dovegreyreader scribbles

In which we cave and buy a SatNav...

Some of you might have caught a post here from yesterday cataloguing our Sad Animal Week which I quickly took down because who needs too much information about sad on a Friday...and apologies to those who still received it by email.

The gist was that either side of bidding farewell to the Tinker we have also said goodbye to one of our Dowager cats Tess back in February..

and this week Sticks ("Sticky") the Gamekeeper's faithful twelve year old gun dog, here in very happy retirement with us, but who sadly broke his front leg while we were out walking last weekend...

We have laughed (and cried) since as we think of the Tinker up there somewhere with this lifetime of a menagerie of ours to look after (sorry Dad) .. dogs Ben, Will, Another Ben, Barney, Sticky, cats Charlie, William, Corky, Rocky, Dusty, Tess, guinea pigs Clover and Parsley, a rabbit who went to the bad and whose name I have forgotten, hamsters Chippy the First and Chippy the Second, ferret Bobby, gerbils, fish various...the list is endless and the parting is sad, but what lessons they have taught us and growing children about loving and caring for them through good and bad times.

Feeling in need of an all-absorbing project we set to....

Bookhound is painting the house,  and my job was to help buy the paint and now I am watching him.

And today we are zipping up to Hay-on-Wye for a couple of events at the literary festival, Helen Macdonald and Robert Macfarlane. And don't miss the latest edition of Five Dials, the online magazine from Hamish Hamilton, this latest one edited by Robert Macfarlane.

Today's journey will be interesting because we have finally caved and bought a SatNav, so Serena will be in charge while I knit (and Bookhound drives obviously).

The deciding factor was negotiating Bideford town centre a few weeks ago in the hope of eventually reaching Arlington Court. 

'Oh look,' I said, ' a sort of google satnav thing on my new phone, let's give that a try...'

I ignored all warnings about it being 'in development' and 'beta' and 'possibly inaccurate' until we had done several circuits of Bideford which kept bringing us back to the same roundabout, with the same rather odd pseudo-neolithic Ring of Brodgar installation, and of a confusing similarity from every angle and approach road. It's at this point that navigator's panic sets in because, having relaxed and devolved all responsibility, I suddenly had to find a map and glasses and Take Charge. None of this helped by the fact that the road map was 2008 and the bit we needed was right on the spiral binding...

'That's it, we're buying a SatNav,'

And that wasn't me, it was Bookhound, finally capitulating.

I do pride myself on basic old-fashioned map-reading and navigational skills though, especially up on Dartmoor. I love a nice map, and having heard Tristan Gooley speaking about natural navigation a few weeks ago, and how the art is being lost thanks to SatNav and GPS, it seems like an important skill that could soon be all but defunct. In fact we now realise that everyone else has a SatNav and therefore drives confidently and assertively in the right lane at the right time and there really is no room for dithering on the roads these days, or saying you can't see what the roundabout sign says until you are a bit closer.

So we have it, the TomTom, and I am hoping to have mastered it by the time we reach Bristol, beyond which and turning left we don't do very often, and it had better work because I have knitting planned.

Some very beautiful wool crossed my path recently but was out of stock. It was the Knit Angel who sealed the deal by booking skeins from the next dye lot and sending me one..

The Devon-based clever person who dyed this is here and the shade is Exmoor. The Knit Angel had knitted some up into a Hitchhiker scarf which looked beyond superlative, a stunning yet subtle range of colours, so I will be doing likewise as long as Serena plays the game.

Any SatNav hints gratefully received...especially What Not to Do and How Not to Upset Serena...I'll read them on the way...

Meanwhile, any making going on over your way...

 

 

 

Warning : Sad animal week...

Thank you for comments and emails, you have all been very kind and so here is the Sad Animal Post that I removed back in place. It did me good to write it and I really should have had the courage of my own convictions and trusted you would all understand, but I was worried about making anyone out there who was feeling sad feel a whole lot worse. Except of course sharing this, as Helen Macdonald explained at Hay yesterday is exactly what we all need to be doing, so as we were...

 

I'm sorry about this but we've had a bit of a sad-animal week of it here chez dovegrey, and it's no good me coming on here all chirpy and pretending we haven't, it's life, but I also completely understand that plenty of people won't want to arrive here and read about it so please feel free to give this post a miss if you are feeling sad or vulnerable yourself or just don't do animals...books will be back on Monday as per usual.

Just a few weeks before the Tinker set off on his way we had to bid farewell to one of our Dowager cats. Tess, sister of dear old Rocky, in her twentieth year and blind for a while but had coped admirably as long as we didn't move the furniture around..

She was the gentlest of cats and if she was lost she would do her 'I am Lost' miaow known to all and sundry; one of us would get up and help her out including Magnus who, ever the gentleman, would slide alongside and walk her in the right direction...it was something to behold I can tell you.

But  then suddenly Tess didn't cope...not at all. Distressed and going round in circles it was as if the last vestiges of light and shade, those last rods and cones, may have disappeared and confusion set in, so we made the decision and off she went very peacefully for the Big Sleep.

As is always the way there we were burying her in the teeth of a February gale and freezing sleet and hoping the Tinker wouldn't look out of the window because we decided not to tell him, and somehow we got away with that one. Neither of us could face the inevitable conversations about animals versus humans in the last days of their lives...and the Tinker would have been sure to say something, so Bookhound and I put our brave faces on when we went in to see him and carried on. I managed to fork up a bunch of snowdrops so hopefully Tess's little corner next to Rocky's daffodils will look a picture next Spring, and will I ever forget that comical visit to the vets with her several years ago now... please do follow that link if you have read this far and are in need of a laugh.

I've also bought Tess of the D'Urbervilles as one of our new roses this year and am looking forward to it looking like this...maybe...

Saying goodbye to Tess and then the Tinker all seemed like enough sad farewells for the year.

Except dear old Sticks (Sticky) the Gamekeeper's faithful old gun dog,  who had also been in retirement here with us (and named after the Tinker's Royal Marine drummer boy nickname,) chased a ball along the lane last weekend, raced around the bend out of sight alongside Nell (their very most favourite game) and the next thing mucho yelping, Sticky emerging with a floppy front paw and Nell trying to lick it better. We gave it a few days and I can't tell you how many times we googled 'dog with floppy paw' and then didn't like what we read. We kidded ourselves a bit ...he wasn't distressed, was chasing balls on three legs as happy as larry, eating, sleeping soundly, so we strapped it up and prayed that he'd put this paw on the ground...and how he tried, but he couldn't, so we took him to the vets on Tuesday.

Bless him, we had a long wait and he was the best behaved dog in the building. We were all praying for dislocation including the vet, easily rectified, so we left him for sedation and X rays only to get the call as we were half way home to say it was much worse...a broken leg and they would keep him sedated while we decided what to do.

We had already talked about it and knew, because we have always had very clear criteria about our animals...we don't keep them going for our benefit or beyond the point where their pride, dignity or quality of life is seriously compromised. Everyone sees this differently I think and that's fine but we always know instinctively when our animals have reached that point....when our dogs can't run with the team they struggle, they hate being left behind and they are miserable.

So it was an awful decision but not a difficult one because at twelve years old and after a full working life, and with increasingly creaky back hips and legs, surgery on a broken front leg was never going to be an option, and it couldn't be done locally either, and so Bookhound dropped me home (I would have started everyone in the building off) and drove back to be with him and to stroke and talk him on his way. Sticky is the first dog we've lost who hasn't been quite ready to go so it's all been very sad. Nell and Rusty said goodbye too (the vets recommend this) and they have been unusually quiet and subdued since...who can know what animals feel or think at times like this, I've tried to get my head around it this week and failed so I'd be really interested to know what you think if you can bear it.

We had an evening burial out on the western border of the garden (where there are now four dogs...a fifth was our first dog Border Collie Ben aged seventeen, who went on his way in December twenty years ago, and when thick ice made a burial impossible) and to the backdrop of the most beautiful sunset of the year. The Kayaker was out cycling on Dartmoor that night and took this amazing picture now officially called Sticky's Sunset...

And now we like to think of the Tinker up there with this lifetime of a menagerie of ours to look after (sorry Dad) .. dogs Ben, Will, Another Ben, Barney, Sticky, cats Charlie, William, Corky, Rocky, Dusty, Tess, guinea pigs Clover and Parsley, a rabbit who went to the bad and whose name I have forgotten, hamsters Chippy the First and Chippy the Second, ferret Bobby, gerbils, fish various...the list is endless and the parting is sad, but what lessons they have taught us and growing children about loving and caring for them through good and bad times.

Talking of the bad times...I'm now thinking of the day that Bobby the ferret was put in the outside run by someone who didn't realise that it had been pre-booked for Clover and Parsley the guinea pigs who were asleep in the drainpipe. The resulting carnage involved trying to prise a ferret's jaw off a guinea pig's nose followed by some very expensive plastic surgery and an overnight stay at the vets for the poor guinea pig...we look back and laugh now but at the time it was a mortgage on an animal that had cost £1.

But what endless pleasure and how much laughter and happiness they have all given us, and I'm sure this is something many of you will have experienced and understood too...

Bless 'em all.

English Stained Glass

I'm not supposed to be buying books on market stalls at the moment, this is because I have sent so many books to charity shops in recent weeks in order to clear out all the previous books I have bought on market stalls, but a while back there it was...only £1, how could I not..

English Stained Glass by Painton Cowen, published by Thames & Hudson, 200 colour illustrations and an ex-library copy. The thing I love about ex-library copies is that the dust jacket is usually in excellent condition underneath the plastic covering, so a nearly new book for £1. Bargain, and what an excellent book it has proved to be too.

