December 2012 – Page 3 – derrickjknight

Jogger’s Nipple

This was another beautiful clear winter’s day when the hard frost did not leave the ground, but continued to sparkle in the sunshine, except for the very open heathland where steam rose offering a misty veil across the backlit landscape. We reprised yesterday’s Ringwood trip, except that I didn’t have my hair cut; I walked further along the Castleman Trailway; and we had our brunches in Bistro Aroma, a much friendlier and more popular cafe, with a greater range of food better cooked. As she drove along the A31 Jackie spotted a hawk atop a fir tree, and likened it to a star on top of a Christmas tree.

It seemed to me that the waters were subsiding a little; just enough for the seagulls to share the fields with crows, and for the ponies to enjoy a little firmer foothold in parts.

As I now knew the way I walked further along the Trailway in the allotted time, managing to reach the edge of Ashley Heath and walk up the hill of pines and heathland by a pukka path provided with a small footbridge that spanned the ditch I had lept yesterday. I was able to look down on the small town before retracing my steps back to the cafe.

Whilst perhaps not quite ‘cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey’, this was definitely extremity-tingling weather. That phrase, incidentally, having nothing to do with cojones, is not as rude as may be thought. The brass monkey was a container for cannon balls on nineteenth century sailing ships. It was made of brass, which the balls were not. Because the two metals froze at different rates the balls would fall from their perch.

Having been revealed by Donna’s attention yesterday, my ears were certainly tingling. She had actually said, when exposing my lugs, that she hoped this wouldn’t make them too cold. Nevertheless, brisk walking, as usual, warmed me up, just as running had in years gone by. Training runs in a track suit were one thing. Running races in sub-zero temperature, clad only in the briefest of running shorts and vest, usually of some unyielding synthetic material, was quite something else. The combination of stinging cold and the friction engendered by clothing on skin could be quite painful. When awaiting a start in conditions such as today, the experienced person wore a black bin-liner until the last available seconds and discarded it before getting into a stride. This was when ‘jogger’s nipple’ was prone to set in. When, even through a vest, exposed to a cold enough temperature, the nipple would react as may be expected. The friction of regular movement would do the rest, and soreness and sometimes bleeding would result. As a runner you just had to grit your teeth and press on. Rather difficult if your gnashers were chattering with cold as you lined up for the off. Men’s particular appendages would also suffer in withering cold. It was not a good idea to jump into a hot shower before you had thawed out somewhat.

This evening Jackie produced a flavoursome, hot, chilli con carne. She drank Hoegaarden and I had a glass of Le Pont St Jean minervois 2010.

Helen having recommended the village of Bartley’s Christmas lights, we drove out after dinner to see them. Many of the residents of this location have decked out their gardens and houses with an amazing array of colourful electrical and mechanical celebratory illuminations. Deer, for example, glow with light and move up and down as if grazing. Particularly as street lighting is at a minimum, this alternative serves to guide one round the village. One of the literal highlights of Christmas in Morden was the ritual drive down Lower Morden Lane. House after house seemed to vie with its neighbours in producing similar spectacles. As people of the Muslim faith have moved in, so these displays have reduced, but it is still worth the trip. In Bartley we have found a most satisfactory substitute.

One Direction

Today I decided my Father Christmas locks must be shorn. From the options available on Google we selected Donna-Marie of Southampton Street, Ringwood. Jackie drove me there and we made an appointment for 3.30 p.m. which was five hours away. I set off on a walk and Jackie went shopping. We met two hours later in Poppies coffee shop above their baker’s, where I had an all-day breakfast and Jackie enjoyed a cauliflower cheese. After this we bought quite a few pieces of cake-making equipment at The Lighthouse cookshop and returned home before revisiting Donna-Marie, who was a delightful young woman who gave me an excellent haircut and lots of cuddly chat, a couple of hours later. She said she had wondered to a customer who she had been styling when I made the appointment why Derrick wanted his hair cut when Father Christmas hadn’t been yet.

My walk took me back to the riverside area swamped by the river Avon. Conditions were much the same as they had been on 30th November. Screeching seagulls claimed the fields where a few remaining horses stood to get their feet wet.

