April 2013 – Page 2 – derrickjknight

Greengrass

We chose a gorgeous spring day to begin catch up in Elizabeth’s garden. As we left Castle Malwood Lodge, leaf buds were at last appearing on the deciduous trees. The sky was a clear light blue, as it was to remain all day, although there was still a chill in the air once the sun had lowered and moved behind buildings. Mum, who came to lunch and stayed on to bask in the sunshine, had to keep moving out of the shade.

Elizabeth shopped, prepared lunch, and collected our mother. Afterwards she started weeding another bed. My task was collecting some of the two year compost from the first bin and distributing it as a top dressing to the bed she had weeded last week. It has broken down well and will be a useful supplement to the still stony soil. After this I trimmed the lawn edges prior to mowing. I was careful not to chop any overhanging flowers. The odd forget-me-not wouldn’t have mattered much, but I didn’t want to cut through wallflower stems. I’m glad it wasn’t me who knocked the head off a fritillary. Elizabeth quickly placed it in a silver egg-cup, along with a sprig of epimedium that had suffered the same fate. Jackie carried out a number of tasks: fitting together and filling the various bird feeders scattered in bits about the garden: raking the grass ready for cutting; cleaning out pebble features; and weeding.

When it came to mowing, we could not get the Honda petrol driven machine to start. Apparently it needs a service. I wasn’t all that sorry.

There were two new golf balls on the lawn. This prompted me to explain to Mum the theory of the foxes conceived on 12th September last year. Briefly, we think the balls are carried here by foxes from the golf course behind the Hampshire County Cricket ground. ‘You should do what Greengrass did’, said Mum. Claude Jeremiah Greengrass is the loveable and utterly hopeless rogue played by Bill Maynard in ‘Heartbeat’, the television series set in the 60s. He had a good line in recycled golf balls. He would send a posse of children to seek out lost balls, pay them a small token, and sell them back to the golfers for an inflated sum. The boys, a bit smarter than their employer, trained their dog to retrieve balls that were not lost, and indeed were still in play. This caused quite a furore among the upper echelons of Aidenfield.

As I pottered around The Firs’ garden, aware of the flapping of wings and satisfied cries of those wood pigeons having been successful in finding a mate, I began to take in all the other sounds of a neighbourhood stirring into life. A bee buzzed busily; small birds whistled tunefully; children’s voices chimed; a light aircraft rattled overhead, in tune with a solitary magpie; a high-pitched electronic car alarm irritated; a power tool droned in fits and starts; my large fork struck the bricks of the compost bin, and the hand fork grated on the flinty soil; the blades of the hedge trimmers clipped rhythmically; and Jackie’s rake rustled the dried leaves and twigs on the grass. Next door had been for sale as long as we have been travelling to The Firs. Recently, new occupants have moved in. One is a particularly unpleasant sounding dog that barks continuously and snarls as if it has a mouthful of ball bearings. Occasionally what I think must be a woman who sounds like a Dalek with a mouthful of pebbles gives the dog as good as it dishes out. This is all a bit incongruous on a beautiful spring afternoon.

Later, Elizabeth did manage to make her temperamental mower work. But by that time I was cooking turkey jalfrezi for our evening meal, so she cut the grass herself. She had discovered how to persuade the machine into stuttering action when, twice, taking it to an engineer to sort out the problem and finding it had no problem when she got there. She decided it must have been the jolting up and down in the car that did the trick. So now she gives it a good jerky walk around the garden.

With the meal we enjoyed wild rice and a jalfrezi bread from a local baker. More like a pud than a naan. Jackie drank Stella. Elizabeth and I shared a bottle of Mondelli reserva chianti 2009.

Back To Work Tomorrow

Jackie’s bedroom seedlings of nasturtiums and marigolds have woken up to the season and are springing forth.

We drove to The Firs, calling in first at the Village Shop to deposit dry cleaning; the bottle bank near Minstead Hall; then on to Lyndhurst to post a couple of parcels and visit the NatWest Bank to transfer some money to the Barclays account in France. It is a reality of village life that no longer can we pop across the road, as in London, to satisfy our every whim. But who cares?