I take pictures of stained glass wherever I go and, for all my lapsed and lazy Anglican faith, I warm to the beauty and added spiritual dimensions it offers to the atmosphere in a church or cathedral. As Painton Cowan suggests...

'It was after all the visible media of its time as far as ordinary, illiterate people were concerned, and in showing people what they needed to know about their faith these visual aids inadvertently say a lot about the society that created them...'

Nineteenth century theories that Medieval stained glass may have been a means of teaching the catechism and Biblical narratives to those who couldn't read have largely been dispelled as romantic apparently, but nevertheless Painton Cowan recognises the overtly didactic purpose of a window depicting The Last Judgement for example...a timely reminder of the consequences of sin; the Crucifixion a reminder of the fundamentals of the Christian faith. Later stained glass often includes the Works of Mercy...feeding the hungry, housing the traveller, visiting the sick and so on whilst the Seven Deadly Sins apparently rarely make an appearance....all sufficient to encourage some closer looking.

April 23rd, St George's Day, dawned bright and sunny and I had to run a few errands in town. Well the sun was shining, Tavistock Parish Church looked stunning, I had my camera with me so in I went.

I sang in the choir here for many years but hadn't set foot in the church since the day of the Tinker's funeral, and it is a beautiful building, too beautiful to avoid in case I might get upset, so in I went and lit a candle and then had a quiet contemplative wander and I was fine.

I'll have to go back countless times because I have barely absorbed the wealth of information in the book, let alone the history of the stained glass in this church, but how fortunate to have it on the doorstep. There is much to pay attention to... for example are there depictions of Saints, Angels and Devils . If there are Angels, well there's a hierarchy, Seraphim, Cherubim, Archangels, and ordinary Angels, musical Angels, singing Angels to look out for. I mean who knew, and to say nothing of the craftmanship, the painting on the glass, the leadwork..

This being St George's Day I was pleased to find the chap himself...

and to look in close up reveals details so easily missed... the fringe on the altar cloth

The Church has several big attractions, not least the William Morris window which I know I have mentioned on here before, apparently now degrading due to the use of borax in the paint, but still exquisitely beautiful and rich in colour and depth...

Properly photographed wouldn't this William Morris panel would make a fine Christmas card...

As always, in a church on a sunny day there will be rainbows of colour...

But in the years I have been going into this church have I ever noticed that the grates are the Dresden Plate patchwork pattern??


This a quilt I made for our tenth wedding anniversary and called Tin Plate, I guess I should be thinking about next year's Ruby shouldn't I. And creativity is where this is all heading because I'm looking for some creative inspiration, and pondering some small pieces of quilted stained glass needlework, where a bias strip takes the place of the lead and some interesting pictures can be achieved. I'd like to be a little more ambitious than this last piece, though I thoroughly enjoyed making it..

So my eyes were peeled for patterns too...

and for colour...


And of course you can't possibly go into Tavistock Parish Church and not find the pew maker's signature ivory mouse...

or the Three Hares roof boss...

Incidentally there is now a trail to follow around the churches of Devon to find another twenty-nine of these hares; the symbol of mysterious origins and may even have found its way to Britain via the silk route from China onto the roof bosses of Devon's medieval churches. We will be on that case this summer but meanwhile have our own on the wall of course...

Before I knew it lunchtime. Two hours spent looking at the stained glass that I thought I knew well enough already (many's the sermon I've sat and stared at it) but this time absorbing the patterns and the colours and the stillness and the quiet, and the seeds of some creative inspiration were sown where I had least expected them. And Painton Cowan's book to come home to, with its illustrations of English stained glass in churches around the country; if you are this side of the pond probably in a church very near you.

 

 

 

 

 

Auricula-itis

'There is no flower so immediately irresistible as the Auricula... for the perfection of the stage Auricula is that of most exquisite Meissen porcelain, or the most lovely silk stuffs of Isfahan...and yet it is a living and growing thing...'

The poet and art critic Sacheverell Sitwell, writing in 1939, was as impressed as I am with the beauty of the Auricula...


It is a plant in which I can see not a thing to dislike. The colours and the symmetry warm the heart, it's a flower that just 'works', with a breath-taking and often complex beauty, and of course another one sits above my desk as part of the Tinker's tapestry..


I had looked at auriculas and marvelled but surely they had to be the most ridiculously impossible things to grow...until Carol (Norton) gave me two seedlings a couple of years ago. My mistake was not to read up on them immediately so sadly one was lost thanks to an excess of everything...sun, water, heat, whilst the other, by some miracle survived long enough for me to enter into my current I Love Auriculas phase, wherein I dote on their every requirement. Carol brought me some more a few weeks ago... Slim Whitman sits next to Lord Saye en Sele with Lemon & Lime and Broadwell Gold in-between.

I have also cleared the library of every available book on the subject sensing that the history of the auricula may be at least as interesting as that of the tulip and I wasn't mistaken, I'm learning a lot. The Portrait of Martha Rhodes, painted by Christopher Steel in 1750, marks an important moment in the history of the auricula, featuring as it does, the arrival of the edged flower....

That's another thing...new language...edges,stripes, doubles, borders, pips, eyes, tubes, selfs, carrots...

Although there is no written evidence to back up the theory it is thought that auriculas, originally a plant of the high mountains of Europe, may have arrived in England from the Low Countries with the Huguenots fleeing persecution; the plant's name deriving from the Latin Auricula ursi or Bear's Ears, maybe thanks to the leaf shape...no one is really certain. Its arrival may not have been that straight-forward but if it is a myth it's a nice one. I like the romantic notion of fleeing weavers packing the plants and seeds they couldn't possibly leave behind in amongst the shuttles...I might be the same about mine now if pressed.

Auriculas Through the Ages - Bear's Ears, Ricklers and Painted Ladies, by Patricia Cleveland -Peck, and with beautiful illustrations by Elisabeth Dowle, has supplied all this information and more, far too much to recount here, but 'tis true, these are special plants, and auriculas quickly joined the ranks of the elite at the end of the sixteenth century, the others being carnations, tulips, ranunculus and anemones. With their ability to be grown from seed auriculas soon became available to a much wider range of gardeners than the expensive tulip bulbs; a diary entry for poverty-stricken poet John Clare states he made a new frame for his auriculas and it is known he owned a definitive book on the subject, whilst Irish writer Maria Edgeworth was known to be collector. Even the miner's cottages in D.H.Lawrence's Sons and Lovers have auriculas in the front garden where now they might not even have a front garden, more likely a paved parking space.

There is no shortage of luminous and beguiling auricula artwork either...both old and new, this by the artist Charles Mahoney and painted in 1956...

or this from a botanical book of 1812...

or this by Jose Escofet...

I'd give wall-space to any of these and would stare at them endlessly.

Now I wasn't wrong because it would seem that raising an auricula is as complex as raising a baby, and now that the flowering season is almost over my attention must turn to re-potting and birthing new plants from the offshoots. And if I follow the rules it would seem ordinary compost will not do...I need a recipe of multi-purpose (60%) John Innes no 2 (20%) and grit (20%) and something called Yellow Sulphur to 'dress the wounds' after I have removed the off-shoots whilst roots (carrots) should be washed in something called Bio Provado. I need to feed with half-strength Chempac No 8 in the autumn and quarter-strength Chempac No 3 in the spring and as for watering...well barely, then a bit more, then not too much, and don't let it touch the leaves whatever you do.

After re-potting, the encroaching enemy will be the summer. This will be swiftly followed by the inevitable dangers of a damp autumn, to which end I must find a selection of seasonal homes because my collection is growing. This weekend's Tavistock Garden Festival (the Shire's answer to RHS Chelsea) yielded two more; 'Double Trouble' in a soft powdery pink-buff-yellow-mushroomy shade of auricula gorgeousness...

and Excalibur, another double, this one purple but with enough off-shoots (I'm learning the lingo) to deliver sextuplets if not octuplets..

Despite a year of almost total ignorance on my part my 2014 garden festival purchase. 'Black Jack' has also survived...

And then there's that powder on the petals. Border auriculas like Black Jack are coated with a light frosting of something called 'farina' or 'meal'. It's delicate and attractive and unusual and I love it.

So the collection grows and I tread carefully because I don't know about you but I find there's a method to this next bit...

'Hmm...I've found a place for these...'

and I identify a little recess in the corner of the storm porch that could have been designed for an auricula theatre.

Then I don't say any more, just sort of stand the pots there in a sad jumble.

I'm in the greenhouse and I hear signs of circular saw in action followed by some hammering. Next thing I know...



So happy Whitsun Bank Holiday everyone and any fellow Auricula-istas out there with any top tips for this novice...

Or news of any new plantings or sproutings in your gardens...

The Speaker's Coach...

We spent a glorious long day at Arlington Court in North Devon last week.

Did the house, coveted the walled garden and the conservatory, managed the obligatory tea and cake (actually some very delicious Carrot & Coriander soup and then cake, it was lunchtime) and then wandered up to the National Carriage Museum housed in the grounds.

More soon about the fascinating Rosalie Chichester and her many collections which form the main displays in the house, and to be honest I wasn't sure there would be much to inspire us in the the shape of carriages.

Wrong.

Barouches and broughams in close up are huge, mostly like great big horse-drawn prams...

But then there was the Speaker's State Coach.

Now if there is one thing I don't really like it is being 'guided'.

I much prefer to be left to my own devices in places like this. Bookhound on the other hand chats to all and sundry so guides absolutely love him. He will patiently listen to everything they know because he doesn't like to be rude, while I wander off and learn precisely nothing but like looking. So one of us was quite happy that the guide came scurrying alongside as we walked into the building which now houses this 'ere Speaker's State Coach, and the other might have been scowling a little.

