friends in their little house. The house is the type that squats low in a wide open landscape. Built around 1720, its little pointed windows gaze out onto flat and wintry fields. It is a house that has sheltered many lives.
On the first night I woke up at 3 am to the smell of onions being fried with meat. Curiously, enquiries the next day showed no one had been in the kitchen at that time. I took it to be an unusually vivid dream, put it to the back of my mind and enjoyed the New Year’s party without another thought.
The following morning arrived damp and grey. Outside a thick fog pervaded everything; inside the kitchen was welcoming and warm. Time passes quickly in friendly company but in the spare early twilight of a New Year’s afternoon the sitting room led me on to think of its past history. What hopes and fears, sickness and suffering had those rural walls seen over the years?
Later, sitting by the fire, the evening was jolly enough. Cheerful company, wine and good food soon dispels any lingering ghostly spirit, but as the fire in the ingle nook died down the atmosphere in the room chilled.
I was back to thinking about the miseries faced by the rural poor in the 18th C, when a large white moth fluttered against the outside of the small window.
It struggled towards the warmth and light several times before disappearing into the night.
The sight of the creature brought me back from my reverie and my friend remarked that a moth visited every night, no matter the weather or time of year. She followed on with,
“I hope it’s no-one I know.”
I laughed with her, but inside my heart lurched. What if I’d conjured up an unquiet spirit by my musings?
Later, cosily tucked up in my bedroom under the eaves, as the clock struck 3am, I realised a trip downstairs to the bathroom was needed. Reluctantly I left my warm bed and crept down the creaking staircase.
The light was still burning in the little arched window in the front room, though the fire was just a pile of cooling ash.
All was deathly quiet and still. Trying not to think about spooky moths I crept across the floor. I was almost safely to the other side of the room, with my hand already feeling for the reassuring door latch, when I heard an unearthly, wheezing,
“Heh, Heh, Heh!”
With a lurching heart I shot out of the room, across the hall and into the safety of the bathroom.
On returning, heart still hammering in my chest, I rested a nervous hand on the back of the sofa, summoning my courage to creep back across the floor. At once the demonic sound happened again, and then again.

I had been frightened out of my wits by an elderly piece of furniture with a wonky leg and creaking spring. As the floor flexed under my weight, the sofa moved and I could summon the noise at will.
Safely back upstairs, trying to snuggle under a cooling duvet and attempting to get back to sleep, I swear I heard the old house creaking with laughter all around me.

The photo is of a Death's Head hawk-moth, a very rare visitor to the U.K.

Seasons Bleatings

2007-12-21T05:06:00.000-08:00

Christmas cards may be loved or loathed but the vast number of people send at least a few every year. I love them. I love the slap-thud as they land on the mat, so much more interesting than the pile of junk mail that usually slithers my way. Cheap tatty robins or designer glitter, mine are all read enthusiastically then pegged on strings around the hall. More is best.
There are a few from family, not full of hugs and kisses, we are a restrained bunch, but welcome all the same.
Then there's a sprinkling from friends saying how the months fly and we’ll have to meet up soon.
Two are hand made, one very arty the other of a friend's dog in a soppy outfit.
At last, a party invite. That’s lucky, now did I wear my velvet jacket to their house last year? Hmm!
A couple from ex colleagues. Is there a hint of jealousy when they mention how stressful the old place is? I hope so…
Ah ha! An embossed official card from cousin Joan. I haven’t seen the woman for ten years. She‘s never sent me a card before. I see, she’s now mayor of a small town in the Midlands, Well done Joan!
Some make me feel guilty. Two come from old acquaintances culled from my list in a moment of thrift and one from the milkman thanking me for my loyal custom, even though I haven’t given him a tip. I wish now I’d ordered extra cream.
Once I received a lovely card from Jonathan, and I still don't have clue who he was, but he sent his love. Well, that was quite a few years ago.
A couple of cards are conspicuous in their absence. Oh dear! Who have I offended now? Or perhaps they are ill? S**** is getting on in years, I hope she’s o.k. I’d better give her a ring.
What’s this? A neatly written card with my name on the envelope but inside it says To A… and Margaret. Hang on a minute. My husband is A… but my name isn’t Margaret. How can that woman make a mistake about me. I send them a card every year. This year it was one of my better ones too. I’m offended and childishly miffed. I feel a bout of thrift coming on as I mentally cross her name off next years list.

Merry Christmas everyone.

The redwings have arrived

2007-12-01T05:14:00.000-08:00

The redwings are back. I saw them myself this morning, their wings flashing red and white as they stripped the holly berries from the trees next door. Mine will be next, but I don’t begrudge those lovely birds their feast.

For many years, when I was working full time, redwings were mythical beasts to me. Off I’d go early in the morning, my holly tree laden with berries that were barely visible in the half light. Then I’d return well after dark only to find, by the light from the porch, that all the berries had been mysteriously removed. Not a berry left.

Indoors my phone would be flashing red, with a smug message from next door saying that, once again, the redwings had arrived and I’d missed them. The following dawn would reveal a tree stripped bare.

For neighbours, bird watching from kitchen windows can be a competitive sport. Last year my neighbour saw a spotted flycatcher on the shed, but I saw the bramblings first. We both agree that redwings are something special. So I was pleased to catch sight of the flock that flew over this mornings. Their shrill trecx, trecx, trecx and the whirr of many wings made me look up in time to see about thirty flying overhead. A race upstairs for a better view showed them feasting and growing fat on next door’s berries.

They can strip a tree bare in a matter of hours and be gone as mysteriously as they arrived, those tough little harbingers of wintry weather. What a pity he’s missed them. I think I’ll just leave a message on his answer phone. The redwings arrived but he was out.

The Stick Ape - A short story

2007-11-16T00:12:00.000-08:00

It was still daylight and she was in bed. It felt odd. She heard talking in the garden outside the room and thought of those long afternoons when, wilful and cheeky, she had been sent to bed long before her sisters. That was a while ago, in another life. Her mind wandered to other high summer evenings, when she’d tossed, hot and sleepless, listening to the click of her father’s spade as he worked outside in the garden. It was on one of those evenings that, in the oak tree just beyond the garden hedge, she had first seen the outline of an ape.

Her stick ape had loomed larger and larger every day until it dominated her waking hours. Even in snow the ape was there, looking down, its stick arms stiff with cold. On frosty nights she thought she heard it scraping and tap tapping on the window. In the summer it hid behind the leaves, ready to swing across the gap between tree and hedge and into her bedroom. Then she grew afraid that her thoughts might let it in.

Her sisters said they couldn’t see it and laughed at her, saying she was daft. They told their mum she was silly. Her mum smiled at her fondly, looked in the wrong place and said abstractedly that it was probably an angel watching to see if she was good. She knew it wasn’t an angel. It’s stick like frame hung over her waking hours, threatening and gleeful that no one else in her family really knew the truth.

To start with she tried pulling the curtains more tightly, but that only made the ape more real, its presence more imminent, so she slept with the curtains undrawn. Each morning, on waking, she needed to see out of the corner of her eye that it was there, just to make sure it was still safely imprisoned in the tree.

One day the urge to watch grew so strong she moved her bed directly opposite the window. That night there was a terrible storm. The sort of storm that pulled down telephone wires and tore birds out of the trees, dashing them and their nests onto the ground.

She had never heard such a storm before. She lay alone in her little bed, looking out as the darkness suddenly lit up like fireworks. Huge jagged streaks ripped across the sky. Slashes of light shone behind her eyes long after the lightening had gone.

The wind tore the noise of the thunder away and rolled it around the wood. She heard the tufted leaves on the ends of the branches slashing together and the whole wood hissed with distress.

Again and again rain hit her window like hailstones on a cold tin roof. Wind gusted down the chimney, leaving patches of sooty grime in the hearth. As the latch rattled and the backdoor opened, the lino lifted as the wind came under her bedroom door.

She relaxed when she heard her father’s voice, back from the pub. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but knew he talked of the wind. Her mother’s lighter tone answered in agreement, then their footsteps came in unison up the stairs. They whispered briefly at her door, then there was silence in the house. A silence more acute because of the tearing noise outside.

She thought of her stick ape. In her mind she saw his body lean forward, changing shape as it moved in the wind, springing back and forward, back and forward. She strained to see the tops of the trees from her bed, waiting for the next lightening flash, needing to make sure he was still there. When it came the brightness burnt strange patterns on her eyes, blinding her to what was going on outside.

She shivered as she heard the crack of a bough splitting, then ripping sounds as it fell, twisting through smaller branches, down into the undergrowth. From her bed she felt sorrow for all the animals out in the wind. She pulled the covers up to her chin but still peered out into the blackness, not sleeping until the storm eventually stilled.

