derrickjknight

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.

Pleasure boats lay apparently stranded.

A gentleman on the jetty pointed out godwits to his female companion.

Honking of geese at times filled the skies, at others dominated strips of water.

Jackie produced a splendid penne bolognese, with which she and Ian drank Peroni, for our evening meal. I finished the Cotes du Rhone Villages.

Picnic At Ratty Rock

The year 2015 was ushered in by a warm, overcast morning. Food laid out on a table for tits and robins has been rapidly consumed over the last few days. Early on, Becky watched a small rat, with the aid of its tail wound around the table legs, speeding up to the top and availing itself of the goodies. She has also followed the rodent’s route to and from the jungle next door where it obviously lives. Rats apparently have no bladder control mechanism, so leak a tempting trail as they run. That is clearly why Scooby has found the area so intriguing.

Later, having set out some tasty tit-bits on the gravel in front of the entrance to the rat’s tunnel, our daughter lay in wait with the camera pressed against the sitting room window. She took 50 more fascinating shots from which it was very difficult for me to select the following pictorial narrative of our visitor’s comings and goings:

Where there is one such charming little creature there are no doubt many more.

This is really Becky’s post, because she chose the title as well. I think she had a film title in mind.

I ambled down to the Shorefield stream and back. Traffic reflectors and discarded food and drinks containers gave touches of brightness to the gloomy verges and hedgerows, and a headless fish flashed on the far bank.

Not realising I had photographed it earlier, Ian, on a later walk, brought back the trophy beer glass. When he found it it had contained a lolly stick.

Whenever we’ve had the opportunity over the last three days, we have continued with ‘Downton Abbey’, and have now reached the end of the second series.

Jackie’s sausage casserole, on which we dined this evening, was made with Hobgoblin beer from a five litre cask Ian had given me for Christmas. Accompanied by swede and potato mash, carrots, and cabbage, it was as scrumptious as usual. I drank Cotes du Rhones Villages 2013, and Ian drank coke.

Contrasting Skies

In January 1964 I took four colour slide photographs of birds being fed at the Tower of London. The best of these has been lost. I had used it to produce a calendar for Mum a year or so later. Sadly, of the twelve pictures selected for that present, this is the only one that has sunk without trace. Two others are just not good enough for my eye which is far more discerning now than it was then. If you have just one or two of something in a collection, maybe you are more likely to retain what would be better thrown away. If you have thousands amassed over fifty years, you don’t mind creating a few gaps. These two are now in the bin.

This is the one that, with a considerable amount of retouching, survived for my posterity collection. It is feeding time for the gulls and pigeons that no doubt still gather to snap up the offerings of those generous souls giving up their lunch hours to line the railings and toss bread for the birds as yesterday’s Ibsley woman tossed carrots for the ponies. I fondly speculate that I still occasionally photograph descendants of these very avian symbols of London and The River Thames. Well, I am given to the occasional romantic thought. The woman nearest the camera was a daily visitor. The lost picture contains her outstretched arm and shower of airborne crumbs glinting in the low winter sunshine. I see it still.

A perhaps less romantic observation is that the dockers whose cranes, so prevalent in 1964, no longer line the shores, are long gone from the scene. Five years after this photograph was taken London Docks were finally closed to shipping and sold to the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, who set about redeveloping them for residential purposes. Further vast improvements to the area were, of course, undertaken for the 2012 London Olympics.

Today’s weather did not improve in the afternoon, although the storms were not as violent as they had been yesterday. We drove Flo through rain, hailstones, and darkening skies, to blink through drops running down the car windows at the home in Downton we hope to buy. In mid-afternoon it seemed like nightfall to the east whilst a golden sun pierced clouds to the west. I could even see small patches of blue sky in Jackie’s wing mirror.

This dramatic contrast was even more apparent on the beach at Milford on Sea. We went on there for Flo to give Scooby a run around on the coastal footpaths, as the choppy waves crashed on the granite rocks below the cliffs. Turner would have painted the nearer clouds to our right as the sun slowly subsided in a clear blue sky. A young man stood contemplating the scene. At the same time the lighthouse light warning of The Needles, on our left, flashed away, clearly visible against a patch of open sky beneath the untinged blanket of cloud. You will need to zoom in on the picture to see what we could see. I found it amazing that looking out across the same stretch of water, simply by changing one’s angle of view, one was seeing such differently hued cloudscapes.

Scooby trotted up and down for a bit, whilst Flo gave me the benefit of her artistic direction. It was cold, so we didn’t stay outside long enough for Jackie to get into her programme on the car radio. We then showed Flo the town and shopped in the Old Milton Tesco.

This evening Jackie fed us on succulent sausage casserole with the usual array of vegetables. I drank a glass of Trottwood 2011 shiraz, whilst Jackie’s preference was for Hoegaarden,

In Search Of The Action

Yesterday Becky gave me another computer lesson, this time in tagging. She showed me how to tag my posts and explained the significance of doing so. That, therefore, is another editing job for me. I made a start on the task this morning.

A violent storm that had raged throughout the night and morning gave way to a calm, springlike afternoon. This was perfect for an art assignment Flo had hoped to complete.

The one problem was that the task was to photograph horses in action. And, as my readers will know, New Forest ponies are not prone to activity. Mostly they are at least upright, but occasionally they are simply prone. We thought an expedition to the north of the forest would perhaps offer possibilities for the occasional evidence of movement.

More trees had been uprooted during the night. Those that had been on the roads had been cleared away. Others lay where they fell. What really gave Jackie a white knuckle drive was the amount of water across the concrete and tarmac. The fords were all awash with fast flowing water, as were the ditches. Sometimes, as on one stretch on the outskirts of Ringwood that I had happily walked through quite recently, the road was flooded. At this particular point our chauffeuse stopped altogether, thinking she would have to turn back. An oncoming car sprayed its way through the water, giving her the confidence to try it, which she did successfully. The brakes had to be tested after each ford encounter.

It was the perhaps unlikely village of Ibsley that provided the photo opportunity that we sought. As we drove slowly through it, having just crossed the ford, three ponies made a dash for a waterlogged spot in front of the cattle grid to a residential garden. Small orange showers flashed in the sunlight, and the animals leapt into action. The woman who lived in the house had just tossed a supply of carrots onto a patch of dry land. These were soon devoured and hopeful nostrils quivered in the donor’s direction.

No more carrots being forthcoming, Flo and my cameras were mistaken for tasty morsels and they and we were silently nuzzled.

It was to be Scooby who really set the cat among the pigeons. Of course he remained in the car with Jackie, but he became a wee bit excited at the sight of such huge potential dinners wandering about. Indeed, his glutinous mucus will probably never come off my passenger seat window. His barking had the effect of a summons on all the ponies in the vicinity. Our car was soon surrounded, causing a log-jam in the traffic.

Our granddaughter and I had as much fun photographing each other photographing our subjects as simply shooting the animals.

When we arrived at Hyde, we were awarded a bonus of a couple of donkeys particularly interested in holly leaves. After a session with them, Flo strode across the large expanse of green, to picture another pony, and in the process missed a horse and rider. But that wasn’t really a subject she needed.

She had already photographed a sublime pony’s head and a delightful set of donkey choppers.

We dined this evening on Jackie’s chicken jalfrezi and savoury rice which was as delicious as ever. Flo’s variant was boiled egg korma. My beverage was Kingfisher and Jackie’s was Peroni.