The raised path I had walked a couple of weeks ago is part of the Castleman Trailway, which, turning right along the river, I wished to explore further. This follows the Southampton to Dorchester Railway Company’s now obsolete line. The railway branch line was another of the casualties of the Beeching axe of 1964. The Trailway runs from Salisbury to Poole. If you can find it, you can walk it. My regular readers will expect me to have had trouble finding it. I did not let them down. Passing the still drowned garden I had first seen on 30th November, I soon came to Hurn Lane. No continuing footpath, just Hurn Lane, a great big roundabout, that and another road to cross, having walked under the A31. No Trailway sign. Just the roar of heavy traffic. I walked on a bit, looking this way, and that, and the other, puzzled. I asked a woman for directions to the trail. ‘Where do you want to get to?’, she asked, and seemed somewhat nonplussed when I replied that anywhere would do. I clarified matters by saying I was new to the area and just exploring. She pointed back the way I had come. I had to explain that and say I wanted the other direction. She then proceeded, augmenting her verbal instructions with clear pointing, to lead me in exactly the opposite direction to the one in which I needed to go. Very soon I was dicing with death on the A31.

Back I tracked to the place where I had asked directions, and asked another couple. They were going there themselves, did it regularly, and wondered why the signs ran out when they did. ‘Someone ought to tell them’, the man said. So, if ‘them’ are reading this, please take note. Before the next sign appeared we had crossed two roads and walked round a left hand bend. It was not visible from the direction in which I had first been led.

My guides walked on ahead as I rambled. Some way along the trail I took a comparatively dry path up into trees and heathland which I traversed for a while before taking a very muddy track down, which led me to a ditch I had to leap across to get back to the trail. I retraced my steps to meet Jackie. Beside the Ringwood part of the trail is posted a laminated sign asking walkers to uproot the menace that is Himalayan Balsam.

Had I met the couple before the first woman, or had the signing of the Trailway not petered out I would not have gone on a false trail as I would have been led only in one direction. My title for today’s adventure was inspired by an exchange with Louisa who had posted on Facebook that her 5 and 3 year old daughters were walking around the house singing songs from One Direction, the latest boy band. When I had asked whether the songs were anything to do with The X factor, she had told me they were by this band, and added ‘get with it Dad’. Well, I’ll have you know, my darling girl, they came third in that programme in 2010.

We had a light salad this evening before going off to The Amberwood pub quiz, which we won.

Researching Seamans

On this dull dank day I took yesterday’s walk in reverse. In Minstead village there is field containing two ponies which are often seen by the gate, at this time fetlock-deep in water-filled well-drilled hoofprints. Nearby buckets perhaps contain some kind of food supplement for these animals leaving the slightly drier centre field to watch the world go by. The wooden stile has a signpost alongside it indicating a public footpath across the land. I doubt anyone has trodden it for some months. Yesterday afternoon a couple were strewing sawdust over the pools. I asked if they were ‘trying to make that passable’. ‘For the horses’, the man replied. Hoping he didn’t think I was daft enough to venture onto the footpath, I made it clear I knew it was for the horses. Mind you, this did remind me of soggy cricketing afternoons when sawdust was called for to give the bowlers a bit of purchase, as we wiped the red surface from the ball onto damp rags instead of the thighs of our flannels. Today, the brown horse was looking over the gate, its black companion preferring to remain in the field.

By the side of Football Green, a New Forest Agister’s jeep was parked. There was no-one in it or on the green so I was unable to check out Seamans Lane’s Agister’s Cottage.

On my way through London Minstead I stopped and chatted to Geoff Brown who was mending his fence. This very friendly man invited me to knock on his door any time I was passing, when he would be happy to give me coffee. He did not know the origin of Seamans Lane, but he, too, directed me to Nick on the brow of the hill. I knocked on Nick’s door. He was out, but his wife, Jeanie Mellersh, was very welcoming and we had a long talk. Geoff had told me she was an artist, so she really should know the truth of the most startling information she gave me. She thought Nick would not know a great deal about Seamans, but they knew a man who would. This was Steve Cattell who lives opposite the village shop. He runs the local history group which she recommended to me. She didn’t know the truth of the press gang story. She had heard another tale the veracity of which she could not vouch for either. This was that Seamans Lodge was a home for old sailors. There is in fact a Seamans Lodge, not visible from the road, behind Seamans Cottages.

