July 2013 – Page 3 – derrickjknight

The Watering Hole

A little way down Running Hill there is a Forestry Commission gateway bearing a notice enjoining people to keep it clear. I had today determined on walking the two fords Q. However, noticing a little track by the side of the gate, used by dog-walkers, I once again went in search of Dave’s path. The track petered out in about the length of time it takes to empty a dog. However, I persevered. Then, to mine and their surprise, I came across three walkers approaching me through the trees. The leader of the middle-aged group carried an Ordnance Survey map, a printed route in a booklet about Minstead, and a compass. He said: ‘We seem to be following an ill-defined path’. I said they were following a non-existent path, and proceeded to offer my assistance. The booklet map must have been ‘made earlier’. They sought what I recognised as Hungerford cottage, and were way off it. However, it was merely a marker to Running Hill, because what they actually wanted was the Castle Malwood Farm underpass so they could make their way – wait for it! – to Sir Walter Tyrrell and thence back to Minstead. Now, as my readers know, if you wish to find your way to Sir Walter, I’m your man. Their map did not tell them to hug the farm’s fence, nor did it mention the stream or sandbags. I probably bewildered them with information overload, but it is not often I get to display my knowledge of the forest.

In the midst of all this, the female walker noticed I was clutching a letter I had forgotten I was meant to be posting. My inquisitors suggested I may not find a postbox in middle of the forest. Having seen them on their way I walked diagonally through the forest to Suters Cottage and picked up the Shave Wood/Football Green loop, thus ensuring I would bear the readdressed envelope to the previous tenants of our flat for another hour, before posting it outside the village shop.

As I walked along the melting tarmac I felt refreshed by the sight of the bright green backlit leaves, to which the sun gave the glow of youth.

On the way to Football Green, being in need of a comfort break, I slipped into the boscage for light relief. Framed in a gap in the trees a group of ponies on the edge of an open stretch, slowly stirred from their grazing, turned, and first ambled, then trotted off. I followed them. As their pace quickened, had I not known it was unlikely, I might have thought they were fleeing from me.

The open field hosted a much larger than usual congregation of ponies. They even seemed to be summoning a few stragglers who had stayed by the roadside. At first, grazing, then walking, trotting, cantering, and finally galloping off, tails and manes flowing in the wind, they were gone. They disappeared into the trees and were out of sight. These often catatonic eerily silent animals, their hooves thundering as if in a stampede, their voices raised in loud whinnying, were actually quite an alarming prospect.

Well, I just had to see what was up, so I made my way through the trees, bracken, and holly, to see if I could trace them. Silence had descended, so either they were a long way off or had reached wherever they were going. Had I not known better, I might have thought someone had rung the dinner bell.

Then. There they all were, many with only their backs in view, through another gap in the undergrowth. Down a trench. The trench was a fairly dried up watercourse, where they were virtually queuing up to slake their thirst. I was later to realise that this was the stream that had fed the watering hole Jessica and Imogen had found on 11th May (see post). It now seems incredible that a pony, leaping from it, had showered my grandchildren when shaking himself dry.

As I reached the top of Running Hill, a drowsy looking woman wound down the window of a car parked on the forest verge. She asked how she could get back onto the A31 after she’d had the rest she needed to prevent herself from falling asleep. There being no fear that she would make a habit of it because she was on her way back to her home in Cornwall, I told her of the short cut through our garden. Having, in my youth, fallen asleep and scraped my Hillman Imp along the side of a classic Bentley, I knew of the need to stop and rest when tired. At the age of 25 I’d had no idea one could actually drop off at the wheel.

This evening we collected our friend Sheila who was staying at Manor House Hotel in Sway and took her to what Becky has described as our new-found local, The Plough Inn at Tiptoe. Jackie and I each consumed the same food and drink as we had on 5th, except that I also managed a creme brulee and a double espresso. Sheila enjoyed plentiful and delicious scampi and sparkling water.

Shopping Early For Christmas

Today I walked straight across Running Hill at the end of Lower Drive into the forest. The terrain dropped sharply and I was soon careering down the steeply undulating land, dodging trees above and around me, snapping fallen branches and rustling last autumn’s leaves underfoot, and listening to the roar of the A31.

Eventually the ground levelled off and became rather soggy. A Forestry Commission pedestrian gate that looked as if it hadn’t been opened for some time, bore a notice asking walkers to close it. It seemed a safe bet that there should be a path on the other side, although that was obscured by bracken. There was. It was very damp and bore the telltale pony droppings. It was as I was battling with the familiar mud suction that Mike Kindred chose to telephone me to express his appreciation of yesterday’s post reporting on his latest book. Someday I may write something about awkward moments at which my mobile has rung. (See also ‘They Do Pick Their Moments’ posted 10th May this year and ‘Nettle Rash’ of 28th May last year).