Even the trip to Elizabeth’s was dual purpose. The Firs has been my business address for some years now, so I needed to collect my post. The main reason, however, was to survey the garden and make a start on this year’s work therein. We were delighted to see how much the plants have benefitted from the composting of the last two years, and in particular how the new beds now look established.

The winter has been so wet, so cold, and so long, that Elizabeth was only able to begin weeding last Sunday. That is therefore a priority, after the cutting of the grass, composting, and a bit of refurbishment to one of the bins I made last summer. When contemplating setting out on a long and daunting task it is always a satisfactory delaying tactic to make a list and start mañana. So we had lunch with my sister, made lists in our heads, and arranged to return tomorrow. Well, at least a commitment has been made.

Fritillaria meleagris is one of the many bulbs planted in the autumn, hoping they would come up in the spring. They have, as have tete-a-tete and other daffodils, such as white narcissi; muscari; numerous hellebores; self-seeded primulas; and a variety of pansies, notably those surrounding the bird bath. Many other flowers, in the beds and in various containers, have survived, and we are able to imagine how everything will look when it is all tidied up. But before that we must get back to work tomorrow.

A further very good reason, I convinced myself, for not making a start today, was that I needed to complete the paperwork for my accountant, and get a cheque off to EDF in France to cover the estimated electricity bill for rue Saint Jacques, since it has been sitting in The Firs whilst I was in France, and gone past the settle before date. We therefore had to go back home so that I could do that. And I did.

Further wildlife, in the form of two boys playing football on the lawn; and a young girl building a den in the far corner behind the rhododendrons, has emerged to enjoy the better weather.

This evening we enjoyed a meal of Aldi oven fish and chips, mushy peas, and gherkins.

Whose Road Is It Anyway?

Back home in Minstead the coal tits on their feeder made up for the elusiveness of the small birds in Sigoules. After a morning spent preparing my papers for Philip, my accountant, I took a later than usual ford loop walk. Upper drive was looking resplendent in the mid-afternoon sun. The deciduous trees, not yet in leaf, displayed their shapely naked limbs. Elsewhere, hedgerows and other, smaller, trees were producing young, yellow-green, budding leaves. Daffodils still thrust their way through thorny hedges. Susan Hill, in ‘The Magic Apple Tree’, her record of a year in the country which I began reading yesterday, calls spring a ‘yellow season’. After the masses of dandelions, marigolds, and buttercups in and around Sigoules, and now us, too, being treated to its awakening, I see what she means. On this very pleasant afternoon there were even a few brief April showers.

A car that sped past me on the very narrow road to the ford, barely wide enough for a pony to straddle it, came to a sudden halt around the next bend. Hearing its approach I had stepped smartly to the side. No such courtesy was offered by the seven or eight ponies that idly blocked the road. They ambled up and down and from side to side investigating possible fodder. The driver just had to wait. Also waiting, in a side road, was a tourist driver who wasn’t sure what to do. I gave him the benefit of my vast, all of five months, experience, and helped him and his passengers on their way. Mind you, I was very wary about passing the rear end, by which was all the space that was available, of the first horse. Having negotiated this back passage safely, I arrived, after walking up from the ford, at what passes for the main road through the village.

Susan Hill speaks of cattle being sent into Buttercup Field at the beginning of May, having been sheltered for the winter. Obviously, in the New Forest the freedom to roam comes a bit earlier. This was brought home to me as I started up the hill through Minstead. A strange lowing sound from behind me alerted me to the fact that I was being followed up the road. Indeed, the only sense I could make of the increasingly agitated, closer and closer, mooing was that the tagged cow wanted me out of the way. I soon realised that it was keen to join its companions who had taken possession of the road and more or less covered Seamans Corner. At a rough estimate half the bovine population of the New Forest now blocked the roads and stripped what was left of the foliage. As I approached the Corner, apart from the odd cow occupying the usual headless stance, pausing only to plop their own recycled fodder offerings, they were all following me up the road. It was just a wee bit disconcerting. I must admit that I did occasionally take a sneaky look to make sure there was no pizzle in sight. Had I seen one, I’m not sure what I would have done. Watching tradesmen negotiating these natural obstacles I often wonder how their time-sheets are affected.

Jackie produced her usual excellent arabbiata with mixed pasta for our evening meal. I had cherry pie for afters. Jackie drank Peroni while I had some Marques de Montino reserva rioja 2007.

