January 2015 – Page 3 – derrickjknight

King Canute

After a shopping trip to Lidl in Old Milton this morning, Jackie deposited me alongside the Beachcomber Cafe. Leaving the flat green open space at Barton on Sea, where romped dogs, including two who found an even smaller one to play with, I walked back along the crumbling and undulating cliff top which severely tested the declining flexibility of my lower limbs.

At one time I might have joined the runners along this route, but never the cyclists. Even some of the walkers went where I would fear to tread.

In 2011, according to Kathryn Westcott on BBC News, ‘MP Frank Field warned David Cameron to “stop being King Canute” if he wanted to avoid being “overwhelmed by the incoming tide of local authority cuts”.’ This able, eleventh century Danish King of England is as misquoted as Topsy, which I explained on September 5th, 2012. He is believed to have been so proud that he thought his command could hold back the tide.

According to J.P. Somerville: ‘this story was first recorded in Henry of Huntingdon’s twelfth-century Chronicle of the history of England. In fact, Henry’s account was rather a testimony to Canute’s good sense and Christian humility – not his vainglory.’

Henry wrote: ‘he commanded that his chair should be set on the shore, when the tide began to rise. And then he spoke to the rising sea saying “You are part of my dominion, and the ground that I am seated upon is mine, nor has anyone disobeyed my orders with impunity. Therefore, I order you not to rise onto my land, nor to wet the clothes or body of your Lord”. But the sea carried on rising as usual without any reverence for his person, and soaked his feet and legs. Then he moving away said: “All the inhabitants of the world should know that the power of kings is vain and trivial, and that none is worthy the name of king but He whose command the heaven, earth and sea obey by eternal laws”. Therefore King Cnut never afterwards placed the crown on his head, but above a picture of the Lord nailed to the cross, turning it forever into a means to praise God, the great king. By whose mercy may the soul of King Cnut enjoy peace’.

It is not the tide that New Forest District Council is attempting to stem, but the effects of the wind and the rain which are slowly eroding the cliff along this part of the Hampshire coast. The results of the ground investigation and monitoring project, it seems to me, may result in the golf course and adjacent farmers parting with some of their terrain if we are to retain a footpath into the next century.

This evening we enjoyed Sunday Roasts at The Plough Inn, Tiptoe. My choice was lamb; Jackie’s was pork. She drank Becks and I drank Doom Bar. As so often the case there, neither of us needed a dessert.

A Jolly Conversation

30+ m.p.h. winds howled through the night and continued this morning. Feeling relieved that I wasn’t in the Shetlands undergoing 100 m.p.h. gusts, I walked to Hordle Cliff beach and back.

Swaying pine branches were reflected in pools in Downton Lane.

I was held up descending the steps to the shingle, and helped back up, by the wind tearing across The Solent. The roar of the traffic on the coast road merged with that of the wind and the waves.

On my way through Shorefield, I noticed one of two women holding a well wrapped up new baby standing in a chalet doorway. I congratulated her, and was then alerted to a man in a bath behind the fencing to the decking, when he said: ‘It’s warmer than it looks’. He had just been for a run. We had a jolly conversation, in which I told him that these days I walk.

This afternoon I scanned a few more black and white negatives from 1982, beginning with the last two from the visit to The Dumb Flea featured in ‘Crunchy Cottage Pie’. Matthew, brilliant with young children, had organised a race around the garden with Susie, Tim, and Sam, identification numbers firmly fixed to their T-shirts.

The next batch were from a trip to the Vachettes’ chateau at Fontaine in France. Jessica and her siblings had enjoyed teenage exchange visits with this family who more or less adopted their guests. Maurice was a relative who lived in one of the accompanying buildings. He was tireless in playing with a gleeful Sam throughout our stay. It was possibly on this particular trip that I had triumphed in a game of Scrabble with Jessica and M. Vachette.

Later today, I printed an A3+ copy of Flo’s eighteenth birthday picture for Jackie. Whilst living in Sutherland Place I attended a life drawing group in Bayswater Road. Although I didn’t think I had produced anything worth exhibiting, I was prevailed upon to submit one of my pieces. This did, admittedly contain some half decent elements, but the whole thing didn’t really hang together. Nevertheless, the organisers hung it. Seeking a frame for Flo’s portrait, it wasn’t difficult to conceal the lissome dancer behind our own long-limbed Pre-Raphelite beauty.

