derrickjknight

Pursuing Potting Up

Sunlight shadows in the kitchen beckoned me outside this morning.

Jackie has been buying myriads of bulbs and potting them up in the last few days.

With the aid of a rusting sack barrow she has transported them to prospective sites, such as

this collection on the north west corner of the patio. The pot in the first image above in the gallery above is destined for the plinth recently bought from the Efford Recycling Centre. The black paint spilled on that is presumably why it was dumped.

This afternoon we scoured the garden centres for suitable slabs to cover the plinth, and eventually found a couple at Redcliffe Nurseries. The pot may have to reside over winter in the greenhouse. An owl has been left keeping watch.

An earlier support from the dump now contains a pot of violas; the recent acquisition awaited its flowers until this evening when Jackie filled it with violas and Erigeron keeping daffodil bulbs warm. It now stands on the patio.

The bulbs are all labelled in their currently over-planted containers, such as the one beneath the Gazebo; the one spilling over with heuchera and begonias; and the one marked Tete-a-Tete.

The Gazebo clematis warranted its own photograph, as did

the view from the Stable Door, the Brick Path, and the Japanese anemones above the wooden mushrooms.

Beds worthy of attention were those named Weeping Birch and Dragon; the first waiting for climbers to cover its eponymous trunk, the second featuring seasonal Michaelmas daisies.

There are two scenes of the Rose Garden and another of the apples to which it plays host.

Later, I watched the penultimate episode of ‘Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams’.

After leaving Redcliffe Nurseries we continued into the forest by way

of Holmsley Passage flanked by moorland landscapes.

Scampering pink pannage piglets grunted and snuffled in the woodland beside Bisterne Close.

On such a sunny Saturday afternoon a number of cycling families like this one outside Burley required careful negotiation to pass giving them adequate space.

A deer speeding across Forest Road was rather too quick for me.

This evening we dined on a meaty pork rack of ribs in barbecue sauce; Jackie’s colourful vegetable rice; and tender green beans, with which I drank more of the Côtes du Rhône Villages.

More Recycling Years Ahead

Now it has dawned on the Southampton General Hospital urology team that I have lacked information since my procedure six weeks ago, I am receiving a plethora of calls. In today’s I was given a date and time for a telephone appointment with a urologist. I informed the caller about Nick Lewis’s call yesterday. She did not know about this and we agreed that I no longer need the new one.

In the four days since our last dump trip Jackie has filled 13 more spent compost bags with green refuse which, along with an old ceramic cistern once used as a breeding ground for mosquitos and a broken plastic plant container, we transported to the Efford Recycling centre on a much colder day with a similar, though less severe, weather pattern to that of yesterday, and, as is our wont returned with two items with more recycling years ahead of them –

a stone container suitable as a plinth when upturned, and a metal potted plant stand.

I read more of ‘The People’s Act of Love’

By late afternoon the weather had settled down and we took a brief forest drive.

Cattle and a calf occupied the verge at Pilley,

ponies having moved to Bull Hill to forage among the browning bracken landscape.

It is always advisable when confronting tractors on our narrow lanes to pull over and wait for them to pass. They are always very appreciative.

A group of pheasants crossed St Leonard’s Road in front of us

and sought camouflage in the shade of the banked verge before vanishing through the hedge.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s colourful vegetable rice; tempura, and hot and spicy prawns, with which I drank Séguret Cötes du Rhöne Villages 2022 and the Culinary Queen drank Diet Coke

Persistence Pays

On a day in which continuous fierce swirling gusts of wind whipped sudden squally bouts of rain across the glistening garden, window panes, and paving stones occasionally bejewelled by sparkling sunshine bouncing light from neighbouring roof tiles, I attempted to follow up the lack of information from the urology department of Southampton General Hospital.

Once again the number I had been given for post procedure problems was not answering. On Tuesday I had been told that an appointment date for a telephone interview with the consultant who had carried out my procedure on 21st August would be forthcoming. Attempting to follow up on this today I was kept holding with no answer.

Coincidentally at lunchtime I received a call from Abbie at PALS who had followed up the issues about my discharge on 24th with four relevant departments securing apologies and advice about contacting security to obtain porterage. I took the opportunity to explain to her my current problems with obtaining any sort of response from the unit this week. She confirmed that there had been no telephone appointment date placed on the system and will follow this up for me. I won’t stop trying to secure an answer to the number which once again doesn’t seem to be staffed.