In the morning washed sun streamed in her window. She lay dazed, watching the dust fairies dance in a beam of light. As she moved her legs in the bed, the dust fairies swirled and climbed. She tried sleepily to recall the night before. On remembering the storm, she sat up in bed with a start. Once out of bed she staggered, and the light coming in blinded her for a moment. Then, running to the window, she looked outside. Down in the garden tall blue flowers lay flat and battered across her mother’s once neat borders. Her cat picked his way cautiously among the debris. Tufted bunches of oak leaves lay mangled on the path and lawn. Larger twigs straddled the hedge. Beyond the hedge the tree was still standing, but the ape was gone. Where it had once loomed down at her was just a gap, a space of blue washed sky. She could see the track it had made as it leapt through the trees and bushes. She imagined it running along a road made by the fallen branches. As she stared at the path its retreating form had made, she was engulfed by loss. Loss so profound that it clutched her chest and squeezed her throat. The stick ape was gone forever.

How she missed its looming branches and its sketchy shape. From now on she would sleep with the curtains tightly closed, not bearing to open her eyes onto the space it had left so empty. For a long time she told herself it was freedom, but mostly she knew it was loss.

Now, years later she was in another narrow bed, looking at another sky through open curtains, with her thoughts flitting back to that childhood room and the stick ape that had waited beyond the window.

Outside the garden had grown silent in the dusk. Evening was rapidly approaching and, as the light dimmed, she began to feel an old familiar presence. Had her thoughts called it? Was it coming for her? Was it there outside the window? She thought she saw a movement from the corner of her eye but her head was heavy and hard to turn. The room was getting darker now and finally she was sure what crouched beyond the window. There was comfort and dread in its return. Slowly she turned her face towards the dying light. Just before the final dark she felt it close by, looking down on her again and this time she realised there would be no storm. It was there and she knew this time they would go together.

On Presents Past

2007-11-04T11:46:00.000-08:00

Apparently Cath Kidson is selling wool tam o’shanters at £25 a throw. I wish I’d saved mine from when I was a kid. I’d have made a fortune. I wonder what’s the going rate on eBay for a vintage tam? Unfortunately mine all met sticky ends.

My Caithness Granny must have spent most of the year knitting and sewing as around Christmas, a bulging parcel would arrive. Along with a blackbun, some oatcakes and sometimes a very dead black hen, (she was convinced we couldn’t get wholesome food in the wicked south) would be several individual parcels. Usually my Mum’s contained a tartan pinny, for wearing on a Sunday, instead of her week day floral overall. My Dad, a son in exile down south, had the most beautiful hand knitted stockings, complete with knitted garters.

My father always wore tweed plus fours. This caused huge embarrassment to us girls, but Caithness Granny made sure he had proper wool stockings, so he‘d look really smart. In fawn or lovat green, those stockings were the work of a superb craftswoman and looked well with his ‘tackety’ boots. It was an unusual outfit for a father to wear in Surrey, in the late fifties and swinging sixties. If we begged him not to wear them, a threat to wear his kilt was enough to bring us to heel.

I can’t remember what came for my big sisters in that parcel, but I often had a fairisle tam o’shanter and once a fancy pixie hood and mittens. Though I seldom saw her, I loved my Caithness Granny but I hated every scratchy stitch she made for me, even if her knitted presents were works of art.

A visit to see her meant huge expense, at two day train ride to Inverness, hours in a rickety red bus and a bumpy ride in the back of my Uncle’s van, before we reached her isolated house, out in the hills by the Grey Cairns of Camster. I now realise those presents were acts of love to granddaughters she seldom saw, the daughters of a son she missed so badly, but to me they were an embarrassment. No one else had to wear hats like mine and worse still, they were physical torture.

To this day I can’t bear wool anywhere near my skin, but off I’d go to school with my Granny’s headgear pulled hard down over my ears, my head itching like it was on fire. I didn’t dare scratch for fear of a,

“You’ve got nits”, taunt from my sisters.

I lost those lovely tam o’shanters. I left them on the school bus, dropped them in puddles, abandoned them to hang lonely and unloved on school pegs in draughty cloakrooms. The pixie hood was quietly hung up a tree. I wouldn’t be so thoughtless now. I think they’re rather smart and I’m quite tempted by a Cath Kidson’s snazzy little number, but the thought of what my thrifty Granny would have said keeps that £25 firmly in my purse. I’m sure she’d have approved of my thrift or may be she’d just be dismayed that I couldn’t knit one myself.

( The pictures are of my Dad as a young man wearing his plus fours and my Caithness Granny and Grandad)

Back to school

2007-10-27T01:59:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I found out that Father Christmas wasn’t real, but Mr Ellis, the school inspector. Where did this definitive proof come from? It was in the written records of the village school that I attended from the age of five. On reaching its 100th year, this venerable establishment threw open its doors to all old pupils. Some seemed very old indeed.

The staff and governors kindly opened the school on a Saturday. The children had made colourful displays, record books dating back for 100 years were available to peruse and even a traditional lunch provided. Not the dreaded mince followed by blancmange that looked pink and tasted pinker, but a tasty shepherds pie and butterscotch tart. Yum!

I stood in my old, shrunken classroom and read the school records with much pleasure. My Dad was mentioned several times. As the local forester he delivered the tree for our Christmas carol concert. I can remember being very proud when he arrived in the National Trust Landrover, a huge Norway spruce poking out of the back.

My big sister found an entry that stirred guilty feelings. Her best friend had been punished for, “Extreme rudeness to a teacher…”, Over 50 years later she still cringes. On Valentine’s day she’d dared her best friend to ask their young male teacher for a kiss. No kiss was offered but the friend got two strokes of the cane instead. It seems incredible now.

Neither of us were ever caned in school but we were both smacked with a ruler. Surprisingly, I don’t remember being troubled by physical punishment. It was a fact of school life and infinitely preferable to writing lines or having to stay in at playtime. In our rural school, surrounded on three sides by beautiful countryside, I remember sitting in class watching kestrels hover over the downs and longing to be free like them. I hated being indoors.

There were a few people we remembered at the reunion. Some very different, some hardly changed. Often I recognised a smile or laugh rather than a face. It was and still is, a very happy school. Though I’m puzzled by the smartly dressed middle aged gent who greeted both of us fondly. When we obviously didn’t recognise him he looked wistful and said, “Oh I remember you both so well. You’re the M..… girls. You lived in the woods.”

I left that school at the age of eleven with a greater knowledge of tree and plant names than I did of maths. I’d read Jane Eyre and Treasure Island and had a sketchy knowledge of British geography. I knew that Sussex was named after the South Saxons and Dorking after the Dorks. I’d also picked up that girls didn’t need careers, only husbands . It took a few years and some hard knocks before I realised they don’t teach you everything in school.

Scalan

2007-10-14T14:47:00.000-07:00

Scalan is a collection of old seminary buildings in the Braes of Glenlivet. Though long deserted, it remains an enigmatically spiritual place. Tucked under encircling spartan hills, its ancient stone buildings huddle round a burn and a clear spring that’s commonly known as The Bishop’s Well. Some of the buildings are in ruins with yellow stonecrop clinging to the walls. Some have been restored; a place to shelter from the rain and ponder on the austere lives they once sheltered.

The ground surrounding the buildings is dotted with gnarled and twisted trees, sparsely fruiting rowans and sycamores, fissured alders, branches laden with blue grey lichen, that edge towards the waterside. All around the burn soothes and tinkles.

Apparently Scalan, set in its lonely isolated glen, was a Catholic seminary dating from a time when to be a Catholic was a risky business. I am not a Catholic, or even a particularly spiritual person, yet the place is profoundly moving.

My first visit was on a sunny afternoon when it glowed green and friendly. The second time a faint Scottish drizzle fell softly on my skin and evening was coming on. Then there was a slight air of apprehension about the place.

It may have been partly because four belligerent looking cows and a rather nervous calf stood solidly by the running water, between me and the bridge. They obviously resented the intrusion and my heart beat a little faster as the biggest one splashed purposefully through the burn towards me. The others followed, stopped almost face on, then nosing the calf before them, they turned shifty glances towards me, before nudging the calf up the bank. Once on the path they looked my way and waited.

I was too nervous to pass them so I also waited. We eyed each other, then I waved my arms. The older cow turned on her heel, gave her nearest companion a stroppy shove with her head and they all trotted away, looking back resentfully a couple of times before disappearing behind a small hillock.

Scalan was empty again. The burn played and the wind sighed softly in the trees. Once again it seethed with ancient spirituality, with a mysterious atmosphere that seemed to predate the long gone priests.

We dallied a while, breathing in the atmosphere and taking photographs, as dusk fell we walked back in the softly falling rain. On leaving the silence flowed slowly in behind us.

I caught a movement in the corner of my eye. To my disappointment it was only the cows creeping quietly round the back of the barns, waiting for us to leave, reclaiming their shelter for the night. It was cows, but it could easily have been something more secret and hidden that was also waiting for us to go.

