dovegreyreader scribbles

Dartmoor Prison Museum

One of the very good things about visitors, apart from the fact that is lovely to see them, is the way that it makes me go and see places I think I know and look at those places with new eyes. I often drive along the lane and try and recall our first impressions of it when we first viewed this house, or drive back from town as if for the first time ...and imagine how the familiar must look now to those who haven't seen it before.

The same can be said for Princetown, high up on Dartmoor, home of Dartmoor Prison. It definitely needed to be seen with new eyes.

It took a cold wet afternoon in Princetown six years ago to convince me that I had really had enough of front line health visiting. It can be bleak and desolate, and yes depressing, especially when your purpose is to be there to visit people who were also struggling with that fact. Plenty of people live there and love it...I didn't need to go and visit them, but I can think of few more isolated spots for women to be struck down with post-natal depression and no transport. It was a frequent occurrence and a challenging one to work with.

The prison museum had always seemed to be closed, and I had often thought it might make a happy little respite from visiting people in the desponds if I could only find it open one day and take shelter and, as I now discover, learn the best way to make a cat-o-nine tails.

Curzon came to visit for a few days last week, and as we drove up onto the moors for what turned out to be a very blustery walk and almost a soaking, we diverted through Princetown en route to lunch in Ashburton, for a glimpse of the prison, and lo, the museum was open. The first thing the curator does is send you out to a vantage point around the back for the best view and encourages photographs, which quite surprised me.

So anyway, here's a perfectly legal picture of the very forbidding entrance portal to HMP Dartmoor, the inscription over the gate reads Parcere Subjectis...Pity the Conquered...


Built to house French prisoners-of-war at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it seems amazing to think that while Georgiana, Duchess of Bedford, was planning her luxury holiday cottage orne at Endsleigh...

Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt was busy laying the foundation stone across the moor at 1430 ft above sea level for the prison. 

Another legal picture...

That round building part of the reservoir, and the very first thing to be built in 1806. A water supply was going to be key to any successful building and prison community up here, and a leat was created to divert water from the nearby River Walkham.

1430 ft, no wonder my ears used to pop when I drove up there, and that we always say when it snows in Scotland it snows at Princetown.

By 1812 the prison housed (somehow) over 9000 prisoners and by 1813 American prisoners were arriving too ( with retrospective apologies to all US readers on behalf of the nation, this was apparently following George III's refusal to accept America's independence) and the place must have been heaving. The death toll was high, not only from smallpox and typhus but from violence, suicide, exposure and malnutrition....and doubtless pure misery. The museum has a large section on those American connections, something of which I was completely unaware, and also some amazing artefacts made by the prisoners from chicken bones and more interesting information to be found here.

The prison fell into disuse after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, when the prisoners were repatriated, and the building wasn't recommisioned until Prince Albert decided that is should be made fit for purpose again in 1850. Fit for purpose might be a bit misleading... I'm not sure Dartmoor has ever achieved much more than isolate some of the country's most dangerous criminals in the middle of one of the most inhospitable places in the country. Prisoners are now graded according to their escape potential and Dartmoor is home to those in Category C (often sex offenders) considered not a high escape or security risk, but may be 'opportunists.' 

It was surprising to discover that nothing deterred the escapees of old and of which there have been hundreds over the years, though many don't get very far. Nor would I without my Scarpa boots, walking poles and a Rab jacket and waterproof trousers, plus a rucksack full of provisions, a dry-bag, space blanket, map and a compass, and I wouldn't say no to a tent either. It can be a very scary place when the mist descends and we all know about the Hairy Hands don't we. The traditional image we have of the convict sporting his uniform covered in arrows, was finally dispensed with in the 1920s. It indicated Crown Property, and nor did I know that the 14lb boots also carried the arrow imprint in hob-nails on the sole, and thus every muddy step left an indelible and identifiable impression.

Perhaps the most famous escapee has to be Frank Mitchell, the Mad Axeman, although apparently he never actually wielded an axe in anger, just rested one on his knee while he held a couple of pensioners hostage and drank tea. It is alleged his escape in 1966 was aided by the infamous Kray twins who then didn't quite know what to do with this larger than life but unpredictable man, and when Frank disappeared eleven days into his freedom, never to be heard of again, the Krays were tried for his murder, but acquitted. No body, no evidence, though I'm sure I recall the rumours at the time (and ongoing local myth) suggested someone should check out the concrete under Spaghetti Junction, or was it the Chiswick Flyover...Curzon and I couldn't decide. The museum has some fascinating newspaper reports and photographs from the time which made for interesting reading, because by all accounts Frank was afforded a great deal of local freedom for a prisoner and would often be seen drinking in local pubs with a prison officer 'attached.'

Nor had I realised that Eamon de Valera, eventually to become the Irish Head of Goverment, was also held at HMP Dartmoor.

The long-term future of the prison seems uncertain, with ongoing improvements possibly now hampered by the fact that HMP Dartmoor is a Grade Two listed building, and more local rumour has it that closure is on the cards...I can see it now as a 'walking' hotel and tourist attraction. Meanwhile the museum is doing a sterling job of keeping the history of the place intact, and probably on a miniscule budget. Perhaps the thing I found most disturbing was that cat-o-nine tails and the frame to which the prisoners were strapped, in use until 1947 when flogging as a punishment for misdemeanours ceased. There is something stark about reading the very specific and detailed instructions about making something to effectively cause the most pain (well-placed knots) so it was good to then read about a wonderful scheme for the good and instigated in recent years at HMP Dartmoor, you can read more about Story Book Dads here.

More cheery sights greeted us in the little museum shop and I now have some nice wooden labels for my herb garden, made in one of the prison workshops...


as well as an enormous bag of these...

Jail House Briquettes, a great big bag full for £2.50, all the wastepaper from the prison turned into compressed 'logs' which burn all evening on my little woodburner.

So there you have it, finally I see the Prison Museum and decide Princetown isn't so depressing after all. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Centuries of Change: Which Century Saw The Most Change? ~ Ian Mortimer

Tavistock's recent Heritage Weekend didn't only involve a bit of folk singing, no indeed, all sorts of talks and workshops in progress too. It was a chance sighting of a sign as I walked through the Bedford Hotel earlier in the week that alerted me to a talk to be given there by Ian Mortimer on the Saturday morning, pedigree as follows...

'Ian Mortimer has BA, PhD and DLitt degrees in history from Exeter University and an MA in archive studies from University College London. From 1991 to 2003 he worked for several archival and research institutions, including Devon Record Office, the University of Reading, the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts and the University of Exeter. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1998, and was awarded the Alexander Prize (2004) by the Royal Historical Society for his work on the social history of medicine. His PhD was published by the Royal Historical Society in 2009 as 'The Dying and the Doctors: the Medical Revolution in Seventeenth-Century England'. He is also the author of two volumes of early modern manuscripts and numerous articles in the scholarly press on subjects ranging from the fourteenth to the twentieth centuries.'

The Bedford is our favourite coffee stop, the only place we know that does a pot of the most delicious hot chocolate too, so we pitched up early with the newspapers. I was reading The Times who are good at reminding us all about these things and felt it was auspicious that on this day in 1415 the French had been defeated at Agincourt, in 1760 George III had ascended to the throne, the Light Brigade had charged in 1854, and so my mind was nicely set in a historical context as Bookhound settled in for the duration with more coffee whilst I wandered off to the Portrait Room for Ian Mortimer's talk.

I quoted Ian's words in my post about our recent visit to Higher Uppacott so I knew of his local connections (he lives across the moor at Moretonhampstead) and I knew a great deal about his book The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England because one half of the Happy Campers made it fit about six Endsleigh Salon book group themes a while ago, until we banned her from bringing it. But I had also been reading this latest book, Centuries of Change on my Kindle, had reached the thirteenth century and was intrigued to know more.

It was standing room only as Ian Mortimer outlined the premise of his book. When asked most people will cite the twentieth as the century that saw the most change, before listing mobile phones, computers, the internet, space travel, cars, flight, The Beatles and anything else they can think of. But think again, look at history and change from a multi-faceted point of view and the big events down the centuries and it soon became evident that this was not as straight-forward as it may seem.