I wonder which you are too...to be guided or not to be guided.

Meanwhile I have to take it all back because what a brilliant talk the guide gave us, and I'm not sure I can make it sound anything like as interesting as he did...

Believed to have been made in 1698 for King William III, the state coach was presented to the Speaker a few years later by Queen Ann who was presumably upgrading to a better model. For those who might not know, the Speaker in question is the one who sits in the middle of the House of Commons shouting 'Order, Order,' and trying to keep the parliamentary rabble under control.

1698...so what was going on then..

Well the the Palace of Whitehall was destroyed by fire...

In Russia Tsar Peter the First imposed a tax on all beards...

The first Eddystone lighthouse was illuminated off Plymouth...

The year before St Paul's Cathedral had been opened...

Charles Perrault had published his fairy tales...

Artists Canaletto and William Hogarth were born...

Not a lot of excitement but imagine seeing such a splendiferous thing around the streets of the capital.

The state coach has been used by the Speaker in processions for Coronations and Royal Weddings ever since, to transport him from the Place of Westminster to Westminster Abbey. There is a whole lot of ceremony attached, coachman, footmen, Household Cavalry rider alongside (special treat apparently) and two little chaps employed to sit on the floor inside and hold the House of Commons Mace so that it is clearly visible to the crowds. Generally pulled by two shire horses it is only when standing next to it, and seeing the height at which the coachman sits, that we realised how precarious it seemed and how horribly wrong it could all go...spooked horses and the Speaker would be rocking off around the M25 in no time.

And then I remember the infamous carriage ride in Flaubert's Madame Bovary...down with the blinds and off they went.

This 1953 film footage (recommended by the guide) gives an idea of the condition of the coach prior to restoration.... almost black whilst the carvings were so caked with centuries of paint and gilding that they had lost their original shape.

The coach was last used for the wedding of Charles and Diana in 1981 before it was decided that it should be pensioned off, restored, refurbished and then put on public display. That restoration took three years at the end of which is was decided that the coach should be exhibited at Arlington for an initial period of six years. Given that the National Trust have created a special room for it, as temperate, light-contolled and humidified as anything Kew Gardens can boast, and that the thing only made it in there by the merest whisker of gold leaf, much manpower and some giant roller skates, we can only hope they don't decide to move it when the time is up.

The coach is now a glittering and truly spectacular sight, though sadly a stipulation of the government contract is no photographs (why? someone will know) ...and the guide was there...ahem, so I have had to borrow one rather than risk incarceration in the Tower and sadly this is the best I can find...

Still partially wrapped and in transit so this doesn't do the opulence and splendour of the coach any justice whatsoever. That is gilding (not B&Q gold spray paint...we asked) and if you can catch a tiny glimpse of something slightly unusual on the lower right of the door, you would be right.

It's a fridge magnet one of several Speaker's Crests which look hopelessly out of place amongst the original seventeenth century depictions of  Literature, Science, Plenty and Architecture, but it was apparently another stipulation by several previous Speakers in agreeing to the restoration and contributing to the funds ...our badges stay.

Balanced on a suspension system of leather straps, all these state coaches are famed for a rocking motion that mimics the Bay of Biscay on a bad day on that short journey through the streets of London, so little wonder that the Speaker was happy to part with it.

Well worth a look if you are passing near to Arlington House this summer, meanwhile has anyone else done any stately home or other nice place visiting of late...

 

 

 

Dead Simple ~ Peter James

Isn't it odd...there I was thinking I was judging my reading mood perfectly.

Some nice nature reads, some biography, more nature, some Trollope, all very gentle and then, don't ask me how, I came across Peter James and his series of ten detective novels, the first, Dead Simple just 59p on Kindle. Well I'd really enjoyed that crime trilogy Peter James had written about the Hebrides, The Black House etc so perhaps I'd enjoy this series just as much.

In fact where on earth have I been. I was quite surprised I hadn't heard about this one, especially given they have sold 14 million copies, because I'm always hankering after a detective series to follow and I can never seem to find one that works and that I haven't read.

I was about half way through Dead Simple before I realised that I had my Peters completely confused. Peter May wrote the Lewis Trilogy... this was Peter James and a different Lewes, this time the Sussex one.

I am now trying to think back to other reads that have gripped me quite as much as this one...

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson  in recent years... a wasted trip to London reading that and where I saw nothing around me because I was too immersed.

Take No Farewell by Robert Goddard aeons ago, and I remember reading that one while I put the hoover round, it was so good.

So my first meeting with Sussex-based Detective Superintendent Roy Grace in charge of a series of cold cases that new forensics may make solvable. I was immediately reminded of Waking the Dead, the TV series with Trevor Eve as the frequently grumpy detective, and the inimitable Sue Johnston as the psychological profiler but there the resemblance ended.

Thirty-nine years old and single since his wife Sandy had vanished into thin air on his thirtieth birthday, just her handbag missing and two withdrawals from her bank account for some incidental shopping, and then not a trace beyond the car parked at Gatwick Airport. Roy Grace, with his cropped hair, his squashed nose and his Paul Newman eyes, a pet goldfish called Marlon and many half-hearted attempts at healthy living with the occasional lapse, well I really warmed to him. He seems kind and considerate, understanding of others and of course the missing wife lays the foundations of some interesting future plot developments.

Dead Simple is one of those books where to reveal even the most basic details will spoil, so all I will say is that when a stag night prank goes horribly wrong, and I mean really badly wrong, there will be plenty to keep DS Roy Grace busy. The suspense is unremitting, some very unexpected twists (well surprises for me, though I accept I might have missed the signs I was so immersed) and my Kindle was fair burning up I was flicking the pages on so fast. It is clear Peter James knows his cars...dangerous because too much information and I am a lost cause, boring car chases and I am asleep, but to my ongoing astonishment perhaps one of the best car chases I have ever read. I can't believe I just wrote that...I hate car chases.

I learned a few things too. 

How many of you have wondered about the recent Jimmy Savile investigation and why it might have been called Operation Yewtree??

I have spent ages trying to figure what the connection was.

Well, there isn't one. Operational names are allocated at random by a police computer which chooses a word. How have I gone all my life and not realised that.

And something else I had never thought of too...

When questioned about the use of a medium to help resolve a crime, and on the brink of ridicule by the counsel, DS Grace suggests that it could be argued he has just been sworn in to give evidence using a Bible and the name of God...and might that not also be super-natural to a non-believer. It was an interesting thought.

Suffice to say I had to put life on hold for the duration. It was dripping wet, grey day, Bookhound brought me breakfast in bed (no, sorry, I won't lend him out) and I just about made it downstairs for coffee time, only to sit at the kitchen table and carry on reading before moving to the sofa and reading some more. I shared instalment updates with Bookhound who doesn't read fiction but who was equally gripped, or pretended to be..

'Do you want to know about this book I'm reading...this really awful thing happens...'

'No, don't tell me if it's that awful, it will spoil my day...'

'Sorry, but you really have to know about this because it's so awful it's brilliant...'

And I proceeded to explain, and his eyes got wider and wider...

By mid-afternoon he was begging for an update.

I am pleased to say the plot held together for me for the entire book and as I flicked the final page to find the beginning of the next book I could only chuckle 'Nice try...' because I had already bought Looking Good Dead  hours ago for £1.19 ...and the one after that Not Dead Enough for £1.59. Then of course things get sticky because the rest of the series are of course full price once addiction is assured. It is books like this that my Kindle is made for though because I won't read these again and I won't want a shelf full of them when space is already tight.

Now of course I am in dangerous waters.

In danger of leaping straight into the next one, and the next one, gorging myself into crime oblivion and ending up in that sated enough-is-enough mood, so I have managed to hold off  Looking Good Dead  for at least...oh let me see, must be six hours since I finished Dead Simple, that'll do.

Meanwhile...any more Peter James fans out there...

Any other good crime novels out there while we are back on the subject, if so please do shout...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Landmarks ~ Robert Macfarlane

I've been procrastinating about writing this blog post. Not through any fault of the book but just because...

I opened Landmarks and started to read my proof copy of Robert Macfarlane's latest book on January 8th 2015. I know because I actually made a note inside. The plan was to make an early start because at the beginning of March, March 6th to be exact, I would be meeting up with six of the Port Eliot dovegreyreader tent helpers for a long weekend in Norfolk, and talking about Landmarks was on our agenda. They all had proof copies too and we were all very enthusiastic about Team Landmarks, to say nothing of a girls weekend away and shared meals, beach walks and lots of laughter, all of which we had fondly been calling Seven Go Mad in Norfolk all winter.

The date of March 6th had been agreed last autumn, the big house was booked, the train tickets were booked, we had all started an enthused e mail conversation about Landmarks and the excitement was palpable...

And then, on January 12th the Tinker and I had the first of those hospital appointments and I knew in an instant that Norfolk, for me, would be cancelled. I kept up the pretence for a few more weeks knowing how upset my dad would be to think I was missing it, and Bookhound saying 'You absolutely MUST go...we'll be fine here...' but I soon realised that not only could I not be away from home, but I didn't actually want to be more than an inch away from home and family, and so I pulled out. I gave the Norfolk Crew very strict instructions that they were to carry on regardless and that I would be very disappointed if they didn't have a whale of a time.

Who could have predicted that the day I should have been departing on the train was the day we finally realised that the Tinker was going to be departing on his journey too, and this all by way of explaining that it has all unwittingly made Landmarks something of a landmark book. It became one of the few books that I found I could read, as well as escaping into some of the diversions that Robert Macfarlane suggested. And I was struck, as I read a book about words and about forgotten words, because there I was locating a disappearing professional vocabulary of my own from many years ago; illness, hospitals and nursing have a language of their own too.