How I got on at the Samaritans' Craft Fair

2007-10-04T07:19:00.000-07:00

One of the best things about having a stall at the Samaritan Craft Fair, apart from the obvious one of helping a wonderful organisation, is that everyone is so positive and cheery. I’d had my doubts. I was staying the weekend with a close friend, the person who’d asked me to have a stall in the first place and a committed Samaritan. I could hardly back out, whatever the weather, but the day before the fair was so wet I’d feared drowning on the M25. I expected the fair to be a washout.

The Craft Fair was set in a lovely house and garden that’s not usually open to the public. The owner and organiser greeted me like an old friend, despite the fact I’d just mistaken her husband for the gardener. (Well he was dressed in overalls and raking the leaves off the lawn. And it was the type of house to have a gardener. Very grand! I only realised my mistake when he entered the house wearing his boots.)

Despite steady drizzle, the lady of the house assured me the weather would be lovely and it was. How could the sun not shine on the Samaritans.

I have never been at a craft venue where everyone was so resolutely cheerful and supportive. Though I know from my experiences from Purple Coo, that goodwill is surprisingly infectious. Stall holders helped to look after each others stalls and praised their rivals work to potential customers.

I even smiled reasonably sweetly as I extracted my bright glass beads from the hands of yet another sticky toddler. Agreeing once again that, ‘Yes they did look exactly like sweeties.’ Though secretly wondering why the little poppet wasn’t firmly restrained in the pushchair.

Visitors came to the fair determined to buy. I had a good day and came away a satisfied and happy bead maker and the weekend was made doubly pleasant because I was staying with old friends.

I can’t say I returned home any richer. Craft fairs are full of temptations. I really did need a craftily turned wooden salt pot, some excellent hand made soap, that exotic chutney and, as for the plant stall…Well, need I say more.

Several people have asked where to buy my beads. They are currently displayed in Concepts in Art, Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex and Simply Unique, East Mey, Caithness.

I’ll also display a few on my blog in case anyone is tempted. If you are, please send me a PM for further details.

The flat beads (£14.50 + p&p) are threaded on silver wire (approx 40cm) and the beads have gold inclusions, one on a yellow background, the other on a turquoise background.

The bead drops (£19.50 + p&p) are on silver wire (approx 40cm) but the drops themselves are white metal with white metal beads in addition to the glass beads. The first drop is mainly mauve and orange glass, 2nd Turquoise and mauve glass, 3rd I call my 'Garden Beads', red raised flowers on a cream background, 4th a flat orange flower with a small black centre.

Making Glass Beads

2007-09-25T14:28:00.000-07:00

I became a lampworker by chance. Long fascinated by glass beads, a few years ago I read an article about an English bead maker who’d learnt her craft in California. What a shame I thought. I was heading for the U.S,A, but chilly Alaska, not warm, sexy California.

On arrival, I mentioned making glass beads to my Alaskan host. She made a phone call, we drove forty five miles to her neighbour’s house and there I had my first lampworking lesson. When I returned to England a short while later, I carried a rucksack stuffed with coloured glass rods, a bag of tools, a hot head torch and book entitled, ‘Everything You ever Wanted to Know About Glass Bead Making.’ You can imagine what they said when I went through U.S. customs.

I’ve been making glass beads ever since. It’s a hobby, it’s a passion, but it’s not a viable way of making a living. I’ve tried. Yet the magical effect when heat meets glass, and the challenge of controlling and shaping the molten glass in the flame makes me feel like an alchemist.

Hot and flowing glass has a life all its own, full of endless potential; when cool, it’s fragile yet durable, decorative and full of possibilities.

Each bead is unique. Even those made to the same design, at the same time, will have subtle variations of shape and tone. The charm of glass is that it’s unpredictable. It behaves in different ways according to my mood, the heat of the flame, even the weather.

Lampworking probably started with the Phoenicians. It was popular with the Romans, was a large scale industry in 18^th and 19^th C Venice and, in the last decade, has seen growing popularity in U.S.A, Canada and the U.K.

I know why. When it flows well, working in glass is almost a meditation. It’s magical, molten, hypnotic and enormously satisfying. When it goes wrong I curse and throw the results up the garden. I wonder what archaeologists will make when they find my mistakes in the future.

Autumn

2007-09-23T03:22:00.000-07:00

Autumn

Autumn, silent killer, softly creeps

And binds her web about the countryside

With cruel chill fingers she reaps the fruits,

Then casts the empty husks aside

Her lush and sensuous colour spreads

Oozing beneath her grasping hands.

Shrouding the ground with pools of red,

Each tree and bush denuded stands

Clammy and chill is the air she breathes

Hard and cold her greedy mouth

She takes the summer to her breast

And slowly sucks the lifeblood out.

N. M.

Anyone got a recipe for Eve's pudding?

2007-09-14T04:25:00.000-07:00

Don’t let on but I’ve been scrumping again, or should I say Autumn foraging. I’m tempted every year and one end of my workshop is now stacked with wonderful bramleys and some old fashioned little red apples that I can’t identify.

Let me explain. Lampwork cottage supports only one apple tree. Stately it may be, with a beautiful canopy, it’s a tree for climbing and resting under, but it doesn’t justify its space in the garden by providing me with apples. It promised six green marbles earlier in the summer, but three dropped off in the first strong wind and the starlings did for the rest. I’ve managed a few pies from next door’s windfalls dropping over the fence but each year I’m lured on by the lustier trees down the allotment.

Now my allotment isn’t posh, with paths, sheds and running water. There are no written rules and anarchy does reign at times. It’s privately owned and I pay £5 a year to join other stalwart gardeners fighting a never ending battle with mares tail, bindweed and other invasive terrors. But for my £5 a year I have the most beautiful spot looking onto fields and woodland. A place of peace and tranquillity, where I can watch birds and wildlife when tired with digging. The soil’s quite good too.

But my little patch of earth is constantly threatened by brambles. They creep towards me with a muscular stealth that can be quite unnerving. and, in the middle of these brambles, grow some of the most prolific apple trees I have ever seen. They are so fertile that each year branches break under the crushing weight of the fruit. No wonder I’m tempted.

When I took over the allotment the old timers told me they were Mr A’s trees. It was a couple of years, and several metres of steadily encroaching brambles, before I realised Mr A had been dead for some time. So now I quietly thank Mr A as I slash and trample my way through his brambles to scrump the apples. I do have a naughty guilty feeling as I pick, but I guess women have always been tempted by apples and I’ve had to find something to go with all those blackberries the brambles so helpfully provide.

(The pictures are just recent snaps of my garden)

I've just found this rather sweet little fairy poem. Very appropriate!

Song of the Fairies Robbing an Orchard

We are the fairies, blithe and antic

Of dimensions not gigantic

Though the moonshine mostly keep us,

Oft in orchards frisk and peep us.

Stolen sweets are always sweeter,

Stolen kisses much completer;

Stolen looks are nice in chapels,

Stolen, stolen be your apples!

When to bed the world are bobbing,

Then it’s time for orchard robbing;

Yet the fruit were scarce worth peeling

Were it not for stealing, stealing

Leigh Hunt (1794-1859)

Country Dancing with Sir Roger

2007-09-01T06:05:00.000-07:00

Country dancing was a big part of a child’s world in the late 1950s and early 1960s, well it was in mine. My first dancing memories are of Miss Strudwick, our infant teacher, thumping on the piano, and me clutching the policeman’s son in my sticky hands, twirling happily in the Sir Roger de Coverly. Who was Sir Roger? I haven’t a clue, but there is probably a whole website dedicated to him. I’ll have to look the old boy up again someday.

My big sisters were very familiar with him. Sometimes in the evening, they'd push the table up against the wall, hum his tune, clap their hands, pirouette and strip the willow on the living room lino. A tricky manoeuvre with just three children and a dog.

All too soon my sisters sang a different tune. The eldest graduated to dancing in halls, driving off in cars and bringing home a boyfriend, then she left home. The middle one wore tight sweaters and rode off on her bike to see her friends and suddenly I was on my own in the evenings.

But in my eighth year I was able to join the G.F.S. (Girls friendly Society. An organisation deserving a blog to itself, I promise.) Miss M and Miss B, genteel ladies, who’d lost their loves in the First World War, were very keen on Sir Roger.

Under their tuition us group of girls skipped and thumped in St Andrew’s Hall, till its wooden walls shook, though we were careful not to crash into the bentwood chairs or the hot stove. Eight o’clock found us on our knees, promising to, ‘….render to no man evil for evil…’ The most wayward of us emphasing, ‘Man’ in the most daring manner, causing giggles that the chaste old ladies stonily ignored.

Sadly I attended this girls club without my previously saintly sister. She’d brought disgrace to her family by jiving during the Sir Roger de Coverly and had been asked to stay away from G.F.S. Obviously a bad influence. Though tainted by my family connections, the fairly forgiving Miss B. allowed me to remain, but she kept a close eye on me just in case. She didn’t want any more moral transgressions. I didn’t disappoint her.

By the time I was twelve years old Sir Roger had been abandoned for the complications of American square dancing and other thrilling fare. At my all girls secondary school, lunchtimes saw me swinging and sashaying to Turkey in the Straw and do-si-do-ing in true barnstorming fashion.