She Snatched My Wallet

‘De Sa Grande Amie’ is a short rondeau by Clement Marot, which I read before Lydie arrived to take me to Bergerac airport for my return to England. It was easy to read.

My driver’s cough was worse than sometimes, but she was her usual cheerful self. This sexagenarian woman is a stalwart character, full of fortitude, and is as wide as she is short. She insists on placing my bag in the car herself and opens my door for me like the true chauffeuse she is. She is absolutely reliable and always punctual. We share much fun conversation, and she is a great teacher of her language.

The youngish woman checking us through security at the airport was so curt and brusque that I stopped speaking in French, or at all, and gave her a long, cool, stare. This was after she’d ushered me to a chair to take my shoes off, snatched my wallet out of my hand, thrown it into one of the plastic trays, and summoned the next person before she’d finished with me. I had to retrieve the wallet to extract the passport she was demanding. She appeared not to realise that that might have been the reason I was opening it anyway. The elderly woman who answered the summons was expected to take off her shoes standing up, as there was only one chair. There was actually no need for any hurry. We were early, there was only one further customer in the queue, and I was moving briskly enough, having gone through all the motions, like taking off my belt, without being instructed to. ‘Ok’, she said, in response to my look, her face betraying no emotion. I did not reply. It takes quite a lot for me to respond in such a manner.

Until we approached England there was a clear view to the land or sea below. Only then did clouds obscure our vision. Swimming pools in gardens around Bergerac airport seemed to reflect the wing of the plane as I watched them reduce in size as we rose. The river Dordogne, from which this part of Acquitaine takes its name, wound its way through the landscape. By the time we were descending towards Southampton and looking down on the fields of Hampshire, the temperature had dropped a few degrees, and as Jackie drove me to Minstead, I noticed that the wild flowers in the hedgerows were some way behind the French ones in their development. Light rain spattered the windscreen as we parked at Castle Malwood Lodge.

As has become traditional, there being a dearth of Indian restaurants in France, we just had to go out for a curry on my return. This meant a visit to Lyndhurst’s ‘Passage to India’ for a good meal and a glass each of Kingfisher.

Don’t Flap, And Keep Still

A short poem by Clement Marot (1496 – 1544) entitled ‘Plus Ne Suis Ce Que J’ai Ete’, which was this morning’s choice was rather a sad lament for the writer’s spring and summer. That a man who didn’t have an autumn by today’s standards could write as if his love life was over, was my first reason for counting my blessings, as readers will know I often do. That, at 70, I can feel as if I have not yet reached winter, is the second. The writer would have liked to have been born again to serve love better. My third reason to be grateful is that I have been given the opportunity to do so without ever having had such a wish. My renaissance is metaphoric.

The rest of the morning was spent on the usual cleaning up. Swabbing down the kitchen and hall tiles was left to this evening to allow for drying time overnight, and I finished off the garden this afternoon.

Taking a break outside in the sunshine to finish Valerie Grove’s biography of Dodie Smith, I was encircled by a large wasp that hovered around me for some time, no doubt contemplating whether or not I was worth a sting. My philosophy on such occasions is ‘don’t flap, and keep still’. I didn’t, and I did. Eventually it flew off in search of someone more attractive. The first lizard of the season, a larger than usual adult, ventured onto the tiles, but thought better of it as I reached for my camera. The avian occupants of the back wall continue to frustrate me. I know they’re in there somewhere.

The Observer described the book as ‘utterly delightful’, which it is, and Elspeth Barker, writing in the Independent on Sunday, offered the view that it is ‘a successful portrait of a powerful and original woman of devastating wit and intelligence’, with which I concur.

Three boiled eggs, slices of fig sausage, bread and butter, and an orange, sufficed for my 4.00 p.m. repast.

I’ve Found A Young Man

I am now entertained by natural sounds throughout the day. The swarm of little birds, far too quick for me to identify even if I knew how, spend the day chattering in the cascading clusters of ivy on the back garden wall. The lower, urgent, mating calls of woodpigeons offer intermittent variation. After nightfall, the incessant, slightly high-pitched, purring of a distant engine, emanates from mating frogs completely covering the pool behind the Carrefour petrol station. Jackie, who watched this writhing pulsating mass of procreation a couple of years ago, when I was still unable to climb up there, provided the metaphor for me.