In part Landmarks is a collection of the introductions that Robert Macfarlane has written for other books as well as new writing about the power of language and its ability to shape our sense of place...

'It is a field guide to literature I love, and it is a word hoard of the astonishing lexis for landscape that exists in the comprision of islands, rivers, strands, fells, lochs , cities, towns, corries, hedgerows, fields and edgelands uneasily known as the British Isles.'

And those word hoards, in the form of glossaries, permeate the book at regular intervals, what Robert Macfarlane calls a Terra Britannica, a gathering of terms, 'specialized ways of indicating aspects of place,' the words freighted not only with a disappearing history but also an urgency. How can arguments for the nurturing and protection of landscape be advanced without the vocabulary  to describe it, and in my own small way it feels true...I can look at a landscape and be struck dumb, with no words to describe

I was immediately interested in those Devon words, especially the ammil, and sent the poor librarian delving into the Exeter stacks to find all the old dialect books which sadly, in the end, I didn't really have time to study in any detail but sufficient to discover that, by osmosis, a great deal of the Devon vernacular has slipped into our daily round without us realising.

Landmarks promptly dispatched me to the Arctic which hadn't featured in my travel plans at all, but Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams became a book of my own dreams too...

'To exercise a care of attention towards a place - as towards a person - is to achieve a sympathetic intimacy with it...'

It's not hard to see why a line like that from Robert Macfarlane would send me scurrying for a copy of Arctic Dreams is it...

'His prose [Barry Lopez's] - priestly, intense, grace-noted - is driven by the belief that 'it is possible to live wisely on the land, and to love well,' and by a conviction that the real achievement of place-writing might be to help incorporate nature into the moral realm of human community.'

It's a lofty idea that might have fallen on stony ground with me at any another less tender time and in another place, but there was a state of grace to be found and I was right in the midst of it. Barry Lopez seemed to take up the baton in my reading...

'How do people imagine the landscapes they find themselves in? How does the land shape the imaginations of the people who dwell in it?...What will we do as the wisdom of the past bears down on our future...'

Landmarks set aside, my copy of Arctic Dreams, opened on February 13th and finished ten days later, is littered with underlinings and marginalia (another rule broken about not scribbling in books any more). On February 19th, as I was reading the chapter on Ice and Light, Niagara Falls froze in a sort of spectacular suspended animation... we were all mesmerised. 


'There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions,' says Barry Lopez, 'You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light...'

Eventually back to Landmarks and Robert Macfarlane verbalising his way across the land adding the glossaries for Flatlands, Uplands, Waterlands, Coastlands, Underlands, Northlands, Edgelands, Earthlands and Woodlands and along the way citing other lives and work; A Land by Jacquetta Hawke, J.A.Baker's The Peregrine, (and the suggestion that Baker anticipates The Rings of Saturn by W.G.Sebald, another book off the shelf ) The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd and mention of The Pebbles on the Beach by Clarence Ellis. 

Thank you to Fran who found me a copy of The Pebbles on the Beach in a second-hand shop and saved me having to cry over handing the library copy back, the book a treasure if only to have this quote in a book on my shelves...

'Pebble hunting is a pleasant and health-giving hobby ...and all but those who are nearing the last stage of decrepitude can enjoy it...'

More about that and my new Cabinet of Curiosities to come.

Meanwhile Linda W, one of the Happy Campers who did go mad in Norfolk, has had a genius idea for her proof copy of Landmarks which, lacking the chapter-heading woodcuts of the finished copy, does look a bit bare. Linda chose and stuck in a photograph for each of the glossaries and I am shamelessly going to copy that idea for what has now become my very special copy of the book.

And off to hear Robert Macfarlane talking to Horatio Clare at the Hay Festival very soon, to be followed by Helen Macdonald talking about H is for Hawk on the same day.

Life goes on and lovely things to look forward to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Related articles

The Living Mountain ~ Nan Shepherd

Snow Goose...

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

I can't believe it is over ten years since I wrote this piece for Newbooksmag but with the seven part TV series starting here in the UK this evening I felt it might benefit from an airing. At the time this article was meant as a sort of vade mecum for reading a huge book...

JONATHAN STRANGE & Mr NORRELL

Susanna Clarke

It had been languishing impressively on my coffee table for some weeks staring at me reproachfully, awaiting that moment when I had the strength to pick up a book that let’s face it weighs the equivalent of a good-sized premature baby and would need the equivalent number of gestational weeks available to read it.

I had just that very week attended my local library book group that is more of a review and recommend (or not) session and there it was in someone’s stack. Imagine my horror when they declared that they had kicked it into touch 50 pages in as ‘another load of magical rubbish’ (surely incurring severe injury in the process?). I had been so looking forward to reading this mainly on the strength of the unanimous support it received from the non-Booker panel judges (i.e. people like me who have busy lives and don’t have time to be misled by prizewinning titles that may ultimately disappoint).

Undaunted I decided this was one occasion when I would venture in and see for myself. What’s that quote…”stop all the clocks…”? Well in our house it became stop all cooking, cleaning, shopping, in fact put life itself on hold, this in the weeks before Christmas. One review I’ve read says “it’s a good job this book is the size of a house as it’s a book you want to move into” and it occurs to me that this total immersion method of reading is good advice to offer before suggesting anyone embarks on the huge journey that reading this book demands. I am convinced this is an unusual reading experience that many readers may miss out on without adequate preparation so I feel duty bound to offer some advice to would-be travellers.

Dribs and drabs of reading will not do, treat this book like a long haul flight down to putting on the flight socks if you are at risk of a deep vein thrombosis as you will be riveted to your chair for the forseeable future. If you can organise a helpful stewardess-like person to bring you regular sustenance all the better though you may be well served making the trip to the kettle and the food yourself to ensure your circulation gets the occasional workout. If you are lucky enough to have a fire, light it as this is a book to curl up into and lose yourself for 782 pages. It is a winter read I think totally incompatible with a deckchair on a beach. I would also suggest a cushion on your knees to prop the book up (remember the baby comparison?) and heed the plight of a friend who found this advice decidedly wimpish and is now nursing a nagging wrist injury.

So what on earth is this book about?

Well, suffice it to say that Clarke takes the familiar world of the 1820s and inserts the premise that magic had actually worked in the Renaissance but the ability to perform it successfully had somehow declined until the emergence of Mr Norrell. He can perform magic from books and then along comes Jonathan Strange who works in a somewhat more cavalier fashion to his own recipe. Known historical events are given a perfectly logical magical twist as by this time Clarke has enabled you to suspend disbelief and enter her world. Much of this is very funny indeed and if you thought Wellington outmanouevered Napoleon at Waterloo think again, it is perfectly obvious that Jonathan Strange organised for the removal of the entire country of Belgium to a remote part of America for an afternoon while things got a bit tricky. But of course why hadn’t that occurred to me before? Clarke aids your journey into this hinterland she creates by the clever use of footnotes. How tempting it is to skip these as superfluous but don’t. Footnotes are usually the factual, evidence-based supplement to information that you have just read that ground you in reality, well of course these footnotes are quite the opposite and ground you even further into the unreal world of the book. You start to become mildly disorientated much like some of Clarke’s characters who become very confused about which world they inhabit.

As an aside, think ‘film’ as you read and you will see what a marvellous one this book would make. Personally I’m always happy if I can find a part for the likes of Alan Rickman and I think he would fit in well here so that’s fine.

Much is made these days of books being too long and needing editing and if anyone should hint to me that this was the case with JS&MrN then I would pay good money, possibly sell a cat or something, to have those edited bits because had this book been 1000 pages it would not have been too long! Do you know that feeling when you approach the end of a good book? It’s located somewhere between the extremes of joy and gratitude for the experience and grief verging on bereavement at the loss to come when you reach the final page. I made the last 50 pages last a whole day. You need to prepare carefully for your move into the post JS&MrN world. Every book you pick up will be too light, too short, too unmagical, too normal. I eventually settled on The Fall by Simon Mawer, I don’t know why but it was good, the gripping account of the ascent of the North Wall of the Eiger somehow took my mind off the fate of all my friends in JS&MrN. I’ve read that it took Clarke 10 years to write this book and I’m now in the horns of a dilemma. It clearly took that long to create such a masterpiece and I would be mortally disappointed to find any sequel was weak but 10 years is such a long time to wait.

As to whether it is good reading group material well that’s a difficult one. This book seems to have deleted all my critical faculties and I have warned friends to whom I have recommended it  (this is a lot, it’s another problem, you want to convert everyone) that for once I will not enter into any negative debate about it. For me it was such a wonderful reading experience that I feel no need to defend it in any way, nor do I really want to delve into it too deeply. So far they have all had exactly the same experience as me (or so they say for fear of upsetting me!) and we are talking here about people who think nothing of any worth has been written since about 1950 when it comes to modern literature.

It is not in my eyes a book to dissect and deliberate over whilst trying to invest huge and meaningful philosophy into its purpose, it is a book to move into and inhabit for that wonderful complete reading experience that we need like manna for the reading soul and are lucky enough to find every so often.

©Lynne Hatwell  January 2005

I've almost made myself want to read the book again just to experience the excitement, and am now holding my breath to see if my film expectations hold up, even if there doesn't seem to be a part for Alan Rickman...never mind.

Anyone else looking forward to this...

Shall we reconvene here after tonight's episode and chew it over...

 

 

 

 

 

 

UFOs & the Multi-Fassetted Diamond Quilt

Un-Finished Objects, not extra-terrestial spacecraft, but the Multi-Fassetted Diamonds...sort me out will you, I need some encouragement and some ideas.