The information she gave me that did ring true, however, concerned Grinling Gibbons. This seventeenth century Englishman, born and educated in Holland, who settled in England and became what many people consider the greatest woodcarver of all time is known for his realistic and intricate representation of flowers, fruit, and birds. These are often bas relief in a vertical format, much like the carved mantelpiece above the fireplace in the communal entrance hall of our wing of Castle Malwood Lodge. When I told her where I lived, Jeanie asked me if there was still a grand entrance hall with a white painted mantelpiece. This, she told me, was by Grinling Gibbons. We certainly agreed that Sir W. Harcourt, for whom the house was built, would have been rich enough to have imported the carving from an earlier source. Whatever the fabric under the many layers of paint on this piece, it is certainly reminiscent of Gibbons.

I may be no wiser about the origin of Seamans, but the search for it is already proving fruitful. Jackie Googled the word this evening and discovered it to be a surname of Anglo-Saxon origin mentioned in the Doomsday Book. Given the inland nature of the New Forest this makes sense to me. But we still have to verify this as pertinent to our Lane.

This afternoon we visited The Firs and partook of Danni’s succulent sausage casserole followed by Elizabeth’s excellent apple and plum crumble. Various red wines, Hoegaarden and Coke were drunk by the assembled company.

The Bay Leaf

Although regular fresh droppings provide evidence of the presence of deer in the garden, we have not, until today, seen these timid, delicate-looking creatures for ourselves. We are told they come out at night. Over lunch, we saw two on the far side of the lawn. Jackie fetched my camera as I dare not move. Despite the distance and the window between us they knew we were there and looked straight at us. I could not even risk placing the camera lens against the glass. I managed to get in a couple of quick shots before they were off like one.

After lunch I walked the Seamans Lane, Shave Wood, Football Green route. One of the first houses in the Lane is Agister’s Cottage. The agisters are employees of the verderers whose task is to assist in the management of commoners’ stock turned loose in the forest, and to collect the annual fees for pasturage that these commoners must pay for each animal. Whether the cottage’s name is purely historical or whether an agister lives there, I have yet to ascertain.

Perhaps because this was a Saturday afternoon there were a number of horse riders on the roads today. The first was a little round girl, with a face like the Cheshire Cat, astride a little round black Thelwell pony. They were being led by a large round woman who held the reins of a large black horse in her other hand. Their greetings were cheery. In London Minstead two riders were dismounting after three hours’ riding. Two more approached me alongside Football Green. When they wished me ‘Good morning’ I realised they too had been out quite a long time. Another pair trotted towards Seamans Corner as I returned home.

I asked the couple in London Minstead if they knew the origin of ‘Seamans’. Apart from our being in Seamans Lane, next door to Agister’s Cottage there are two Seamans Cottages. The apostrophe in Agister’s is missing in each use of Seamans. They were obviously comparatively new themselves, and a little vague, but related it to press gangs from Portsmouth. Nick, who lives across the road from them, would know the story. I must ask him some time. What I can do is explain press gangs. They were legal gangs of men who could press men into Naval service. We read, for example, of drunken gentlemen tottering out of hostelries, when they were snatched and knocked on the head, and waking up on board ship. Sometimes, plied with enough strong drink, they just passed out in the inns. The unfortunate victims were then given a choice. They could either sign up for the Navy and get paid; or remain ‘pressed’, in which case they received no pay. Not quite Hobson’s choice, but near enough. The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 saw the end of this horrific, yet legal, method of manning the famous British Navy.

Jackie fed us tonight on a delicious lamb jalfrezi containing succulent Waitrose meat beautifully cooked with a greatly enhanced Patak sauce. This was followed by a Malwood Mess. We finished yesterday’s Pinot Grigio. Noticing that I had all the bay leaves and bits of cinnamon stick on my plate, we decided that the law is that the person who doesn’t cook gets the debris. It is only since cooking myself that I have become fully familiar with bay leaves. There is, of course, a large tree at The Firs, and there was an absolutely huge one at Lindum House. My first encounter with the leaf was somewhat embarassing. When I worked at Lloyd’s Insurance we had our own canteen. Mum had been an excellent basic English cook. We were occasionally fed meals at Lloyd’s with which I was unfamiliar. One day, aged eighteen, I fished a thickish leaf out of my stew. ‘This is disgusting’, I thought. ‘Where has this meal been to get this into it’. So, I took it back to the counter, claiming a bit of privet had found its way into my portion. It was replaced without a murmur. I was too ignorant to feel embarassed then, but I still feel so when I think of my first bay leaf.