Each century was outlined briefly...

The eleventh for the confrontation between the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope, the decline of the former and the rise of the latter and look too at the biggest change, the castle as the emblem of peace. In the year 1000 England had no castles, 500 had soon been built by William the Conqueror and territory could thus be secured and controlled...

The twelfth century has to be notable for the slow rise of the monastic system... 150 monasteries at the beginning, 700 by the end and with them came the power of the written word. Ian Mortimer likened them to the world wide web of the time; an information distribution network previously unknown and the establishment of the monasteries as key centres of learning.

The thirteenth century was about holding political leaders to account as well as the exponential growth of market towns, and with them the establishment of a money-based economy to replace the barter system.

I am now riveted because it is fascinating when someone (and I have to say Ian Mortimer is an excellent speaker, in other hands this could have had me asleep) outlines this in human terms. It wasn't hard to project my mind out into the town square and imagine the old Abbey walls and the market in progress.

Onto the fourteenth century, and having just read a fascinating book on Ebola, I was bound to be interested... enter the Black Death (and my thanks to the phD student who has written to tell me (24.01.15) that this is now known to be a picture of Leprosy patients not the Black Death)

But that aside, imagine the scale of the comparisons..

The Great War killed 1.55% of the population in four years

The Black Death killed 52% of the population in seven months. I'm sure I heard it right...the equivalent of dropping two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima every day for seven months. The shock and horror can't even begin to be imagined; the disease was apocalyptic rapidly eclipsing leprosy as the most serious of the day and posing the question, would humanity survive?

In fact society was transformed and inequalities levelled considerably. Capital was left for the remainder to exploit and upward social mobility became possible.

The fifteenth century is frequently cited for the invention of the printing press but Ian Mortimer wanted to focus on the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. Imagine it now...someone sets off and discovers there is twice as much world as was first thought. There was disbelief amongst a people who thought they knew everything, a whole new world rich with opportunities out there waiting to be discovered.

Printing takes its place in the sixteenth century with the arrival of the Bible in the vernacular creating the opportunity for everyone to read it for themselves and have their own relationship with God without need for the middle man. Male literacy increased by 25%, female by 10% but what also followed was a dialogue about the role of the sexes along with some reversal of the persecution of women for handing Adam that apple. Now everyone realised that Adam should have manned up a bit and resisted.

By now even someone's car alarm regularly setting itself off in the car park outside isn't bothering me...nor the mobile phone bird song in the pocket of the man sitting next to me 

The seventeenth century hails a revolution in medicine. From probate accounts can be gleaned what people may have paid for when they were dying; once that would be care and the alleviation of suffering but by the end of the century it was for medical help. Where people had previously looked to God for their salvation, by 1700 they are trusting in the hands of a fellow human being as the organ of God's curing. It is a seismic shift.

I feel as if I have started so I must finish even though I can see this post being yards long...if you are still reading maybe go put the kettle on, we still have three centuries to go.

The eighteenth century was mostly revolutions whether French, agricultural or industrial but Ian Mortimer privileges the agricultural over all others because without food not a lot could happen. Starvation was not uncommon and once science was applied to the production of food the eight million population were faring much better by the end of the century (which had begun on five million). Crop rotation made better use of land whilst animal husbandry and breeding programmes created more meat. Imagine the average sheep may weigh 300lbs now...back then just 28lbs (not much bigger than a small dog) not that many chops per capita.

As for the nineteenth century, well where to start?

Ian Mortimer laid all his trust in the telegraph and the telephone and the impact of long-range communications, by the end of the century considerably faster than the speed of a horse and the thirty-seven hours it would take news of the death of Lord Nelson to reach London from Falmouth. Our mobile phones merely the apogee of these beginnings.

And finally to what we see as our gloriously clever twentieth century, well not so fast.

It was a surprise, but a sensible one to listen as Ian Mortimer outlined the invention of the future as the most significant change, citing William Morris and his vision of Utopia as significant. From a world that consistently looked backwards emerged one with the capabilities to look ahead, from weather forecast, to planning for housing and population, the language and dialogue of the future became a viable concept. 

As to which century did see the most change...well I was on the edge of my seat for the answer as Ian Mortimer held his book aloft before saying he couldn't possibly spoil it by telling us, but not before hinting that a reframing of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs had been his method in reaching his conclusion.

The post-talk questions were good and Ian Mortimer's answers far more detailed than I have space for...

Do you see yourself as a Neo-Malthusian.. (yes)

How was the Black Death controlled in the end...(ran its course)

Would you like historians to take more risks as you have done in this book...(yes)

But I still don't know which century saw the most change, because I haven't reached that point in the book either, but on the basis of Maslow I think I might have an idea. 

If you have read this far thank you, and I wonder which century you think it might be...

And has anyone read any more of Ian Mortimer's books..

 

 

Beating the Bounds ~ October in the Shire

After rather a lot of words from me last week I think you all deserve a rest and some looking. My fourth Persephone lunch book choice will be on here in a few day's time, but meanwhile, after all that sitting, time for some walking and a few pictures from the Shire in October. The clocks have gone back so for a few days I always feel strangely ahead of myself, as if I have all the time in the world and am early for everything. That will have dissolved by about Thursday, we will have had a few darker evenings and know that we really are heading into winter, but the lane and the green lane to the woods are still looking magical, scuffly leaf walks and plenty to see if I look carefully...

 The poisonous black bryony appears out of nowhere and looks for all the world as if it should boil up into some delicious jam....someone must have done it by mistake, and perhaps it is fortunate that most other hedgerow foraging is over for the year so it can be left well alone.

 and I quite thought the holly was looking promising until I realised more of the same...

The symmetry of the ivy flowers...amazing..

Sweet Chestnut profusion...any suggestions?

I've had an audience up at the potting shed, looking over from Rocky's Field and helping me to watch over my very tiny auricula seedlings

and they now seem to have been replaced by these..


I'm not in the least bit horsey but even I can see this is rather a handsome specimen...

and talking of handsome specimens, here's a pretty one; an unusually Persil-white Nell... post-600 tennis ball retrievals and pre- a swim and a drink in her most favourite green and slimey cattle trough...

Finally, does anyone have any idea what this might be thinking about growing into...


Sorry, not a very clear picture. Spotted in the woods yesterday and I doubt I will ever be able to find it again. The most likely culprit perhaps the Amethyst Deceiver mushroom, but someone out there will know...

A Saturday Night Out in The Shire...

We really know how to have a good time down here in the Shire, but it is so long since Bookhound and I have been to an evening of folk music that it took us a while to find the patterned jumpers and perfect the forward lean and the hand over the ear thing, but suitably attired we headed to the Parish Church last night for a celebration of Dartmoor music, dance and dialect.

It was all part of the Tavistock Heritage Festival which almost passed us by but for the sighting of a huge sign in the town square that morning telling us to 'eave down yer prong, and stamp it along,' so we did.

It was a great evening, and how good to see the church being used for an event like this. It is huge and can seat plenty of people (albeit in pews and on very thin cushions) and the acoustics are second to none. I sang in the choir there for years and loved it for that wonderful moment when the sound seems to rise up through the chancel.

All organised by Geoff Lakeman (dad to Sean, Sam and Seth...and now we hear he and Joy are grandparents to three sets of twins) Lots of songs and recitations, plenty of jig-along music from the Dartmoor Pixie Band and then a song which really caught my ear. It is called The Bellringing and was originally collected by the Revd Sabine Baring Gould, our local nineteenth century chap who also composed Onward Christian Soldiers, but worked tirelessly to ensure that the local songs didn't die out either.

Here's a little taste of what us gets up to in the Shire on a Saturday night out on the town...

and in case you want to lean forward a little, hand over ear (I'm joking, no one did that really) and sing along with Jim Causley and Bill Murray for the last two verses and a bit of chorus here are the words...

One day in October, neither drunken nor sober,
O'er Broadbury Down I was mending my way,
When I heard of some ringing, some dancing and singing.
I'll always remember that jubilee day.

Chorus:

'Twas in Ashwater town, the bells they did sound,
They rang for a belt and a hat laced with gold.
And the men of Northlew rang so steady and true
That there never were better in Devon I hold.

