derrickjknight

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.

Working The Rose Garden

Listening to the tinkle-trickle of the water fountain and the tuneful trilling of a red-breasted robin’s deceptively sweet-sounding war cry delivered from our southern neighbours’ garden, Jackie and I worked together in the Rose Garden this morning dead-heading, weeding, and sweeping in the warmth of the summer-sunshine. With an eye to next spring the Head Gardener also continued planting the vast array of tulips and daffodils she has been collecting from garden centres in recent weeks.

By a now sweltering mid-afternoon, the direct sun having moved around a bit, I photographed some of our results and the

bustling bees still working over the Japanese anemones.

Later I read more of ‘The Berlin Diaries, then watched the next episode of ‘Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams’.

This evening we dined on baked gammon; piquant cauliflower cheese; boiled new potatoes, carrots, and Brussels sprouts, with which I drank Reserva Privada Chilean Malbec 2023.

The West Bed Pathways

This morning, while Martin was working on the West Bed, Jackie and I transported the last nine bags of green refuse and various wooden and metal broken bits to the Efford Recycling Centre.

Martin completed his clearance task, including re-fixing a fallen trellis,

and planting rhubarb.

This afternoon I published

The Berlin Diaries Of Marie Vassiltchikov Part One

This evening we dined on smoked haddock fish cakes; piquant cauliflower cheese; boiled new potatoes; crunchy carrots; firm broccoli; and tender runner beans

The Berlin Diaries Of Marie Vassiltchikov Part One

My Folio Society edition as well as several important maps, contains a good assortment of photographs of which I append only a selection.

Here is the title page and frontispiece.

“The author of this diary, Marie (‘Missie’) Vassiltchikov, was born on 11 January 1917 in St Petersburg, and died of leukaemia on 12 August 1978, in London…

“Missie’s [White Russian] family left a Civil War-torn Russia in the spring of 1919 from the (sic) Crimea, aboard a British naval squadron that had come to rescue the surviving members of the Imperial family. She grew up as a homeless refugee – in Germany, in France and in Lithuania……. France, where Missie spent most of her childhood, was in the twenties and thirties the centre of Russian émigré public and cultural life…. all her life and whatever her circumstances, she remained a staunch Russian patriot and a believing Orthodox” (From the foreword of her younger brother George,

who edited the diary from 1940 to 1945, and added linking paragraphs placing the context of the Second World War.)

January to December 1940

Missie’s accounts of the year 1940 show that the experiences of Berliners were not that dissimilar to those of Londoners; both were subject to air raids; both spent time in shelters; basic needs were in short supply. She also speaks of the anti-Nazi groups with whom she was in touch. I have selected a few extracts which I hope will give a flavour of her experience and sense of humour. There are also some of George’s links.

” Tuesday, 12 March Mamma (who is on her way from Silesia to Rome) telephoned from Vienna to say that Georgie has disappeared. When the train stopped at some small station on the way, he went to check their luggage. Without his noticing it, the luggage van was uncoupled from the main body of the train and joined on to another. He is now hurtling towards Warsaw. He has both their tickets, no passport and only five marks to his name. Mamma is waiting for him hopefully in Vienna.”

” Friday, 22 March… I dislike him cordially and am tempted to give him a shove when he leans far out of the [train] window to get a breath of air after one of their rows…..”

” Thursday, 4 April ….. “Nobody in Germany is supposed to know what the rest of the world is up to except what appears in the daily papers and that is not much….”

“The normal method of execution in Nazi Germany was beheading by means of a miniature guillotine. But is some cases ( such as high treason ), Hitler had ordered the reintroduction of the medieval axe.” (George V.)

” Monday, 22 April…. We are fasting rather severely. Our Church allows us to disregard this in wartime, on account of general malnutrition. But we have so little to eat anyhow that we want to save up some coupons for Easter.”

” Sunday, 28 April…… for some time now, our bosses had been complaining about the inexplicable consumption of unaccountable quantities of w.c. paper. At first they concluded that the staff must be suffering from some new form of mass diarrhoea, but as weeks passed and the toll did not diminish, it finally dawned on them that everyone was simply tearing off ten times more that he (or she) needed and smuggling it home…..”

” Tuesday, 7 May ….. We are allowed approximately one jar of jam a month per person and, butter being so scarce, that does not go very far…..”

” At the outbreak of war [P.G.] Wodehouse (a British subject, but a longtime American resident) was living with his wife at their home in Le Touquet, where the Germans caught them just as they were about to escape occupied France. Interned as an enemy alien, he was eventually released at the request of the USA (which was not yet at war). In Berlin the representative of the American Broadcasting System talked him into making five broadcasts for the American public, describing his experience. These broadcasts – witty, slightly ridiculing the Germans – were totally apolitical…….” (George V.)

