Category: Uncategorized

The Good Samaritan

Late this morning we took a trip to the north of the forest in order to brunch at The Potting Shed Café at Hyde. We had enjoyed it so much on Saturday with Jessie that we wanted to go back.

From Holmsley Passage I photographed some heather scenes for John Corden;

Dog walkers and cyclists made way for us to pass on the road.

We pulled into Smugglers Road carpark to picture standing ponies and a prone foal.

We were some way from our goal when I spotted that we were about to run out of petrol. The only chance of finding any more was to make it to the busy main road to Ringwood. Which we did. And turned left. And ran out of Petrol. Opposite a bus stop.

As we sat wondering who to call,

with the tailback building up behind us while we blocked traffic in each direction while oncoming vehicles paused to allow

those behind us to pass and continue on their way, David came to our rescue. He was on his way home from Ringwood. He turned round, drove Jackie back in the direction from which he had travelled, stopped at a garage where she bought a can and a gallon of fuel which he poured into our tank having driven her back to me sitting in the Hyundai, and waited until our engine fired up at first turn of the key. We couldn’t thank him enough. Next time we travel to Hale from whence he hails we hope to meet him again.

Ponies gathered on the green at North Gorley, and those forcing traffic onto the sward don’t seem to have moved since the 17th.

Splendid sunflowers tower above the fence to The Potting Shed Café, where Jackie produced photographs of both establishment and meals:

she chose very fresh and tasty blue cheese and walnut salad; I enjoyed a repeat of my last meal there:

The Full Works breakfast, with best quality ingredients, and water. In the first picture the hash brown is obscured by the authentic black pudding, and the herby sausage by the bacon in the second.

On our return through Bransgore Jackie photographed Tom and Jerry decorating a postbox.

For a late, light, supper Jackie chose asparagus soup and salad; mine was scrambled egg on toast. I drank water.

Antibiotics

Suddenly this morning I felt caught up in a rush making me feel like the plants in the fast moving winds of yesterday.

Soon after 9.30 a.m. Paula, who had carried out my medical checks with scarcely any notice for me and none for her on 14th, telephoned to say that the urine sample had revealed an infection and I needed to collect antibiotics today when I had received a call from my GP. I should start taking these immediately and it would be up to the surgeon to decide whether he would perform the booked cystoscopy in two days time. This meant that we wouldn’t know until we got to Southampton General Hospital on 21st whether the journey would be a wasted one. The surgery receptionist rang just as Mike Dutton arrived to clear our gutters and clean the windows. I was in the shower and they would not speak to Jackie, only me. I called back quickly, and had to jump through the hoops of press this, press that, press the other and listen to messages offering me the option to go on line to avoid waiting. Eventually I was given the message that a prescription had been sent to the pharmacy. When I expressed some frustration that they were unable to tell my wife that, I was told I could collect a form to sign giving them permission to speak to her. Next, the pharmacy rang to say the medication was ready. We waited until Mike had finished, while we were having lunch. I had needed to cadge some of the money for Mike from Jackie, therefore to collect that from an ATM as well, and post two letters, one, not ours, having been incorrectly delivered.

The only thing to do after that was to sit down with a short book, which I did, then posted

The Hundredth Story of A. E. Coppard

This evening we dined on Jackie’s liver casserole with boiled new potatoes; crunchy carrots; and tender broccoli stems.

No Protection But Each Other

On an increasingly warm late morning we took Jessie for a forest drive and brunched at The Potting Shed at Hyde.

The heather-filled landscape off Holmsley Passage reminded our friend of her childhood home in Scotland.

Ponies crowded along the road outside Burley.

We tracked a veteran vehicle until entered The Elm Tree car park.

At South Gorley the usual donkeys played with the traffic.

Ponies on the green at North Gorley enjoyed no protection from marauding flies but themselves;

others found shade at Frogham Hill;

a further group forced traffic onto the green on our way back through North Gorley.

After another afternoon’s pleasant conversation we dined on tender roast lamb; crispy roast potatoes and Yorkshire pudding; crunchy carrots; firm cauliflower and Brussels sprouts with meaty gravy. I finished the merlot. Later we reminisced more.

