May 2014 – Page 3 – derrickjknight

Rabbits And A Slow Worm

The wind still raged after a stormy night. I walked down to the Spar shop and back for strawberry jam to accompany scones for the visit of Michael, Heidi, Emily and Alice. They didn’t have any so I settled for blackcurrant.

Choppy breakers on the Solent, a good mile away, could be seen from Downton Lane, where plants

such as periwinkle, even in the shelter of the hedgerow, quivered precariously before the blasts.

Droplets from the otherwise uninspired fountains in Shorefield Country Park sparkled in the occasional bright sunlight as they were blown across the disturbance of the surface of the pool.
According to the poet Alfred Noyes, Kew, which ‘isn’t far from London’, is worth a visit at lilac time. We are quite a way from London,

but we have a few lilacs in the garden, as well as various clematis, most of which are entwined among trees and other shrubs. One such is the montana shown here.
Jackie put on a splendid lunch for us and our visitors. Broccoli and Stilton soup was followed by pizza and garlic bread, before an array of cold meats, cheeses and various salad ingredients.

Michael, Heidi, and the girls accompanied me on a walk to the beach.

A slow worm slithering across the tarmac on the path to the rookery caused some consternation. It looked so much like a snake.
After descending the steps from the cliff top we continued along the shingle to the Hordle Cliff car park where Jackie met us. Heidi joined Jackie on the return in the car and the rest of us walked back.

Like the rooks, battling against the buffeting wind, we struggled to maintain our line. Guess who took the pictures.

Alice stopped on the way back to photograph rabbits scuttling about among the static caravans in the country park.

When she got home she e-mailed me some of her pictures:
After a quick cup of tea and scones I accompanied Michael and his family to New Milton railway station where we deposited Emily on a train for her journey back to Nottingham to rejoin her university. The rest of us then returned for more tea at our leisure before my son, daughter-in-law and younger granddaughter set off back to Sanderstead.
I had forgotten to give Michael his belated birthday present, so telephoned him and he returned to collect it and continued on his way.
This evening the remainder of the super soup sufficed for our supper.

The Nursery Field

This morning I walked along Christchurch Road to New Milton to meet friend Alison at the railway station. Jackie collected us from there, took us to Old Post House, and returned our guest later.
This road winds and undulates but is still busy enough to sound like a formula one racing circuit on telly. Much skipping to and fro across the road was required to ensure that I kept, as far as possible, facing the oncoming traffic. Because I always had to make sure I was seen by the drivers, on bends like the one I am approaching in the photograph I had to cross the road and present my rear to those driving on the left. I was quite relieved to reach Caird Avenue and the footpath into the town.

The verge on the edge of this wide tarmacked path was being trimmed.

Turning into Station Road I enjoyed the dusting of buttercups, daisies, and clover on the grass lining this thoroughfare. I expect they will be next for the chop.
Alongside Christchurch Road itself, a narrow cut has been applied to the otherwise pathless grasses. Cow parsley, bluebells, dandelion clocks, daisies, violets, and the occasional wild aquilegias have escaped the whirling blades.

The early lambs are fattening up nicely, making one feel slightly uncomfortable about mint sauce.

The nursery field still has a smattering of new occupants.

Wandering round our own garden early this evening, I was reminded of how much attention it needs. We cannot wait to get started on it, but it has to take second place to the inside of the house at the moment.

Jackie did tireless work cleaning, scraping off careless paint, polishing, and fixing loose fittings upstairs, so it seemed only right to take her out for a meal this evening.

We chose The Jarna Bangladeshi restaurant in Old Milton. Its unprepossessing modern exterior in no way prepares the visitor for the cavernous interior modelled, according to Sam, the proprietor, on a cross between a Mogul palace and The Orient Express. Sam is proud of his heritage, as demonstrated by his dating the traditional cooking methods. Forget the flock wallpaper, The Jarna’s seating, walls, and even ceilings are clad in velvet. Naive paintings depicting scenes of Bangladesh are bordered by tied back curtain fabric and sculpted velvet. There are two sets of chandeliers and a number of discrete cubicles.

What is particularly marked about this place is how spotlessly clean everything is. With such soft, plush, fabrics this would seem to be impossible. Sam explained that four or five of them set to once a week with Vanish. It shows.

The food was excellent. My choice was Shath koraa, being this establishment’s version of the Hatkora I have eaten at Ringwood’s Curry Garden. Jackie enjoyed chicken dopiaza. We both drank Cobra.

Next time I will most definitely take my camera. There will be a next time.