The Rainbow

Jackie drove us to Christchurch this morning in time for lunch at Boathouse, a rather good restaurant overlooking the River Avon quay. It was a beautiful day and the drive through the forest was gorgeous. I had a delicious fish pie whilst Jackie ate a pizza fire, which apparently lived up to its name. She then went off to the High Street whilst I sallied forth in search of the river path in the direction of the sea.

According to my lady I needed to turn left along the quay for the sea, or right to travel inland. I chose the sinister route and very soon found myself in the middle of a static caravan site which proved to be a dead end. One of the residents told me I needed to go back along the towpath and cross the bridges. Simple enough. Except I hadn’t come along the towpath in the first place, and wasn’t sure where the bridges were. I found myself walking the Convent Walk along what must be a towpath. Glancing up at the Priory church, I saw the glowing colours of the stained glass window of the Lady Chapel benefitting from the westerly sun that streamed in from the side. I came to one bridge and crossed to the other side of the road. My first attempt at continuing led me to what seemed to be conference centre. I passed a deep window in which I large group of young women were feasting. I caused them great hilarity, realised my error, and backtracked.

Another woman told me that to regain the river bank I needed to walk up to and along the High Street, and cross a dual carriage way where I would find the next bridge. This was one of those moments on my travels when I berate myself for not having brought a map. Nevertheless the element of uncertainty I gain this way is all part of the fun. Since I was in need of relief there was the bonus of the public lavatories in the main shopping centre. The wall of my cubicle bore the graffiti legend DEFEND ATLANTIS.

At the end of the High Street I used an underpass across a dual carriageway. It bore a helpful sign indicating Avon Valley Path. I followed it. And found myself in Waitrose Car Park. There a young man struggling to lead a string of supermarket trolleys to their stable was blown across my path. He wondered if I had come in search of a trolley. When I told him what I was searching for he confirmed that I should walk up to the motorway where I would find my path. Now, I should have guessed that the river which had burst its banks at Ringwood would have done the same here. If my path existed it was under several feet of the water which stretched as far as I could see. Seagulls swam around the bases of telegraph poles, electricity pylons and trees. What had been fields were now their landing strips. It was then that I began to wonder whether the Avon had its own submerged Atlantis. When I reached Stoney Lane railway bridge I decided it was time to turn back.

As it began to rain I entered The Priory Church. This splendid building, begun in the 11th Century, is both sturdy and elegant. There is a splendid marble Pieta carving as a monument to the poet Shelley, and much more of interest which will repay a further visit. It was in examining the stained glass from the inside that I was able to identify the windows I had photographed earlier. The building is more like a grand cathedral than a local parish church.

When I emerged into the light it was to a clear bright low sun and sparkling rain. I walked into the shower’s needle sharp shafts as I turned right along the quay. The arc which soon appeared in the sky provided evidence that conditions were perfect for a rainbow. I sped along the strand seeking a standpoint from which I would be able to photograph the whole semicircle of the most complete rainbow I have ever seen. I may have had better luck on the other side of the river. As I returned to the Priory car park where I was to meet Jackie, I witnessed a squabble of seagulls at the water’s edge screeching, flapping their wings, and stretching wide their beaks at each other. The origin of their collective noun became very clear.

Incidentally, ‘The Rainbow’ is the title of the D.H.Lawrence novel I have most enjoyed.

We had a light salad, followed by apple crumble leftovers enhanced with tinned madarin oranges, for our evening meal. Our wine was a most potable Breganze reserve Pinot Grigio 2011, ticket number 510 in last Saturday’s Merton Mind Christmas Fayre tombola.

Almost A Local

Today’s dawning put me in mind of the old adage: ‘Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight; red sky in the morning shepherd’s warning’. This was a morning of heavy frost, frozen pools, and slippery tarmac.

I walked to Lyndhurst via the A337 and back by way of Emery Down. The purpose of my trip was to collect my eye ointment. Jackie had taken the prescription in yesterday and so diverted herself making other purchases in the chemist that she forgot to wait and collect it.