Catching Up

I spent the earlier part of the day posting

The Secret Garden

This afternoon our good friend Jessie arrived to spend the weekend with us, and after several hours of convivial conversation involving reminiscing shared memories and catching up with each other’s news we dined at Rokali’s where I enjoyed prawn Ceylon; Jackie’s choice being chicken shashlik; Jessie’s I disremember. We shared aloo bhuna, special rice, and a plain paratha. I drank Kingfisher, Jackie drank Diet Coke, and Jessie, water.

Somewhat Confused

In my post https://derrickjknight.com/2024/08/02/bcg/ I described the treatment plan for my bladder cancer. When I was recently telephoned booking a date for this to begin, I was told I would not need another cystoscopy before it commenced. I therefore have been anticipating the vaccine installations sequence to start in one week’s time. It now seems this is wrong.

At 8.50 this morning I received a call asking me to attend a pre-assessment appointment, fortunately at Lymington Hospital, at 9.30. This would be a questionnaire from a nurse, checking on current details. We arrived at the hospital at 9.25 to be told that I was booked in for 9.45. I was called at 10.10, which was just after the nurse herself had been informed.

The staff were all very friendly – I attributed this mix-up at least to the fact that the arrangement had clearly been arranged in a rush.

Nurse Paula Rickard was thorough, friendly, and efficient. She was quite clear that my appointment on 21st is in fact for a further cystoscopy which does, as Consultant Miss Vickie Dawson had informed me, need to be carried out. The meeting with Paula involved much more than the usual questions: she gave me another ECG, checked blood pressure and pulse, followed by escorting me to a blood test and asking me to deposit a urine sample. We agreed there was no need to measure height and weight again.

Neither consultant nor nurse had, of course played any part in this confusion and the message from them is consistent. So – I think I know what to expect at my next procedure, and will await a date for the vaccine application thereafter.

This took the whole of the morning, after which I made good headway in reading “The Secret Garden” by Frances Hodgson Burnett, a wonderful book making me feel very much at home that I will review when I have finished it.

Tonight we dined on tender baked gammon; piquant cauliflower cheese; spring greens and green beans; crunchy carrots; firm broccoli and boiled new potatoes, with which I drank Luis Felipe Edwards Gran Reserva Merlot 2021

Relief In Shade

On this cooler, pleasant, summer afternoon, after a visit to Ferndene Farm Shop for the purchase of vegetables and salad ingredients,

we took a forest drive via Beckley Common Road.

After passing ponies in shade alongside Pound Lane, we turned off into a car park whence we admired the

landscape with heather

and a variety of daisy slightly larger than normal but smaller than marguerites.

Further down the road we turned into Burley which

was pulsating with visitors.

Cattle having slaked their thirst in the stream under the ford on Forest Road wandered slowly up the road frustrating some drivers while

ponies further along sheltered beneath the usual trees,

adopting their customary head to tail fly whisk technique.

This grey seemed to have caused a kerfuffle resulting in thudding head butts, sudden scattering, and clopping on the tarmac. I was pleased I was no nearer these heavy animals whose hooves could have landed on my sandalled feet.

Along Holmsley Passage on our way home we followed a cyclist climbing the hill. When he reached the top, he pulled over to the gravel on his left and we exchanged waves.

This evening we dined on baked smoked haddock; piquant cauliflower cheese; tender green beans; boiled new potatoes and carrots al dente, with which I finished the Tempranillo.

Still, Silent, Sounds

Before the temperature soared, in the early morning of this, another hotter day, as I stayed inside working on my blogging comments and replies, a faint breeze entered through the French windows allowing admission to the occasional buzzing bluebottle while I listened to the gentle scraping of Jackie’s garden tools; the glinting tinkling of the wind chimes adjusted yesterday; the rattling clanking of the magpies which have wiped out our smaller songbirds whose eggs and chicks they have stolen; and the amorous cooing of mated wood pigeons whose size has protected them from the predators, despite their numbers being reduced by egg theft.

This afternoon I posted

The Lay, And The Tragedy, Of Horn-Skinned Siegfried

This evening we dined on tender roast duck in orange sauce; firm carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, and very flavoursome Brussels sprouts, with which I drank more of the Tempranillo.