Our meal this evening consisted of fish, chips, mushy peas, and pickled onions. Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I began a bottle of Chatau de Pena Cotes du Roussillon Villages 2012. This was not a suitable choice of wine for this particular repast, so I imbibed no more than a small glass.

Borrowed Wellies

A strong wind was getting up in preparation for later rainfall when I took a walk along Hordle Lane and the footpath alongside Apple Court Garden where I met the owner who thought I might have been interested in looking at the house which is for sale. The plan now is to sell the house and garden separate from the Nursery business. The house and garden are on the market for £850,000, and the business £100,000.

As I passed Yeatton House Cottage paddock, a young woman entered the field carrying food containers. This was a signal for the usually stationary animals to tear across the soggy terrain and vie with each other to bury their noses in the buckets of fodder. I had a long and pleasant talk with Merisa, who had worked for Spencers estate agents in Burley. She knew Pippa and the others at the Lymington office who had done so much to restore our flagging faith in such agents. She is the owner of the two forest ponies who, she said, prefer to drink from the pools than the trough.

Here is number 57 in Elizabeth’s through the ages series. Like the photograph featured in ‘No Mod Cons’, It would have been taken by Jessica around 1976. I think she framed it rather well. In the previous post I have explained why my visits to the stone cottage in Snowdonia were most infrequent. This damp holiday home contained a row of Wellington boots of all possible sizes, left behind by former guests, for the use of whoever may come next. Regular readers will know that I spent thirty-odd years resisting Jessica’s efforts to persuade me to buy my own. This was because I never intended to wallow around in mud enough to make a purchase worthwhile. I would have used a pair of those so kindly donated. I have, of course, bought my own quite recently, on account of the amount of time I do now spend tramping around terrain not unlike that in the third picture above. But naturally, I only wear them when I really cannot avoid it.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s classic sausage casserole, boiled potatoes, and crisp brussels sprouts and cauliflower, followed by Dutch Apple Cake and custard. I drank more of the Costieres de Nimes.

Orlando/Vita

Heavy overnight rain had left lakes on the landscape and pools on the roads. Tractor tracks disappeared into a field now occupied by waterfowl. On my walk home from car trip to Milford on Sea, I took one look at the overflowing stream alongside the footpath leading to the nature reserve, and decided to take the Park Lane route to the clifftop. As I received a sparkling cascade thrown up by a speeding motorist, I realised I may have been slightly mistaken in this.

Councillor Matthew Goode has been helpfully engaged in a conversation on Streetlife about the replacement of the footpath that fell into the sea last summer. Local residents are concerned about the time this is taking. It seems to me it would be rather rash to replace it before proper geological studies have been undertaken. It is easy to see where the next falls could possibly occur. The dog in the photograph was perhaps conducting its own survey.

Whenever rooks or seagulls find themselves a convenient post on which to perch, they are dive-bombed by relatives wishing to supplant them, and generally take off in a hurry. So it was this morning.

Later this afternoon, I finished reading Virginia Woolf’s novel ‘Orlando’. Woolf herself termed it a biography, which was why it was less popular with booksellers than with the reading public, because the shops believed biography did not sell as well as the fictional genre. Quentin Bell, in his introduction to my copy, describes the work as a prose poem.

James Joyce, in his lengthy novel ‘Ulysses’, manages to occupy no more than twenty four hours in the life of Leopold Bloom. The shorter piece from Mrs Woolf has Orlando, born at the end of the sixteenth century, still living in 1928, changing sex from male to female at the midway point, bearing two children, and reaching the age of just thirty- six by the end of the book.

Having met in 1922, Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West’s friendship developed into a two or three year sexual relationship, perhaps culminating in this gift from Virginia to Vita, first published in 1928. The writer has found a fascinating form with which to celebrate her lover; her lover’s family, the Sackvilles; and Knole, their ancestral home. Orlando/Vita glides through three centuries of largely indulgent life in elegant surroundings described in beautifully flowing, opulent, and gloriously seductive descriptive prose. Woolf was having fun, even to the extent of calling it biography.