When I shyly asked our young teacher if she’d ever heard of Sir Roger de Coverly, she laughed and led us onto daring European folk dances requiring much stomping and stamping and even the occasional shout. Aah! If only I’d stayed faithful to old Sir Roger, all would have been well.

In the fourth form we gave an open day dancing display. She’d chosen a particularly vigorous European dance. As a big strapping lass I naturally took the boys part in my red school shorts, white gym blouse and black lace up shoes. My partner was togged out in swirly skirt and white plimsolls. We were quite a pair.

Sadly boys play a large part in the rest of this story. One was waiting for me just outside the school gate and, excited at the prospect and anxious not to keep him waiting, I wanted to get through the dance and change as quickly as possible. Scared he might not bother to stay, I took some unwise short cuts.

Our dancing team bounced onto the arena, determined to put on a really good show. We stamped and capered, twirled and kicked and stamped again. It was the show of our lives. I knew we were impressive as everyone stopped to watch. It was going down really well. Most of the audience were smiling, some were even laughing, all were enjoying it except our young teacher. Her usual sunny face had a frozen stare and it was concentrated on me. I stamped all the harder and swung my partner with renewed vigour. Something was jouncing against my leg. Again and again I felt it bounce. Now it was both legs. My suspenders, that I thought safely tucked into the elastic of my grey regulation knickers, had come adrift and were bouncing away freely.

That was my last country dancing display. Shortly after I gave up Sir Roger and his friends for Jimmy Hendrix and a Purple Haze and bought myself my first pair of tights, then a whole new world opened up for me.

Owl box project a success!

2007-08-27T06:09:00.000-07:00

I don’t know if anyone remembers about our village owl box project. I wrote about it when we were young and innocent and blogged courtesy of CL.

As part of our local biodiversity project 28 shiny new designer owl boxes were erected within our local parish. For six exhausting days back in February, these huge and unwieldy tawny and barn owl boxes were lugged through fields and over stiles by the intrepid owl box team. I volunteered the keen mountain biker as official photographer, but he was quickly promoted to the wheel barrow and ladder party. Mainly because we owned the wheel barrow and ladder.

The initial opinion was that no owl would even consider their new homes for at least a year. I secretly feared the only occupants were likely to be grey squirrels and magpies, but I’ve been proved wrong.

The owl inspector, yes there really is one, has confirmed a large number of the barn owl boxes are in use. Three separate adults and thirteen young were weighed and tagged, and at the time of inspection, five more eggs were still to hatch. Another box showed signs of habitation by a buzzard. The tawny owl boxes haven’t been checked yet but results should be equally promising.

Owl numbers have plummeted throughout Britain in the past few years, so the results of our little project are enormously exciting and very satisfying.

Now we have to decide upon our next project. Thinking back to those damp and freezing treks across muddy fields, way back at the start of the year, I’m keen on a dormouse village. The boxes are much smaller and easier to carry for a start. Hopefully we will be able to find a sympathetic landowner with just the right sort of coppiced woodland.

If anyone else has been involved in similar projects or if you have any ideas for small scale, inexpensive projects that may help our local flora or fauna I’d love to hear from you.

(Sorry about the rubbish quality of the picture but I had to copy it from our news sheet. It is a picture of one of the owls being tagged.)

Lessons for the holiday letter

2007-08-20T05:13:00.000-07:00

( This is not useful advice on how to write a postcard.)

Having just arrived back from an eventful ten days in Scotland I’ve jotted down some points to remember for those in the holiday lettings business:

When a guest requests instructions on how to find your remote and romantic hideaway cottage, don’t direct her via a narrow road where the bridge has been closed for repairs for the past 8 weeks. The resulting 14 mile detour at the end of a long drive doesn’t make for a contented visitor.

Avoid filling the cottage with dry and dusty flower arrangements. The temptation to use them to light the fire may prove too great for your tired and chilly guest when she arrives and can’t find any kindling.

Remember to sort through all those useful leaflets on local attractions on a regular basis. A minimum of at least once a year is suggested. Guests aren’t interested in what fun they could have had if only they had been there in 2003/2004. This is particularly true if the leaflets are too shiny to light the fire.

If an open fire is a main feature, do warn your guest not to light it when a slight breeze is blowing. This will save her having to run into the garden in her nightie when the cottage fills up with smoke, or at least ensure she is wearing her best nightie and not just an old tee shirt, socks and walking boots, when she attempts to light the morning fire.

If an elderly relative leaves you a dirty old three piece suit in a will, don’t give it pride of place in your holiday cottage. ( The same can be said for a double bed, wardrobe, stained table mats etc….)

Likewise, a holiday let is not the place to store all those strange ornaments and faded dusty plastic flower arrangements left over from the last village hall table top sale.

Clean pillow cases and duvet covers do not hide an all pervading smell of stale bedding. Not all of your guests will have their own clean sleeping bags with them. Fortunately we did.

Double beds are crucial to a romantic holiday let. They aren't comfy if they dip so badly in the middle that guests are forced to hang on to the edges all night or sleep stacked up in a pile in the middle. (OK, I know that can be fun for a short while, but I need my sleep.)

Most important. Don’t just rely on the fact your cottage is situated in an outstandingly beautiful area of Scotland. An effort had been made to clean the cottage and it had a fancy microwave and washing machine, but the overall impression was so grotty that we actually considered sleeping in our tent in the garden and only using the kitchen and bathroom. The area is lovely, with huge heather moors, wonderful wildlife, secret glens and pretty villages. We even came across a couple of outstanding art galleries in the most unexpected hidden places, but we will think twice before returning to the Glenlivet area again.

I've been Bloomsburied

2007-08-06T01:50:00.000-07:00

Give me two hot days in summer and my whole attitude to clothes changes. Without really noticing I drift into soft cotton and starched linen, a floppy hat pulled rakishly over my ears. Yesterday I even wore lipstick down the allotment, where there is only the odd rabbit and scarecrow to see me. I don’t count the Loic look alike who works the plot next to mine. Best not to catch his eye if you want to avoid long and boring conversations about sprouts.

All autumn and winter I happily slop around with mud splattered trousers tucked into my boots, but hot sunny weather has me squeezing into diaphanous fabrics. In winter or wet weather I shop with local charities. Give me a warm summer breeze and I dig into the depths of my wardrobe. In a flash I’m under the apple tree sighing romantically into my gin and toxic, wafting clouds of Muguet perfume, as sensuous as any Arthur Rackham fairy.

In your dreams woman!

Actually, I’ve been drifting around in a voluminous blue number I bought back in April, when the promise was a long and steaming summer. I’ll need to get as much wear out of it as I can, else I’ll be stuck with another dratted frock in the back of my wardrobe It will lurk there until it’s so completely out of fashion even my local charity shop won‘t take it. Yes, that's happened to me, but I eventually flogged that item as ‘vintage’ on eBay.

Now I need to repeat to myself,

“No more buying clothes on impulse”. Now where did I put that Boden catalogue.

(The painting is 'July Sunlight' by Douglas Stannus Grey)

Why be bitchy about Boden?

2007-08-05T04:30:00.000-07:00

I’m annoyed with myself for being irritated by the Boden-blogs article, but annoyed I am. Why be bitchy about Boden? I find their fabrics interesting, any garment I have bought has been well made and, making the most of the special offers, the prices are reasonable.

The catalogue is quirky, but buying a couple of items doesn’t mean you buy into a phoney lifestyle. I buy tee-shirts from Orvis but that doesn’t make me a keen fisherman. I used to read Country Living but didn’t believe it was anything more than a magazine published by the huge Hearst Corporation.

(Oops! Ignore that bit. I was taken in by the C.L. blog con after all.)

However, it’s become fashionable to knock Boden. Rosie Millard in the Independent had a go at them a few weeks back, now it’s Kate Muir’s turn, maybe a few others have joined in. I don’t often read lifestyle articles, my real life is too busy.

Once again I’m reminded of a small girl I saw in our village library, choosing books with pink covers, such is the power of style over substance. A bit like Ms Muir’s journalism perhaps.

2007-07-27T01:33:00.000-07:00

The three irregular amber beads had been in the window for as long as I could remember. Golden chunks on a thin gold chain, they were hopelessly old and completely unattainable. The shop was painted black with a small three cornered tear in the faded front blind, but to me it was mysterious. I sometimes walked by with my Dad. Occasionally he’d stop and chat in the street, then I’d look through the door. There was a small side counter. I think I even went into the shop once, when we had our old clock repaired.

At the back, the doorway was obscured by a curtain of long, brown glass, bugle beads. I thought them unspeakably exotic. I imagined the sound they’d make if you walked through. I suspected there might be treasure on the other side.

Things came and went from the main window, but the display in the little side window never changed. There was only a couple of bits of dusty silver and the amber necklace, three lonely chunks on a bit of gold chain.