” When the Soviet troops took over Lithuania, Missie’s father was visiting Vilnius……. The family had remained popular with the local population and in due course guides were found who volunteered to smuggle him across the border into Germany. They happened to be poachers who used to ‘work’ his forests and when he reached German soil and was about to pay them off, they refused, saying: ‘We’ve had our reward many times over….when you still lived here!’ ” (George V.)

“Friday, 12 July……Peter Bielenberg is a lawyer from Hamburg….married to a charming English girl, Christabel….. They have two little boys. The elder one, aged seven, was expelled from his school for having protested when his teacher referred to the English as Schweine…..”

“It was only after the failure of the 20th July coup that Missie learnt about Hasso von Etzdorf’s key role in the anti-Nazi resistance, and that his earlier aloofness when discussing politics was merely elementary caution.” (George V.)

January to June 1941

“Tuesday, 27 May The Bismarck was sunk today. The German Admiral Lutjens went down with her.”

Missie’s note [ September 1945 ]: “From this [June] day on, nearly two years of my diary are missing, even though I kept on writing it almost daily. Some pages I destroyed myself. Others I concealed in the country home of a friend in what is now Eastern Europe, where they may still be to this day; or where, as likely as not, they were discovered and removed to some local archive or, even more likely, burnt as rubbish.

But then in the confusion of the hectic years that followed, it seems a miracle that so much of my diary survived at all.”

INTERLUDE:

July 1941 to July 1943

Missie’s note [ written in the spring of 1978, the year of her death ] “I will try to give a short account of those events that had a lasting impact on our lives and of what happened to me, the family and some of my friends [ between 22 June 1941 and 20 July 1943 ], so that the reader may find it less difficult to go on with the daily account when this resumes.

During this period Missie kept up correspondence with her mother; from these we learn of the deteriorating conditions for residents of Germany while Hitler’s attentions were focussed on the Eastern Front.

“Tatiana married Paul Metternich on 6 September 1941. It was a joyous event except, of course, those who were at the front or who has already been killed or were too badly injured…..

That night Berlin had one of its worst air raids to date……”

Random excerpts from Missie’s diary discovered after her death describe the shocking effects of Allied bombing; of the effect of the battle for Russia on those White Russians living in Germany; and of her diminishing list of friends who had not been killed.

As the tide of the war began to turn “everyday life in Berlin had also changed radically. The USA’s entry into the war has been followed by a mass exodus of …… the last bastions of social life in the capital. And the heavy losses on the Eastern Front, which were beginning to affect every family in Germany, in themselves discouraged frivolity. From now on, the daily efforts of the author and her friends – or rather of those who were not on the fighting fronts – would be focussed essentially on physical but also on ethical survival – against hunger, Allied bombs and, presently worsening political tyranny and persecution.” ( George V. )

(Because of the length of my feature on this important book, I have decided to break it up in order to spare my readers – more will appear in Part Two soon)

Light And Shade

Having realised that strong sunlight, such as we enjoyed today, burns out the colours when photographing flowers I took a walk around the garden today to put to the test my conviction that the best results are found either by backlighting or by shade.

The images above are a mix of backlighting and shade. Each subject bears its title in the gallery. Bees, especially on Japanese anemones, and Small White butterflies, fidgety as ever, enjoyed the warmth.

This afternoon I read more of The Berlin Diaries and continued drafting the review.

Dinner this evening consisted of roast pork and apple sauce, boiled potatoes, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, and carrots, with tasty gravy.

Garden Refuse

On this very warm and sunny morning Jackie and I packed 23 more spent compost bags of green waste into our uncomplaining little i10 Hyundai and transported them to Efford Recycling Centre, formerly the Council Dump.

Later, in the afternoon, we visited Ferndene Farm Shop to purchase various provisions and

three more bags of compost.

I have recently begun reading “The Berlin Diaries of Marie Vassiltchikov” and will be drafting the review, on which I made a start today, as I go along.

This evening we dined on Ferndene’s meaty pork and chives sausages; boiled potatoes; particularly flavoursome mushrooms and Brussels sprouts; firm carrots and cauliflower.

Occupying The Roads

On a warm and largely overcast morning we took a forest drive.

After I had photographed this young lady in her unusual laptop station, we exchanged thumbs up signs.

Many cyclists are on the roads at weekends in September, often with bikes attached to their vehicles. The two in the background had just emerged from Furzey Lane,

variously occupied by ponies and conversationalists. When enlarged in the gallery a fly can be seen making a bee line for the right eye of the pony blocking our way. The couple engaged in chatting with the car driver all seemed content to block one side of the road in either direction for quite some time. We had already veered round them on our way down the lane and it looked as if the man with his hand in the air was indicating we should do so again. Jackie and others were thus forced to encroach upon the opposite dwelling’s gravel entrance.

A group of ponies sheltered beneath trees alongside Beaulieu Road.

This afternoon I watched the women’s rugby match between Scotland and Fiji on BBC iPlayer; and later the highlights of the men’s T20 cricket match between England and Australia.