Illustrations of the adult, female, Orlando are photographs of Vita Sackville-West.

My copy purports to be no. 191 of a limited edition of 1000 of the Hogarth Press Collected Edition published in 1990. The £1 pencilled on the flyleaf suggests I bought it second-hand with no dust-jacket. Although the boards look genuine, I was surprised to find the book perfect-bound; containing several typographical errors; and a number of blank pages, not, as in Lawrence Sterne’s ‘Tristram Shandy’, deliberately left so by the author.

Two stamps, one superimposed on the other, giving an impression reminiscent of the London Underground, are in what my uneducated eye imagines to be Chinese. The only signs that the book may have been read before me were a few splashes of what I hope is coffee on the page edges; and pages 212/213 pasted in. Where has it been, and who drank the coffee?

Second-hand books do often give scope for such speculation.

Becky is, I know, not responsible for the stain, because that was in place when I lent it to her recently. She did, however, take the trouble to find the two missing pages of text on the internet and stick them into the blanks. Other empty pages should be part of the appendices.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s juicy chilli con carne and my plain boiled rice, followed by Pearl’s delicious Dutch Apple Cake with a.n. other’s cream. I started on an excellent bottle of Arene des Anges Costieres de Nimes 2013 given to us for Christmas by Helen and Bill.

Emily Lee

Jackie drove me to and from New Milton for the Waterloo train to lunch with Norman at The Archduke.

Before meeting my friend, I walked along Concert Hall Approach and up the steps to the Golden Jubilee Bridge, the supports of which paralleled the structure of a nearby crane.

On our previous visit to the restaurant I mentioned the change of decor reflecting the new jazz theme. Greats such as John Coltrane, Theolonius Monk and Jimi Hendrix now grace the walls.

Norman and I both chose superb sea trout on a creamy pecan risotto, followed by tasty pecan pie and clotted cream, with which we shared an excellent Sicilian shiraz.

On leaving The Archduke, I was drawn to return to the bank of The Thames by the strains a powerful and exciting voice, which was itself unstrained. This emanated from a vibrant, humorous, young woman, who also had the engaging personality to hold crowds transfixed on a day that was cold enough to urge sightseers to keep moving. She is Emily Lee, who is soon to release a CD. She claimed to be suffering from a persistent cough which didn’t appear to detract from her performance. Look out for her.

The train on our return journey was as packed as ever. Three seats opposite or beside me were occupied by the bags of neighbouring passengers. A couple in their fifties approached the seats, looked at them, and said they would sit on the floor by the gangway. They were ignored, and this they proceeded to do. As awkwardly and painfully as usual in this tiny cramped accommodation I rose to my feet, walked over to the people on the floor, and told them they need not be so uncomfortable when available seats were occupied by luggage. The woman said it was very sweet of me, but they opted to stay where they were. I returned to my seat.

I ask you.

P.S.

I wouldn’t have mentioned the contribution I made to the singer’s collection, but after posting this, I went on to her Facebook page to send her the link to this post. She had already posted her busking session, complete with photograph. This is what she said:

‘Busking next to the London Eye and a £5 note that a lovely guy gave me goes flying straight into the Thames. Damn you wind.’

Crunchy Cottage Pie

On a mild, dank, morning a friendly robin trilled a greeting from a neighbour’s birch tree, encouraging me to take my walk to Hordle Cliff top and back.

The daddy longlegs that had splatted against the bus shelter window during the summer is well on the way to becoming fossilised.

By the time I returned through Shorefield Country Park, the skies had cleared to reveal a splendid sunny day.

The rest of the 1982 black and white images that I scanned yesterday involve a stay in the Drapers’ home in Meldreth, and another with Maggie and Mike in Southwell. As far as I remember Jessica and I were house-sitting at ‘The Dumb Flea’ in Meldreth, so named after the Tudor public house it had been before its current extensions.

Matthew and Becky, who are seen here holding baby Louisa, decided to cook cottage pie for our evening meal. Having worked away in the hot kitchen, the two red-faced, glowing, children proudly placed the dish on the table and we all eagerly tucked in. The mashed potato topping was appropriately crisp and soft, but the filling was a little crunchy. And some. When Julie and Peter returned they explained the reason. They kept dogs. The children had used dog mince which must have been three quarters bone.