'Twas misunderstood, for the men of Broadwood
Rang a peel on the tenor should never have been.
But the men of Northlew rang so steady and true,
A difficult matter to beat them I ween.

(Chorus)

Those of Broadwood being naughty, then said to our party,
We'll ring you a challenge again in a round.
We'll give you the chance in St. Stephen's by Launceston;
The prize to the winner a note of five pound.

Chorus:

'Twas in Callington town, the bells they did sound, etc.

So the match it went on, at good Callington,
And the bells they rang out o'er the valley below.
And the old and young people, the hale and the feeble,
They came out to hear the sweet bell music flow.

Chorus:

'Twas in Callington town, the bells they did sound, etc.

Those of Broadwood once more were obliged to give o'er,
They were beaten completely again in a round.
But the men of Northlew rang so steady and true;
No better than they in the West can be found.

Chorus:

'Twas in Ashwater town then in Callington Town, etc.

The Home Maker ~ Dorothy Canfield Fisher :: Persephone Talk - October 15th 2014 (Part 3)

If Noel Streatfeild and Barbara Noble were busy prefiguring child psychology in the 1940s then hang it all, wasn’t Dorothy Canfield Fisher streets ahead of everyone back in 1924?

The Home Maker, how could I leave it off my list and I am sure you are familiar with the story…

Evangeline and Lester Knapp, she trapped by an almost OCD approach to housework and child-rearing, he ‘bound and gagged’ by a dead end job, and their three children. Helen of the supposed delicate lungs and the supposed helpless impracticality. Henry of the phantom delicate digestion and the unnecessary special diet and then there is Stephen, three year old Stephen, the changeling child with his ‘hot little warrior heart’. The ‘perfect imp of darkness,’ the one who ‘arouses the white heat of anger in those trying to care for him.’

It is Stephen who needs his comfort object the most, his teddy, whilst living with the constant threat and fear of it being put through the wash.

(Pausing to explain. I had intended to take a teddy with me to London but completely forgot to pack him, the picture you see here is Bimbo,my second-best teddy, the previous one is Fred. I had to improvise with an imagined teddy. And to further explain the absence of eyes...do you recall they were glass on the end of a sharp stalk of wire? They were removed, probably for safety reasons and when I was old enough to put them back in both bears looked completely and utterly wrong and not mine, so they were always left eyeless.)

I had to think very carefully before bringing this teddy with me to London. It’s actually my second-best teddy, because when I looked at the best one, Fred Bear, now as old as me and very thread bare I couldn’t bring myself to risk a London trip for him. Supposing he got lost, or stolen…that’s how deeply entrenched the attachment goes, even 61 years on. I could hardly believe it myself and how well I remember the human feelings I invested in him. I was definitely on Stephen’s side over this one.

Evangeline…well where do we start.

Motherhood predicated on need, and if there isn’t one it must be created… think of Helen’s lungs and Henry’s digestion, and Stephen’s tantrums perpetuated and fuelled by a woman who makes a career out of motherhood. But perhaps it is about control too; when life feels out of your control you will try and control the bits of it that you possibly can, in Evangeline’s case this will be her husband, her children and her kitchen floor.

But she is also mother to an entire community…

‘Mrs Knapp had taken up the problem, what need for anyone else to think on it?’

And with that comes a welcome reciprocity, a sense of being valued and appreciated, the affirmation and gratitude that motherhood doesn’t bring. Evangeline is innovative and ingenious outside her home but paralysed into drudgery within.

Have you ever done one those Belbin Team Inventory questionnaires designed to identify which member of the team you are?

The Plant, or the Resource Investigator, the Shaper, or the Monitor Evaluator. I think I was the one who sat in the corner throwing out good ideas for others to follow through, but when I was once part of a dynamic but nevertheless failing team it was Belbin that revealed the problem. We didn’t have an Evangeline…a Completer Finisher. The CF sets their own high standards, may refuse to delegate through lack of trust, may worry excessively about minor details and poor Evangeline cannot complete or finish her children, they will always be a work in progress…

‘Eva hated anything unfinished.’

When the couple reverse their roles after Lester’s accident, Evangeline goes out to work. I see her as the original Colour Me Beautiful consultant with her natural flair for helping women to feel good about themselves, however limited their resources.

‘Dressing themselves properly at difficult ages…’

Lester runs the home, and the ill-fitting pieces of the fragmented and frankly dysfunctional family jigsaw suddenly slot neatly into place.

And how good that Dorothy Canfield Fisher prefigures some more research into attachment theory and the role of the mother..

Schaffer (1990…almost 70 years on)

"Children develop better with a mother who is happy in her work than a mother who is frustrated by staying at home."

Forgive my cynicism but perhaps one day the research might tell us something we don’t know.

It is all a salutary reminder that parenting has never been straightforward. It wasn’t then, it isn’t now. Dorothy Canfield Fisher advances the Montessori approach of allowing children to make choices and take responsibility for their subsequent actions, Lester unwittingly embraces this approach and the whole family thrives. He accentuates the positives, ignores the negatives, he is resourceful and the children become so too, and he sits back and allows them to discover for themselves.

The oft-quoted egg-whisk moment.

For the plethora of complex parenting approaches and parenting classes out there now surely Dorothy Canfield Fisher approach remains the simplest and the soundest.

Meanwhile The Home Maker endorses rights for women, rights for men and above all rights for the children… to be listened to, to be respected and for all to feel affirmed and confident with what they are doing. Self-determination for parents without outside interference was crucial to Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s outlook too, and in an introduction to an early edition of The Home Maker she expounds her theories on all this.

So far we have met three, maybe four mothers, Lena Wiltshire, Mrs Rawlings, Francie Osborne and Evangeline Knapp and as I thought about it, perhaps rather unfairly did I wonder whose mothering did the most harm to the children, and I wonder what you all think…

I decided it was, for me, the one who tried the hardest, Evangeline Knapp. Had those roles not been reversed the Munchausen-by-Proxy symptoms (now called Fabricated Ilnness in Children Caused by Carers or something, forgive my vagueness) she developed in her children would have been real cause for alarm, doing lasting damage.

But then perhaps Lena’s benign neglect or Mrs Rawling’s overbearing need to be a mother to Doreen in the face of rivals… perhaps those did equal harm.

Or perhaps we have to say that everyone was just doing what those of us who are mothers always try to do…the best we can with the circumstances that we are given.

At this point we stopped for lunch and Maggie and John's cake, gone to fast for a photo but here's their Port Eliot one, please help yourselves to a slice...

The fourth and final book to follow, and a quote from The Home Maker to give you a clue about my choice...

'Could there be human beings - women, mothers who fattened on it, fought to keep the slave's look in the eyes of the children?'

 

 

 

 

Doreen ~ Barbara Noble :: Persephone Talk - October 15th 2014 (Part 2)

If the role of the wartime mother and the impact of conflict on children are so brilliantly delineated in Saplings, then Barbara Noble’s Doreen has just as much to offer.

Two mothers, one biological, one surrogate will unwittingly fight for the possession of Doreen…or is it DoReen…or maybe even Dreen. The book was written in eighteen months during the worst part of the blitz; office cleaner Mrs Rawlings, torn between keeping Doreen close or keeping her safe takes up the offer of a country billet for her 9 yr old daughter. Enter childless couple Francie and Geoffrey who will grow to love Doreen as their own, and for Doreen what follows will be utter emotional confusion  verging on an identity crisis as she starts to feel ‘as if there were two Doreens.’

I love this book because it mirrors my mum’s wartime experience almost identically in every detail, fiction becomes fact. She was evacuated from Liverpool to Chester in 1939 at the age of 14, to a childless couple who absolutely adored her, sent her to The Queen’s School, a very exclusive private school and my mum was blissfully happy there. But my grandmother was having none of it. They were a working class family, my grandmother  had been in service, my grandfather worked on the docks, they lived in Liverpool 8, The Dingle, in one of those streets of terraced houses that run down to the Mersey. For every reason that Mrs Rawlings wanted Doreen back… jealousy, being loved and loving someone else, rising above her station in life, not fitting in when she went home, likewise did my grandmother dispatch my grandfather to bring my mum home to Liverpool just in time for the very worst of the blitz on the city. She was distraught, doubtless terrified through the war and maybe never quite forgave her mother, keeping in touch with that couple for years. Interestingly, having suffered countless miscarriages beforehand, the couple finally conceived and raised a family after my mum had left them... who can know the impact of an experience of mothering on that woman's hormones.