I Am Pleased To Have Retained The Film

This morning I continued sorting out the box marked ‘Contents of Desk’. This involved a certain amount of shredding and binning, which was hardly surprising since most of it hadn’t been touched for five years.
Jackie beavered away upstairs. Now that we have created the library we can concentrate on sorting out the spare bedrooms and bathroom.
I diverted to put the drawing of Michael reading to Matthew behind glass. We had a frame which looked contemporary with the picture, so I used that.
Two strips of black and white negatives proved, when scanned, to be not very interesting ones from ‘The Magnificent Seven’ project. I probably rejected them at the time but couldn’t bring myself to throw them away. I have now done so.
Somewhat disappointed at not having discovered negatives I could use, I delved into the random selection I have featured before, and came up with more black and white material to scan.

The photographs included one of Sam and his ‘Soldier’, his transitional object depicted in ‘Fascinated By His Shadow’. He also clutches ‘Dogger’, named from Shirley Hughes’ beautifully illustrated books.
This picture was taken in 1982. I am not sure where, but it was a National Trust property, probably in Surrey.
I remember very well the location of the others because of what happened there.

They show Matthew, Sam, and Jessica in Tooting Swimming Baths that same year. The others enjoyed public baths swimming. I didn’t. Matthew was always entertaining and attentive as an older brother. The delight the two boys took in their activity is apparent.

Jessica was in the water to keep an eye on things if necessary. Becky would also have been present.
I trotted up to the observation level with my camera. This was clearly very naive of me, but it was more than thirty years ago. It wasn’t long before I was challenged and told not to take any more pictures. I had to satisfy the attendant that it was my own family I was photographing. Fair enough, but I am pleased to have retained the film.
This evening’s dinner was what I call Jackie’s symphony in white and cream, consisting of smoked haddock and cod, tangy cauliflower cheese, mashed potato, runner beans and carrots. Treacle sponge with clotted cream was to follow.

Finishing Touches

We have a long, but not tall, Chinese oak cabinet which has gone up and down stairs in our new home like a yo-yo. The library had seemed its most likely final resting place. The almost completed project no longer offered space for it. So back upstairs we carted it. When I bought the chests of drawers from Fergusson’s, one was intended to stand beneath this piece of furniture. We had second thoughts. Now we have thought again.
I then emptied the last four boxes of books; Jackie got out the vacuum cleaner; and we set about transporting the games table into the library. Had we not covered the garage door this would have been quite a simple matter. But we had. So it wasn’t.
The table was surplus to requirements in the sitting room. We carried it into the hall, intending to take it through the kitchen into the library. We couldn’t get it into the kitchen. So we took the casters off. We got it into the kitchen cupboard known as the glory hole. We couldn’t get it out into the kitchen itself. So we shifted it back into the hall and had a think.

I then had the bright, albeit somewhat tardy, idea of taking it out through the front door, round the side of the house, and in through the back door which now leads straight into the library. This worked like a dream. When I suggested to Jackie that we may not have needed to remove the casters, she suggested that I should not ‘even go there’.
The legs of the piece had taken a bit of scuffing in its various moves, so Jackie applied wood stain to the wounds and polish to both limbs and surface. A piece of string held the slightly loosened leg in place whilst the glue dried.
The carpet that Michael had given us had just one grease mark on it. To complete the creation of the room my lady got down and scrubbed this with an application of Vanish. She fixed a clock to the side of one of the bookcases.
Still visible in one corner of the library are a handful of Safestore boxes containing a selection of volumes for a charity stall our friend Heather is running in August.

A wander round the garden followed. The bungalow next door has been unoccupied for many years and such fence as there ever was between this and our property has been swamped by shrubs, one of which is a photinia. We think it is not ours, but never mind it blooms in our garden.

There are also a couple of yellow flowering shrubs we could not identify until Jackie’s research revealed them to be corokia cotoneasters which originate in New Zealand.

The copper beech is now in full leaf.

White was the dominant colour of the hedgerows in Downton Lane as I took an early evening walk into a fierce headwind coming off the Solent.

Cow parsley, stitchwort and may blossom have replaced the yellow daffodils and dandelions.

Rooks struggled against the wind to keep their bearings as they winged to and fro to their now clamouring chicks.

It was an evening for kite surfing such as my friend John Smith would relish.

As I arrived at the coastline a lone surfer was about to be joined by others walking down the steps from Hordle Cliff top. They were still setting up by the time I left the beach on which the rollers were again piling up the shingle. An intrepid yachts person was seen in the distance, and the Isle of Wight and The Needles made a landmark backdrop to the scene.