After their London wedding some years previously, Jessica and I had not seen Maggie and Mike until I ran my first Newark half marathon later in 1982. We visited them, not dreaming that five years later we would move to Lindum House. The story of the renewal of our friendship is told in ‘Mordred’.

We will miss the Emsworth family who returned home this evening. Becky sent a text saying ‘Look at moon’, so we did. It was full, with a halo and balanced the rear lights of cars speeding along the darkness of Christchurch Road.

Egg, bacon and chips was the perfect meal for anyone wishing to come down to earth from an extended festive season. That is what we ate this evening.

On The Moors

Today’s news is that the car transporter, Hoegh Osaka, featured yesterday was deliberately run aground when it developed an unexplained list. The decision was apparently taken in order to protect the shipping lanes. Recovery is expected to take some days with minimal disruption to the port of Southampton. Here is an extract from a comment posted by my friend Barrie: ‘Thank God nobody was hurt the Captain and Pilot deserve a medal’.

Feeling a bit like the sage green reflections in the muddy pools, on a very mild, heavy, overcast morning I took a lethargic amble along the path through Roger’s field off Downton Lane.

I have mentioned before my trip with Matthew to Uncle Ben and Auntie Ellen’s home in Bolton. This was for the purpose of running the Bolton Marathon in 1982. It was in that year that I took a series of black and white photographs, the negatives of which I scanned this afternoon. They span more than one part of that summer, so today I will address those relating to that visit. Mat and I climbed up to the moors above Horwich,where it was a bit bleak. I reproduce some of the photographs here. Mat can be seen in the last two. I am grateful to my cousin Yvonne Burgess for identifying these as scenes of Rivington, the Pike so named being seen in the distance in the final moors picture. See her comment below for the Good Friday custom.

A further description of the Bolton event features in ‘A Welsh Interlude’, as does my maternal grandmother.

This evening the five of us dined at The Plough in Tiptoe. Everyone enjoyed their meals. Mine was steak and Guinness suet pudding followed by mixed fruit crumble and custard, with which I drank Doom Bar. Given that a ‘Sorry Sold Out’ sticker was placed on the blackboard across my choice almost as soon as I had ordered it, that was clearly a result in football parlance.

Stranded On Bramble Bank

Jackie has been collecting little mice from a gallery in Milford on Sea. Each morning these charming little creatures, noses in the air, have been found in different locations. One of Flo’s Christmas Dragonology books contained a model which could be removed, assembled, and hung somewhere. Put these two facts together and you might be able to work out where the mice had moved to in their nocturnal flit.

This morning Jackie and I drove to Hythe on Southampton Water, and took a trip along the pier:

This antique structure, served by an ancient train, stretches across the sea where a ferry takes over the transport of passengers to Southampton. We took the train on our outward journey, and walked back to the High Street, seen from the pier, and back to our car.

Renovation work on Hythe Pier is a continuing process. Much of the planking has been replaced, although some is still in need of replacement. The waiting room exterior could do with a lick of paint, although the interior has a charm of its own. Older, rusting pier supports are visible from the modern stainless steel railings. One method of raising funds lies in the planking engraving which contains many messages, such as memorials to dead people, marking of visits, and at least one proposal of marriage.

The train from a bygone era, with views across Southampton Water, still carries travellers the length of the structure on its rust-coloured rails, and, of course planes that were not invented when it began its service, cross the skies to and from the airport.

When I overhead a comment in a conversation between two gentlemen walking along the footway, I realised they must be talking about the car transporter ship, Hoegh Osaka, which had run aground on Bramble Bank at 21.30 yesterday evening. The snippet was ‘all the press photographers are on Calshot Spit’. Naturally, we sped off to Calshot where the ship still lay stranded. The vessel had been on its way to Germany, when the grounding occurred and twenty five crew members were rescued.

The small beach at Calshot was swarming with sightseers. Anyone who has followed my ramblings across Westminster Bridge will know that I tend to be more interested in what is going on with the viewing crowds than in the attractions themselves. When, indicating the watchers assembled on the shingle, I offered my observation that ‘there’s the picture’, to one of the photographers, he simply smiled and kept his lens firmly aimed at the stricken vessel and its attending tugboats. This little village was packed with cars lining the roadside and the grassy banks alongside the beach huts, one of which, after Dylan Thomas’s ‘Llareggub’ from ‘Under Milk Wood’, was named ‘LLamedos’. (Read them backwards).