As I crossed the cattle grid to our lower drive the sudden swish of fallen leaves alerted me to the starting, leaping, and bounding off in unison of three startled deer who disappeared deep into the forest. Their superbly synchronised scuts and elegant rear limbs would have graced an Olympic swimming pool. Four unperturbed ponies nonchalently continued chomping at the bracken, gently rustling the foliage underfoot. Their inelegant legs were matted with dried mud.

The building pointed out by Lindsey yesterday as having been the Post Office is Hungerford Cottage which lies on Running Hill shortly before Seamans Corner. Villages throughout Britain have, in recent decades, lost their Post Offices. Another example is Upper Dicker in East Sussex, home of the Village Shop run by Tess Flower posted on 12th May. That shop once included a Post Office counter which, despite much local objection, was withdrawn about three years ago. Incredibly this was just after Tess, as a recent subpostmistress, had been sent on a training course by the Post Office decision makers.

Ice pattern 12.12

When a small car containing two women who asked me directions stopped in Lyndurst road I was rather pleased to be able to point the way to Minstead Lodge in Seamans Lane.

Four more ponies, which I have seen before, were grazing by the twig circle I noticed two days ago. I reflected that these animals are often seen at this site. I then remembered that last night, driving back in the dark, I had recognised the pony from outside Perry Farm just a bit further up the road than usual. Arriving at Seamans Corner two and a half hours after I had passed the first quartet of ponies, I saw that three of them had made it this far down Running Hill. I now begin to understand how Jeanie, who I met on the 30th November, recognises photographs of her ponies. They seem to have their own preferred or allocated territories and, contrary to my uneducated original impression, they do not all look alike. Obviously they have different colouring, bearing different shades of white; and browns ranging from ochre to chocolate; with white, golden, black, or brown manes.

I am beginning to know my equine neighbours; those streets that do have names; the names of some buildings I pass; even one or two actual people. Hey, I’m almost a local.

This evening’s meal consisted of Jackie’s succulent cottage pie followed by apple crumble. I finished the McGuigan Estate shiraz and Jackie didn’t.

A Swan In The System

This morning I took a train up to Waterloo to visit Norman then Carol. Because Jackie’s car was being repaired I needed a cab to Southampton Parkway. Lindsey from Point to Point arrived bang on time. He explained he was taking the safe route through London Minstead because crossing the A31 was too dangerous. I agreed. As we travelled through the village he pointed out houses that had been used for other purposes when he was a child growing up there. Examples were the old post office and a second village shop. On a corner in London Minstead he pointed out where the Knight family had lived. He has been a patient at the Lyndhurst surgery all his life, and spoke very highly of it. He offered himself as a fount of local stories.

The station was packed when I arrived. The man selling tickets informed me that there was a two hour delay in getting to London. The platform announcer told us that the train, normally consisting of eight coaches, contained four. On entering a carriage I was one of the few people who managed to secure a seat. Actually it was only half a seat with room for just one buttock. Checking out the time delay with other passengers, I was relieved to learn that this only applied in the other direction. I would be able to keep my appointments but not get home on time, for the problem would not be rectified before midnight. The concourse at Waterloo was filled with serried ranks of hopeful travellers, eyes fixed on the departure boards. This did not augur well for the return journey, and, indeed, by 6.45 p.m. the sight was the same.

From Waterloo I walked to Green Park by the route described on 22nd November. From The Embankment to Green Park crowds of people photographed each other against their chosen backdrop. Geese, having abandoned the lake in St. James’s Park in search of tourists’ proffered titbits, drank from puddles on the paths.

I took the Jubilee Line to Neasden and walked to Norman’s where he fed us on roast duck followed by Christmas pudding, accompanied by a fine chianti. After going on by tube to visit Carol, and spending a couple of hours with her, I boarded a 507 bus to Waterloo. There was no let-up in the morning’s disruption, although the train I did catch was only about 40 minutes late in arriving at Southampton.

It was, however, standing room only on the ten carriage train. I could get no further than the second coach. Even in the first, first class, carriage there were no seats available. A certain amount of hilarity was engendered by the guard’s announcement that there was a buffet car at the front of the train, which it would have been impossible to reach. I was able to give Jackie an accurate estimate of the arrival time and she was there to meet me as I came out of the station.