Looking back there was nothing special about those amber beads. They had trapped no Jurassic fly, nor were they glamorous, but I wanted them so badly.

I never mentioned it to anyone. What would have been the point. My father frowned upon jewellery, my mother would have said it was a waste of money and my big sister had a passion for startling fake pearls. All my friends wore crosses or little silver lockets, of the type you could open and show your boyfriend’s picture, hopefully.

At fourteen I got a Saturday job. For a while I worked in a sweet shop, but jumped at the chance of being a Saturday girl in Woolworths on the High Street. Once a week I was queen of the haberdashery counter. I sold needles, cottons, coloured tapes, embroidery silk, that sort of thing.

Every Saturday afternoon an old woman came and stole bits and pieces from my counter. Though terrified I’d be blamed, I never told. I knew what it was like to want something really badly. I knew, if left alone with that necklace, what I’d be tempted to do. Instead I saved.

One lunchtime, braving snooty disapproval, I asked the shopman the price. It was a huge sum. I think £5, but I can’t be sure. It was a while ago. I saved what I could in secret, checking that little side window when I walked past. The more I saved the more pressing was the need to own that necklace.

Eventually one Christmas, probably about six years after I first saw it and almost a year from when I’d checked the price, I had enough. I couldn’t wait for Saturday to come.

But a shock was waiting at the shop. The necklace was gone. There was a space in the window where it should have been. In alarm I went in, hoping it had just been moved, but no. It had been sold, the man said, just a few days before. Back out on the street I wanted to weep. It was a scruffy, down at heel street then, narrow and congested, just a few tatty shops including a corn chandlers, a café, chip shop and that seedy little jewellers.

It’s upmarket now, smart antique shops on both sides, traffic restricted to one way.

I’ve owned amber, jet, lapis lazuli. I’ve collected every type of exotic bead you could imagine. I make glass beads myself, but I’ve never wanted a necklace as much as I wanted that one.

Just three rough amber beads on a thin gold chain. Nothing special, but if I saw it now I’d still be thrilled.

The importance of big knickers

2007-07-23T03:33:00.000-07:00

This is my big sister’s favourite story about me. It’s one she loves to tell but I am not so sure.

Sunday afternoons saw us both packed off to Sunday school. I now realise my parents’ religious fervour had little to do with our spiritual well being, and more to do with, ‘a little lie down’, on Sunday afternoons.

However, after lunch, the woman who ran our local G.F.S group, (Girls Friendly Society - an organisation deserving a whole blog to itself) would pick us up in her little green van. Off we’d go to endure an afternoon of stultifying boredom. In the little ones’ group I’d cut out pictures and copy an uplifting text. ‘Suffer the Little Children …. was one of the most appropriate.

I was a free range child and being indoors when I could be out playing on a sunny afternoon was torture to me. My 8^th year was a year of rebellion. One inviting Sunday afternoon, lunch finished, we were sent to wait in the lane for our lift. I rushed out in front of my sister and shot up the big old yew tree that grew close to our garden boundary. There I hid among the dense branches.

My pious sister called and called but I couldn’t be found and off she went on her own.

I waited until the coast was clear and started the descent.. Topping forty five feet, the yew tree was mammoth and I’d scrambled right to the top. Getting down wasn’t easy. Yew trees are dusty and bits got in my hair and eyes. Irregular twigs stuck up from the massive branches and I got caught up.

Scared, grubby and stuck fast on a branch about twelve feet from the ground, I waited for my sister’s return. Seeing her just about to enter the gate I called out. She appeared beneath me, more than usually pious and disapproving. I tried to explain I was stuck and caught up. She tutted and said,

“Oh just jump. You’ll be O.K. The grounds soft”.

I was doubtful but jumped. My knicker leg was hooked firmly over a sticking up twig and, after falling forward, I was left dangling. Far from helping me, my rotten sister collapsed with laughter as I was slowly lowered by my tearing underwear. It says something for the quality of the fabric and quantity of the material that it was some time before, with a sudden rip, the navy interlock gave way and I was dropped unhurt onto the ground.

Pious sister was hysterical, she’s still laughing about it fifty years later. I guess if she had a computer this is the first blog she’d write. She never let on to our parents though. As I’ve reminded her on more than one occasion since, some things are better not disclosed.

Tantrums and vests

2007-07-16T08:17:00.000-07:00

My mother used to knit my vests which, even for the 1950s, was unusual. Most of the other girls my age had hand knitted cardigans, mine were often shop bought, but for some reason she always knitted my vests.

Nearly 40 when I was born, my Mum was also the product of older parents. My maternal Gran and Grandad, what little I remember if them, were true Victorians, very religious, very stern, clothed in black and ancient.

Grandad in his nineties, still wore a bowler hat and waistcoat; Granny had an umbrella with a duck’s head handle and a fierce expression. I longed to be like other girls, have a Nana with blue rinsed hair and wear Marks and Spencer’s vests, preferably the ones with blue or pink ribbons. And how I longed for dainty aertex knickers. Mum didn’t knit them, thanks goodness, but I swear the ones I had to wear would have withstood a nuclear blast.

I had an early rebellion about wearing liberty bodices, I always chewed up the rubber buttons, but those knitted vests were indestructible. Grown out of, they would be unravelled, a bit more wool bought, and a new set knitted up in no time. Women who had lived through the war knew a thing or two about recycling.

My big rebellion came when I was about eight. Firstly I tied my knitted pixie hood to the top of the tallest tree I could climb. I did contemplate doing away with the vests but didn’t dare.

Quite by accident I found a way out. On a trip to town to buy shoes I threw an enormous tantrum. I wanted a cherry red pair with straps not my usual sensible laceups. My Dad made my big, brown shoes so shiny with polish that the boys on the school bus had started to call me ‘conkers’. I desperately needed different footwear. To my amazement the tantrum worked. I got the shoes and the power I wanted. If used sparingly those tantrums served me well.

I didn’t get the dainty vests I craved, much too frivolous, but at least the scratchy horrors were replaced by sensible white interlock. I even managed to tantrum my way into a pair of blue and white baby doll pyjamas and a startling pink swim suit, complete with saucy skirt. Only occasionally I took the tantrums too far and all I got was a smacked bottom and sent to bed but, on the whole, it was worth the risk.

For lovers of cats and mysteries

2007-07-10T12:15:00.000-07:00

I don’t really believe in ghosts, I’m too much of a cynical realist, but I’ve never been able to explain what happened in our previous house. When looking for suitable furniture to do up our Victorian kitchen, we saw a dilapidated old pot cupboard standing outside a junk furniture shop. The owner of the shop said they’d just cleared a Sussex farmhouse and this had been ripped out of the kitchen. We snapped it up as a bargain and, when stripped and cleaned of years of grease and grime, it looked gorgeous. It looked like it had always been there, completely filling one wall.

Initially nothing unusual was noticed until on day my neighbour, perched sipping coffee and admiring the renovations, suddenly brushed something away from her legs with a shudder. She has a fear of cats and insisted a large cat had brushed past her legs . I pointed out that my cat was asleep in the garden, but she insisted a cat had been there.

I thought no more about it until a few weeks later. One afternoon I was sitting reading at the kitchen when my cat jumped in the chair behind me. I felt him squeeze in the space between me and the back of the chair. We often had minor battles as to who owned that particular chair and this time I was determined to win. I turned round to pick him up and chuck him off, but there was no cat.

A little nervously I told my husband, expecting my story to be dismissed as a fantasy, but he took me seriously. He said that when he was rebuilding the kitchen, plumbing in the sink unit to be precise, he’d felt a cat brushing round his back. He hadn’t liked to mention it before as it seemed so strange, no cat being there.

We lived for several years with a vague feeling of a benign presence in the house. Our children were teenagers at the time and they never mentioned anything and we never told them about our extra ‘cat’.

Maybe it was our imagination but we sometimes felt it was just out of sight, in the corner of an eye, in another room. It was no way scary, just there.

Only once more did it make itself known to anyone. On her last visit to us , my mother, in her late eighties and with her mind meandering far into the past, suddenly smiled and put her hand down and stroked a cat, saying, ‘Nice puss’ or something like that. She had owned many cats in her lifetime and was an enduring cat lover. Her mind may have been wandering but I am sure on that occasion, even though I couldn’t see it, she stroked a cat.

As I’ve said, I can’t explain it. When we moved the first things the new owners did was rip out the old kitchen We saw the cupboard lying broken and forlorn in a skip in the street. They told our old neighbour that they loved the house but hated that gloomy cupboard in the kitchen. A pity, they don’t know what they missed.

Diary of an Ordinary Woman?

2007-07-01T11:31:00.000-07:00

Before starting this book I was unsure. It certainly wasn’t on my list of ‘must reads’. I’m a fan of pre 1930s literature or yarns of daring adventure. I suspected ‘Diary of an Ordinary Woman’ to be some ghastly kitchen sink drama. I was wrong.