It's the Kaffe Fasset quilt. Started last year, or maybe it was the year before that, but the fabric wasn't cheap so it can't go to waste. I'm back on it in that I have finished the piecing and now have to do the big join-up...

The thing is...well I'm not sure I like it that much now and Magnus never was that impressed...

In fact nor was he impressed with my tray of rudbeckia seedlings in the greenhouse this week, but that's another story...

In fact this was feline revenge. We have a stray cat coming in the cat flap at the moment and so I had locked it while we were out ..and locked out Magnus. You can see it in his face can't you.

Back to the quilt. My eye is asking to work in pastels and spriggy flowers all of a sudden, most unexpected because I thought I had left that phase behind long ago, but I want to do some 'pretty' rather than 'bold' which is why my hexagons from my stash still feel very pleasing...



So my plan is to piece this dazzingly bright diamond thing together pronto, but then what.

I will have a serious problem if I try to hand quilt it, my eyes will go doolally, so I am wondering whether to psyche up the Bernina and attempt to machine quilt it, maybe just 'in the ditch' along the seam lines. I must admit I haven't attempted to machine quilt anything this size before, and it is smaller than intended because I ran out of fabric having decided to quit while I was even vaguely winning, but it is still quite unwieldy.

I do have the spray glue which holds the top, batting and backing together which I am thinking might help a great deal with machine quilting..

Or maybe I just knot it..

Or maybe I leave it as an unquilted top and just add some backing a la Diana Boston.

All suggestions welcome because I am not allowing myself to start anything big and major and new until I at least have this on its way to completion, so you will all feel my pain at this hurdle I am sure.

On the Black Hill ~ Bruce Chatwin

Having immersed myself in the world of shepherding with James Rebanks' book The Shepherd's Life and then scouting around my shelves for the book he mentions by W.H.Hudson A Shepherd's Tale, I stumbled across On the Black Hill by Bruce Chatwin, and in this tennis-elbow-foot world that reading can become, I felt a little surge of enthusiasm for the writing of Bruce as well as some fictional shepherding.

Bruce Chatwin, some would argue (oh alright...me included) arrestingly handsome with those piercing blue eyes, exuding boyish charm, and with the floppy blond hair that looked like it would never do what it was told...in fact Bruce looked like he would never do what he was told either. A man with a spell-binding gift for telling stories and with a relentless intellectual energy according to a commentary by Nicholas Murray which also happened to be on my shelves. And there was the untimely death at the age of forty-nine in 1989, supposedly from a mystery illness contracted from eating a thousand-year old Chinese egg or something when in fact Bruce Chatwin was one of the early casualties of HIV and AIDS. Yes indeed, Bruce Chatwin felt like an on-trend contemporary author to read back in the 1990s, in the midst of my child-rearing and working years when reading time was scarce and what I read needed to enthuse.

And I was enthused by Bruce Chatwin.

I bought all the books, even that large oblong book of photos which to this day has never fitted comfortably on any bookshelf and I never know where to put it...

...but it had me dashing off to buy Moleskinne notebooks just because Bruce had used them.

And as I opened the books a sheaf of newspaper and magazine snippets fell out, I had clearly been a fan.I had first read On the Black Hill in 1995. It had become something of a cult book in the 1980s according to Nicholas Murray, and I remember loving it so hopes were high for a re-read. In fact I thought perhaps I might have a bit of a ChatFest on here and read a few more because his name seems to have vanished from the literary radar, or that might be because I don't get out much or read the right publications.

So I was all set for a Bruce Revival and things got off to a great start with On the Black Hill.

To begin with that is...

Eighty-year-old twins Lewis and Benjamin Jones, the former tall and stringy who works the farm, the latter shorter and pinker, the cook and the accountant and the one who does the lambing on their hill farm, The Vision on the Welsh borders.

The brothers share the bed that they were born in...

'The bedstead an oak four-poster, came from their mother's home at Bryn-Draenog when she married in 1899. Its faded cretonne hangings, printed with a design of larkspur and roses....calloused heels had worn holes in the linen sheets, and parts of the patchwork quilt had frayed...'

With their identical shocks of white hair, 'even whiter than the pillowcases,' and their daily routine of rising at six, tapping the barometer, lighting the fire and boiling the kettle I settled down comfortably into the world and the lives of Benjamin and Lewis.

The meeting and marriage of their parents, their childhood lives as twins, all was fascinating; the shared language, the secrets, the united inseparable lives, two boys spiritually and emotionally conjoined and self-sufficient, never alone, never lonely. I was reminded of the brothers in Kent Haruf's Eventide, and I am sure there must be more, this is rich and fertile territory for an author after all.

Now maybe this was more about me and my reading mood, but everything was going swimmingly for the first two thirds of the book and then something seemed to shift and I was no longer interested. The book seemed to stray into very strange territory and ultimately felt dour and miserable, the characters became caricatures, there were flashes of humour but the magic stopped working, no depths were plumbed, maybe even a surfeit of Bruce showing off  bit seemed to nip through the cracks.

Truth is I was bored and proceeded on the fatal skimming of the final chapters, which I confess gives me no right to even comment on a book that I haven't read properly. And of course reading the rest of Nicholas Murray's commentary I now know that everything just passed me by..the Cain and Abel imagery, the religious allegory, maybe even the affinity with the rural novels of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy. I confess to being slightly more in tune with the critic of the time who labelled Bruce Chatwin's literary country as Chatwinshire, classing the book as a fairy tale of twins and travellers. The critic goes on to describe Bruce Chatwin as 'a gifted writer with access to an admiring public,' so no shortage of axes being firmly ground there, and none of which detracted from the book's enormous prize-winning success.

'The country is better than the town, the novel seems to convey: but the country is terrible. Where, if not in heaven are we to live?'

argues the critic ( Karl Miller in the London Review of Books October 1982) suggesting that the book was 'well-received by sophisticated readers,' which, I'll rather embarrassingly admit, I was definitely trying to be back in 1995.

So I'll stop there and I wonder about your thoughts.

If you have read On the Black Hill what did you think...

Were you a Bruce Chatwin fan...

Should I persevere and re-read some more...

If you skim a book rather than cast it aside unfinished how does it leave you feeling..

I always feel slightly disappointed with myself for not staying the course mixed with relief that I can finally put the book down.

I don't often write about reading disappointments but this one felt significant, and goodness what a difference thirty years can make.

 

 

Counting Sheep @herdyshepherd1

I am so grateful to Fran HB who kindly sent me this exquisite picture of a piece of calligraphy completed by her late father Harold Page as part of the City & Guilds Diploma which he undertook after retirement. You may remember that Fran shared some more of her dad's work when were 'doing' Team Edward Thomas and Adlestrop and Fran quite rightly thought this would be a perfect fit with our conversation about The Shepherd's Life by James Rebanks.

I hope you will agree that Counting Sheep is something very special indeed (click to enlarge) and I'm sure Fran will be along in comments soon to add more information, but what a wonderful legacy of artwork her dad, a great lover of the Lake District, has left.

 

The Shepherd's Life - A Tale of the Lake District ~ James Rebanks @herdyshepherd1

It is Fell to Fell @herdyshepherd1 at the moment.

James Rebanks has really landed shepherding into everyone's consciousness, not only with his brilliant @herdyshepherd1 Twitter feed which offers a daily photographic record and 140 character commentary of his working life as a shepherd in the Lake District, but also thanks to his book The Shepherd's Life which was Radio 4's Book of the Week backalong and has been top of the best seller lists for a few weeks now. Even out-performing Kim Kardashian apparently... Kim who?

I succumbed to the temptation of purchase, not only because I searched Devon Library catalogue expecting there to be a waiting list of several thousand only to find they don't have a single copy of The Shepherd's Life (yet), but also because now that the Wainwright Prize for 2015 has been decided I am all eyes for seeing what might make next year's cut, and The Shepherd's Life has to be the first one I feel sure.

But first, and most importantly, find a book mark. Here's mine..



That doesn't look remotely like James Rebanks (yet) but that's definitely a sheep, no mistake.

James Rebanks' family have lived and worked in and around the Lake District for generations; the life of a shepherd dominated and ordered by the seasons, year on year, same tasks, same time, same attention to detail and same amount of toil and effort. Writing of his grandfather, James Rebanks suggests his were the silent majority, the great forgotten...

'....people who lived, worked, loved and died without leaving much written trace that they were ever there....essentially nobodies as far as anyone else is concerned.'

But, as he proceeds to elaborate, it was through the efforts of 'nobodies' that the landscape was created and was survived through, and this a thought that stayed with me as I read on. I say it time and again ...how often I wander around the farmland here and wonder about all those people who have gone before; walk up the green lane and see the wall on either side that someone must have built; see the hedges once laid (now massacred) and wonder at all the manpower and effort involved to keep it that way, the narrative rapidly disappearing. Books like The Shepherd's Life matter, they help that narrative to thrive. The Cumbrian landscape of Matterdale home to a web of relationships adhering to time honoured values, the  code of honour where a man's handshake is his bond and family and kinship is centred on the farmhouse.

Mention of rural kinship reminded of my working life as a rookie health visitor in one particular patch of West Devon. New babies on isolated farms in the late 1970s, and I was the muggins that rolled up in the muddy farmyard with a wall-eyed Border Collie in the car, because back in the day Ben used to come to work with me. It could be a lonesome job, solo working out in the middle of nowhere and he was wonderful company, until we met a pack of farm dogs that is and my car would be under siege and scratched to smithereens. I wasn't too worried because it was a health authority car ( in the days before we had to use our own) and in Devon they had bought us a batch of defunct Police Panda cars. But, before I digressed, I was going to say that I couldn't understand how everyone I visited seemed to know of and about me before I arrived (and not only because of the car) I had seriously underestimated the kinship and the family networks..you've just been to my sister..that was my cousin you saw last week...