The surfer didn’t manage to keep out of the water.

Hordle Chinese Takeaway provided a spread for our evening meal. The Co-op’s cheesecake was to follow. Jackie drank Hoegarden and I finished the chianti.

Weaning

Michael Watts has identified the allium photographed two days ago as ‘Purple Sensation’. Now it is in full bloom, and lives up to its name. Thank you Michael.

We also have a new rhododendron in flower.
This morning we took another trip to IKEA where we bought four more book cases, some book ends, clocks, and a couple of rugs. The sets of shelves are half the height of the tall ones; three are the same width as those, and one half the width. This was our solution to the problem of having run out of shelf space. They had to be shorter so that they did not obscure the light source from the window to the garden.
Possibly because it was the day after a bank holiday weekend, this was a more pleasant than usual IKEA experience. There were far less customers milling around than usual; we knew exactly what we wanted, and could go straight to the items; and the queues were shorter.

On our return through the forest there were many ponies enjoying munching grass in the sunshine. By the side of the road between Beaulieu and Lymington two mares were suckling their foals as we drove by. Jackie stopped the car for me to walk back and photograph them. Each was by then teaching the art of cropping the sward. I imagine ponies need weaning quite early in life. One mother and child trotted off into the bushes. The others remained unperturbed. I was fascinated at how wobbly on their pins were each of the youngsters, especially when negotiating slopes.
After lunch Jackie made up the shelving whilst I prepared the books for insertion. It was touch and go whether we would be able to make room for the Dictionary of National Biography, MacMillan’s Dictionary of Art, and the Oxford English Dictionary, but I am pleased to say we managed it. There are just three more miscellaneous boxes to be emptied tomorrow.
This evening we dined in Bombay Night in New Milton, where we enjoyed the usual excellent meal with friendly and efficient service. Kingfisher was our drink.

Hours In A Library

During the night I began to realise that, although ‘Monkey’ by Wu Ch’eng En was snuggled up in the novels section of the library, there was no Gibbon among the shelves that I thought had been accurately filled yesterday. That meant that there had to be another History container somewhere among the 24 left to empty. This morning’s search demonstrated no such luck.
There were two.
Consequently another couple of hours was spent moving books along and adjusting the heights of shelves. After lunch it was the turn of Biography. In searching for the first of those, I came across a third History box. It was well into the afternoon before I could tackle the stories of people’s lives. These were all on their shelves soon after our evening meal which consisted of liver, bacon and sausage stew with roast potatoes, carrots and beans, followed by a chocolate eclair. All delicious. I drank via di Cavallo chianti 2012 then got back to finish the last of the biographies.
Over the past day or two I have spent so much time on the task of housing a lifetime’s book collection that I have often thought of Sir Leslie Stephen. Virginia Woolf took the name by which we know her from her husband Leonard. She was born a Stephen, her father being the eminent Victorian man of letters. The reason he has come to mind is that the Folio Society edition of a selection of his writings is called ‘Hours in a Library’. I have spent many of these lately, but, I think, not quite in the way he did, which was in reading and writing. It seems a bit antisocial to hide away with a book, whereas sitting in company with one doesn’t to me.
Stephen was the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, the first volume of which was published in 1885 by Smith, Elder & Co. This is a record of the lives of notable UK people that continues in regular supplements today. From 1917 it has been produced by the Oxford University Press. The original edition ran to 63 volumes, which are now reproduced on the same sheets by OUP, albeit on thinner paper with one third of the number of tomes.
I do have the complete set which we are going to need more bookshelves and organisational ingenuity for me to keep. So it will be off to IKEA tomorrow.
Some OUP publications supplement my 23 of the original nineteenth century issue. How I came by these is a story worth telling. Sam and Louisa, when they were both quite young, had been given the task of hiding these books, individually wrapped, around the house and garden. I had the job of following their clues, as in an Easter Egg hunt, each one leading to another. I wondered when the supply would run out and how many there would be. They were a birthday present from Jessica who had found them in a second hand bookshop in Lincolnshire. I have never discovered any more, although, much later, I did find odd copies of the modern edition, with which to complete the collection, in a shop on Marylebone Road.

Spot The Dummies

Before tackling shelf-filling again I took a wander round the garden. I here present two plants for my readers, please, to identify. The first is the white one originally featured on 28th April:
It is from a bulb and has trefoil petals. Maybe this photograph will aid recognition better than the last.

Secondly, can anyone name this allium?