The Power Of The Web

As we set out on a still warm, but generally overcast, morning for a

forest drive I noticed a feather hanging above a myrtle bloom.

A pigeon was in no hurry to move out of our way along Lower Pennington Lane, alongside which, from a five barred gate

Jackie photographed moorland, and, on the way back,

I photographed walkers pushing a small baby in a buggy.

Before then, we had watched distant geese approaching, then flying over a walking family. The birds travel every day each way between Christchurch and Lymington, presumably finding regular sustenance. (Enlargement by access to the gallery may make them more visible).

Along St Leonard’s Road Jackie photographed me approaching and leaning on a tree in order to

picture a field horse and foal.

Blackberries are ripening along all the hedgerows.

Jackie also photographed this five-barred gate and its view.

Outside the ancient barn ponies cropped the grass on the verge;the animal in the first picture of this gallery hopefully wet-nosed me as I disembarked; finding I had no treats on offer she

stuck her nose through the open passenger window.

This is what it looked like to Jackie inside, while I wandered off.

Joggers along these narrow lanes take their lives in their hands. Those in the first picture were in Lower Pennington Lane. The woman decided to wait until the two cars had gone by; the one in the second was about to be passed by a large tractor towing a long container vehicle.

When, after an hour and a half, we returned home, the feather, despite the stiff breeze had not detached itself from the almost invisible, sticky, thread that held it. Such is the power of the web.

After lunch I posted

From The Saga Of Dietrich Of Bern

This evening the Culinary Queen served up a meal both colourful and flavoursome consisting of lemon chicken on a bed of rice packed with peas, fava beans, red and yellow peppers, onions, and mushrooms, with which I drank Bajoz Tempranillo 2022.

Purchasing Prescience?

Martin worked in the garden all morning, and Ronan and Craig from Tom Sutton Heating checked faults in two radiators. The latter diagnosis was a blocked pipe which necessitates their returning in about a month’s time with a machine to clear it.

I therefore stayed at home while Jackie went shopping.

Today our gardening friend completed his work on weeding the gravelled Gazebo Path, thereby providing a clear walkway the whole length from the iron urn to the southern fence.

I had not noticed when photographing Jackie studying the contents of this antiques cubicle at the Redcliffe Garden Centre Emporium that there was a row of five cut glasses on the third shelf from the bottom beside her left elbow. Why not a set of six? The answer was because she was holding one. She made no purchase. I must have known.

While out this morning she returned to the antiques centre and came back with these cut glasses.

At intervals during the day I completed my reading of The Saga of Dietrich of Bern which I expect to review tomorrow.

This evening we dined on oven fish, chips, and peas.

An Exceptional Year For Magpies

Knowing that we were in for a cool day of continuing rain we took an early forest trip before the showers had begun, therefore before a planned visit to the new Antiques Emporium behind Redcliffe Garden Centre.

Outside Brockenhurst we stopped to watch ponies and foals.

We are accustomed to seeing crows pecking about among the pony droppings, but magpies foraging there is unusual;

one foal, young enough to bear the vestiges of the umbilical cord wondered what the black and white bird was doing perched upon it. Accompanying adults ignored it. It has been an exceptional year for these birds – we even have one nesting in or near to our garden which could be one reason why we have fewer small birds this year. In our Newark Lindum House magpies would come one year and there would be no small birds. The next year the predators would be gone and eggs had a chance to hatch.

Our timing was good. Drizzle began as we turned towards Redcliffe Garden Centre and had begun beating a tattoo on the roof.

It is a fairly long trek through the Garden Centre,

beyond Warman’s Architectural Antiques Area,

to the Emporium, which looks like a resurgence of

(Dammit, I published too early so I am continuing with this addition)

the now defunct Molly’s Den, featured in https://derrickjknight.com/2014/08/22/her-very-own-seaside/

Jackie can be seen studying the contents of some of these antiques cubicles.

On my way round I met a man walking with a stick. Having by now found the unaided walk a real struggle I mentioned that I was regretting having left mine in the car. He said he had done the same thing and bought one here. I decided that it was better to put up with the pain of perambulation than paying for a prop I wouldn’t use again.

This evening we will dine on a roast lamb meal which is already tickling my nostrils.