Talking of the dog (wonderful, faithful and lived to seventeen) James Rebanks would probably have a fit. Border Collies are bred for work in the Lake District, not pets, and his are the mainstay of his working day, without them much of the work would be nigh on impossible, and if you have missed Floss's nine puppies on Twitter hie thee there and enjoy them before they disappear off to their new homes.

Moving through the seasons the life and the shepherding work comes alive as do the people, and in particular that handing of the baton between grandfather, father and son, bringing with it a keen sense of a timeless past, present and future and the inherent responsibilities ...

'I am the thread that goes to the future. He lives in me. His voice, His values. His stories. His farm. These things are carried forwards. I hear his voice in my head when I do work on the farm... everyone knows he was a major ingredient in the making of me and that I am the going on of him.

It was ever thus.'

It may sound sentimental but there is nothing sentimental about James Rebanks' writing and in the face of the suggestion that 'the past falters and dies by little steps' he could be forgiven had he headed that way. This is a rough, tough life and one that needs to allow the old and the traditional to sit comfortably with the new because sustaining old knowledge is vital: who can know when it may be needed again. There is something oddly comforting about knowing that  'a Viking would understand the daily routines' in Matterdale.

James Rebanks keeps a few cards close to his chest too. Why should I be surprised to discover, beyond the pages of this book, that his stint at Oxford as a student, and after an indifferent and rebellious time at school, resulted in a First Class Honours degree in History. Or that he also works for UNESCO as an advisor on the impact of tourism, though I doubt any of this, or the writing of this book, earns him any sway with his fellow shepherds. James Rebanks describes it as 'a rough Northern form of egalitarianism,'  a world where all men are equal and there is no place for snobbery....in fact I bet they pull his leg something rotten.

I was plumb exhausted sitting on the sofa reading The Shepherd's Life underneath my electric comfort blanket while James slogged away on the Fells, and in following his Twitter feed it was clear he wasn't doing the rounds of the bookshops, pressing palms and signing books, because he has been far to busy lambing, but goodness me did I learn a thing or two as I read.

I had absolutely no idea that the span of a sheep's useful life on a farm is entirely governed by its teeth, unless you are a prize ram that is, in which case it seems you may well drop dead of exhaustion long before you lose your teeth. Anyway, as the sheep gets older its teeth lengthen, weaken, wobble and fall out making it possible only to gum the grass I suppose, and with condition and lamb-bearing capability compromised there is only one way to go.

Stew.

And another thing... that shepherd's crook is not some quaint ancient ornament now only carried by Bishops as the shepherds of human sheep, far from it. The crook still an essential and much-treasured piece of kit, an extension of the shepherd's arm when catching sheep.

And it would seem Chris Hadfield's astronautical (made-up word) mantra of 'No problem so bad you can't make it worse,' holds true for shepherding as well. Knowing when and when not to interfere with a distressed and unsettled ewe takes as many years of experience as knowing when and when not to do a space walk it would seem.

There is a moment in the book when a younger James Rebanks is discussing the fact book people don't seem to be interested in their way of life...

Don't tell them,' says his dad, 'they'll only ruin it.'

...and I hold my breath for a moment and think about that, because it's a risk with a book like this.

We are braced for the Poldark effect down here this summer, and as always the West Country will welcome the influx with open arms and cope as it always does, we don't have a monopoly on enjoying it just because we live and work here. Likewise the Lake District also well-versed in the tourist industry, so I really hope that The Shepherd's Life won't 'ruin' anything but rather enhance.

James Rebanks quotes William Wordsworth who, in 1810, proposed that the Lake District should be...

'a sort of national property, in which every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy.'

And so say all of us, and many thanks to James Rebanks for sharing his world so generously, so eloquently and so realistically in this book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pleasings...

I haven't done Pleasings for a while but it's time to start again and perhaps I'll begin with some Garden Pleasings and these...

As I write this the garden is in the teeth of a howling gale, everything has been taking quite a battering this week, so I dashed out and picked some of the Black Parrot tulips rather than let them be strewn across the Tamar Valley. The Parrots have been the big success and I will plant more in the autumn now that I know, because they last a good long week in a vase too. I'm not sure if it helped but we used to drop a soluble aspirin in a vase of drooping tulips when we were doing the drug round at the London, and when flowers were allowed in hospitals. If only I had known the pin-prick through the neck of the stem trick back then.

We did a lot of work on our tiny little orchard last year. A proper summer prune and also some gentle re-shaping, all of which seems to be paying off this year and it has suddenly burst into blossom...


A big pleasing last week was a lovely visit from Carol (Norton) on her way home from a stay in Cornwall. Carol pulled up in her car which was a little a lot like a greenhouse on wheels because she doesn't take any prisoners when she passes a nursery or a garden centre on her travels. To make matters worse we spent a happy hour wandering around Endsleigh Nurseries just five minutes away and hands were not empty as we left. Carol has also single-handedly ignited my interest in auriculas, giving me a couple last year that she had grown from seed and now adding more from her stocks this year...

...is that not exquisite, and this one too...

I have my own little tray of seedlings started last summer and which I am talking to very nicely in the vain hope..

Now all I need is for 'Someone' to build me a little auricula theatre, nothing too fancy...this would do

Meanwhile we are almost certainly beyond our frost-possibility phase (about May 15th down here and the forecast is warm) so fingers crossed the wisteria 'alba' is properly on song..

and the clematis is going berserk on the flower front thanks to that proper prune and plenty of feeding after its two miserable flowers last summer...

I have also caught up with myself in the greenhouse and everything's cracking along nicely. Wait until the slugs get a shot at those juicy lupins, it will be war.

Please catch a glimpse above of those thirty nicotiana seedlings underneath the bench, all pricked out in good time and long before the seed tray reached the overcrowding crisis that I faced last year...

They really were worth the effort though, their lemon-yellow colour and fabulous scent a wonderful addition to the border last summer...

I'm also having a go with some echinacea and heliotrope from seed this year. Nothing happening as yet, all advice welcome.

And finally, I have been holding my breath over the aquilegias sown two years ago now and this their first year of flowering, because having joked that I was going to aim for the National Collection, and indeed had sown some seeds bought from its owner Carrie Thomas, how devastating to hear that much of her collection has been decimated by a new mutation of a mildew virus this year and it is as yet unknown whether the virus can lurk in the seed.

So far so good, they are popping up hither and yon and looking beautiful...

All of a muddle with the names of course but I am on the lookout for the more distinctive William Guinness and Nora Barlow, and I am sure there are some Rhubarb & Custard somewhere too.

But that's enough from me. time for your pleasings and they don't have to be garden ones...

 

 

Trifles

Do you remember that Susan Glaspell play Trifles??

Also written as the short story A Jury of Her Peers, but today I prefer Trifles for the way it demonstrates that it is often the seemingly insignificant things, readily dismissed as of little import, that prove to be of the greatest relevance in a person's life.

Now I'm sure many of you will have had to do this, and perhaps you will agree that is one of the hardest bits...the sorting out of possessions after someone you love has died. Second to registering a death and organising a funeral I doubt there can be a tougher task in the aftermath of a bereavement, but something has to be done; it has to be faced eventually.

So we have been steadily sorting the Tinker's little home and his 'things'.

He was very clear about it all beforehand, along the lines of 'just get on with it' and 'don't leave it too long' in much the same way he had dealt with things after my mum died. So each day I would head through the hall door into Tinker's Cott and open another drawer, or cupboard and find things, or look at a window-sill of ornaments and then try to decide what to keep and what to part with. It was only as I was doing it that I realised this wasn't just my dad's things, this was my mum and dad's things and with lots of reminders of my brother woven in, so I felt incredibly close to my dear old family as I sorted. 

The first thing to start me off was, talking of trifles, the trifle bowl and dishes and I've had to start making trifle again just because.

Don't ask me how many 1950's trifles were served from this. Jelly poured over sponge fingers and tinned peaches, topped with custard when set, and on a special occasion whipped cream (done with the hand whisk) and hundreds and thousands.

A lot of time has been spent sitting and looking through albums...the holiday in Italy in 1976, camping in Wales in 1977, trip to Australia in 1980...it was all there because my mum was a meticulous chronicler of it all, places and names underneath photographs. menus from restaurants, tickets, even the Bon Voyage card that Bookhound had drawn for that trip to Oz, and which we had completely forgotten about. I can't be the one to throw all that away so it's gone in mouse-proof boxes in the loft and the next generation can decide what to do with it when we are gone.

Then there was a box of old letters. I definitely hadn't seen these before, all the cards and letters of congratulations my mum and dad received after I was born....and they had all been kept. Apparently everyone was very pleased I was a girl though it would seem a miracle that my grandmother's letter  arrived from Liverpool at all...

and then this...

There had been a surfeit of boy cousins, I was definitely well-received, and now the doll and the precious doll's clothes explained, and which of course I still have...

Mostly I knew what I was looking at, and knew its significance, I mean bless my mum and dad for keeping every single gift I ever brought them back from every single holiday I ever went on, and how on earth I got that miniature spinning wheel back from Yugoslavia in one piece is anyone's guess.

But every so often something would floor me completely like little bookshelf that I know my dad had made in woodwork at Rowan Road school in Mitcham...

and the little drawer inside the little bookshelf when I opened it lined with my bedroom wallpaper circa late 1960's.