This morning I learned that if you do not straighten a duvet for a week, but just drag it over you as you climb into bed at night, it has the capacity completely to reorient itself.

Early on, slightly disconcerted by the albeit painless creaking of my left knee, I did some more sweeping and weeding of the garden.

Ragged robin is the most prolific plant in the garden. Although a weed, it provides attractive ground cover, provided you have a decent acreage with a wild section, which I don’t. One fully grown potato had been reared in a flower bed. It could therefore be expected to have been of the sweet variety, but it isn’t.

Villon’s ‘Ballade Des Pendus’ was this morning’s straightforward poem. The collection’s earlier pieces must all be translations. I don’t think I’d make much sense of a French Chaucer or a Shakespeare.

When shopping for bread, I met my arthritic old lady again. This time she accepted my arm and allowed me to carry her extremely heavy bag. It was uphill from the baker’s. The sigh of relief as she gained my support, and was able to straighten up, was patent. On my way to the shop I had greeted her as she was resting on the half-way bench. She hadn’t got much further. Coquettishly, as, arm in arm, we adapted our paces to each other, she told a passing male acquaintance that she had found a young man. I suppose to her I must seem young. I was still only allowed to help until we reached a parked car she pointed out about a hundred yards away, this clearly being a milestone in her journey. When we reached it she remained adamant and pointed out her house which still seemed a long way for her. Otherwise, I didn’t understand much of what she said.

After this it was time to get out the hoover – a Philips actually – and duster. Thoroughly as the men had swept up after each day’s work, there was inevitably a fine coating of masonry dust covering numerous surfaces.

Half the aforementioned baguette; scrambled eggs and bacon, courtesy of Bill emptying his fridge; followed by an orange, provided a simple but adequate lunch.

For some reason best known to themselves, Don thinks I am always knocking over drinks, and Jackie thinks I am always about to. They would have each felt justified and probably ‘more than somewhat’ amused when David, replacing a beer I had just overturned whilst posting this entry, made a point of positioning it as far away from me as possible.

Genealogy

With my coffee this morning I began reading another of Ann’s books, ‘Dear Dodie’, being Valerie Grove’s biography of the writer Dodie Smith.

I was grateful for the cool breeze offering relief from the strong sun occupying a clear blue sky as I began the long ascent up to Pomport to walk the loop that offers a much steeper descent from the plateau surrounding the village via a winding road past fields and through woods and back into Sigoules. I passed the ornamental garden in rue de La Mayade at 10.20 a.m. and arrived at number 6 on the stroke of midday when my outside thermometer read 24 degrees.

The landscape sparkled. An intrepid cyclist laboured past me up the slope. As always I spared a prayer for two Frenchmen when I passed their roadside monument. This time I scanned the village war memorial seeking their Christian names. There they were: Robert Siron and Gabriel Lamy, who had been shot by Germans, presumably at that spot, when I was just 21 months old. I had been more fortunate in the land and time of my birth. My own father survived his time in the British Army in France. Could these two men have otherwise been alive today?

The only other pedestrian I met was a woman pushing a buggy in which, dummy firmly esconced, lay a sleeping toddler. A light aircraft chugged and droned overhead. Butterflies fluttered by. A small rodent scuttled across last autumns dried fallen leaves. Sweetly sonorous birdsong accompanied the ubiquitous golden symphony of spring flowers, not yet eclipsed either by tall grasses and sprouting nettles or by the still knotty heavily pruned vines. Far off in the woods the melody was interrupted by a discordant clamour no doubt set up by parent birds to deter an egg-collecting magpie and drown its warning clatter. Fruit trees blossomed.

The now shallower streams glittered temptingly as I began to look forward to the refreshing glass of water I would extract from the kitchen tap on my return.

Having put Chris and Gay, two ardent genealogists, in touch with each other, I am now copied into their exchanges of e-mails. Gay, in Australia, has managed to provide my brother with documentation about the Knights that he did not have, and to discover that her daughter Holly and my son Sam each have antecedents hailing from villages four miles apart in Devon. I was delighted to be able to tell Sam’s mother-in-law, seeking information about Jean Knight, nee Hunter, that my nonagenarian mother is still very much alive. She will be able to answer any questions herself.