After some time the footpath broadened out into a wide gravelled track for vehicles. The next gate was one for motor transport, beyond which I could see the A377. I got a bit excited at this because I thought it may be taking me to an underpass that I have seen from the other side of what is now quite a dangerous road to walk along. Sadly, that was not the case. I turned round and retraced my steps, turning left at a footpath just before the aforementioned gate. This, I thought, would lead to Shave Wood. Tempted by another footpath to the right I was soon again crunching arboreal debris underfoot, dodging living branches, and tripping on bracken stems. I had by now realised that the fir wood I had walked through earlier was enclosed by the usual wire fence. Keeping to the fence I came across another pedestrian gate to my right. I walked through this and continued on the other side of the fence which had, at one point, been brought down by a fallen tree. Later, I opted to go back through the next gate into what I expected to be the forested area that has the road to London Minstead running through it. The carpet of nuts beneath my feet confirmed that I was in the vicinity of Hazel Hill and I emerged by the track to Suters Cottage.

By this time I had had enough of clambering, ducking, and tripping so I went home through London Minstead, where lives a classic two parent two child family. Equine, that is.

Near the junction of Bull and Seamans Lanes I was fascinated by two young turkeys in a small coop on the lawn of a small front garden. I wondered whether the occupants of the house had been shopping early for Christmas. As I stood contemplating this a friendly little terrier popped out of the front doorway, followed by his equally amiable owner. I told the man of my speculation, and he confirmed that my surmise was accurate. One was being fattened up for Christmas and one for Easter. Apparently they are very fragile creatures. Even a plane going overhead can cause them to drop down dead; and they have to be kept away from chickens which harbour a disease fatal to them.

Naturally, I thought of my niece Alex’s pet Terry, and in telling the man of him, said Alex was lucky to have bred him successfully. Actually, it is Terry, hatched early last year, now fully grown, having come through the last winter festive season unscathed, who is fortunate. Mind you, he has been to some extent feather-bedded.

This afternoon we drove out to Ferndene Farm Shop in Bashley for various supplies.

The rhubarb for our evening crumble came, washed and trimmed like everything else, from Ferndene, as did the orange whose zest with ginger paste from a halal shop in Morden, flavoured this wonderful sweet, served, naturally, with custard. Before that we enjoyed Morrison’s wild rice with Jackie’s, certainly not tame, chilli con carne. I finished the Campo Dorado.

A Precarious Career

Horses and carriages are not an unusual sight in the lanes of Minstead. As I walked down toward Football Green this morning, a horse pulling an old carriage containing two gentlemen trotted towards me directly into the sun, which glinted from the windscreens of the convoy of cars keeping pace with it. Like any other considerate road user, the animal nodded acknowledgement to the driver of a New Forest Council drain clearing vehicle I had seen operating further up the road.

From Football Green I took the road through the grounds of Minstead Lodge training project, where Dave had told me I would see goats that he and Gladys had seen as kids. That is when the goats were in their infancy, not my friends. I did indeed see the goats, and geese, and donkeys.

Leaving these grounds and turning right down Seamans Lane I again took the Suters Cottage route across the forest. Walking under the dead tree I had photographed yesterday, I was rewarded with a sight of some of the wonderfully weird shapes these fallen trunks metamorphose into. A fox and a rhino, perhaps?

Keeping straight across the wilderness I eventually emerged a little further up Running Hill. It is very clear that the forest across the road from our Lower Drive does actually link with Shave Wood. I had once asked a woman returning with her dog: ‘Does that lead anywhere?’. She had said it didn’t. Well, I suppose if all you do is park your car on the forest verge and let your dog out for an euphemistic walk, you wouldn’t know, would you?

Today I finished reading my friend Michael Kindred’s autobiographical work, ‘Once Upon a Game’, being a description of his ‘precarious career as a games inventor’. For two reasons I am mightily relieved that I can wholeheartedly recommend this entertaining book. The first is because Michael is a very good long-standing friend and, in the world of cryptic crosswords, colleague. The second is that I feature as one of his collaborators.

Michael’s capacity to entertain is at least twofold in this piece. The first strand of this talent is in his descriptions of the process of creativity from the, sometimes failing, germ of an idea to the shop shelves. I found his story of how the very successful board game ‘Bewitched’ came into being fascinating and provoking of much admiration. Without giving too much away I can record that his observation of a discarded but saved ‘just in case’ magnet from a kitchen cupboard door mechanism, led to an idea for the game that produced a surprise element that immediately captivated the minds of the Waddington assessors.