Bright yellow flowers which I adored, and my mum would buy me something perfumy by Kiku (which came in bright yellow containers) for my dressing table. But inside this drawer my dad had clearly collected a little stash of things that reminded him of my brother and I in our youth, amongst them Malcolm's Liverpool football badge and his wristwatch, and a very gnarled old capo off my guitar. A week before my O Levels started my dad had taken me to a second-hand shop in Sutton High street and bought me the guitar in the window that I had been coveting for weeks. Heavens, I must have driven everyone mad because I never stopped playing the thing to the point where I had just about worn my fingerprints away...but there it was, in the drawer, the red elastic capo.

But also in the drawer was a very carefully coiled piece of string.

So what was that all about. Well perhaps my dad just picked it up and put it in there for a place to put it, except I can't help thinking it might be a special piece of string, who can know, so I'd better keep it.

Anyway I worked my way through, 'keepings' and 'partings', and Bookhound came home with empty boxes from the supermarket and I filled them with 'partings' for the charity shops; things that must have meant something to my mum and dad, but the memory and the meaning hadn't been passed onto me. So off they went until finally I arrived at the last drawer, the one underneath the big bookcase, and obviously this was for things like instruction manuals and glue and sellotape and pens and pencils.

Now can you bear with me a minute, I quickly need to go back forty years.

1975, the summer after my brother had died at the Surrey Marsden, we were sent as student nurses to some lectures at the Royal Marsden in London. I was a bit wary but went along clutching my precious blue Paper Mate biro, one of my brother's last presents to me the Christmas before he died. It had the logo of two hearts on the clip and I loved that, and had invested an extraordinary amount of talisman-like remembrance into this pen, so I settled down to take notes as the lecture with slideshow started. To be honest I think it was quite brave of me to walk into the place. I was twenty-two, raw to the bone with grief , trying my best to be a competent nurse, holding it together when I needed to and falling apart when I knew it was safe to do so, but to my horror I could see exactly where the lecture was leading... leukaemia...bone marrow transplants...pictures of the new Bud Flanagan Unit at the Surrey Marsden....patients in the state of the art barrier nursing rooms. My brother had been one of the first patients to be treated at the Bud Flanagan when the unit opened, immediately heading into three months isolation while he had what was then very new chemotherapy, and, convinced there was going to be a picture of his smiling face on the next slide I upped and fled much to the astonishment of the nurse tutor. Out of the room, out of the hospital and I wandered around London on my own for the rest of the day (probably used it as a good excuse to go to Laura Ashley ) but in my fleeing I had dropped the blue Paper Mate biro never to be seen again, and distraught doesn't come close.

It was never found, and I tried...rang the School of Nursing to apologise for fleeing, begged them to go and look in the room for me, went back and looked myself the next day, retraced my steps, but to no avail. I can't tell you how often this seeming trifle has come into my mind down the years, and how much I have seriously missed that biro.

So there I am rummaging through the final drawer, wondering why my dad needed so much super glue, and duck tape, and velcro sticky things, and heavens all these pens, when suddenly something caught my eye.. and there it was.

The identical blue Paper Mate biro in the identical box, unopened and unused, and I can only think that my brother might have bought my dad and I one each for that last Christmas.

Initially dumbstruck I couldn't quite believe it, and sat on the floor and just stared at it, but in an instant I got the message, it definitely felt like the three of them were looking down on me and sending a gift, and all would be well.

So does any of this sound familiar to you I wonder...the sorting, the finding, the deciding, the parting, the keeping...

 

 

 

 

And Lead Us Not Into Temptation...

I'm really really sorry but I might be about to, and as there is nothing else important happening in the UK this week...

I seem to be tripping over a steady stream of non-fiction suggestions recently, which is what happens when you buy one book from You Know Where and then you see the People Who Bought That Also Bought This thing, and before I know it my wish list is heading to three figures.

Also, thanks to those of you who click on a book cover over here >>>> and then make a purchase I get a 0.000000000001% (so it seems) commission which eventually adds up and arrives in the form of an email gift voucher with which to buy more books. That is not by way of advertising and asking you to do so (because I know plenty of people don't like to buy from You Know Where, and that's fine) it's more, in the interests of transparency about making sure you know it happens. I purchase wisely I hope, books that I would want to share here and keep on the shelves, and I am sure all these can be reserved at a library near you too.

Anyway the total had added up a bit over recent months so I had a little splurge on a few books I have been coveting which included The Shepherd's Life - A Tale of the Lake District by James Rebanks which I have just finished and can't recommend highly enough. More on that very soon, once I've recovered from lambing hundreds of yows on the Fells. I now realise it is way easier to knit a flock, even if I am eventually going to have to steam the living daylights out of this lot to sort out those puckered sheep...


But at least the Unfinished Flock is out to graze and stands a chance of some fattening up, and I shouldn't have to worry about maggots or blow fly, just the negotiation of the steek and the 800 stitches round the edge to finish....honestly and shepherds think they have a tough life.

Other purchases (including information from publishers)

Gods of the Morning - A Bird's Eye View of the Highland Year ~ John Lister- Kaye (Canongate)

"For more than three decades, John Lister-Kaye has been enraptured by the spectacular seasonal metamorphosis at Aigas, the world-renowned Highlands field centre. Over the years, the glen's wildlife has come to infiltrate his soul, whether it is a warbling blackcap's cascading refrains, whooper swans hauling winter along with them, pine martens causing havoc in the hen run, loyal resident tawny owls defending their territory from adolescents, or a regal roe buck strutting in the broom and gorse, suddenly gilded by a fiery ray of sunlight.

John Lister-Kaye has come to understand intimately the movements of these beloved creatures, but increasingly unpredictable weather patterns have caused sometimes subtle, sometimes seismic shifts in their behaviour. Gods of the Morning follows a year through the turning of the seasons at Aigas, exploring the habits of the Highland animals, and in particular the birds - his gods of the morning - for whom he has nourished a lifelong passion.

Gods of the Morning is an affectionate and wise celebration of the British landscape and the birds that come and go through the year, a lyrical reminder of the relationship we have lost with the seasons and a call to look afresh at the natural world around us."

 

Cuckoo - Cheating by Nature ~ Nick Davies (Bloomsbury)

"Beloved as the herald of spring, cuckoos have held a place in our affections for centuries. The oldest song in English celebrates the cuckoo's arrival, telling us that 'Sumer is icumen in'. But for many other birds the cuckoo is a signal of doom, for it is Nature's most notorious cheat. Cuckoos across the world have evolved extraordinary tricks to manipulate other species into raising their young. How do they get away with it?

In this enormously engaging book, naturalist and scientist Nick Davies reveals how cuckoos trick their hosts. Using shrewd detective skills and field experiments, he uncovers an evolutionary arms race, in which hosts evolve better defences against cuckoos and cuckoos, in turn, evolve novel forms of trickery. This is a fascinating corner of Darwin's 'entangled bank', where creatures are continually evolving to keep up with changes in their rivals.

Lively field drawings by James McCallum, and remarkable photographs, show cuckoos in action: from the female cuckoo laying her beautifully disguised egg, to the cuckoo chick ejecting the host's eggs and young from the nest to ensure it gets the full attention of its foster parents.

Cuckoo offers a new insight not only into the secret lives of these extraordinary birds, but also into how cheating evolves and thrives in the natural world."

 

Backalong a book arrived from Jonathan Cape, and my heart sang when I saw it was by Julia Blackburn. As always it is beautifully produced, that unusual 8.5inch x 6.5inch size, good quality paper and a wealth of illustrations.

Threads _ The Delicate Life of John Craske ~ Julia Blackburn (Jonathan Cape)

"John Craske, a Norfolk fisherman, was born in 1881 and in 1917, when he had just turned thirty-six, he fell seriously ill. For the rest of his life he kept moving in and out of what was described as ‘a stuporous state’. In 1923 he started making paintings of the sea and boats and the coastline seen from the sea, and later, when he was too ill to stand and paint, he turned to embroidery, which he could do lying in bed. His embroideries were also the sea, including his masterpiece, a huge embroidery of The Evacuation of Dunkirk.

Very few facts about Craske are known, and only a few scattered photographs have survived, together with accounts by the writer Sylvia Townsend Warner and her lover Valentine Ackland, who discovered Craske in 1937. So - as with all her books - Julia Blackburn’s account of his life is far from a conventional biography. Instead it is a quest which takes her in many strange directions - to fishermen’s cottages in Sheringham, a grand hotel fallen on hard times in Great Yarmouth and to the isolated Watch House far out in the Blakeney estuary; to Cromer and the bizarre story of Einstein’s stay there, guarded by dashing young women in jodhpurs with shotguns.

Threads is a book about life and death and the strange country between the two where John Craske seemed to live. It is also about life after death, as Julia’s beloved husband Herman, a vivid presence in the early pages of the book, dies before it is finished.

In a gentle meditation on art and fame; on the nature of time and the fact of mortality; and illustrated with Craske’s paintings and embroideries, Threads shows, yet again, that Julia Blackburn can conjure a magic that is spellbinding and utterly her own."

I met Julia and her late husband Herman a few years ago and I always look forward to her writing; you can read my thoughts on The Three of Us and Thin Paths if you click those links. I sent condolences to Julia when I heard the news of Herman's death, because once met never forgotten, one of life's special people.

And while my back has been turned some interesting fiction has been arriving unbidden so I will share those which take my fancy once you have recovered from this lot.

Meanwhile, ask a silly question... do any of these appeal...

 

The Living Mountain ~ Nan Shepherd

Do you remember that book I was telling you about?

The one that I daren't mention because of the strict embargo or I would have had to kill you?

Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane now out there in the big wide world, fending for itself to wonderful reviews and I am a bit behind the curve with it...well and truly beyond the envelope or whatever it is I am, but I did manage to enlist a little Team Landmarks to read the book in proof copy and they have been busy on it so eventually our thoughts will come together.

So I have been reading Landmarks since January, and apart from being diverted for the obvious family reasons I have also been diverted by Robert Macfarlane's suggestions about other books. Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez was one and The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd was another. I had read it once but my mood was entirely different then, this time I was ready to linger.

'The inaccessibility of the loch is part of its power. Silence belongs to it...the good of the greatest number is not here relevant. It is necessary to be sometimes exclusive, not on behalf of rank or wealth but of those human qualities that can apprehend loneliness.'

Thus speaks Nan Shepherd about the beguiling Loch Coire an Lochain, invisible to the eye until the walker almost falls into it, and suddenly I was transported willingly to the Cairngorms and The Living Mountain, like Arctic Dreams became a journey that I relished each day.


It was a book to make me think...

When do I ever take time to really contemplate the colour of water...

Nan Shepherd sees a rainbow of colours in the clear translucent water of the mountain...green, metallic rather than vegetable. then aquamarine, sometimes violet, sometimes verdigris. It is a lesson in the art of microscopic looking, an intense focus on that which is so easily passed by.

And snow, surely snow is just white, or grey.

Not so, it is purplish to golden green to vivid electric blue to slate blue, and with the observation comes the sage advice

'If you can't see your own footsteps behind you in the snow, don't go on.'

And then there is the sound...

'One hears it without listening as one breathes without thinking.'

I was reminded of that silence in the mountains when you go up in a cable car. You think it is quiet, but then suddenly, the higher you go, it is really very quiet. To go up a mountain in this way is to leave all distractions behind, and reading The Living Mountain somehow created the equivalent.

'But up here no movement, no voice. Man might be a thousand years away...'

In balancing her clarity of intellect with the surge of emotion, Nan Shepherd succeeds where I suspect I often don't; in finding beauty in the drab, in seeing things that are waiting to be noticed, creating a total awareness in the moment, and whilst not wishing away the summer  I will now keenly anticipate what she describes as the mid-October days ' as golden as whisky.' I don't think the Cairngorms has a monopoly on those, and The Living Mountain has become a sort of passport to noticing these things everywhere and anywhere, to look to my own powers of observation and concentration and sharpen them up considerably. And also to realise that 'our habitual vision of things is not necessarily right,' thus permission to see the familiar anew and with different eyes.

Addressing each of the senses, suggesting that there is an innocence that has been lost and revelling in them as she does, it seems eminently possible to feel the glow of Nan Shepherd's 'plain humdrum happiness' no matter the personal circumstance. This seemed to be confirmed by an awareness that the book was so utterly calming each time I picked it up.

I was impressed too by Nan Shepherd's intrepid exploring, often alone, and sleeping out on the mountain as a means of absorbing its mysterious qualities..

'Find an October night warm enough to sleep put, and dawn all mixed up with moonshine and you too will be mis-spelled...

'In September dawns I hardly breath...I am an image in a ball of glass. The world is suspended there and I in it.'

It all made me want to be there that's for sure, but if there was one thing I was less certain about it was barefoot walking...around here...maybe not.

Any other Nan Shepherd fans out there...

And what about the Cairngorms... we have only driven through, has anyone walked them...

Is it as do-able as Nan has convinced me it is...

 

 

Poldark Deprivation Syndrome

It's a new disease, as debilitating as Putrid Throat, so I felt I should offer a place of sojourn and some hope of recovery from Poldark Deprivation Syndrome to ask how are you all coping??

I have found some mild solace in Macmillan's republication of Poldark's Cornwall, written by Winston Graham in the early 1980s, and which they very kindly sent having sensed that I would be sickening once the series finished.

They weren't wrong, took me out overnight it did.

The book is lavishly illustrated anew and really does take the edge off that depleted feeling, to say nothing of saving all that bother of galloping along the cliff tops to see for yourself whether Ross really was that close to the edge.

It is well-known that initially Winston Graham was no fan of the first series of his beloved books and in a new introduction to Poldark's Cornwall, Andrew Graham, Winston's son, elaborates on his father's wrath and his attempt to withdraw from the contract. By the second series thankfully, and possibly aided by astronomic book sales and the fast-growing public adoration of Ross and Demelza, all was 'sweetness and light.'

Fortunate to have known Cornwall in the days before what Quiller-Couch diagnosed as Bungaloweczema struck, Winston Graham's love for the county shines through as he experiences first delighted discovery, then the sun and sea addiction followed by the nostalgic return. And as for Poldark...well the plan for one novel soon spilled over into many more and having little experience of writing historical fiction so the research began. 

Winston Graham mounts a spirited defence of the historical novel arguing that if they are to be downgraded as a genre then what of War and Peace and Vanity Fair and Wuthering Heights...

'I do not know how near to the truth of life in the eighteenth century these novels are; all I know is that they are as near to the truth as I can make them...any writer, any good writer, takes a set of events and imposes his own view upon them...

And an interesting take on the interloper authors...

'Cornwall has particularly suffered from the writers who have spent a few months living here and have decided to write an epic set in the county...'

Winston Graham was known to be particularly furious by Daphne du Maurier's portrayal of the wreckers in Jamaica Inn; deliberately blacking out lights and luring ships onto the rocks a practice for which he could find no historical evidence. Plenty of sharing the spoils, often with greed and violence after the event, yes, and little wonder when the people were starving, as was so well portrayed in that final episode.

Talking of that final episode, but without spoiling it...what did you think ?

I was spell-bound by it all and near to tears. I thought Jack Farthing as George Warleggan achieved something superb in conveying the vulnerabilities, the sadness and the loneliness lying just beneath the veneer of his machiavellian tendencies.

Having now finished Book One, and marvelled at what a brilliant writer Winston Graham was, I can see how tightly the script writer, Debbie Horsfield, has held to the original, and I love her take on Ross...

Ross Poldark is one of literature's great heroes: a gentleman who is also a rebel, who has a keen sense of morality and social justice but without any priggishness or moralising. He's also a great romantic figure - caught between two women from two completely different backgrounds. A gentleman who marries his kitchen maid. A man who doesn't stand on ceremony, who doesn't play by the rules and often falls foul of authority. He has elements of Darcy, Heathcliffe, Rochester, Rhett Butler and Robin Hood - quite a combination!

You can read more in an interesting interview with Debbie Horsfield here.

So Poldark's Cornwall has been nothing short of bliss, the perfect remedy and a huge help in my partial (but not complete) recovery from Poldark Deprivation Syndrome, but meanwhile how are the rest of you coping...

Anyone else feeling that Sunday night just won't be the same...

Anyone else prostrate on their chaise longue reading the books...

Anyone else going to jump to Book Three because they can't wait a year to know what happens next...

Anyone else giggling at this picture which is doing the rounds...

 

 

Antony House...outside

Camellias, azaleas and rhododendrons just hate our garden. Nothing personal I am sure, but the soil is alkaline in the extreme and they just say no thank you very much, so we have to head out elsewhere to see them and the Antony House woodland walk, once we had enjoyed the house, was just the ticket.

Magnolias are another thing.

I'm guessing we might have the same problem, but every time we've thought about buying one, one of us remembers reading somewhere that it's seven years before they flower and we think...huh, don't want to wait that long. Obviously we could have bought three at seven year intervals and had them all in flower in the time we've been here, but then there are the storms and the wind and the unexpected frosts. I'd be heartbroken.

Talking of which, in amongst all this recent scorchio weather there was ice on the car the other morning and we both dashed out to check the wisteria. We are a two wisteria household and it is the 'Alba' that sometime takes a frost hit while the 'Bog Standard Purple' seems to carry on as if nothing unusual has happened. Both appear to to be enjoying their best year in eighteen, a mass of plump buds and very few leaves (usually the other way round) this thanks to us finally pruning them at the right time and in the right way back in February, and before that last June (half a crown 2/6 in old money, heard it on the radio as way of remembering the wisteria pruning months) 

Likewise the neighbouring Clematis Montana genus 'Thug'. Dripping with buds and the promise of a mass of flowers where last year there were approximately two thanks to a rash decision to prune it in the previous December 'to tidy it up' when it should be done hard after flowering apparently.

Gosh this is all so complicated isn't it, but this nought compared to the glories of Antony.

The formal gardens surrounding the house likewise promise much, we were a little early for what will surely be a fabulous display of parrot tulips, but some wonderful garden features nevertheless. This sculpture casting intriguing shadows and entirely in keeping with the family's wish to weave the new into the old in order to keep the place vibrant and alive.

All any garden needs is a decent set of walls and just about anything goes. I feel sure this would be rolling off down to the Tamar from our garden at the first south-westerly gale, no matter how well it was fixed.

Accessible from the grounds of the house though not owned by the National Trust, there is a delightful gingerbread cottage at the start of the Antony woodland walk where non- NT members pay £5 entrance..

It's Goldilocks and Lilliput cottages rolled into one isn't it.

We just sailed past waving our cards at the honesty machine and proceeded to gasp with admiration at what followed every step of the way.

I'm no expert but I reckon these are as near perfect as you could expect a camellia bloom to be...


There was a bit of tree hugging...

and some nesting bird evidence. I am reliably informed 'twas a song thrush...

We heard and finally saw a woodpecker (the expert again) in this tree...prize for anyone who can spot it because I can't...

and as we wandered along the paths back towards the house looking underfoot realised the camellia moment was passing and would soon be done...

We skirted around the tea room and cake fearing we might exceed our five a day but a most enjoyable day and we will definitely be going back through the summer.