Today’s poem was ‘Ballade Des Dames Du Temps Jadis’ by Francois Villon (1431 -1465). It presented no problems.

Lunch was last week’s sausage casserole accompanied by a final glass of Sofiene’s gift of a superb Groupe Austoni Bariolees 2010 that Bill and I hadn’t finished a couple of nights ago after we’d polished off his Cotes du Rhone. Lemon sorbet was for afters.

Sunday in Sigoules offers a day without straining to hear and speak French. The birds were today’s relaxing companions.

I Must Stay Strong

Thierry arrived alone today, Geoffrey being ill. By the afternoon the younger man had recovered sufficiently from a hangover to come and help clear up. The builder admired the lizard candlestick Elizabeth had given Jessica and me years ago that Mike Kindred had bolted onto the back garden wall for me. This led to a conversation about lizards. Those in Thierry’s large garden are big, wheras those in the cracks in my small garden are tiny. Such creatures adapt their size to their environment, like fish in a bowl.

Every child in England grows up with the knowledge of King Henry VIII and his six wives. I had studied this Tudor period for O level at school, for an exam taken in my sixteenth summer. I therefore knew all about Anne Boleyn. ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’, the subject of Philippa Gregory’s excellently written and meticulously researched novel about Anne’s younger sister Mary, a previous lover of the king, which I finished reading today, was unknown to me until quite recently. Woven into this tale was, naturally, the story of Anne, a description of Henry’s tyranny, and an exposure of the scheming treachery of the Howard and Boleyn families. The descriptive writing demonstrates a skill in depicting human relationships. It has the ability to hold the attention, despite knowing how this saga panned out. Women, in sixteenth century England, had neither rights nor power of their own. Gregory shows how those at court were simply pawns in the marriage game. Mary was fortunate that her flame did not burn as brightly as that of her sister, whose blaze of glory was all too brief.

Another Ann was constantly in my thoughts as I read the book, because it had been in my late friend Ann Eland’s library, and one of those given to me by Don.

I walked down to Bill’s for a farewell coffee. He shared a small pizza with me. On my return, Sofiene, who had joined Thierry, went to collect two of those he had ordered in Sigoules. Because they were almost half the price a large one would have cost in Bergerac he had assumed they would be small. They weren’t. Naturally, I had to help them out.

On my way back I noticed an elderly woman struggling past the entrance steps of number 8, which spread right across the pavement. As I ascended the hill, bit by bit, she dragged first herself, then her shopping, across them. Somehow, even with an empty bag, she must have climbed the steep slope. I offered to help, and to carry her bag. All she would accept was my hand, with which to pull herself upright. As she almost fell towards the wall of the building, on which she would support herself for the rest of her journey, she cheerfully explained that she was 84 and riddled with arthritis, and therefore had to do these things for herself in order to stay strong. She continued the conversation in which I then hardly understood a word. Eventually, to give my brain a rest, I bade her farewell. Watching her painful progress, I thought ‘there but for the grace of God…….’.

Today’s poem was a rondeau by Charles D’Orleans (1391 – 1465): short and easy.

But for some making good, such as tiling, for which materials have been ordered, the work on the house has been completed to my satisfaction. The place is also much more secure, and the windows at the front now match. No longer will we sit in a draft in the winter.

Today’s 25 degrees of strong sunshine was a pleasant sequel to long months of cold rain and snow.

Columbo

Last night Lydie arrived on time to collect Bill and me and return us to Sigoules. She and I had our usual debate about what she should be paid. She always charges less than appears on the clock and I always give her a little more, which is still less than other companies charge. This figure has not changed in five years. Recoiling in mock horror when I said there was to be no argument about it, she exclaimed, a twinkle in her eye, that I was ‘so masterful’.

Keen to finish, against the odds, today, the builders, who normally arrive at 9 a.m., let themselves in with the key I had given them yesterday, well before 8, catching me in bed with ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’ and a cafetiere. I thanked them for having taken my dead washing machine and old ironing board to the dump yesterday.

A fragment of ‘La complainte’ (The lament) which I read this morning was the next Rutebeuf poem in Sofiene’s book.