For those who are intrigued by the actual mechanics of the games; how these developed; the intricacies of the processes of playing; and the rules, there is a different kind of entertainment. I have to confess that my brain doesn’t easily grasp such concepts, so I did skip some sections. If you have a mind like Maggie and Mike’s rather brilliant daughter Cathy, I can assure you that you will be too gripped to skip anything. Super-intelligence is not however necessary for enjoyment of these sections, for Michael does have the ability to make them simple, which benefitted the children at the Southwell primary school where he played a once-weekly play-testing session. I am sure the visits of Mr. Kindred were most popular. The expertise in working with groups, of both Michael and his wife Maggie, was put to good use in the production of the very popular ‘Once Upon a Group’, the first book to come out of the 4M stable.

Just as our work on cryptic crosswords and related books involved Michael and me bouncing ideas off each other, so the games creation involved a similar relationship with the late Malcolm Goldsmith. My friend and I shared much fun, as did he with Malcolm.

The light-hearted nature of this professional autobiography does not conceal the nerve-wracking aspects of the author’s chosen career. Creativity is an intensely personal process which, as he says, needs the reinforcement of appreciation and acceptance by others. To persevere in the face of the inevitable disappointments requires great courage and resilience. The need to make a living from the products, and their likely short-lived nature, puts timescales on the work which create considerable pressure. The inventor can never rest on his laurels. New ideas must always be forthcoming. The classics such as Scrabble and Monopoly were produced in a different era. I don’t know about Monopoly, but Scrabble was developed as a family game having the benefit of many years’ play-testing before it reached the public. As Michael states, the support of a good wife is also rather helpful. A daughter who loves games is equally a considerable asset.

The book can be obtained from www.kindredgamesandbooks.co.uk

Jackie produced perfectly cooked lamb chops and crisp vegetables for our evening meal with which I opened Campo Dorado rioja 2012 that Matthew had brought from the Upper Dicker Village Shop.

The Ladybird

It was all go at Castle Malwood Lodge this morning. Virtually simultaneously we were descended upon by Autoglass to replace the windscreen; by someone else to fix the intercom system, including ours and Steve’s at number eight who had left his keys with us; and by a surveyor to inspect what I think is imperceptible damage to the ceiling as a result of the leak from upstairs.

Ever chivalrous, I left Jackie to it and went for a walk. I had decided to investigate a footpath I had noticed behind the cottages at the foot of the hill into Minstead. It now seemed dry enough to see where it led. I thought London Minstead likely. As I reached the turn-off I met Gladys and Dave who confirmed my speculation and said they were going that way to Hazel Hill Farm to buy eggs. They led the way.

Dave told me that if I walked on further there was a path that led through the forest and came out near our gate. At the far end of London Minstead a right angled bend takes you to the Cadnam/Lyndhurst road. To the left of this is a gravel path marked ‘No access. Suter’s Cottage only’. This was the road to take. I took it. It stops at Suter’s Cottage, beyond which is a field containing a mare with her foal. There are many such little families around at the moment.

I walked straight past the idyllic home in its sylvan setting and into the forest. There was no more footpath. However, I am now quite good at clambering over fallen trees into the unknown, and avoiding twisting my ankles on the hardened lips of pitted clay cups stamped out by ponies’ hooves.

Having a pretty good idea of the direction in which I wanted to go, I nevertheless zigzagged all over the place, surmounting the above-mentioned obstacles and living branches, especially of hollies. My ears told me that somewhere ahead lay the A31, and that there was at least one horse or pony over to my left. I decided to go as straight as possible. Then I saw the flash of pink through the trees on the left. That might be a guide of some sort. So I diverted left. The colour came from a plastic bucket in a field. Two parallel fences and a few trees separated me from the field and the rows of houses beyond that.

I should probably have ignored the bucket. Instead, I kept as close to the fences as I could. A considerable amount of zigzagging was required. Eventually I espied the back of a cottage that I thought might be Hungerford, and decided to make my way round to that. It was the very same, and I soon found myself on the shaded tarmac of Running Hill. Had I not been diverted by the bucket, and had I held my nerve, I would no doubt have left the forest just where Dave had said I would.

It is now so hot that Jackie’s garden pots need to be watered twice a day. I was to feel great relief that I had taken an early walk as we set off in the car to Totton in the afternoon for a shop at Lidl and Asda. The chillers in Asda were most welcome.