Eventually I telephoned the ward number where I was told by an administrator that the decision meeting usually takes eight weeks from the analysis and was given the consultant secretary telephone number. That was answered with a recorded message. I left one in response. My voice has gone up a few decibels.

I started reading ‘The People’s Act of Love’ by James Meek.

By mid-afternoon the rain had ceased and the sun seemed in the ascendancy, but the wind was still fierce enough to propel me round

the garden in my rather appropriate T-shirt.

The corner of the patio containing the revamped galvanised containers; the recycled blue topped table having replaced the wickerwork chair on the West Bed; and the decking all bear evidence of Jackie’s recent planting;

the aforementioned table can be seen at the edge of the first of these Brick Path pictures, while

the Gazebo Path and the area around the old well include the recently planted urn.

The last gallery of the Palm Bed, the Dragon Bed, the crinum lilies, and the stumpery all demonstrate tidied up areas.

Later I received a call from Nick Lewis, lead nurse in the urology department. The decision making meeting actually took place on Friday. It is confirmed that I now have no cancer in the bladder, but the BCG vaccine option will still go ahead in order to reduce the possibility of a recurrence. I will receive an appointment date within a couple of days.

This evening we dined on succulent roast breast of lamb; boiled new potatoes, crisp Yorkshire pudding; crunchy carrots; firm Brussels sprouts; meaty gravy, and mint sauce, with which I finished the garnacha.

The High Path

“Ted Walker [1934-2004] was one of the foremost English poets of his generation, with five critically acclaimed books published between 1965 and 1977, beginning with Fox On A Barn Door.

“His work eventually encompassed short stories, radio and television drama, travel writing, and two volumes of autobiography – notably The Last Of England, which he read in serialised form on BBC Radio 4 in 1992.

“In a parallel career as a teacher and interpreter of literature, he fulfilled roles as diverse as creative-writing tutor in prisons, writer-in-residence in primary schools and longstanding lecturer at the British campus of a private American college.

“Ted was born in Lancing, west Sussex, the son of a Birmingham-born carpenter who had found work in the south-coast construction industry. Educated at Steyning grammar school and St John’s College, Cambridge, where he read modern languages, he became a teacher in London.

“Success as a poet came early to Ted Walker, and he and wife Lorna were able to move to Hunston, in his beloved Sussex. Characterised as a nature poet, in his sharp-focussed depictions of the natural world he utilised nature to place our human concerns in proper perspective. Accruing major awards in his 20s, he had published five collections of poetry by his early 40s and then, as he put it in a poem, “My muse went AWOL.” “I haven’t had a poem in years,” he would say. Fifteen years in the end.

“It is not surprising that his most substantial works are his autobiographical volumes: The High Path (1983) and The Last Of England.

“The first vividly evokes the wartime childhood of one (in George MacBeth’s phrase) “too young to fight and too old to forget”.” https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/apr/02/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries1

Today I finished reading ‘The High Path’ which, perhaps because he was just seven years my senior, but more likely the clarity of his memory and descriptive skills, he has the ability to evoke my own memories. I, too, remember the shortage of money in my family, dependent upon the weekly wage of a working man when priority was given to payment of the rent for fear of eviction, and on the skilled economy of the housewife-mother’s home cooking; being a scholarship boy at a Grammar school struggling to catch up with more privileged pupils better prepared for the mysteries of geometry and algebra; lobbing brown paper bagged water bombs over the doors of unsavoury lavatories, and competing to piss highest up a wall.

The poet’s love of language I also share. Walker’s autobiography is packed with spare, full, detailed description, alliteration, metaphor, and simile, involving all the senses, particularly of hearing, since the ear is so important to a poet. Even with the writing of a blog, I pay attention to how it would be read aloud.

For his first ten years the author was an only child albeit aware of his parents’ loss of a younger sister who lived only a few days.

The tradesmen he describes in immediate post-war England are those I too, remember, when a wire cutter was used to cut blocks of cheddar cheese in the days before pre-packed supermarket fare; and the cash-carrier payment method in department stores where money handed to the counter assistant was carried in a container on overhead wires to the cashier in a lofty perch who popped the change in the container, returning it to the counter (a job my sister tells me our mother had before marriage). “Far more interesting [to pre-school Ted] were the tradesmen’s horses which put their huge heads over our roadside hedges and tossed back their heads to get at the oats at the bottom of their nosebags. The tradesmen themselves were worthy of close observation, too, each belonging to a unique species of human kind, each with his own colour and smell and sound. The clinking milkman was the first to call……While his trailing sourness yet lingered in the outhouse, the brown baker snapped back the hasp of the gate; and he smelt warm and deliciously of buns as he flipped open the creaking lid of his wicker basket for our tin loaf…….” the copper boiler which simmered and steamed…”