‘She’s got to live the life she was born to,’ says Mrs Rawlings, Doreen is denied opportunities and the mother-child relationship could be altered permanently.

Perhaps I find it harder to sympathise with Mrs Rawlings than I do with Lena because of that family story, and of course the return of the evacuated Parker children to London in Saplings, for similar reasons of a mother’s love, has disastrous consequences. But Barbara Noble left me feeling distraught for Francie and Geoffrey too and with those words of warning from John Bowlby, about the hazards of evacuation, ringing in my ears. Though not a very small child, Doreen nevertheless undergoes serious emotional trauma as the process and outcomes of her sojourn in the country are played out.

Interestingly I feel sure there were eventually advantages for me from my mum’s experience. Whilst her education and subsequent lack of a stable and reliable career after the war were deeply affected by that experience, because her education almost came to an end at that point, it made her determined that her own children would benefit from every advantage available. I would have a good education and I would have a career that I could always fall back on when I needed to… the nursing outfit was in my dressing up box from the age of four.

So where to next in our journey around some of the mothers and children in Persephone books?

Here's a clue... meet threadbare Fred Bear.

 

 

 

Saplings ~ Noel Streatfeild :: Persephone Talk ~ October 15th 2014 (Part 1)

Here follows, over several blog posts, the transcript of my talk at the Persephone Lunch last week...

 

Mothers and children in Persephone books...well it's now Wednesday (it was), I hope you have until at least next Tuesday because this could take us some time.

I came across some old copies of The Young Elizabethan magazine at a book sale, and this article by Noel Streatfeild entitled 'How I Write My Books' caught my eye...

'I am convinced if I do not know everything there is to know about my characters my readers will not know them at all. For this reason I start living with the people in my books, in my head, at least a year before I start to write about them...it is when I wake up one morning to find the people in my head more real than the people around me, that I know they are ready for hatching...'

Published in 1945, Saplings gets off to quite a pedestrian start plot-wise as Noel Streatfeild starts to hatch her characters from their year-long shells and onto the page. It would be easy to dismiss the book as too cosy as the aspirational middle-class Wiltshire family take to the beach for their annual summer holiday. But there is no question that every nuance of the family is cleverly revealed in these early stages to set the reader up for what is to follow, because war is on the horizon and with it will come great changes for this family, and no one better than Noel Streatfeild to delve beneath the surface, exposing the cracks and stresses on family life, and telling it like it was.

Angela Bull in her biography of Noel Streatfeild suggests that...

'Noel's crisp characterisation and witty style make her sombre narrative compulsive reading...'

and I would agree whole-heartedly. Once the preliminaries were established, and I had sorted out the children and their ages...Laurel, Tony, Kim and Tuesday...Tuesday?

I once did a new birth visit to a baby called Tuesday the Fifteenth and I often wondered how that held up through life.

A clear picture emerges of the family dynamic as parents Lena and Alex along with Nannie and governess Ruth take their places in the big picture, before the Saplings action moves quickly onto the outbreak of war, and without giving too much away there will be proper turmoil for the family; separations, insecurities, meltdowns, misunderstandings, losses, tragedy, grief and more.

My focus in reading for the subject of this talk was very much on Lena and the children, but ultimately, taking as a baseline the 1950s theories of attachment formulated in the wake of the war by child psychologist John Bowlby, I ended up being interested in everyone, the satellite characters that nevertheless played an important part in all their lives.

The war must have been a gift to John Bowlby. Not one he would have wanted or asked for, but since it was there, when better to explore the impact of the separation of mother and child than through the process of wartime evacuation. Interestingly I came across a letter of warning sent by John Bowlby to the British Medical Journal in December 1939...

' It is quite possible for a child of any age to feel sad or upset at having to leave home, but...such an experience in the life of a little child can mean far more than the actual experience of sadness. It can in fact amount to an emotional blackout, and can lead to severe disturbance of the development of the personality which may persist throughout life...'

Bowlby goes on to argue that...

'... it follows that evacuation of  small children without their mothers can lead to very serious and widespread psychological disorder. For instance it can lead to a big increase in juvenile delinquency in the next decade.'

As if to prove his theory, in 1944, Bowlby conducted a study entitled 44 Thieves. He identified and studied forty-four juvenile delinquents accused of stealing alongside forty-four controls who exhibited emotional problems but had committed no crime. The results were startling: 50% of the thieves had been separated from their mothers for longer than six months in their first five years, in the control group only two. 32% of the thieves displayed signs of affectionless psycopathy. Though flawed the study was laying down an evidence base for what was to follow.

It is little wonder that such evidence was eventually extrapolated into Bowlby's attachment theories of the 1950s. The findings published in the subsequent Child Care and the Growth of Love must have preyed on the mind of every post-war mother who ever considered going out to work.

Short term separation from an attachment figure who is available, loving and understanding leads to distress, and that central care-giver is the mother.

But forget evidence base and research, Noel Streatfeild had no need of any of this, she knew it already intuitively, and wouldn't I love to know whether John Bowlby ever read Saplings; he would have wanted to. It might be fiction but what truths lie therein as Noel prefigures all those theories as she juggles the impact of the war and separation on a range of age groups within one family, revealing the truths behind the ordeals of war and the super-human task of holding a family together.

The question is asked very early in the book...

'Was Lena a good mother, ' wonders governess Ruth, (generally considered to be Noel Streatfeild's alter-ego in this book and with a key role to play in the future welfare of the children)  and it seemed a natural progression to then ask 'What is a good mother?'

Lena, though capable of performing a very good Mummy Act when required, lacks much maternal instinct and is not a family woman, she is 'utterly wife and mistress too,' with eyes and attention predominantly focused on her husband Alex...

'The children were enchanting but Alex was her life,'

and there is always something staged and posed about her mothering performances.

Compare this to Alex who could be described as a ‘mothering’ father, fulfilling more of the accepted role than Lena with his nurturing that comes so naturally and unconditionally. Alex shoulders the burden while Lena adds the frills and the gifts. The children worship them both and as a couple, with outside help, they succeed. Nanny is in charge of bowels and Ruth takes care of little minds.

When the wartime plot demands that Lena steps up to the plate alone I felt like hiding behind a cushion because it wasn't going to be pretty. We know already that she lacks resilience or resourcefulness and is highly dependent on others, and I could only wonder how courageous Noel Streatfeild might be in portraying this inevitable human disintegration. The answer is supremely adept as the descent into drink and drugs, the sexual deprivation that leads to torrid love affairs, the depression and disaster ensue, and on the periphery of Lena's life. when tradition dictates that they should be central to it, four needy children who cling to the flotsam and security of any attachment which floats by...school teachers, the cook, the gardener, a puppy.

But for all the accusations that might be levelled at Lena I find it possible, thanks to Noel Streatfeild's even-handed and non-judgemental approach, to identify mitigating circumstances and some sympathy for her actions. Lena is a dependent, a child herself and needs to find her own attachment figures to survive, and remember, Noel Streatfeild has thought her characters through with care…Lena was an only child herself, the centre of attention but she would also have lived through and experienced the distorted emotional reactions to grief during the Great War. That generation took some very fettered mourning practices into the next war.

But also might Noel Streatfeild be busting the myth of the blitz very early in the day, 1945?

There is an excellent book Death in War and Peace – A history of loss and grief in England 1914-1970 by Pat Jalland in which the author explores and explains much of relevance to a read of Saplings and in particular Lena’s reactions.

The civilian sacrifice, the stoicism, the good humour, defiance and solidarity, this was the behavioural norm reinforced by Churchill’s speeches, J.B.Priestley’s broadcasts and the BBC in general. We rarely hear of poor morale, hysteria, panic or cowardice. People conformed rather than allow themselves to be overcome by despair, whilst reported behaviour established a model of how people should behave, therefore they did. Mollie Panter Downes, with her journalistic hat on, was very critical of the ‘minimising effect of BBC reporting…

‘To someone newly facing grief, the chirpy statement that casualties “were slight” has a way of sounding callous.’