Some days ago Jackie told me the story of the ladybird. When Flo was about three years old, Becky had taken her to a garden centre to buy her grannie a present. She bought one, wrapped it, and full of expectation, handed it over. ‘Oh, that’s beautiful’, exclaimed Jackie as she opened it. With her arms thrust behind her, as was her wont, little Flo asked: ‘Is it very, very beautiful?’. Of course it was. The present was a stick to plant among the garden flowers with a plastic ladybird attached to the top. Jackie told me the story with regret, for the gift was now rather disintegrated, and had been lost in her move.

Yesterday, my birthday, was not long after Jackie’s. She was given her presents before I had mine. Flo presented a small parcel. ‘Is it very, very beautiful?’, asked Jackie. This delighted our granddaughter, because Jackie then unwrapped a small ladybird on a little stick.

The new creature now has a special place in the garden.

This evening we took Elizabeth to The Plough Inn at Tiptoe. I ate a wonderful fish pie; Jackie’s choice was cajun chicken; and Elizabeth chose liver and bacon. All lived up to expectations, as did the crumble and creme brûlée to follow. Doom Bar and Becks were the draft beers we drank.

A Dog’s Life

After opening a range of presents this, my seventy first birthday, morning I went on a long walk with Matthew and Oddie. Elizabeth and Louisa at different points telephoned with greetings, so I was a little distracted from guiding Matthew on the walk. The result was that we walked up to Stoney Cross where a gentleman asked for directions to Emery Down. Not being exactly sure whether he could drive to Forest Road without going onto the A31, and subsequently finding he couldn’t, I decided we would try to find a route that I felt sure must exist. Walking through three five-barred gates and passing directly in front of Little Chef, we did indeed find the way, and walked along the road to Lyndhurst before turning left onto the bridleway which joined the bridle path with which I am familiar; then on down to the first ford and back to the bottle bank by Minstead Hall.

There are lovely meadow flowers blooming alongside the A31 in the vicinity of Little Chef. Another driver, seeking directions to that eating place went on ahead of us along the rough tracks through the gateways. He and his teenaged passengers had been decanted into the restaurant by the time we arrived there.

It was along Forest Road that our brave little Oddie began to remind us that he is the equivalent in dog years of a 98 year old human. He flagged a bit, and was clearly thirsty. So was I actually, but I wasn’t going to drink the water I led him to. If desperate, I might have tried the clear water from the ford for which I was aiming, but certainly not the muddy, midge spawning pool we came across en route. Oddie was happy though. And, in the ford, he had a second supply.

Matthew had to carry him pretty much the rest of the way, otherwise watching him limping stiffly along was much too painful. This reminded me of a dog at the other end of life also struggling on the roads. Like Oddie, our Newark pet, Paddy, was also a rescue dog. Paddy, ostensibly Sam’s collie/labrador cross, was really Jessica’s familiar. She was rescued from the rescue centre’s necessary cull of puppies not chosen for adoption, by the family selection committee. When she was just a few weeks old, we took her for a walk in Stapleford Woods. After a while she began whimpering and we realised that her baby paws had not been toughened enough for tarmac.

When we eventually arrived at the bottle bank today we should have had another eighteen minutes or so to go. However, I knew Jackie planned a drive down to this refuse dump; Oddie couldn’t walk any more; Matthew was a bit tired of carrying him; I, of course, was fighting fit and raring to go, but thinking it might be quite nice for the others to have a lift back in the car, I rang Jackie and suggested she brought the bottles down and took us home in the car. I can hear you pointing out that I could have walked back on my own, had I wanted to, but that would have been rather churlish, wouldn’t it?

Matthew had predicted that Oddie would collapse when we got back, and have a good sleep. He omitted to mention the obvious, which was where the little terrier would lie. Where else, but in my chair?

Between Matthew’s departure and the arrival of Becky, Flo, and Ian, Jackie and I watched history being made on the tennis court. Andy Murray defeated Novak Djokovic of Serbia to become the first male British player to win Wimbledon since Fred Perry in 1936.

This evening Ian took us all out to a restaurant of my choice. It had to be the recently discovered Plough at Tiptoe. Three of us had crispy haddock, chips, and peas. Becky enjoyed the tagliatelle as much as Jackie had done a couple of days ago; and Ian rated his roast beef, lamb, and chicken dinner the best he had eaten. Ian and I ploughed through enormous bowls of excellent apple and raspberry crumble with custard, and the others scoffed delicious berry creme brulees. Doom Bar, Fosters, Kronenberg, Diet Coke, Becks, and Apple juice were drunk. all in all, a splendid event.