On our return journey, Jackie dropped me at Milford on Sea and I walked home by way of the Nature Reserve, Sharvells Road, Blackbush Road and the back of Shorefield.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s exquisite penne bolognese followed by a choice of syrup or raspberry jam sponges with custard or cream. Jackie’s beverage was Hoegaarden, Ian’s Peroni, and mine the last of the Margaux.

An Aid To Autosuggestion

The weather today could not have been more of a contrast to yesterday’s. It was several degrees warmer, wet, and overcast. I took a short walk along Hordle Lane to visit the horses in a waterlogged Yeatton Cottage paddock.

These miserable looking animals, wrapped in their winter rugs, could not even show their customary interest in my presence. They probably would have preferred raincoats.

The Shetland pony belongs to the owners of the cottage who let space to accommodate the other two.

The photograph of the waterspout taken on the beach at Shanklin in September 1968 that featured in my post of 3rd November, when I hung it on the downstairs loo wall, has proved so popular I may have to leave it there. Clearly it offers an aid to autosuggestion. Flo is so taken with it that she asked for a copy. I made one when I returned from my walk. Our friend Paul Clarke, when he last visited with Margery, brought me a pack of A3+ size photographic paper that had been found in a car boot sale. He thought I could at least use it for test prints. I used it for this picture and found it of excellent quality.

Before dinner Jackie drove Flo and me on a rather abortive Christmas lights tour. Lymington and New Milton still had them lit up in their streets, but Brockenhurst had switched off one side of the street and Lydhurst’s were extinguished altogether. Even the garden of the famous private house in Bartley was in darkness. The real star of the trip was, when it freed itself from the clouds, the almost full moon.

On our return we all dined on Jackie’s sausage casserole, as always, improved with keeping; and potatoes, cabbage, carrots,a and cauliflower, all cooked to perfection. Jackie drank Hoegaarden, and I finally opened an excellent bottle of Bois du Riche Margaux 2007 given to me by Shelly and Ron for Christmas 2013. And drank some of it.

The Litter Nest

My first walk today was through the woodland. After a while, I diverged from the footpath, and, although I kept it vaguely to my left, found it difficult to regain until I noticed a rope with strips of coloured cloth lying on the ground and leading off in the right direction. I had seen the other end of this a couple of days ago, so I followed it with success, and returned home in time for Jackie to drive Becky and me to Emsworth, so our daughter could keep an appointment in Havant and I could take a further amble around the quay.

From North Road I took the path through St James’s Churchyard to the A259 which I crossed and turned into Bath Road. I followed this alongside the Mill Pond as far as the Sailing Club and walked around the pond, along Fisherman’s Walk and down the jetty. This occupied me until the light changed as the dazzling sun gradually made way for the gentler moon. It had grown dark by the time my chauffeuse and Becky picked me up again at the corner of Bath Road. I had hoped to photograph the ‘litter nest’ which, for the last three years has been found beneath the bridge over the pond at that point. It was no longer there, so I have used Rosemary Hampton’s illustration from 2013. Becky told me the story. The nest, made from assorted pieces of litter, has been home to a pair of mute swans and their intended progeny. There has been much local concern at the failure to thrive of eggs that have been laid there, because the nest has regularly become waterlogged. This year, for example, of a clutch of six, only one has survived. It is seen in the foreground of this photograph I took today: Conservationists have cleared away the nest and will place a nesting raft on the site. Any home built on it will float on the rising waters. In the bright afternoon sunshine seagulls squabbled over food that was being thrown to the waterfowl, by numerous walkers along the banks. Ducks, swans, gulls and coots played, paddled, drank, and fished in the pond. The tide was out on the far side of the well populated Fisherman’s Walk and under the jetty. Water dripped from their beaks as swans waddled, paddled, and slaked their thirst among coots, egrets and other wading birds among the silt and shallow stretches. One flapped its wings; another managed admirably on its one leg; and a seemingly inseparable pair formed curving patterns as they danced along.