Today’s problem, across the region, had been cause by ice on the tracks at Woking. In December 1987 I had set out optimistically from Kings Cross on the very first evening of my commuting back home to Newark. This journey, normally lasting 80 minutes, took four hours. The train came to a standstill when a swan became stuck in the braking system. It could not be freed, so a replacement locomotive had to be sent down from somewhere in the far North. As I arrived home some time after midnight I wondered: ‘What have I done?’. Fortunately it was never as bad again.

Gracedale Road S.W.

Just before mid-day I took the upper drive route down to Minstead; turned right by the red phone box; walked up through Fleetwater; took the right turn at the junction towards Stoney Cross; and right again on the A31 back to Castle Malwood Lodge.

The thatchers in Minstead continued their work. A house in Fleetwater had been demolished and a wooden structure was being built. I couldn’t tell whether it was a replacement house or a rather splendid shed.

Walking up from the ford by the school you encounter a fork in the road by a clearing at the edge of the forest. The left fork takes you nearer to Emery Down, and the right to Fleetwater. I was intrigued by a large perfect circle of twigs laid out, some way off the road, on the turf. Is this The New Forest’s answer to miraculous crop circles?

On the road past Fleetwater which runs between the A31 and Lyndhurst there were numerous ponies of varying sizes. One came trotting down the tarmac towards me, as if straight out of a Thelwell drawing. Its mane covered its eyes and almost reached the ground beneath its short, stubby, legs. I half expected to see a similarly shaped dazed schoolgirl in jodhpurs and a crash helmet, planted in the bracken festooned with saddle and trappings, having been dumped by her dumpy steed. Another silver haired grey-dappled horse, much taller than the others, blended beautifully with the forest birches. Many of the ponies were haloed against the light of the low winter sun.

Arriving at Stoney Cross, and not wishing to walk back along the scary A31 which has no footpath, I did my best to find a path running parallel to that road which should return me to upper drive. I was unsuccessful and therefore had to brave the buffeting of blasts from the vast vans speeding past.

In Fleetwater I spoke to a man who was blowing leaves from his drive. He was proud of the old LNER cast iron sign he had fixed to his gate. LNER was the London and North East Railway that had been one of the four major companies which ran UK’s pre-Nationalised railways in their earlier privatised incarnation. Forty shillings was a lot of money in those days. Once upon a time most street name signs were made of similar material painted black and white. They can still be found, but are gradually being replaced, in London at least, by lighter, less substantial signs put up by the Boroughs which came into being in 1965. In 1987, Gracedale Road, SW16, in Wandsworth, just before Jessica, Sam, Louisa, and I left it for Newark in Nottinghamshire, boasted such a sign at each end. Two weeks before our departure flimsy substitutes replaced them both. One old one was left in the gutter and never removed. Not until we departed, that is. With the sign in our car. Matthew cleaned up the trophy, gave it a fresh coat of suitable paint, and bolted it to the brick wall of the old boiler house attached to the back of Lindum House. I like to think that little part of Nottinghamshire still bears the legend:

For our evening meal Jackie produced an excellent chicken korai with an elaborate pilau rice which was eaten with paratas from Portswood International Stores. She drank Hoegaarden whilst I imbibed McGuigan Estate shiraz 2010. For sweet we had gulabjam. Jackie was a bit concerned that she hadn’t any cream to go with it, but the evaporated milk we used was a good complement. When I suggested cold custard she called me a philistine.

‘Some Handlebars’

This morning I walked to Lyndhurst via Minstead and Emery Down. Thatchers in Minstead, ignoring the light rain, perched on a roof renewing a pretty thatch. The gentle clopping of hooves from behind alerted me to the presence of a cart drawn by two horses who became quite skittery when face to face with a massive motor coach. This was a single track section of the road leading up from the ford. There was quite a queue in this less travelled road by the time the coach had edged past the vehicle of yesteryear which was tucked in by a fortunately placed farm entrance.