Certainly the first few diary entries don’t quite ring true. Millicent seems a very fictional thirteen year old to me and I was looking for faults to dislike. However I quickly appreciated the subtle way the author hangs back from telling everything, revealing some incidents, glossing over others, always leaving the reader wanting more.

It would be easy to mistake this book for a real diary, and not recognise it as an unusual work of fiction. In my own family are stories of young men joining up to fight in wars, with equally tragic results, I think George’s story is very real. The account of life in the First World War hooked me and from then on I couldn’t put the book down.

I feel for this woman. How she wants more from life but is challenged at every turn, though really she has far more opportunities than many of her time, male or female. She annoys me. I am irritated by her lack of staying power and even slightly jealous of her job on the bohemian, artsy magazine. I scoffed when she fails to realise that, when a young man says he admires her ‘critical faculties’, he really wants to get his hands on something else. I could understand her rage and frustration, trapped in that dreadful Brighton school with a head teacher she scorns and detests and all the time wanting something better. I wanted to find out more about her life. I began to really care about what happened next.

My heart goes out to her, with a life so full of duty and even love, but so devoid of true friendship. The lack of anyone close to confide in goes well with the conceit of a confessional diary.

Was she an extraordinary woman or just an ordinary woman living through extraordinary times? I haven’t made up my mind yet, I’m still thinking about it, and to my mind that’s the mark of an extraordinary book.

Ephemeral sounds of childhood

2007-06-29T04:15:00.000-07:00

The other morning I just caught the end of a radio programme about disappearing noises, milk floats, the ching of cash registers, police car sirens and the like. That set me thinking about what sounds played in the background of my childhood.

When very small, and not allowed beyond the bounds of our garden, I remember the sound of my Dad’s circular saw working in the tiny sawmill next to our cottage. He worked as a forester for the National Trust and I can also remember the whine of chain saws coming from the woods. I wasn’t scared by these sounds, they were just the background to everyday life.

The noise that scared the wits out of me was the spooky coo of wood pigeons. And the woods round our house was just full of the wretched birds. (Just like my allotment, D **n them!)

My big sister, who went to school and therefore knew everything, told me they were witches calling to each other. The first soft hoot would have me banging on the back door to be let in. I never told my Mum what the matter was and she never thought to ask.

Later we had a golden retriever who could hear my Dad’s Landrover a long time before it came into the lane. We’d know he was on his way home when she ran to the door with her ears pricked up. Sure enough Dad would arrive minutes later. It just gave us enough time to get out our homework and turn the record player off.

Sounds are so ephemeral, with so much noise about nowadays I wonder what modern children will remember. My home was on its own in a wood. I was so used to natural sounds that I often took them for granted. I think that’s why the noise of the saws are so prominent in my memory.

What were the sounds I liked best as a child? Foxes barking in the woods or and owl hooting overhead while I lay snug in bed were nice, but best was the wind whipping the plum trees until they nearly touched my bedroom window. As I type I can almost hear them now. Even the thought sends a delicious shiver down my back.

A nasty case of green fingers

2007-06-23T00:32:00.000-07:00

I’m feeling just a bit guilty. It’s the village summer vegetable show today and the ‘Hidden Gardens’ open day on Sunday and I’m not going to either. I’m off to an old friend’s big birthday bash today and it’s best that, for once, I boycott the Hidden Gardens. They only make me dissatisfied with my small plot of earth, though most of the posh heritage gardens, the ones that make me really jealous, are firmly closed this year. They’re probably fed up with us humble cottage dwellers staring maliciously at their manicured lawns and perfect rose arbours. I can be a spiteful gardener at times. I would love a few rolling acres but realistically my little garden and half an allotment are about all I have time to manage. That and the fact that I haven’t got about a million and a half quid to spare.

I knew someone, a previous work colleague and a waspish sort of chappie, who would visit gardens with a pocket full of seeds specially saved for the purpose of scattering when he felt garden envy coming on. He brought a whole new meaning to green fingered. I guess it makes a change from visitors pinching plants. Sadly he never felt the need to scatter those secret little seeds in my garden.

As for the show. I really meant to enter some peas and other bits and pieces. I grew some specially. They were looking good too, but they were even lovelier in the vegetable lasagne we had last night for supper. It was either that or walk up the village to the greengrocers and, as I may have said before, I can be quite lazy at times.

(There was actually a famous ‘lady’ gardener, Miss Wilmot, who would scatter white Eryngium seeds in all the gardens she visited, the resulting plants came to be known as Miss Wilmot’s Ghost. I am not sure if I’ve got that completely right. Does anyone know the whole story?)

Midsummer memories

2007-06-21T00:46:00.000-07:00

I’m feeling wistful. On this day last year I was drinking beer around midnight in a bar in Destruction Bay, the Yukon, and it was still daylight. I can’t say I saw the midnight sun as Destruction Bay doesn’t do sun, just eerie twilight and an amazing scouring wind that blows 365 days a year.

The bar was crowded with construction workers and some of the toughest looking women I’ve ever seen in my life, but they were all amiable and we passed a pleasant evening talking football and the world cup. I know absolutely nothing about football but beer helps to extend opinions and I don’t think anyone else knew much either.

I remember feeling a bit wistful that evening as well . We were coming to the last couple of days of our drive from Seattle, into Canada, along Highways 97 and 99 to Dawson City and up the Alaskan Highway, on route to my friend’s home in central Alaska. An epic drive through the most amazing scenery ever.

My Alaskan friend’s daughter had just graduated from Washington State and needed to drive her car home, so we joined her for one of the most amazing road journeys in the world. She drove most of the way , with her mum, my man and me hanging out of the windows snapping photos, yarning, singing and generally behaving like a bunch of teenagers on a spree. It was great, even if our cheeky young driver did tell people we met on the way that she’d just picked us up at a pioneer home (Old folk’s home to us in the UK) Bless her!

Some tru(ish) confessions

2007-06-10T08:43:00.000-07:00

It seems I’ve had a few days off school and the whole place has erupted into nakedness and true confessions. I’ll pass on the nakedness, it has to be very hot for me to take off my cardi, but I’ll have a go at a few true(ish) confessions.

I learnt early on that you can get away with most things if you have the right disguise.
I’d rather be out in the wilds but have lived much of my adult life in a town.
I have been accused of being aloof and standoffish. This is always a surprise to me as I see myself as thoughtful and restrained.
I was brought up in a cottage with no electricity and 15 cats.
I love travelling to wild places. I’ve sat with mountain gorillas in Zaire (Congo) and camped wild in Alaska.
I tend to be rather lazy.
I can be bossy and self opinionated.
I’ve surprised myself at writing this as it is very out of character. I detest being the centre of attention.

(If you are interested in the fate of mountain gorillas, check out http://www.wildlifedirect.org/ )
.

My sister would kill me if she knew..

2007-06-07T05:05:00.000-07:00

My big sister, who lives in the wilds of North East Scotland, was asked by her local womens' group to write a promotional poem about where they live. Rather tongue in cheek she wrote:

Welcome to rural Scotland
Where mountains are so high
Standing stones and waterfalls
Rainbows in the sky

See our lovely coastline Dolphins in the bay
Castles perched upon the cliff
'Tis life the highland way
Sweetly blooming heather
Grouse upon the moor
You'll get a smile from friendly folk
At every cottage door
Goodbye from rural Scotland
Haste ye back once more

To her surprise it was greeted with much acclaim, but, after a few weeks of very trying weather she wrote the antidote:

Welcome to rural Scotland
Wi' it's midges and wi' bogs
Hurricanes and aeroplanes
And everlasting fogs
If you should come to Scotland
Be sure to bring a mac
Wi' rain and wind and hailstones
Will you be coming back.

(If anyone recognises her style, she loves it there really. Don't tell on me 'cos she's bigger than me.)

The truth has to be told...

2007-06-04T09:21:00.001-07:00

Thanks for the lovely comments about my pest of a cat but I’m afraid the truth has to be told. He isn’t the sweet furry little number he appears to be in photos. I’ll forgive him the bits of chewed blue tits left on the washing basket lid. I’m used to mouse guts squidged behind the kitchen door. I calmed down quickly when the live magpie he bought into the kitchen wrecked my show daffodils. I didn’t make a fuss when the smell in the shoe rack turned out to be a badly mauled mouse that had crawled in there to die. I know he is a cat and likely to do these things.

What I can’t accept is that he bullies small children. When brave, bold, cat confident children arrive he runs for cover under the bed or he sits scowling up the apple tree, but two of my grandchildren are timid around animals.

Then the brave garden tiger finds them irresistible. As soon as they arrive he starts some serious intimidation, rubbing round their legs, walking across their toys, sitting on their books, all the time purring aggressively. The more they stiffen with fright, the more he smirks and enjoys himself. They stand still with their little hands in the air and he purrs and winds round them in an intimidatingly friendly manner.

Even the older, bolder granddaughter, eyeing him cautiously, remarked,

“It’s lucky he hasn’t learned to eat people yet.”