“The living-room was more constricted than any I have been in since; we had no option but to be in a close family” is an example of the dry wit that litters his prose. Here is another: as a consequence of “Constipation, despite my best wailings and protestations my mother would insist on ramming a piece of green soap (she tried not to let me see it, but I saw it right enough) up my backside. The pain was searing. She would lift me on to the big lavatory, tell me to be a good boy, leave me to my task; then I would strain and heave, wanting so much to please her, wanting above all else to be rid of the gnarled vegetable of agony that rooted deep in my insides. There would be heard a minor but gratifying plop, and I would cry out with relief: but when I was lifted off, and we examined my achievement, all we saw in the clear water was the sliver of green soap……”. Fortunately I do not share the reason for this description of potty training, but many of us will identify with the need to please with the required achievement.

I also remember the steam trains described with the poet’s alliteration of “a monster so enraged that it smothered them in gouts of hissing breath. A perpetual light drizzle of condensed steam…..”

We, too, had a GP who would always make a home visit whenever called, and perhaps as a result died of a heart attack in his forties.

Walker takes us through infancy; primary school days (reminding me of my shared terror on a first day entering a playground full of swarms of noisy children); postwar playing on bomb sites; first long trousers (which I ripped while climbing a tree the day before Grammar school for which they had been bought); first fumbling for the mysteries of girls, (despite celibacy before marriage, in my case for fear of mortal sin); first love, (mine more normal, in that it ran its course) which in his case lasted through early marriage and his wife’s early death – I also have memories of the latter.

Diane Barker’s illustration for the book jacket shows young Ted with his home made gun practising for membership of the Home Guard.

Elizabeth joined us for the afternoon and stayed for a dinner of Jackie’s wholesome chicken stewp with a fresh, crusty, French baguette. I drank more of the Garnacha; my sister drank tea; and the Culinary Queen drank Diet Coke.

Too Patient A Patient

I am a patient man – often too patient for my own good.

It is now more than a month since my second cystoscopy and biopsy at Southampton General Hospital. The biopsy was meant to reveal what had been left of the tumour first removed in June, after which I would know whether or not the planned BCG vaccination treatment would still be the best next procedure. I had been told that the analysis would be considered in two weeks.

Yesterday I telephoned the urology department to ask about the result. I was told by the man taking the calls on the number I had been given that I had not had the procedure on 21st, because I was “not on the system”. It was with growing irritation that I spent almost 15 minutes saying that I didn’t know about his system, but I did know I had had the procedure. Eventually I demanded to speak to a urologist. They were all in clinic, but he did agree to get one to call me. I am still waiting for that call. Yes, a classic case of “Computer says no.”

I then telephoned my GP surgery, leaving a message for my doctor there. As always he rang me within ten minutes. He had received the urology consultant’s report (I had not). This revealed that there was nothing left of the tumour. Although diminishing, I have been experiencing discomfort. A urine sample has shown that I do not have a UTI, but there is blood in the urine. He therefore sent me for an urgent blood test at Lymington Hospital, which was carried out this morning.

In the meantime I called the Southampton Urology department this morning. The given number rang for ages before a breathless woman answered. She was the very capable clinician who had removed my catheter in Lymington. There was no-one to manage the phone today so the others all had to leave what they were doing in turn.

Happily, we both remembered each other and Sharon found everything on the system and confirmed what my GP had said. I still need to speak to the surgeon who carried out the procedure, make my frustrations clear, and more importantly ask what I can expect from now on. Can I trust it?

I ask you.

This afternoon I read a lot more of Ted Walker’s ‘The High Path’.

We celebrated this evening with a meal at Rokali’s where food and service was as good as ever. My choice was lamb vindaloo; Jackie’s, sizzling chicken tikka; we shared mushroom rice and cauliflower bhaji; Jackie drank Diet Coke and I drank Kingfisher.

Real Recycling

On a warm cloud-gloom morning, we transported another collection of garden refuse to Efford Recycling Centre.

We returned with a shower stool and a marble topped table both of which will now be used in the garden, until, like the other broken metal items, they return to from whence they came. That is real recycling.

Fortunately the rain kept off while we were doing our dump run, but set in thereafter for the day. I therefore began reading ‘The High Path’ by Ted Walker.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s wholesome chicken stewp with fresh bread. Hacienda Uvanis Garnacha Old Vines 2020 accompanied my portion.