The Fly Whisk

We are now basking in hot, sunny, weather. To celebrate I walked the Mill Lane/Emery Down loop in sandals.

Near the farm holiday cottages at the top of the lane, in addition to the usual crop of ponies, two young donkeys grazed in a field. Even from a distance I could tell they were asses because their ears were clearly elongated.

The millpond’s streams are now less full and the lake, for that is what it is, now bears irises and waterlilies.

Many of the roads and lanes around Minstead have barely enough room for one vehicle. Passing tends to be a pretty dodgy affair. Whether driving or walking you have to take care not to be persuaded into a ditch. The road leading to Emery Down on today’s route is particularly narrow. Despite signs indicating that there are passing places, some cars are forced to back up quite a long way. All the roads were very busy today. At one point a car meeting two others and a motorbike head on took the better part of valour and went into reverse. As there was no way a pedestrian could thread himself through there, I could only ‘stand and stare’. Well, I now have plenty of time for that.

There is far more concern for those on foot as one enters Emery Down. Especially as there is also a blind bend near the village hall, the sign warning drivers what they may encounter is really rather necessary.

Whisking and flicking at flies, mares’ tails were much in evidence today. (Anyone who cares to humour me may wish to read yesterday’s post to glean a full appreciation of that sentence. It will, after all, be my birthday very soon after this ramble is posted.)

Jackie hoped to retain her resolution to be rather mean with the birds today. Except for the two near the feeding station, her myriad of hanging baskets are now chock full of gorgeous flowers. The exceptions are suffering from a surfeit of guano. They have required mucking out, which means they have been shorn of clumps that had the misfortune to lie under the avian post-prandial evacuations. The miscreants were punished by being sent out into the forest to forage for a day.

Later this afternoon I began reading my friend Michael Kindred’s book ‘Once Upon a Game’.

For dinner Jackie served up Dandy and Beano style pork and leak sausage and mash with which she drank Roc Saint Vincent sauvignon blanc Bordeaux 2011. I finished the Maipo red and began a Cimarosa shiraz cabernet sauvignon of the same year.

Later Mat and Oddie turned up to eat the last of the sausages and a tin of Butcher’s.

Mare’s Tails

On the train yesterday, with Kenneth O. Morgan’s ‘The Twentieth Century’, I finished reading ‘The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain’ in the 1992 edition. Ten university historians have each contributed a section in their particular field, from Roman times to 1991. Written for the layperson it does neverless assume a certain amount of prior knowledge, the lack of which caused me to make some assumptions. It is an excellent overview of 2,000 years of history, well written, and lavishly illustrated. Each separate piece flows into the next, quite seamlessly. It provided interesting revision for periods I know a bit about, and was informative about those I didn’t.

I must confess to having been relieved at getting to the end. Not because the reading wasn’t pleasing, but because it will considerably lighten my bag on my train trips. It is quite a big book, but its size was not the reason for its weight. The illustrations are interspersed with the text. This requires a heavy glossy paper throughout. I much prefer it this way. The alternative is to cluster the illustrations at two or three arbitrary places, so you are often perusing pictures the subject of which you have not yet encountered.

As we progressed through the second millennium the illustrations changed in nature and subject. Photographs of artefacts provided most of the early ones. With the advent of the possibility of using a contemporary camera, people and events came into focus. Written records enabled the writers to go further than when facilitated mostly by archeological finds. From the eighteenth century onwards there was less of an emphasis on royalty and more on the politics of the people. Given its publication date it was rather salutory to see the first fifty years of my life confined to history.

I enjoyed the book. It was another that I had inherited from my late friend Ann.

A trip to Corfe Castle in Dorset continued the historical theme. Certainly in situ during the time of King William I, it was said to be the scene of the assassination of King Edward in 978. Described in the twelfth century as the most secure castle in England, it remained impregnable until, during the Civil War, Lady Bankes’s stout resistance to the Roundhead siege was ended by the treachery of one of her own soldiers who admitted Cromwell’s men during the night. It was then blown up by Captain Hughes’s sappers in 1646, leaving us with a dramatic skyline on a natural mound the outer perimeter of which has been eroded by the action of two rivers. From the National Trust car park Jackie andI followed a path along the site of the moat tracked by the Corfe River. Through gaps in the trees we could see the impressive remains that had survived the explosion. Pieces of ‘tumble’, as were termed those stones falling down the hill, mingled with the residue still standing.