I’m not so sure. I’m certainly keeping an eye on him when the little ones are at our house.

Purple Prose - make your final choice

2007-05-30T06:11:00.000-07:00

I have managed to whittle the Purple Prose book list down to a final 5.

I’ve tried to be fair, so lots of apologies if your favourite book didn’t make the final list. I used a points system to choose - well it’s a wet day and I’ve time on my hands.

3 points 1^st choice

2 points 2^nd choice

1 point No preference mentioned and/or the book was on the original list.

Please make your final choice in the comment box:

English Passenger by Matthew Kneale ( A wryly humorous seafaring yarn set around an 1857 voyage to Tasmania.)

Diary of an Ordinary Woman by Margaret Forster ( A series of fictional journals recording a woman’s inner life and 20c events.)

Time travellers Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (She meets the love of her life when she is 6 and he’s 36, but he’s only really 8 years older than her. It’s not really science fiction, it’s more about two people coping with a situation beyond their control

Redemption Falls by Joseph O’Connor (This explores the enigma of life through a love story and tale of war in 1860s America.)

Unless by Carol Shields (This is about a woman who’s comfortable life is in turmoil when she finds her daughter is sitting on a Toronto street corner with a begging bowl in her lap.)

I feel I want to read them all but that isn’t possible. Please vote and the one with the most votes can be the current Purple prose book of the month.

Purple Prose - your choice

2007-05-29T00:26:00.000-07:00

Wow! What a response. Now we need to whittle the suggested books down to 4 or 5 of the most popular before we make our final choice of purple prose.

Please put your 1^st choice and 2^nd choice of book in the comment box. Bear in mind the book needs to be currently in print and readily available to all.

I’ll publish the 4 or 5 most popular on Children, Chocolate and Wine. Then we can vote for the book we want to read this time.

Purple Prose Book List 29/05/07 (in no particular order)

Time Traveller’s Wife Audrey Niffenegg.

Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte

Into the Wild John Krakauer

Unless Carol shields

Redemption Joseph O’Connor

Star of the Sea Joseph O’Connor

Diary of an Ordinary Woman Margaret Foster

Running for the Hills Horatio Clare

Falling Angels Tracey Chevalier

The English Passengers Matthew Kneale

A Monstrous Regiment Terry Pratchet

A Scandalous Life (biography of Jane Digby) Mary Lovell

My Dirty little Book of Stolen Time Liz Jensen

The Historian Elizabeth Kostovo

On Beauty Zadie Smith

Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Nature Cure Richard Mabey

Holberts Gift Saul bellow

Day A L Kennedy

How to be free Tim Hodgkinson

Purple prose

2007-05-27T07:46:00.000-07:00

I hope I’m not being too swotty but several people expressed an interest in a purple reading group. I can see some enormous advantages for me. Firstly I won’t have to drive home after having a measly fruit juice while my bus riding friends have been knocking back the red and white. Secondly I won’t have to drive home late at night and, with my eye sight problems that will be a help. Specs like the bottom of wine glasses loom on the horizon. (Well they would if I could actually see the horizon any more.)

Next, other readers won’t get lost trying to find my house in the dark. I live 20 mins from a coastal town and the village is well signposted, but my town dwelling friends go to pieces once beyond the security of street lamps. In my regular reading group the person who chooses the book also hosts the evening. The last time it was my turn three friends turned up 30 mns early, afraid they might get lost. The majority came late because they did get lost. And two intrepid travellers, driving a 4x4, didn’t turn up at all. They set out together and headed for a similar sounding place in East Sussex not West Sussex, only realising they’d gone wrong when they’d driven more than twenty miles totally in the wrong direction.

What book were we reading? In to the Wild by John Krakauer of course!

Is anyone interested in forming a group? If so, add a suggested title and author in the comment box and I’ll list them on the main page. A vote could be taken on the most popular title and off we go. Any takers?

On books and friends

2007-05-25T04:13:00.000-07:00

I missed going to my book club last night. My sight is still a bit wobbly after the tadpoles in the sky incident, so I felt driving home from the town in the dark would be too risky. The group are all previous work colleagues, some now in early retirement and others are still 'in the thick of it' career women. It’s usually a great meeting. All of us are a bit spiky and bitchy but supportive of each other in our own way. They are sharp, funny and argumentative by turns, all willing to disagree, dish the dirt and listen to each other, offence seldom taken and usually never meant. We even get round to discussing the book occasionally.

This lively forum has ruined me for any other book group I’ve ever thought of joining. I was invited to one but turned it down when I realised the wife of a former boss would also be a member. I’ve nothing against the woman, but knew that I couldn’t trust myself to be civil about him, so thought it best to stay away.

Meeting up with my old group means a longish drive into town so, as part of my, ‘getting to know people in the village’ campaign, I a responded to an advert in the village bookshop. It said, ‘New members wanted for established reading group’ . Promising a warm welcome with stimulating discussion it seemed just the job and a way to get to know some like minded people.

Their daunting booklist for the past seven years arrived along with the title of the tome of the month and the address of the next venue. Until I get to know people I tend to be a bit quiet, so the first couple of sessions went quite well, but on the third occasion I found the book really not to my taste. Anxious not to offend people I hardly knew, when it came to my turn I diplomatically offered that I thought the book was, ‘sweetly pretty, but lacked any substance’. I smiled brightly then, to my embarrassment, noticed the woman who’d chosen the book looked distinctly upset. She bravely blew her nose and said that she couldn’t believe I could be so unkind about her favourite book, a book she had loved since girlhood. A horrible silence followed, only broken when our host quickly suggested we all had some tea. I drank mine feeling it might be poisoned.

After that I decided perhaps that book group was too well established and far too polite for me. Any one out there wishing to form a reading group? I promise I won’t make any hasty or critical comments, at least not for the first couple of weeks.

I guess I'll have to do it in my sunglasses now.

2007-05-19T12:42:00.000-07:00

On Friday we fancied a day trip to Sissinghurst garden, but I just had to pop into the optician on the way. When I told them about the funny little tadpole shapes that were swimming before my eyes all hell broke out. Stingy stuff was squirted into my eyes. I was puffed and peered at, the hospital was phoned, a letter pushed into my bleary hand and, with my husband driving, off I went to the eye hospital as a medical emergency.

Once at the hospital I had to sit on a special red chair and wait. A few more medical emergencies arrived and we were called one by one to have more stingy stuff squirted into our eyes. We sat together on our red chairs, with dilated eyes, like a row of bush babies on speed. By now I was peering through pupils the size of saucers but I was being very brave. Apparently in past times women would put belladonna in their eyes to dilate the pupils and look more alluring. It certainly wouldn’t have worked for me.

I was seen quite quickly by a lovely bearded doctor, who, to my confused vision , looked remarkably like my husband, only more patient and stern. After much puffing, prodding and peering I was told I had a bleeding eyeball (that's roughly what I was thinking by this time...) but nothing important was detached. I’d have known more of what he was talking about if I’d paid attention in biology lessons, but in those days they never taught the really interesting stuff and pictures of eyes still make me go all squidgey inside.

Apparently it will clear up in a couple of weeks in the meantime sunglasses might help. Today the tadpoles have turned into a sort of grey cobweb, so I guess that’s progress. When I asked the doctor what I could have done to cause it, he replied without a hint of humour, ‘grown older’. Not a nice thing to say to a woman facing a birthday. I replied , ‘Oh wailey, wailey’ and he showed me the door.

A bit of a gloomy tail

2007-05-17T02:47:00.000-07:00

Maybe its the weather but, in my darkened mood, I parked on the lavender and couldn’t be bothered to move the car. Why so glum? I’ve trays of plants for the allotment but I can’t get them down there. It’s been raining for days.. I’m working too much. I go months with not a hint of work then everybody is on the phone at once. Then there has been the slaughter in the garden and the cat’s smirking again.

I guess it’s all part of the perils of owning a cat, but why did it have to do that to the baby great tit and I can hear the blackbird alarm calling again. Our previous cat lived in permanent comfy middle age, always asleep in the garden or on the sofa; this garden tiger is a marauder.

I’ve told sad tales of mice under the sofa and shocked magpies smashing up my daffodils in the kitchen (alas all on the other blog site that shall not be named) but this morning I was greeted by half a fancy goldfish, the tail end. Should I confess to my neighbour or keep quiet and let him think it’s the heron again. (Answers on a postcard please.)

I know it’s not only cats that do bad things. Yesterday I met Jack, a hamster eating terrier. The hamster was on holiday at a friends house. Never assume that those jolly little plastic balls, designed to exercise a hamster, are doggy proof. Any canny dog can whiz the ball along with one foot, then decant a dizzy hamster and, wham, no more hamster.

What’s the real reason for me being gloomy? Another birthday looms. Not a significant one, but aren’t they all significant once your past the first flush of middle age.