A Visit To Giles

This morning Jackie drove me to Giles’s home at Milford on Sea and collected me at lunch time. There I spent time with my longest-standing friend and Jean, largely comparing notes on our respective health conditions. This was as pleasurable as always.

Giles gave me a print I had made for him of his reflection in a glass chess board on which we were playing in 1973.

This afternoon I completed and posted my review of

The Berlin Diaries Of Marie Vassiltchikov Part Two

This evening we dined on Jackie’s famed chicken stewp and fresh bread with which I drank more of the Malbec.

The Berlin Diaries Of Marie Vassiltchikov Part Two

July to December 1943

Now the daily diary resumes with dramatic descriptions of the air raids and their effects on the populace, buildings, and locations.

“Wednesday, 28 July. Hamburg is being bombed daily. There are very many victims and it is already so badly hit that practically the whole town is being evacuated. There are stories of little children wandering around the streets calling for their parents. The mothers are presumed dead, the fathers are at the front, so nobody can identify them. The NSV [the Nazi Social Service] seem to be taking things in hand, but the difficulties are enormous.”

“Sunday, 24 October……I have a new urgent assignment: the translation of the captions for a large number of photographs of the remains of some. 4,000 Polish officers found murdered by the Soviets in Katyn forest near Smolensk…… Roosevelt has expressed the wish to receive the full, unadulterated story – a thing he is, apparently unable to do in the States because his entourage….. intercept and suppress any report unfavourable to the Soviet Union.”

“Wednesday, 24 November…….She soon returned with an old lady on her arm, wrapped in a white shawl. She had stumbled into her at the street corner and, peering into her grimy face, had recognised her own eighty-year-old mother, who had been trying to reach her, walking through the burning town all night…..”

“Friday, 26 November……. The park looked like a battlefield in France in the 1914-1918 war, the trees stark and gaunt and broken-off branches everywhere, over which we had to clamber…… These last days innumerable inscriptions in chalk have appeared on the blackened walls of wrecked houses: [e.g. ‘Dearest Frau B, where are you? I have been looking for you everywhere….. or ‘[Everyone from this cellar has been saved!’]….. Gradually as people return to their homes and read these messages, answers start to appear, chalked underneath…..”

“Saturday, 27 November…….Everywhere in town large fires are still burning in the backyards and it is, apparently, impossible to put them out. These are Berlin’s recently-delivered coal supplies for the winter! We often stop before them to warm our hands, for these days it is colder indoors than out…… “

January to 18 July 1944

This section continues with details of the worsening daily lives of Germany’s residents and the build up to 20th July.

” Sunday, 2 January …..My nerves are not improving and I was jolly frightened when some bombs came whizzing down in our vicinity. Also, having to sit up every night, sometimes for hours, is becoming exhausting.”

” Monday, 3 January ……I find the harassed faces of the people more depressing even than the desolate aspect of the town. It must be this constant insomnia, that never gives one time to recuperate, be it only a little.”

” Tuesday, 4 January…… Haeften himself asked Loremarie to quickly fetch some twenty-pfennig stamps for him. She fund none and came back trailing a snake of one-pfennig stamps in her wake…..”

” Sunday, 30 January ….. I am deeply depressed: Tatiana has still no news of Paul Metternich and Heinrich Wttgenstein is dead…..”

” Sunday, 6 February …. On 26 December, our old postman….. fell ill with pneumonia. His family had been evacuated, so Maria and Heinz brought the old man downstairs and fixed up an improvised bed in the kitchen. No doctor could be reached and he died on 28th……he lay in state on the kitchen table, surrounded by candles….[ for another six days ]”

” Friday, 23 June…….The journey was pretty awful. At Görlitz I had to wait hours for the Dresden train and when it arrived I could hardly squeeze in. Somebody tossed a bouncing baby into my arms and jumped into another carriage and I had to hold it all the way to Dresden. It screamed and fidgeted and I was in agony….. At Dresden the mother retrieved the infant and I waited another three hours for a train…..”

” Sunday, 2 July…. After dinner we had a long discussion with a famous zoologist about the best way to get rid of Adolf. He said that in India natives use tigers’ whiskers chopped very fine and mixed with food. The victim dies a few days later and nobody can detect the cause. But where do we find a tiger’s whiskers?…..”

” Monday, 10 July…… we discussed the coming events which, he told me, are now imminent…….I continue to find that too much time is being lost perfecting the details, whereas to me only one thing is really important now – the physical elimination of the man…….”