At the heart of the myth of the blitz were suppressed and sanitized stories and families wounded by sorrow that could not be expressed, all of which required outward displays of courage and coping. In a later study in 1965, Geoffrey Gorer declared…

‘a society which denies mourning and gives no ritual support to mourners is thereby producing maladaptive and neurotic responses in a number of its citizens.’

Lena Wiltshire is not  a good advert for the myth of the blitz but a very good subject for Geoffrey Gorer’s study, and in the absence of official records, though there are many diaries, might Noel Streatfeild have consciously been aware that history might not offer accuracy and thus decided to provide us with a realistic fictional account of the impact of the war on a single family?

Part Two, about my next choice of book, to follow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

London called...

.. and I answered the call over three days this week.

The talk at the Persephone Bookshop (Mothers and Children in Persephone Books) happened on Wednesday, to a very appreciative audience full of friendly faces who looked engrossed each time I glanced up, so I am hoping it all lived up to expectations. It can be hard to know how and where to pitch any talk, but I had taken a particular line with this one and just hoped it would all make sense and hold together. The transcripts of both halves (before and after lunch) will be on here this coming week in a series of posts, one for each of the four books, so those who weren't there can share in the event and maybe add to the interesting discussion that we had over delicious salads and fruit compotes.

I have to say a few thank yous for great kindnesses...

...to Persephone for inviting me and for sending me away with six free books in a lovely bag which I wasn't expecting.

...to those of you who read here and who came. It was lovely to meet and chat with everyone.

....to Curzon who gave me a bed, supper and wonderful conversation the night before, as well as guiding me back across London to Lamb's Conduit Street, thus saving the 4am start and the worry about signal failures, flood defence works and other delaying hazards that seem to have beset the trains this last few weeks.

...to Maggie and John who travelled from Liverpool with one of their wonderful and well-fed fruitcakes aboard and which was devoured within nano seconds by everyone.

...to Rowena who handed me a box of Hummingbird Bakery cupcakes which made it all the way home and were enjoyed with Bookhound and the Tinker over coffee.

...to everyone who said really encouraging things about the talk afterwards and stayed to chat, lovely to meet Gill who comments here, and Jane too, Adele Geras and Carol and I am sure several more.

I had also been booked to talk about dovegreyreader at a Chairman's Lunch the next day at the University Women's Club in Mayfair, as well as having dinner and meeting the club's book group and staying over on the Wednesday evening. I might only have been to Mayfair via the Monopoly board in the past so this was another treat, more of which soon, especially about the club, a fascinating and well-kept secret but one which they would love more people to know of. Established in 1883, and a very warm, friendly and welcoming place, the club's history is fascinating to say nothing of a Dorothy L. Sayers connection.

Finally on my way home I visited the new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, Anarchy and Beauty - William Morris and His Legacy 1860-1960 on its opening day. Look at the dates...the legacy aspect was fascinating and revealed plenty of craftspeople I had never heard of, so lots of lives to explore and much more about all that soon too. The hardback catalogue, not yet published but available to buy at the gallery for £30. I shall wait for You Know Where. 

I also have to thank Carol S who very kindly e mailed me the number of a very reliable cab company in London, journeys pre-booked at a very reasonable fixed price, no meters clocking up at the speed of light whilst the traffic around you is travelling sub-snail...this ultimately proved to be a Very Good Thing.

Wouldn't it be a treat to travel in style for once I thought and there was my cab waiting to take me from South Audley Street to the National Portrait Gallery, delivering me safely at the door for £11, luggage then safely stowed in the cloakroom for a suggested but not compulsory donation of £1 per item (yet another very useful thing to know if you are in London) and off I went.

Finding the cab as I emerged was slightly trickier but achieved because the driver kindly rang my mobile and directed me to where he was parked. It was 4.30pm, my train was at 6pm, the cab company had thought that this would be plenty of time, but what we hadn't bargained for was London on the Tavistock equivalent of Market Day with added road-works in The Square. Gridlock, complete and utter gridlock, and as we crawled along, stopped, inched along a little more the minutes ticked on....and on.

The driver, Indian I think, was absolutely brilliant comparing the chaos to that on tube-strike days as he wove in and out, changing the route in the hope of avoiding the chaos, pushing his way into solid streams of determined and relentless taxis whose drivers all had that look of nonchalent menace.

'Shall I get out and hop on the tube,' I kept asking.

'No Madam I will get you there...'

I can still get on the tube...'

'We are only five minutes away Madam, don't worry I will get you there...'

Eventually, at 5.35pm and at a complete standstill it became clear that getting me there on time was not going to happen.

Distraught, the driver pulled up at the entrance to Portland Square tube, two stops from Paddington, I leapt out, he had my suitcase out, handle up, ready for the dash and I paid him the full agreed price plus a tip.

'No Madam , I have failed you, you must take at least half of this back.'

There then followed that ridiculous thing of money being pushed one to the other while the traffic honked and hooted around us (doubtless other people trying to catch the 6pm Paddington to Penzance) ..

'No, I said, please keep it, I am really grateful, you have tried your best, this isn't your fault,' and off I ran.

I should probably apologise to all the people I mowed down on the way, but the Train Fairy was on my team and I reached Paddington with five minutes to spare, breathing deeply though with my blood pressure possibly in orbit, and lord knows how my Hummingbird Bakery cup cakes were feeling about it all.

The train was heaving and I learned later that the signals had been down and trains out of Paddington had only just returned to normal, perhaps that partially explained the road chaos, but I collapsed into my seat and immediately rang the cab driver.

'Hello, it's me, your last passenger, I'm on the train, I'm fine...'

'Oh Madam, I am so very sorry, I have been so worried about you, I have only moved fifty yards since I dropped you off. I'm going home now, I've had enough but it will take me hours.'

'Have a good evening and thank you again,' I said before thinking what a stupid thing for me to say.

It has to be people like that who keep London going round doesn't it, what a star. It replenishes any dwindling love I might have had for a city that seemed to have gained about a million more people since my last visit. I seriously think the iPhone has slowed London (and everywhere else) down too. I love to walk, but don't ask me how many times I almost tripped over people ambling along texting and talking on their phones.

So relieved was I to be on the train and heading home that I didn't even worry about the quadrophonic surround sound of a thousand crisp packets (when did crisp packets get so noisy?) from people who had planned all this better than me and had time to buy food.

Nor was I in the least bit envious of the chap across the aisle who made a protracted palava about peeling off the cellophane lid from his delicious looking chinese meal, which he then proceeded to eat with chopsticks as the train lurched on its way.

And no I wasn't concealing a smirk when it all dropped onto his tie.

Or what about the man eating the Macdonald chips.

Envious me...no way.

Nor was I that bothered about the gigantic designer Great Dane splayed and snoring its head off in the aisle which needed to be negotiated (tip toeing inbetween giant paws and elongated tail) on every toilet or buffet trip.

Nor was I even that bothered that the buffet queue when I finally reached it was half-way down the carriage and consequently I didn't get my hot chocolate (beyond food by this point) until Bristol.

Nor was I worried for the author of the phD being commented on by his advisor (I assume) on a laptop screen in the seat in front of me. It was in red, how could I help but read that whilst there was some that was quite pleasing in this there was concern over the referencing of secondary sources and things will need to improve.

Nope, none of that bothered me in the slightest, because all I could think of was that lovely cab driver. I probably arrived home before he did.

 

 

 

Higher Uppacott

I am always grateful to all of you for ideas, suggestions, inspiration and thanks, both in comments and your emails, so when Avis sent along a message asking if I knew of this..

I was delighted to say, yes indeed.

We have driven past Higher Uppacott on the road from Tavistock to Ashburton and beyond for over thirty five years now, always admired it, often wondered what it might look like inside, and now that it is completely owned by the Dartmoor National Park we have been able to visit.