Although much warmer today, rain looked likely when I set off to walk the loop that turns off the Thenac road at the wooden signpost beside it. I therefore wore an unbuttoned raincoat. Referring to the long-running (1971 – 2003) and oft-repeated formulaic American detective series starring Peter Falk, ‘ah! Columbo!’ cried Thierry.

Adopting the role, I turned around as I opened the front door, raised my hand, and said ‘just one more thing…..’. Picking up the theme, ‘my wife…..’ replied a smiling Thierry. For those who are not familiar with this TV production, these were two of the eponymous character’s stock phrases used when he was about to ask an apparently innocent, yet incisive, question, or make a deceptively perceptive observation. It must be nigh on forty years since I last saw an episode.

No doubt waiting for the sun’s rays to filter through the blinds that were the surrounding trees, the wild flowers mentioned in previous recent posts still dipped their heads in slumber, not yet having stirred and stretched their petals. They hadn’t been roused by intruders. It didn’t rain, yet I was pretty moist on my return, after which I made a start on tidying up the garden.

Lunch at Le Code Bar consisted of my favourite, onion soup; coarse pate, avocado, melon and gherkins; and the tenderest thick slices of roast pork with mixed pasta. The biscuit based soft chocolate mousse that followed lay in its usual pool of creme anglaise which was piped with threads of light and dark brown sauce producing an artistic kaleidoscopic effect when disturbed.

Her Slightly Dopey Prof

Thierry was singing away this morning, maybe because completion is in sight. I said I liked a man who enjoyed his work. He replied that it is his policy, as he had said a day or two ago it was to take his time to ensure the work was good. He isn’t slow. Just thorough. Apart from yesterday’s lunch, the two men have worked eight hours a day without a break.

Geoffrey, who is of course new to the work, was, without using the term for a doorstop, explaining that I would need one in the living room to protect the wall from the handle. With the aid of Robert (dictionary), I was able to give him the word. He was grateful and I was pleased.

Warning me that there would be more noise than usual this morning, Thierry asked me if I knew my neighbours and would I apologise for him. Fortunately Garry and Brigitte were out, but I left them a note.

I have, at last, finished reading Violette Leduc’s book ‘La femme au petit renard’. Albeit short enough to be a novelette, this is by far the most difficult work in French that I have read. Using stream of consciousness the paragraphs are up to ten pages long. It is the story of an ageing, povrty-stricken, starving woman wandering the streets of Paris, finding warmth when and where she can. Round her neck, both as comforter and sole companion, is a fox-fur.

When writing of ‘Her fearful symmetry’ on 7th, I mentioned Martin, who suffers from OCD. He uses counting enormous numbers as a method of warding off imagined danger. ‘La femme’ counts to kill time and to help her eke out her few grains of coffee and cubes of sugar. Her situation is real enough.

I was somewhat comforted when Clement told me that the stream of consciousness writing would be difficult for a French person to read. There is no room for working out the vocabulary from the context. I even had to check words that I did know, because they didn’t seem to make sense. Never mind, it was good revision, and nowhere near as difficult as James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake which I had to abandon.

After this I started on the book Sofiene had given me in January. It is an anthology of ‘the hundred most beautiful poems in the French language’, presented in chronological order. Following the straightforward preface, I began with ‘La Griech d’hiver’ by Rutebeuf (1225? – 1285?). That wasn’t too difficult, but this is a collection I will just tackle one at a time, for my sanity’s sake.

My chequebook arrived this morning, enclosed with a note from Jackie in which she had the temerity to call me her ‘slightly dopey prof’. Given the two important items I’d forgotten, I suppose that was fair enough.

Pools again filled the holes in the road as, beset by staedy rain, I walked the steeply undulating route to Ste Innocence to meet Maggie, Mike, and Bill, fresh from their game of tennis with Joss who runs their favourite holiday venue. Maggie then drove us all to their home in Eymet for our evening meal. In Eymet I bought an universal charger that is suitable for my camera battery, so I can take photographs again.

Maggie fed us all on a marvellous spare rib casserole with rice or pasta. The ribs were incredibly meaty. A variety of ice creams was to follow and we shared a bottle of Le Bihan 2009 which was very mellow.

As I write Bill and I are waiting for Lydie to drive us back to Sigoules.