Inside the castle, through the entrance and across the access bridge, we could see the remains of walls sprouting valerian and accommodating dog roses. Jackdaws trotted about the ramparts, and buzzards circled overhead. Just past the gateway sat a pair of stocks. I managed to climb most of the way to the top of the keep, which was scary. There was an observation platform from which people looked down over the valley and the sloping sides of the mound. Although I did unwittingly actually reach the same level as that, I chickened out of turning the corner that would have led me to it. Jackie, who had done this trip with her sisters at the weekend, had the good sense to sit on a bench and await my descent.

Venturing to look over almost any wall gave one a good, vertiginous, view of whatever lay beneath.

Having had our fill of the ruins we wandered into the picturesque stone village of Corfe which is dominated by its castle.

On the way home we took a diversion to Sway Road in Brockenhurst to look at the outside of a railway cottage we had seen on the internet. The house and its neighbour shared a small private track accessed by a cattle grid. This should have led us to expect the banks to be completely devoid of mares’ tails. We were to be disappointed. There was a widespread proliferation of the botanical version. These are invasive deep-rooted weeds with fast growing underground stems that may penetrate as deep as 7 ft, and have been doing so since the time of the dinosaurs. This pernicious plant is extremely difficult to eradicate. Ground elder, which took me sixteen years to banish from Lindum House, is a pussy cat in comparison.

After this investigation, we drove straight through Sway and carefully entered the car park of The Plough at Tiptoe, where we had wonderful meals. Mine was a mixed grill cooked to perfection, with the steak medium rare as I had asked for, so large as to make it impossible for me to contemplate a sweet, and to earn me the admiration of the barmaid for actually finishing it. Jackie was equally impressed with her ham and mushroom tagliatelli and the creme brûlée she did manage to eat. She drank Becks and I drank Doom Bar.

Our last diversion was to Barton on Sea where we had a look at The Wilderness, another house from the internet. This was in a secluded position near Barton Common, but has been sold subject to contract.

The Abdication

Jackie drove me to and from Southampton for my trip to London to visit first Norman, then Carol.

I chose the Golden Jubilee Bridge route to walk to Green Park.

The South Bank living sculpture I had photographed on 18th June had, as usual, caught the eye of another lens wielder.

Making my way to the bridge I became aware of how, from certain directions, London’s modern Eye can dwarf the older structures that tourists come to picture.

On one of the supports of the railway bridge a pair of pigeons, possibly having produced fertiliser for an optimistic maple that had taken root beside them, slumbered in apparent ignorance of the lumbering locomotives behind them.

Passing The Playhouse theatre at Charing Cross, I was treated to the strains of Spamalot’s ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’, being broadcast into the street. That truly hilarious song from the Monty Python ‘Life of Brian’ film of 1979 could so easily have been blasphemous, but somehow managed to avoid it.

Near Trafalgar Square, where Admiral Lord Nelson keeps his single eye on an era he could not have dreamed of whilst saving the English nation at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, one of Westminster Bridge’s lone pipers had found a new pitch.

The empty plinth, which periodically provides a temporary pedestal for pieces of modern sculpture, awaits its next tenant.

A silent male dancer entertained the crowds beneath the National Gallery. They gave him quite a lot of breathing space.

On Pall Mall vast throngs, some looking rather disgruntled, queued for what would perforce be a very leisurely sightseeing tour through London’s traffic.

In my Central London years I often shopped in Jermyn Street at sales time. I am no longer tempted because I still wear shirts bought there up to three or four decades ago. In addition to Cary Grant, Hawes & Curtis are featuring Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson hoping to attract prospective customers to take advantage of their large reductions. In his brief tenure this playboy king provoked a constitutional crisis in 1936 by his determination to marry his twice divorced lover. In that bygone age this was acceptable neither to the Church nor the State. He therefore chose to abdicate and thrust his younger brother onto centre stage. A reluctant and shy monarch, King George VI, despite a dreadful stutter, with his wife Elizabeth, saw us nobly through the war years and, in 1952, died young, making way for our current long-serving queen. Colin Firth was awarded a well earned Oscar for his spellbinding performance in the 2010 film ‘The King’s Speech’ which follows King George’s struggles to find his voice. One has to wonder how the shirt-makers chose their particular icons.

In Green Park those who can still comfortably get down to ground level eschewed the deck chairs and sat on the grass.

For lunch, Norman served tender kleftiko, savoury rice, red cabbage and mixed vegetables followed by apricot flan. In anticipation of my forthcoming birthday he provided a superb Primitivo di Manduria wine of 2010.

I took my usual transport to Carol’s and thence to Waterloo for the return journey. On the train, with the back of my hand, I managed to slap a sleeping young woman beside me on the thigh. As she dozed, the pen with which she had been writing rolled off the table. I used my marvellous reflexes in an attempt to prevent it from falling to the floor between our seats. The thigh got in the way, and the ballpoint disappeared into the dark recess, so I was forced to slip my arm down the gap to retrieve it. My co-passenger woke up with a start and was very good about it.