Approaching Emery Down there is a long uphill stretch that, for a cyclist emerging from the village, is an exciting downhill plunge. Rapidly descending towards me, grey locks flying splayed out on each side, grasping soaring handlebars which would have graced an ‘Easy Rider’ type machine, was really quite an elderly woman. ‘Some handlebars!’, I cried as she whizzed past. ‘Yayyyee!’ she replied, her voice tailing off in the distance.

I met Jackie in the car park at Lyndhurst. We went to register at the Lyndhurst G.P. Surgery which, amazingly, has the same address, 2, Church Lane, as the G.P.’s that had been Jackie’s in Merton for forty four years. On our return, gamely cycling up the slope was my ageing easy rider.

Aldi’s haddock and chips provided our evening repast with which I drank Adnam’s ale and Jackie didn’t.

After the meal we took part in The Amberwood pub quiz. Our team improved somewhat from last week, finishing in fifth place, just two away from the prizes.

Maawwah!

Clear frosty light sreaked across the lawn outside the kitchen window this morning.

I walked through London Minstead to the A337 and back to meet Jackie by Seamans Cottages to be driven to Southampton. In Seamans Lane a boy spun around on a skateboard, as I slid along on the slippery road. A smaller lad was busy cracking the ice on the surfaces of the frozen puddles. Further on another boy bounced up and down on a trampoline in his garden. A cock crew in Hazel Hill Yard where hens seemed to be queueing for his attention. Outside Perry Farm a wagtail shared grazing rights with a forest pony.

The reason we were going to Southampton was to buy some Infected Eye Optrex for my eye which is a bit sore again. Having looked it up on the Internet we saw there was a Boots open in Unit 6 of the dreaded West Quay shopping centre. This being a Sunday that seemed to be our only opportunity. We couldn’t find it. After driving around for an age we saw a Boots sign on the back of a building, drove as near as we could to the front of it, and started to walk to where it should be. Unfortunately we asked a couple if we were on the right track. They were adamant there was no Boots in West Quay. What we had to do was walk to the multistorey carpark, take a lift to the seventh floor, then from there traverse a bridge across the road and into the High Street where we would find the only branch of Nottingham’s finest. It was only five minutes. It was in fact ten, despite the fact that we were hurrying. We queued for the antibiotic which is available without prescription over the counter. The assistant refused to sell it to us because I hadn’t been to a G.P. I exploded. We returned to the car. I had remained convinced that had we walked fifty yards around the corner before asking the couple for directions we would have found the West Quay Boots. I just had to satisfy myself, so we drove around and there it was. Jackie wanted to try our luck there. I didn’t. She was determined to do it even if it meant leaving me in the car. Seeking another parking spot, the next arrow on the tarmac she followed took her out of West Quay and into the main road. Even she had had enough then and we returned empty-handed to Castle Malwood Lodge where we were due to give lunch to Mum and Elizabeth.

I am now firmly of the opinion that anyone wishing to lay out a town in the most confusing manner possible would do well to take inspiration and ideas from Southampton.

After lunch we all visited the fortnightly antiques fair at Minstead Hall where Jackie bought a tablecloth for our new table and three Asterix books, allegedly for visiting children; and Elizabeth bought us housewarming presents of a 1930s wooden jigsaw puzzle and a substantial glass cakestand.

We then had a portraiture session in which I produced a choice of photographs for Elizabeth to put on her website.

As Mum struggled to her feet from the sofa, I spoke of a game I had played in yesterday’s Santa performance. I would ham up struggling to my feet and stand looking vaguely into the middle distance, carefully not noticing that Lisa and Dan were placing a toy hedgehog on my seat. I would then sit down, feel the prickles on this actually very soft object, and jump up grimacing in pain. I did not repeat the roar that had been a feature of my impersonation of Mr. Bumble, the Beadle from Oliver Twist, of which this little charade reminded us all. When Sam, Louisa, Adam, and Danielle had all been small, they would approach me at the meal table, bowls in hand, and ask: ‘Please, Sir, may I have some more?’. My reply, eyes bulging, red-faced and hoarser and hoarser with each repetition, would be: ‘MAAWWAH?’. And there would be repetitions. As with yesterday’s hedgehog, adults tire of these games much sooner than do children. Mum remembered that when Louisa played Mr. Bumble it could be heard on the other side of Newark.

This evening we revisited Friday’s roast pork; I drank Piccini Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Riserva 2009, and Jackie had some more Three Choirs.