The Perils of Being a Shrinking Violet

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.

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!

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

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

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

Get your kicks on route 6

‘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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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