The house sits in a hollow on the right hand side of a narrow and sharp left hand bend. If you are driving you daren't take your eyes off the road, if you are a passenger to be honest you can't help but be the second pair of eyes on the road too. The glimpse of the thatch and the wonderful courtyard shape is gone in a flash...

...but it has always left me with a sense of intrigue and wanting to know more, so I booked places on a tour months ago. Off we trotted last Sunday morning, though not before leaving a steak and ale casserole with dumplings in the bottom oven for our return. I am not usually that organised but we had been out to stock up on winter food and the Le Creuset beckoned....there's a connection coming.

Dartmoor, though overcast, was dry and looking gloriously autumnal...

...and finally we get to see the house in close up, 

and I am going inside.

I'm sure you all know this feeling...that moment when the inside of somewhere you know so well from the outside is about to be revealed.

And what makes it so special I hear you asking..

Well, Higher Uppacott is, as Dr Ian Mortimer says in his Foreword to the booklet....

'a rare chance to examine one of the rarest things: a 14th century longhouse.'

He goes on to say..

'It is a direct connection between us and the medieval past. Normally we look to ruined castles and abbeys to conjure up the middle ages - but those were the homes of the well-connected and the powerful. It is ironic: there are many more opportunities today to examine the once exclusive houses of the nobility than there are to enter those of their humble tenants.'

These rectangular dwellings, shared by people and cattle alike, were the progression from Bronze Age round houses of the first millenium and are scattered all over Devon, but most have been converted into family homes and thus lost that very unique element, the original shippon, to a fitted kitchen or a sitting room.The tradition has it that the cattle turned one way and the people turned the other as they entered the same door, all living under the one roof. 

Bookhound has designed and installed many-a fitted kitchen in a barn conversion and would come home each evening tsking and muttering that they were built for animals not people as he worked his way round wonky stone walls full of breezy gaps.

Well Devon Longhouses were built for both.

Devon thatch is never removed when worn out and in need of repair, another layer is just added on top, so in places the Higher Uppacott roof is apparently three feet thick and a mine of dating and plant and pollen information too. The Park Ranger who lives there now says he has no idea when it is raining because the roof is completely silent, only when it hits the tiny windows does he know there is a gale.

Built when the Black Death was a recent memory, and 60% of the population had died, a first view of the shippon can only emphasise what it might have been like in those dark ages...

But let there be a little light and we marvelled at what we saw...


Huge complete tree trunks create cross-beams at head height above a stone floor. The cattle, much smaller then, would have been tethered to the sides facing outwards allowing that central sloping channel, leading to a gap in the wall, to deal with the obvious and thence straight out onto the vegetable garden.

The roof another work of art...

Dating places some of these roof trusses to the mid 14th century.

Medieval feet hath trod here before me I thought.. 

...and the cattle therein a precious resource, no wonder they kept an eye on them all the time. It is easy to imagine the hardship and sheer grit that would have been needed to survive on High Dartmoor in the 1300s. Imagine the rainfall all year round, and the snow and ice through the winter, the cold, the mud, no running water but for a spring across the way. And the isolation, think of that, miles to the nearest town, miles to the church at Widecombe and, as our walk back up to car park revealed, very steep hills all around.

Since I am also deeply immersed in my bout of Cadfaelitis I am now going to finally have to read Ian Mortimer's book The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England.

Thanks to what our tour guide called '20th century abominations' (because the house was a family home until very recently, now only part of it lived in by the Park Ranger) the open plan living area is now walled off from the shippon and an upper floor has been created, so we all sat in a warm and cosy sitting room to hear more details about the history of the house, before heading up the narrow staircase to see the newer bedrooms above.

The addition of this little mullioned window is dated to the time of the dissolution of the monasteries. Imagine the farmer setting off in his cart, walking back in the door that night and saying 'Guess what I found at the tip?' and then making it fit..

I can understand what his wife might have said. Bookhound is famed for coming back from the tip with more than he takes, and though I moan and groan I was as pleased with this, obviously from the dissolution of a kitchen...

...as I'll bet she was with her new window. 

There, I said there would be a connection.

In these straightened financial times it is little wonder that the National Park briefly considered selling this property. Its maintenance is after all a drain on dwindling resources, but thankfully lottery funding prevents the sale for fifty years, and so Higher Uppacott lives on, and with a team of volunteers to support it. Hopefully it won't be on our watch that such a wonderful piece of history is lost, which all makes you realise how important it is to applaud such projects.

If you are down here in the Shire and nearby it is really worth the £5 for the tour, and these can be pre-booked here. Don't just turn up, admission is by pre-booked tour only and you can't get in without this..

Failing that (and I quite understand, it would be a trek for some of you) you can do the virtual tour here.

Oh yes, and when we arrived home the steak and ale casserole with dumplings was done to perfection in that as-new Le Creuset a la Tip.

Cadfaelitis

It's a new affliction and it struck on my birthday, a big bout of Cadfaelitis.

I have never been that interested in the Cadfael Chronicles by Ellis Peters (aka Edith Pargeter) not even when a very good friend, who read every one as it was published back in the 1980s, tried to persuade me. Those were the days when I favoured Susan Howatch and Mary Wesley, but a monastic whodunnit...no thank you.

Nor did I watch the TV series with Derek Jacobi. That continues to pass me by completely.

So when the Kindle Daily Deal arrived in my inbox backalong, and for one day only it was the entire Cadfeal series, all twenty books, for 99p each...and bearing in mind I hadn't purchased a single book in London the day before (though I now think I probably should have bought a signed copy of the new volume of short stories by Hilary Mantel available by the dozen in Foyles) ...well I quickly blew almost £20 on the entire Cadfael series.

Happy Birthday to meeeee...

I don't know what I was thinking beyond that slightly uneasy feeling that I had succumbed to a maketing coup and should have had more sense, but they would all be £2.99 each again the next day wouldn't they (they were) and supposing I had really enjoyed the first one, and they did all have really good reviews, and the friend who had read them was very discerning about her crime reading...that many people can't be wrong.

I'd be kicking myself.

But supposing I didn't enjoy the first one.

Well I took a risk because I have been on the hunt for a detective series that I could immerse myself in for ages now, Jackson Brodie is going to run out after four, and nothing else seemed to fit the bill, but it was a eureka moment...maybe these would...

Brother Cadfael is the abbey herbalist and I have spent a great deal of time reading about herbs and creating a little Physic Garden this year, as well as revelling in a book that Fran introduced me to last year, In a Unicorn's Garden - Recreating the mystery and magic of medieval gardens by Judyth McLeod. Whilst offering an historical overview, Judyth McLeod also elaborates on the society, culture, religion and mythology that surrounded the medieval landscapes, before including helpful indexes of descriptive plant lists and suggested planting plans. 

We had stumbled across Mr Pink's Herb Farm in North Devon last year and had come home with something I had been looking for, Costmary (also known as Alecost). A hardy, soft-leaved herb with a really unusual sweet scent, Gertrude Jekyll used to sell it on her herb list, but one tiny plant spread around my little patch like a thing possessed, as well as soaring upwards too.

It has helpfully kept everything else in place but was clearly too big, so I have just dug it all up and moved it to a new herb garden on the outskirts where it can go off on a frolic of its own along with the Woad and the Rue...which thanks to Brother Cadfael I now know is also called Herb of Grace.

I have made a start with the first in the Cadfael series A Morbid Taste for Bones and really enjoyed the gentle flow of medieval monastic life with the odd dead body thrown in. No abbey can be complete without a set of relics and when the monks of Shrewsbury set off across the border into Wales to claim the bones of St Winifred as their own, trouble will undoubtedly brew.

This is what I can only describe as harmless reading (unlike other crime/thriller books I have started and stopped of late which felt quite the opposite) well-written, observant fiction; Ellis Peters was so skilled at setting scenes and characters, no wonder this made it into a TV series. Cadfael himself is a likeable, wise and self-effacing chap and I feel sure his history will emerge slowly as each book reveals more details.

I knew nothing about Edith Pargeter either, but thanks to the Oxford DNB I have read this quote of hers which makes me realise that these books will probably fill a happy little on-off reading niche for me for a while to come...

'The thriller must be a morality tale. If it strays from the side of the angels...takes pleasure in evil, that is the unforgiveable sin...It is probably true that I am not very good at villains. The good interest me so much more...'