Another complete day in the library probably progressed the project, although at times it looked as if we had more boxes to empty than we had when we started. However, by lunchtime the Zola novels were in place. This gave impetus to the afternoon’s work, and poetry, plays, literary criticism, and history were all on their shelves by early evening. We might have been even quicker had we not kept coming across more containers labelled history, and another of poetry and plays just when we thought they were all done.

The discovery of the day for me was an annual report cover. In the 1970s and ’80s I was a member of the `Committee of the Queens Park Family Service Unit. I designed several of the covers of the Charity’s Annual Report. As with other drawings for such purposes, I never kept the originals which were retained by the organisations concerned. One summer, a few years ago, I found myself walking past the said FSU and popped in to see if they had a spare copy of a particular publication. I was told that the unit was moving the following week and I could help myself from a box of annual reports that were about to be binned.

I couldn’t believe my luck when I found exactly what I was looking for. This was the annual report for 1980-1981, featuring Sam reaching for a daisy being handed to him by Jessica. Our son is on the back, with the two hands on the front. The drawing is taken from a black and white photograph taken late in 1980 at the Owl House Garden at Lamberhurst in Kent. The Annual Report is a bit grubby and I have left it that way.

I thought I had lost it again, and found it sandwiched between two history books.

There has been the occasional moment when Jackie has politely requested that I remove myself from her china shop. This I believe is a reference to the phrase ‘like a bull in a china shop’ applied to someone who rushes in without thinking and messes everything up. It seems a little unfair to me, but I have to admit that Shelly reminded me yesterday that she had witnessed one such event. We have some tiles on the kitchen wall which had been covered en bloc by a large sheet of cork tiling. we thought this ugly, so I took the said bull by the horns and started stripping it off. We then discovered what the cork was doing there. There were two tiles missing.

The glue used to stick the offending cork in place was pretty strong, so there were bits of it stuck to the remaining tiles. This bull had, in fact, made a right pig’s ear of it.

Among my art materials is a stock of variously coloured card, and an assortment of pastels. Jackie has used some of these to produce dummy tiles, and fixed them in place with contact patches made from carpet tape.

Are you able to spot the dummies?

This evening’s dinner consisted of a delicious liver casserole Jackie produced, with crisp carrots, cauliflower and boiled potatoes in their skins. Afterwards we enjoyed a Post House Pud. This is what I erroneously called Post House Mess yesterday. In my defence I submit that it is prepared in the same way as The Firs Mess. It has now been given the benefit of alliteration. One of today’s ingredients was breakfast apricots from a tin. I don’t suppose it matters that we consumed them at the other end of the day.

A Good Read

Much of the day was spent continuing with the filling of the bookshelves. By the time we had finished last night we were both under the impression that we hadn’t been out that day. We’d both forgotten the mere four hours spent on the IKEA trip which we had in our minds relegated to the day before.
I can categorically state that we have not left the house today. We made a great deal of progress on the novels, but not as much as we at one time thought. When we completed the Novels M box we thought we were more than half way through this major section. I was somewhat perturbed at the shortage of Is. Surely I had more than one Hammond Innes and another Christopher Isherwood. The task is possibly numbing our brains a bit, so I didn’t persist. I should at least have wondered where John Irving had got to.
So….. With only the two aforementioned Is to separate Harris from Joyce, we continued merrily along through to M. Neither did it occur to us that there should be more Hs. What about Hemingway and Hoban?
Determined not to make the same error (you will by now have realised, as we did, that something was awry) with N, we searched and searched for it. That box remained elusive. What we did find, however, was H to J.

One of the beauties of the Billy bookcases is that the shelves are adjustable, so that different sized books can stand alongside each other in their correct alphabetical order. These can be adjusted as you go along. It is also helpful to leave a few gaps so that when inserting an additional volume or two there is enough room on the shelf without having to move everything along, and consequently risk having to readjust the height of the shelves ad infinitum.
If you have omitted a large section like H to J there is no way you have left enough spaces, so there is more pulling out of studs to lower or raise the laminated chipboard on which to perch the books. This is quite a laborious process, and if you haven’t estimated the space correctly, you have to do it over again. Having gone through this experience once, we had a determined effort to find N. The Novels N box was, of course, in the least accessible spot in a far corner surrounded by Reference, History, Philosophy, etc., etc. I got in and heaved it out.
Have I mentioned that when I first met her Jackie was a librarian? I thought not. Well, she was, and this is proving to be quite useful.
After lunch Jackie researched the Internet and found that the

unknown shrub near the bottle brush trees is a Chinese Lantern Tree or Crinodendron Hookerianum. I updated the relevant post.

We also have a beautiful magenta pieris and and a mature lace cap hydrangea.
Two more discoveries from the treasure trove of Safestore Storage boxes are a photograph and a drawing.