Oak Tree Farm

Yesterday’s observant readers will have noticed the post was earlier than usual. This is because I pressed ‘Publish’ rather than ‘Preview’ by mistake. Once today’s posts have been set in motion there is no turning back. Some of us, of course still use what is jocularly termed ‘snail mail’, where you write on paper, place the missive in an envelope, write an address and stick a stamp on that and place it in a red box. Until placed in the box there is plenty of time to rethink and even alter what you have written. Modern technology allows you endless painless revisions, but once you have pressed the button your message is metaphorically snatched out of your hands. There are no snails in cyber space. Mind you, the normal post, be it adminstered by the Royal Mail or its commercial rivals, is pretty quick. We can still expect first class letters to arrive the next day. Once it was even quicker. In my childhood there were two deliveries a day; in Victorian times even more. It was then possible to arrange an evening’s meeting through exchange of letters beginning that morning. There was no texting in those days.

The Penny Post was introduced by Sir Robert Peel in 1841. Originally horsepower was harnessed to carry the mail. Now huge vans cart them along our motorways and special locomotive vans transport them through the night. I once knew a man who worked on the mail trains. The vans were mobile sorting offices. Bags of mail were loaded onto the carriage, their contents removed and sorted, and unloaded at the other end of the country. The system required the bags to be upturned and thoroughly shaken, to ensure that no mail had been caught in the seams. One day he had adopted this procedure when a slim sheet of paper floated to the floor. It was a postcard sent some forty years earlier from Germany. Strenuous efforts were made to seek out the parents of the young man who had sent it during the war.

Soon after our dinner of Jackie’s liver and bacon casserole David Small arrived to replace the broken garage lock. The light was fading by the time he finished.

The casserole was served with crisp vegetables and sauteed potatoes enhanced by onion and garlic. It was rather a miracle that the spuds were not limp. These hang in a bag behind the kitchen door, so they won’t turn green if you leave them too long. Yesterday’s Murphies were wizened and bendy, displaying the creases you see in a new born baby’s skin. Much of their stuffing had been drawn out by the new shoots they were sprouting. But they weren’t green. Jackie had disguised this beautifully.

As we had promised ourselves, we took another trip to Ferndene Farm Shop, joined the throng and well and truly stocked up. I have never been to a Harrods sale, but I have seen pictures in newspapers of bargain-hunters frenziedly elbowing each other out of the way to get at the goodies on display. Some of the most frail-looking customers in what is really a food supermarket of excellent quality and reasonable prices, would not be out of place at a Harrods free-for-all.

Across the road from the shop lies Oak Tree Farm, a haven for red pillar and telephone box enthusiasts. The gravelled courtyard behind a securely locked pair of entrance gates are filled with these symbols of England. A black-painted Georgian wall-mounted letterbox is set in the establishment’s brick wall. The owner is a serious collector.

Anyone interested enough in the subject of red telephone boxes may also like to read my post of 15th October last year entitled ‘Kersall Telephone Box’.

On leaving the shop we went driveabout. New Milton’s main street was closed to traffic. This made it rather difficult to reach Milford-on-Sea, but we managed it in the end and walked along the sea front past Hurst Pond Nature reserve out to Hurst Point, and back to The Needles Eye cafe (see post of 10th January).

We happened to pass a house for sale in High Ridge Crescent that we had seen on the internet. It confirmed our interest.

As we left our car in the Hurst Road car park and I announced my intention to take photographs, a woman advised me to make sure the horizon was straight. I didn’t mention that it wouldn’t matter too much because I have an editing facility which can straighten images. My picture of a crow aiming for the point of an arrow that was the water’s edge, seemed to me to be enhanced by the angle of the skyline, so I didn’t change it.

A heron on the hunt in the pond did not move for the whole time it took us to walk to the spit and back.

The area is an intriguing nature reserve because it lies at a point where freshwater from the River Dane meets tidal water coming up the gully from the spit. The sight of the seabirds swooping, manoeuvring, and diving at an alarming rate along this channeled out watercourse reminded Jackie of the X-wings speeding along the tunnel during the famous Death Star battle in ‘Star Wars’.

Like much of the Dorset coast this area is subject to erosion. In an attempt to stay the inevitable action of the waves, huge rocks line the shore alongside the nature reserve, providing shelter for the Californian poppies clinging to the pebbled margins. These were imported from Norway, and today the quartz they contain glinted in the sunlight.