Any more bouts of Cadfaelitis out there?

 

 

 

Autumn...

I have been busy with next week's London talk preparations, but not too busy to notice that someone has suddenly flicked the autumn switch to 'ON' here in the Shire, is it the same over your way??

And it had us scurrying out to buy 'winter' food once we decided we were fed up with all this cold stuff.

Or if you are down the bottom end of the world I am hoping perhaps the spring switch has suddenly flicked on as we hand the baton over. Offspringette keeps me posted from Christchurch about chicken runs and veg gardens, and blossom on trees and seeds sprouting, so I feel we will live through another summer vicariously too

If it grows and can be picked we have frozen it. Tomatoes whole for soup...

...because in the end I was overwhelmed with the things, then there were the runner beans, Bramley apples by the ton, blackberries which just kept appearing day after day along the hedgerows and the preserves shelf is looking nice too, though whittling down fast.The Gamekeeper tall enough to whip a jar off and have it out of the house and home before we have even blinked.

And incidentally I discover that it was (and still may be) a wideheld superstition around the British Isles that blackberries were bad or even poisonous after a certain date, ranging from Michaelmas through to the 10th or 11th October. Apparently the devil interfered on that day; in polite company he was said to have wiped his tail over them, more graphic descriptions suggest worse, and though I had no idea, it is true, by the end of September the season is done and the maslin pan goes back in the cupboard.

With minimal discussion the Aga was fired up for the first time since early May too. That is always a fine and lovely moment, as the kitchen reverts to being the warm heart of our home rather than the cool sanctuary it has been through the summer, yes we are ready for the hunker down.

The garden is having a final fling, especially the Cobaea scandens (Cup & Saucer plant) which I have grown for the first time, in pots and from seed, and have to say this has been very easy sow and grow stuff. It is an annual and we had no idea what to expect but quickly realised it would involve netting...stand too near and it had wrapped a tentacle around your arm and you'd be stuck there until first frost.

The leaves have now turned a beautiful shade of red, the flowers are still popping up hither and yon, and we have realised that if planted and trained around each side of the greenhouse next year it would make ideal natural dappled shade for what grows within. 
,
The Morning Glory has been showing off too...

But let's be honest, all this is irrelevant because there is only really one true indicator of Autumn in the Northern Hemisphere isn't there...

 

 

'Tis Tavistock Goozey Vair on old Dartymoor...

It's the second Wednesday in October and in fact October 8th the earliest it can be, which only means one thing, Tavistock's annual Goose Fair which has its ancient origins in the traditional Michaelmas Fair of September 29th and eventually shifted to October by the inconveniences of things like Gregorian calender changes circa 1752.

We wax and wane in our enthusiasms for the fair largely because once the children grew up we no longer felt quite so obliged to tramp down to the fairground for Free Rides Night. This is held on the Tuesday evening for all the local children, and does exactly what is says, free rides on all the dodgems, waltzers and other hair-raising escapades...which always felt to me like Let's Check the Nuts and Bolts Are Done Up Properly Before The Big Day.


But the school children will have the day off, the town will be closed to traffic, the main street a mass of stalls and this year we might be in the mood for a wander. The traditions is that we never buy anything at Goose Fair because it always breaks the next day, by which time the stall-holders are long gone, but the atmosphere is bustly and busy and different and I always love to see the Golden Gallopers instead of the buses in the bus station...

Traditionally the fair was the place to sell your geese for Christmas fattening, and for the rest of us to buy them, and one year we did spot one (real)  in a car...

So us might go down, on the other hand if 'tis raining streams and dark as pitch us'll just stay at home and sing a verse or two of the song instead. I haven't posted this for a couple of years so I hope you can remember the tune, but pliz do take a moment in your day to heave down your prong and stamp along with us to Goozey Vair, but be mindful of the whacking gurt big stone in verse three....

'Tis just a month come Friday next,
Bill Champernowne and me,
Us went across old Dartymoor
The Goosey Fair to see.
Us made usselves right vitty,
Us shaved and grazed our hair,
And off us goes in our Zunday clothes
Behind Bill's old grey mare.
Us smelt the zage and onion
'Alf a mile from Whitchurch Down,
And didn't us 'ave a blow out
When us put up in the town,
And there us met Ned Hannaford,
Jan Steer and Nicky Square,
I think that all the world must be
At Tavistock Goosey Fair.
Chorus:
And its oh, and where be a-going,
And what be a-doing of there,
Heave down your prong and stamp along,
To Tavistock Goosey Fair.

 

2. Us went to see the 'osses
And the 'effers and the yaws,
Us went on all them roundabouts
And into all the shows,
And then it started raining
And blowing in our face,
So off us goes down to the Rose
To 'ave a dish of tay.
And then us had a sing song
And the folks kept dropping in,
And what with one an' t'other,
Well, us had a drop of gin,
And what with one an' t'other,
Us didn't seem to care,
Whether us was to Bellever Tor
Or Tavistock Goosey Fair.
Chorus:

 

3. 'Twere raining streams and dark as pitch
When us trotted 'ome that night,
An' when us got past Merrivale Bridge,
Our mare, 'er took a fright,
Says I to Bill, "Be careful,
You'll 'ave us in them drains,"
Says 'e to me, "Cor bugger," says 'e,
"Why 'aven't you got the reins,"
Just then the mare ran slap against
A whacking gurt big stone,
'Er kicked the trap to flibbits
And 'er trotted off alone,
And when it come to reckoning,
'Tweren't no use standing there,
Us 'ad to traipse 'ome thirteen mile
From Tavistock Goosey Fair.
Chorus:

Case Histories & One Good Turn ~ Kate Atkinson

One of the early choices from my Fifty Unread Books has been Case Histories by Kate Atkinson bought years ago in an attempt to 'like' Jackson Brodie as much as everyone else, but sitting unread on the shelf ever since.

I am a fan of Kate Atkinson's writing...but can I say not a slavish one. I loved Behind the Scenes at the Museum but have had varying degrees of enjoyment from others, and still remain uncertain about Life After Life (to which I hear there will be a sequel.)...

Did Life After Life somehow outdo itself with the contortions and convolutions of plot...

Could it happily have shed some words...

Did that German/ Eva Braun episode really work..it didn't for me.

But overall I was pleased to have read it.

But there has been an enormous Jackson Brodie-sized gap in my amble through Kate Atkinson's oeuvre and I finally caved with Case Histories.

They adore Jackson Brodie at the Endsleigh Salon. He is a regular choice amongst our themed reads, being made to fit just about any subject it would seem. Looking back through my notebook I see he's popped up on Crime (obviously), Guilty Pleasures, and Festivals, and I gave him an outing for Watching the Detectives a while back too. There is always a chorus of admiration and shared love as the book is discussed so I am pleased to be able to join the party at last.

The setting for Case Histories is Cambridge, and as each of three crime events is described so the book is quickly peopled with a vast array of characters set in differing moments in time...1970, 1994, back to 1979 and with a latecomer in the book, but of great relevance a fourth case history set in 1971. Potential for confusion reigns as murders and disappearances prevail, though nothing like the confusion of Life After Life, and whether it's an age thing or not, I did have recourse to a self-compiled genogram to save me trying to hold all these people in my head.

Into the mix strolls the man himself...Jackson Brodie. Ex-policeman turned private investigator, a born-again smoker with the pre-requisite dysfunctional personal life...painful divorce, young daughter, past a bit of a muddle and a mess, with details slowly revealed as his character is constructed for the long haul, because there are three more books in the series after Case Histories.

The secrets start to seep out from each case history. People are not quite what they seem, and, as with all good detective novels, attempts at second-guessing fell flat as I became more and more engrossed. Kate Atkinson certainly knows how to keep her powder dry whilst upping the intrigue.Throwing in a few marker buoys for readers like me to cling on to, perhaps clues awaiting connections, I was on the alert at all times, or so I thought. I should have learned my lesson from Behind the Scenes at the Museum where a seeming trifle turns out to be a great big fat dollop of detail of huge import.