The photograph is a heat-sealed print on board. It is too large for my scanner, so I have here taken the image directly from the August 1971 colour slide. Michael is reading to Jackie and me at 76 Amity Grove.

Two years later I made this quick charcoal sketch of him reading to Matthew.

Late this afternoon Shelly dropped in for a visit and brought a few of the plants and garden ornaments we had left at her home.

Jackie and I dined on fish, chips, and mushy peas, followed by a Post House Mess, the ingredients for which are similar to a Firs Mess.

Not Lost After All

Those smaller sized books that are filling the spaces at the top of the library bookshelves need bookends to keep them securely in place.

We needed a few more, which, given that their product is very robust and weighty, meant a trip to IKEA in Southampton this morning. We also went to buy a replacement for Jackie’s kitchen shelves, so generously donated yesterday.
As usual, Jackie grasped a trolley, just in case we saw anything else. This proved to be prescient, since, in addition to the above items, we also came away with a large rug for the entrance hall, several induction hob friendly cooking pans, some gift wrapping paper, and finally, a mini sack barrow. Given that we have probably finished carting large boxes of books backwards and forwards, this latter item seemed rather like locking the stable door (after the horse has bolted).

After nearly two hours in the dry heat atmosphere of this emporium, I felt as usual, as if I were in a trance.

During the wait at checkout I was able to reflect that IKEA, on our way in, had, by virtue of a certain obfuscation of their signage, warned us what we were in for.
One box of goodies retrieved from storage is labelled ‘Contents of Desk’. Since it rattles a bit and would not have been opened for some years, I have rather put off investigating the contents. I dip into it every now and then, and attempt to make decisions about disposal or otherwise.

Today I came across a small print of a photograph taken on honeymoon with Vivien in 1963. We stayed at a bed and breakfast farmhouse in Pendeen in Cornwall, and I am reliably informed by my blogging friend, Melanie of

that this was a shot of Mousehole. I do not have the negative and thought I had lost the print, the significance of which is that it was on the first roll of colour film I ever exposed, and it was instrumental in making me serious about my photography.
It was taken with the Kodak Box Brownie, and has suffered a few blemishes over the years, but I have decided not to remove these, and to present it as I found it.

I also found further art-work I had thought gone forever. Here I reproduce two:

The mother and child was the original drawing for a Christmas card made in 1976.

The elderly lady contemplating an array of medication is my Auntie Gwen.

Gwen was not confused about her pills. The drawing was made for the in-house magazine of my Social Services Area Office in Westminster Social Services. It was called ‘Age Lines’ and was devoted to our work with elderly people. Edited by Sid Briskin, one of the Social Workers, contributions were solicited from all his colleagues. I generally provided the illustrations. This one was from 1985.

We spent the afternoon and part of the evening filling shelves, reaching Novels L.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s sausage casserole (recipe), boiled potatoes, and crisp carrots and cauliflower, followed by chocolate eclairs. She drank Hoegaarden whilst I began a bottle of excellent El Pinsapo gran seleccion rioja 2011.

Twelfth Impression

This morning the building of the last two bookcases was completed.

I managed to unearth the Novels A box and cleared a path to begin placing books on the shelves.

That is when Jackie decided that the column of concrete in the left hand corner offended her eye. Worse than that, she had a half width set of shelves in the kitchen which she was prepared to sacrifice to cover it up.

Oh joy. That meant shifting many more boxes without Matthew’s muscle. The two bookcases Matthew had moved across the room would have to be moved along a foot or so. And he had screwed them together to make the structure more secure. So I had to unscrew them; with Jackie’s help, reposition them and the one from the kitchen; and fasten them up again. That should have done the trick.

But there was now a strip of exposed concrete along the top. As I contemplated filling it with paperbacks before she noticed, she covered it herself with a piece of flooring laminate that had been placed along the windowsill. She had cleaned it up and saved it in case it might come in useful.
Why did I have to choose Superwoman?

After lunch I did get to begin filling shelves with novels whose authors names begin with A to C. In doing so, I found my copy of Daisy Ashford’s ‘The Young Visiters’. On May 22nd 1919, the then thirty seven year old author published, for the first time, the acclaimed masterpiece written when she was nine years old. Such was the work’s amazing success that by July that same year the twelfth impression, one of which is my book, was published. This brilliant description of adults and their behaviour, with uncorrected spelling adding to its charm, has never been out of print.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s superb sausage and bacon casserole (recipe), served with mashed potato and crisp cauliflower and broccoli.