This evening’s meal was a tender and lean roast lamb dinner. Maipo reserva merlot 2012 was my wine.

Machine Operated Hoops

On 25th June I mentioned that all the garages had been broken into. The locks need replacement. The others are all owned by separate residents. They will all deal with them individually, which seems a bit uneconomic to me. However, as a tenant, I managed to get the agent to arrange for a locksmith to make contact. He got me to photograph the lock and e-mail it to him so he could identify it. We will now have a succession of individual locksmiths descending on Minstead. There will be no consequent discount for bulk orders.

After this we had a drive. First stop was Donna-Marie in Poulner for my haircut. This chirpy pink young lady doesn’t appreciate silence. Jackie sat in the waiting area and was drawn in to respond to the questions designed to open up conversation. It was all very pleasant as long as you didn’t just come in for a quiet sit-down and snip.

When the answer to the enquiry about where Jackie had been camping turned out to be very close to where Donna lives, we were well away. Naturally this led to camping stories. My hairdresser was very amused by the tale of the keys reported in ‘An Uncomfortable Night’ posted on 26th August last year.

We then went for an accommodation window shop in Bashley Cross Road, New Milton. The house we were aiming for was very attractive inside and out at the back, but we were intrigued by the lack of a front elevation photograph. The rather twee windows, including a bay concealed behind a hedge, may have contributed to this omission. Next door is a chicken farm. We wondered how many cockerels may be on song in the mornings. Alongside the farm is Ferndene Farm Shop. Whether or not we will ever come back to look at the house properly (we have no money yet), we will revisit this excellent shop. Five tills were inadequate to cater for all the people queuing for all kinds of fresh vegetables; meats and meat products; cheese; pickles; and much more, not to mention the vast array of plants outside beside the ample car park. So many people crowded around the shelves and cooling cabinets that I felt rather in the way and stepped back to allow Jackie to get on with her task of selection. Wherever I stood I blocked someone’s passage. Actually, as we arrived at the car park, I commented on the superb quality of the plants. Since this shop is sited alongside a country road, all these shoppers would have driven here, possibly from some distance. The pies we sampled for lunch confirmed my impression that this is the best shop of its kind I have ever experienced.

Back home we turned our minds to windscreen insurance. My post of 25th May featured Ryan of Screen-Care UK carrying out a repair necessitated by a crack left by a stone thrown up by an overtaking vehicle a few days earlier. Never before had either Jackie or I been subjected to a cracked windscreen. Nevertheless, a few days ago, another was inflicted. An impatient Porsche on the M27, overtaking, came straight across our path; there was a sharp crack; and a minute horizontal dint no more than a couple of centimetres long appeared near the base of the glass on the driver’s side. As it was so small we didn’t think it worth repairing. Within the last few days, however, it has spread across most of the width of the window, and even sent a tributary skywards.

This second crack reminded Jackie that she has not yet received the cheque to cover Ryan’s express repair. Maybe, she thought, she hadn’t let Churchill, the insurance company, know her new address? She hadn’t.

So now there were three matters to be resolved. To inform the insurers of the change of address; to follow up the cheque for £40; and to report the need for a replacement windscreen. The vast improvements brought about by modern technology mean that you understand it will be a robot, albeit one sounding almost human, who will answer the phone and invite you to press a variety of numbers according to taste. I would have said choice, but I have learned that what I am dealing with is a menu. For this reason the use of an antique telephone sporting an actual dial is not to be recommended. Of the four telephone numbers given with Churchill’s policy documents, Customer Care seemed a likely bet. It was, if you were not an existing customer and wanted to be given a choice of policies for motor vehicles, houses, etc. If you were already paying your premium you were offered no way of reaching the correct destination. Claims Hotline was pretty similar. Glass Repair and Replacement was a little better. We were answered by a person. When I’d finished explaining our three concerns, Clem informed me that I had come straight through to Autoglass. He wasn’t Churchill. Neither was he Screen-Care. ‘How do I get to Churchill?’, seemed a natural question, to which he didn’t know the answer. And Screen-Care was beyond his remit. But he could organise the replacement windscreen.

Our division of labour works like this: I go through the machine operated hoops, then pass the phone to Jackie once a real live person appears. The reason we do it this way is because I am marginally more sane by the time the obstacles have been overcome. She found Clem very helpful and particularly reassuring in his explanation that the windscreen in its current condition would not shatter. The job was booked for next week, and the £75 excess taken.

I was therefore forced to take up the other matters by e-mail. You can possibly imagine the tenor of my message, written, of course, in Jackie’s name, so she will have the pleasure of the insurers’ response.