19 July to September 1944

Here the author relates the failure of the 20th July plot and the savage retribution meted out to many, involved or not.

” Thursday, 20 July…… Gottfried Bismarck burst in, bright red spots on his cheeks….He told me I should not worry, that in a few days everything would be settled…..

“Count Claus Schenck von Stauffenberg, colonel on the General Staff, had put a bomb at Hitler’s feet during a conference at Supreme HQ at Rastenberg in East Prussia. It had gone off and Adolf was dead….

“….it was past six o’clock…… “There has just been an announcement on the radio: “A Count Stauffenberg has attempted to murder the Führer, but Providence saved him…..”

” To the very end of her life Missie was reluctant to admit how much she knew about Count von Stauffenberg’s plot prior to 20 July. But the many random hints she keeps inadvertently dropping, starting with that first mention of ‘The Conspiracy’ on 2 August 1943, through the plotters’ persistent urging that she help keep Loremarie Schönburg away from Berlin, and ending with that all-revealing entry of 19 July 1944 with its ‘We [i.e. Adam von Trott and she] agreed not to meet again until Friday’, show that she was far better informed than she claimed and that she even knew the exact date of the planned coup!”(George V.)

Large scale arrests of actual or suspected plotters and their families followed immediately. “Many of those arrested were indeed not only savagely beaten but cruelly tortured, the most common practice being finger-screws, spiked leggings and even the medieval ‘rack’. It is to the lasting credit of the 20th July plotters that only a few were broken…..” (George V.)

A People’s Court was convened to rival Stalin’s Moscow Show Trials. Almost all those summoned were summarily executed. ” Thursday, 22 August ….. It appears they are not simply hanged, but are slowly strangled with piano wire on butchers’ hooks and, to prolong their agony, are given heart booster injections…..”

“To this day, the exact number of those executed in connection with the 20th July Plot remains a subject of controversy. According to official Nazi sources those arrested after the coup numbered some 7,000. A total of 5,764 persons were charged with high treason and were executed in 1944 and a further 5, 684 in the five remaining months of Nazi rule in 1945….” (George V.)

January to September 1945

With the Russians advancing on Vienna and with constant air raids to endure, Missie worked as a hospital army nurse and eventually as an escort to many refugee children and tells of her ultimate journey to freedom.

EPILOGUE

Tells of Missie’s marriage to American Peter G. Harnden on 28th January 1946, and brings us up to date with many more of the protagonists of the diary.

Categorised as Books

Garden, Pigs, And Ponies

This morning I read more of ‘The Berlin Diaries’.

By mid-afternoon, with the warm sun vying with the cotton clouds for dominance of the skies,

I wandered round the garden with my camera. The Virginia creeper has reddened up beautifully in the last 48 hours. Each of the images bears a title in the gallery.

Later, the sun having defeated the clouds, we visited Ferndene Farm shop to buy various food items and three more bags of compost for which I now have to avail myself of the trolleys provided.

We continued into the forest where we tracked a group of young

Tamworth pigs as they left the road for gleeful chomping on heaps of crunchy apples.

Ponies along Forest Road formed an orderly line along a wall in the shade; while

others disrupted the traffic on Tiptoe Road.

After drinks on the patio we dined on Jackie’s tasty liver casserole; boiled new potatoes, carrots, runner beans, and broccoli, with which I drank more of the Malbec.

An Extended Recycling

On 16th March 2016, we transported bags of garden refuge to Efford Recycling Centre in the Modus and returned with this wickerwork chair purchased from the Reuse Shop.

This, of course had to go straight onto the decking, where it stayed for a couple of years until, now unsafe for seating, it became a

plant stand at the corner of the West Bed.

Sadly, even that is now beyond its strength, so it has been broken up and formed part of a further load of spent compost bags and other broken bits of wood and metal which we took back to where it came from this morning – in the Hyundai which has now replaced the Modus.

This afternoon I continued with my draft of ‘The Berlin Diaries’.

The choice between Lal Quilla and Rokali’s as our favourite Indian restaurant is very even, but during the holiday season determined by parking, because it is impossible then to find a spot near Lal Quilla. We aimed to chance it today, but after circling the town twice, we returned to Rokali’s where we enjoyed their usual friendly service and excellent food. Jackie chose Paneer Shashlik and I enjoyed duck Jalfrezi. We shared special rice. She drank Diet Coke and I drank Kingfisher.

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