Wine and water

2007-05-13T12:03:00.000-07:00

My Man’s cooking the dinner, I’ve just had a couple of gulps of red wine and I’ve been sitting curled up in the armchair thinking what to write. Sounds good eh? Are you jealous? Actually I’m feeling really fed up. It’s been one of those days, starting full of promise, that didn’t live up to expectations.
Early on it was sunny so I breakfasted early and was ready to wheelbarrow my tomato plants down the allotment, when it started to pour with rain. It’s been torrential all day. Twice I tried to do things in the garden and twice I got soaked.
Then I tried to plan lessons for the week but I’ve mislaid a vital science book. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned it before but somehow I’ve landed up as home tutor to a delightful girl with ASD and ME. I was told she was gifted, in English I presumed. Well they’d hardly ask me to teach maths would they? Ha! Ha! Now I’m teaching English, Science and Maths to a girl who’s gifted in Maths. She has a very exact approach to life and I’ve lost her science book. I’m not looking forward to Monday. It starts in a unit for troubled children with a young person who often throws my carefully prepared work on the floor accompanied by colourful expletives. (Note how polite I’m being) I usually have to frantically improvise just to keep him in the room. Then I’m off to a delightfully eccentric household and a languid girl in her pyjamas who knows more maths than I do.
I thought giving up full time work would be easy. I’m writing this rather than facing working my way through another chapter of her maths book. Hysteria is setting in. - another gulp of wine.

The sun finally came out around 6.15 pm and I sought refuge in the greenhouse to pot up some seedlings. My man has been replastering a hole in the bathroom wall (don’t ask) and swearing when it went wrong.. He came outside for a breath of fresh air, decided to clean the greenhouse glass, threw a bucket of cold water and it went straight through the greenhouse window and onto me. I’m now wearing a completely new set of dry clothes and he’s cooking the dinner. Need I say more.

In the pink?

2007-05-12T11:20:00.000-07:00

I guess women often meet other women at the school gates but my kids are grown up, so I needed somewhere else to meet new people when I moved to the edge of this village. I didn’t feel ready for the W.I, Scottish country dancing would be a hopeless choice, I can’t sing in tune, so it had to be the Horticultural Society. Even with a tiny town plot I was a keen gardener so, as soon as we moved, I was off to the monthly meetings.

The village horticultural society has been running for over a hundred years and many of the members could be described as ‘heritage gardeners’, people with gorgeous inherited gardens (and houses). Some of these gardens are magnificent. They are often open for the yellow book scheme, are visited on village ‘secret gardens ‘day and are the site for charitable fetes and cream teas.

I have a meagre 100 feet crammed with a huge Bramley apple, a spreading beech, a patch of vegetables, a few flowers, a ramshackle green house and his and hers workshops. His workshop houses his tools and mountains of mountain bikes and appropriate clutter. My workshop doubles as a glass bead making studio and garden shed. In the autumn bunches of onions and garlic, trays of stored apples and squashes vie for space between racks of coloured glass rods and garden tools. I can just squeeze my plant propagator on the bench next to my kiln.

Strangely I haven’t been asked to open ‘lampwork part acre’ to the public yet. In fact my ploy for meeting new people wasn’t initially successful. I’m a loyal attender but a bit on the shy side, After a couple of years of Horticultural Evenings I still felt like a new girl in the wrong uniform.

One evening, late home from work, I rushed off to the meeting wearing my bright pink jacket instead of my usual gardeners’ drab. The effect was miraculous. Several of the older gents, of whom there are many, politely introduced themselves, another offered me a chair and volunteered to get me a tea in the interval. A few years ago I’d have said I was , 'In with a chance.' The secretary even welcomed me as a new member and looked a little taken back when I tartly explained I‘d been paying him my dues for the past two years.

The next meeting I wore my usual garb, no one spoke , so I wore my pink jacket again and was met by friendly approval, at least from the gardening gents. This took place a few years ago. I can’t say even now they are a very friendly bunch, but I got to know several of them as soon as I entered the village show and started to win a few modest prizes. Once their garlic and courgettes were under threat from a woman they started to notice me. As for the pink jacket, it’s looking a little worn. Well it’s almost at the point when I’ll wear it down the allotment. I’ve got another in a rather fetching purple. I’ll wear that when I really want to impress.

Any news, any scandal, any gossip?

2007-05-06T15:12:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, while I was planning my move to the edge of a West Sussex village my big sister out did me once again and took herself off to the far north of Scotland, (No sibling rivalry there then!)

In the quiet community where she lives the common greeting is,

‘Any news?’

‘Any news, any scandal, any gossip, and if not, let’s make some up!’ would be more appropriate.

I was staying with her last week and had the misfortune to need to visit the local doctor on pension day. The post office is just across the road from the health centre and I passed by just as the village worthies were gathering for their morning chat. I could feel all eyes on my back as I crossed over and I swear I could hear them whispering.

‘That’s Em’s sister from down south, she’s going to the doctor…’

One old farmer, waiting for his wife, quickly rolled down his car window to be ready to greet me with a cheery, ‘How are yea?‘ as I passed. Before I’d even got beyond the waiting room door my sister’s neighbour, a kindly and inquisitive old soul and ex nurse, had phoned to enquire what was wrong and could she be of assistance. In a two minute conversation she’d managed to wheedle out all essential details and within a few more minutes I imagine most of the over sixties had been updated on the state of my health. I swear even the sheep in the neighbouring field eyed me with interest.

I don’t think I could cope with that level of speculation on a regular basis but my sister takes it in her stride and gives as good as she gets. I now know quite a lot more than I needed to about several of her friends and acquaintances. Though not one to gossip myself, if this blog was a bit more secure I might even be tempted to pass on a few particularly interesting snippets. It’s not only the porridge that gets stirred up there you know. Some other time perhaps.

I’m not saying my own village isn’t capable of spreading a rumour or three. If you want to know who’s bought the empty shop and the juicy details of why the previous tenants left in such a hurry, then a visit to the hairdressers is needed. It’s only a small village but is blessed with three hairdressers and it would be unwise to upset any of them. I even heard that they’ve actually banned a woman I know for ‘bad behaviour’ but my half hour appointment wasn’t quite long enough to find out the exact nature of the behaviour. I need a perm and colour to get to the bottom of that one. It’s even rumoured that the village restaurant failed because my hairdresser’s mum had an indifferent meal there on her anniversary, but not being one to gossip myself I don’t think I should pass that on.

I travelled home yesterday and my sister phoned this evening to say she’s had several of friends pop in to see her. One brought a cabbage she had spare, another wanted a recipe, all wanted to know how I was. I shudder to think how my medical mishap has been pondered over and embroidered, but at least I know that my sister, who’s getting on a bit and not in the best of health herself, will be watched over by a community that looks after its own and its incomers. She’s a long way from me and I can’t get to see her much so I take comfort in that.

So much for self sufficiency!.

2007-04-27T11:43:00.000-07:00

Oriental poppies, bluebells, roses, primroses and holly berries all out together. My garden has me confused. Stuff is coming up at the wrong time, some plants have disappeared completely and others, those that won’t normally self seed at all, are thriving between the stones of the path,
In March the temperature in my car at 8am was often around zero but by noon it could reach 20 degrees F, and now we’ve apparently had the warmest April since records began. No wonder many of my poor little vegetable seeds have refused to sprout. Then there are the slugs. I wrote a whole C.L. blog on slug hunting with a torch. After last night’s shower I could make it a book. Anyone any ideas on what to do with a Sainsbury’s carrier bag full of slugs and snails. Ebay?
I promised myself I would be self sufficient in veg for at least 6 months this year. O.K. I’ll buy frozen peas but I need them in the freezer in case I sprain an ankle digging my rock hard ground. All I have to show so far are a few tiny lettuces. Maybe I could serve them with salted slugs. Any ideas.

Thrift Queen

2007-04-25T07:20:00.000-07:00

I caught the end of a radio programme about a group of people who have given up shopping for a year. I didn’t hear it all so presume buying food and medicine is o.k. and , hopefully, soap. All else has to be repaired, made, bartered, swapped or bought second hand.

Since giving up full time work I’ve become something of a thrift queen. Apparently it’s quite fashionable, which is more than I can say for my trousers. I like the idea of not going to ‘the shops’. I no longer need all the smart clothes that lurk in my wardrobe and I’m not tempted by the fancy catalogues that flood through my door and into the recycling box. They never offer the mud coloured trousers and battered hats I really need.

There was a time when I kept an old pair of jeans and a tatty sweatshirt for weekend work. Now all my clothes have to do for outdoors. Slowly my entire wardrobe will become designated gardening clothes. I wonder where the line is between charmingly eccentric and the village bag lady. I guess I’m soon to find out.

Home hint for the slatternly blogger

A quick hoover round and a touch of furniture polish at nose height on the door frame and no one need know you’ve been on the computer all afternoon.

In at last

2007-04-24T09:57:00.000-07:00

In at last after many misconceptions and mistakes. Unfortunately I haven't got time to write anything as I have to get down the allotment before it gets dark and it's dodgy in the lane with a wheel barrow without lights.