Slowly the connections appear, the case histories of the title start to weave their way towards each other in a generally very satisfying way, though the book's 2004 publication is slightly betrayed by some 2014 improbabilities (thinking about teachers and compulsory CRB checks maybe) but suspending disbelief I remained glued to the book to the final page.

This is fiction after all and I loved this one.

Maybe my big mistake was to dash straight into the next book in the series One Good Turn, which I had quickly bought along with the other two on the back of this success, When Will There Be Good News and Started Early, Took My Dog.

Set in Edinburgh during the August Festival, and with the Festival so much in the news Every Good Turn seemed like an ideal choice for some deckchair reading.

Time has moved on a little.

Jackson Brodie is now forty-seven and living in luxury in France with a new partner thanks to the unexpected denouement of Case Histories. I now know that our man is ex-army, ex police and ex-private investigator, though he will be hard pushed to keep any of that under wraps when he finds himself in the midst of a plot that involves a bout of road rage, a drowned woman, a rather feeble crime writer, an extrovert but less than successful festival performer, a business man in ITU on life support, an alluring female detective, some jerry-built homes, the frequent appearance of a baseball bat, a lot of muggings, drug-fuelled teenagers, rich women at literary events, and yes, the kitchen sink in the shape of a bogus cleaning company.

527 pages which I felt were a bit padded out with extraneous detail. and superfluous back story about the characters. The sort of detail that takes you miles from the action and where you really want to be, whilst seeming to add little to it, and sadly the book became a bit of a plod for me. The plot threads became diluted and stretched out, though still with a neat plot twist at the end. Don't let any of that put you off... detail might be exactly your sort of thing, I just wasn't in the mood for it, and I still think One Good Turn is a necessary read in the series to follow the events of our hero's life.

I am Jackson Brodie-d out for now but can't wait to read the remaining two eventually, so all is not lost.

Own up...any more Jackson Brodie fans out there ??

 

Related articles

Life After Life ~ Kate Atkinson

Tales From the Potting Shed :: Border Country

One of my big digging projects last year was the border that runs the length of the front of the house. Given over to laissez faire strim-once-a-year wild geraniums for the last fifteen years or so, with added ground elder for extra nuisance factor, I cleared and dug it a few feet at a time through last summer...

In fact I was only going to dig the first ten foot or so and have myself a little boxed in bed that I could see from the kitchen window and play about with, but...well you know what it's like...once you get started, and then it wasn't as hard as I thought. The geraniums lifted like slabs of turf and we used them all over the garden where we needed cover on new banks etc.

And in the intervening year we have had great fun planting it up as a herbaceous border...

The principle has been to sow in trays in the greenhouse, prick into pots and then transplant out so close together there would be no room for weeds, and it has been a huge success. Sowing direct was a disaster last year. I had thought I would just strew this boxed in bed with seeds and expect something to appear that would have Monty Don green with envy and knocking on the door to ask how it was done.

This is what actually happened...


It was a complete mess, not even a pretty mess really, more weeds than flowers which I couldn't tell apart as they were growing, and Monty didn't seem that interested either, so I spent the entire summer of 2013 waiting for the moment when I could dig it over and start again. I covered it with weed-proof membrane to teach the weeds a lesson and used it as a nursery for various plants in pots to winter over...

...before peeling it back in April to see that I had sadly punished a few bulbs as well...

But I soon had it dug over and ready for planting not sowing. Another passing moment of naivity came with the expectation that seeds sown last autumn, like Aquilegia and Ornamental Poppies, would be off and away and flowering this summer, that was a mistake too. The Poppies went in and quickly came out again, back in pots and hopefully for the future...

It was still April, and so I was biding my time, planting out from mid-May onwards.

I finished it in late June, sneaking annuals in between and around the perennials for some mid-to-late summer colour and then we waited... Phlox, Larkspur, Bells of Ireland, miniature Sunflowers, Cosmos, Chrysanthemum 'Rainbow', Echinops 'Ritro', Lychnis 'Alba' (thank you for the seeds Carol...huge success and hopefully flowering next year) Rudbeckia 'Marmalade', one rogue poppy that had snuck into a pot with an Aquilegia, Zinnia 'Mammoth' and all surrounded by a Lavender 'Munstead' border that would hopefully establish itself over the next few years.

The Aquilegias were slotted in amongst and are growing away, umpteen varieties, so if we don't have the National Collection by next spring I will be very upset, and the following year I expect they will all cross-pollinate and be the same colour anyway, but no matter, it will be plenty of pretty.

By August this is what we were enjoying...



And still going strong through September into October, though the picture doesn't really do justice to the amount of colour and the variety of flowers...

or that single opium poppy from seeds sent by Sabina (thank you Sabina, we hope for drifts of them next year) which did wondrous things by accident, whilst those I tried too hard with refused to do anything...

...and the rest of the front border has been a mass of colour too..

The Nicotiana (greenish-yellow above) that I cursed for its proliferation in the seed tray...

was really worth all the effort of pricking out and potting on and keeping the slugs at bay (a single 3-4" seedling could be gone overnight) because it has swayed with a graceful elegance in amongst everything else, and given off a glorious scent in the evenings.

Thank you so much to those who have sent me seeds and cuttings this year, and made suggestions or shared experience in comments... and Sarah who sent Aquilegia...are you there? I don't have your address but have some seeds to send you in return. I have been busy collecting seeds this week before the rains come (not a drop in September, it has been joyous) so please let me know if you want to do a swap.

Soon be time to think about what's next, and whilst we have decided to leave the glory of the front border to fade in its own time (Gertrude Jekyll would not approve) around the back we have been busy clearing and planting out...more about that soon.

Meanwhile, how's your garden growing...

 

My Desert Island Smells...

I wrote this blog post soon after I 'retired' from nursing in early 2013 and somehow it never made it to the top of the pile. Idly clicking on 'Draft Posts' behind the scenes here the other day I found it again and decided to jump it back up the list and give it an airing...

 

Thinking as I was about desert island authors the other day while I was cleaning my teeth, I suddenly wondered whether a year's supply of toothpaste as my luxury would be a rather stupid and frivolous request on a desert island, or would a crate of Euthymol (I just love it) be a lifesaver for the smell, the memories of it...and oh yes, maybe starve to death but being able to clean my teeth while I did.

It's interesting because I used to be thinking about the imminent plod to my desk for the day job when I was cleaning my teeth, now I can think about whatever I like.
Like smells, because it's the smell of the Euthymol really and then, while I was waiting for the two minute pinger to buzz on my electric toothbrush I thought about desert island smells...there is another one I just couldn't do without so how would I choose.

Many moons ago I was doing a home visit to a mother and her children who had just escaped a very abusive domestic situation and were in emergency accommodation. I walked into the kitchen and there they all were, mum, two teenagers and two much younger children seated around the table, and to my utter horror there was a pile of white dust in the middle being slicing and quartered and moving around.

I did a double take.

OMG...clearly, with all the attention on the domestic abuse, and working to get the family to safety, we had all missed the obvious...drug dealing.

There they were all sitting there cutting cocaine.

Imagine my relief, (and I suspect my hesitation had been noted no matter how good I thought I was at dealing with the unexpected,) when the mum waved the Johnson's Baby Powder at me before explaining.

When ever times had been tough in the past she would sit them all down with a pile of Johnson's Baby Powder. It was the reassurring smell of security and happier times and it never failed to lift their spirits.

I sat down and joined in as we talked, and we all shuffled piles and piles of the powder around to each other (it wasn't cocaine, I'm sure) and I bought into their calmness. The power of that smell was a revelation.

We talked about how much better life was for them all now...how much safer they felt...how the police were keeping a close eye on the house... how the children were all settled in school and sleeping well ...how the impending court case might go.. who to ring in an emergency...and generally what this freedom from fear felt like.

It was one of the most memorable home visits I have ever done.

As I got back into my car, my hands soft with the powder, I indulged in a reverie of my own.. dusting freshly bathed babies, towelling nappies ...and that scattering of powder on the floor. It was a smell I thought I had left behind, but on my way back to the surgery I stopped off and bought some and I haven't been without it since.

So decisions, decisions...Euthymol or Johnson's Baby Powder for my desert island smell.

How about yours??