As I indicated yesterday, this evening’s dinner was a variation on last night’s – I enjoyed Jackie’s portion of the Peri Peri chicken kebabs, while she baked her own chicken pieces sprinkled with Batt’s BBQ seasoning – taken with her colourful savoury rice and similar vegetables.

On The Road

This afternoon we drove to the north of the forest.

Donkeys caused traffic diversions outside Bramshaw,

where we saw our first pannage pigs of the season;

another was crossing Penn Common,

populated today by ponies, cattle, sheep, a lamb, and goats.

Some of the many groups of motorcyclists we encountered formed a long arc just outside Nomansland.

For a number of weeks now, farmers have been bringing in bales of hay and bagging them up. See Sue W’s comment below, naming these as Silage bags. These were outside Fritham;

where, within the woodland,

lies Eyeworth Pond, beside which were resting one of the many groups of camping teenagers we have seen this week. We speculated that they may be between school and university.

When leaving Fritham we witnessed a string of ponies trooping along the verge.

Once back at home I watched a recording of the women’s rugby match between England and New Zealand at Twickenham, now named Allianz, the home of the English game.

This evening I dined on Braemoor Peri Peri Chicken King Kebab, with spinach and Jackie’s colourful savoury rice. Jackie meant to have the same, but a very small bite revealed that it was far too hot for her. She therefore enjoyed the accompanying cauliflower and more of the spinach. I will be having the same tomorrow when Jackie will choose to cook chicken in her own way.

A Mistake Discovered Too Late

This morning I received a telephone response from Abby of Southampton General Hospital PALS (Patient Advice and Liaison Service) concerning the manner of my discharge from hospital on 24th August (https://derrickjknight.com/2024/08/25/four-days/). I made it clear that I wanted to prevent this happening again to anyone else. She will discuss this with the relevant department and report back to me. I am under no illusions that the system will change other than perhaps ensuring that the discharge doesn’t happen on such a day when necessary help is not available.

We then transported another 13 spent compost bags of green refuse to Efford Recycling Centre and came home with two plant stands purchased from the Reuse Shop.

After lunch I finished reading the last story in my Folio Society collection from the work of Maria de Zayas.

Beginning with a dramatic description of a tempest and cleverly led escape to security by an exceptional male character in that he is honest, caring, and seeking answers to

the scene pictured in this illustration by Eric Fraser, it is in fact the treachery of women leading to the typical male cruelty. A woman’s lies result in the honour murder of an innocent man and the disparity of the two women in the picture.

The device for recounting the story is the falsely dishonoured man explaining it to the honourable protagonist and standing by his extreme cruelty as justified revenge.

Maria de Zayas closes with: “It is my opinion, incidentally, that some women suffer innocently. They are not all guilty, as is commonly supposed, and the ladies present might consider this: if the innocent….must pay for imaginary crimes, then what ought not to be the punishment of those who pursue their vicious follies in all reality. It is worth noting that, at the present day, men have such an adverse opinion of us that even if we endure innocent suffering they still decline to do anything about it.” In fairness, she has granted a happy ending to the good man of this tale.

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

This evening we dined on salt and pepper, and tempura prawn preparations with Jackie’s colourful savoury rice.

There Always Comes The Reckoning After 4.50 To Paddington

Unfortunately my recently prescribed antibiotics have not dismissed my UTI so I rang the GP surgery to report this. Within ten minutes I was called back and prescribed an alternative, this time being asked for a sample which I furnished this afternoon and collected the medication at the pharmacy.

Opening with a bustling description of the rush to catch a train, described as an uneven race to keep track of a porter who “turned the corner at the end of the platform whilst Mrs McGillicuddy was still coming up the straight.” is an example of the writer’s ability to engage attention and the dry humour which pervades Agatha Christie’s novel “4.50 From Paddington” – the first by her that I have read.

The story is very well crafted, with various leads, false and incidental, followed without any real suggestion of the final conclusion. Much is told by skilled dialogue of which the author is a master. She amplifies the words with description of tones, as in ” “Well?” she said. It was a small insignificant word, but it acquired full significance from Mrs. McGillicuddy’s tone, and Miss Marple understood its meaning perfectly.” Sometimes sentences are left unfinished, as in “You don’t think……..” for the reader or indeed the conversationalist to complete. The mood of each person was indicated by such as a raised eyebrow or slumped body language.

Mrs Christie makes good use of short sentences to increase the pace of the narrative, and has an ability to create the essence of person and place with simple, telling, statements, as in “Her eyes were like windows in an empty house.” and “He unpropped himself from the dresser.”

There are hints at romance and less than subtle match-making.

It is hardly surprising that this story has been filmed on a number of occasions.

My 1959 edition of The Book Club was in a collection bequeathed to me by my Auntie Ivy some 50 years ago.

It is protected by two copies of the same book jacket very well designed by Taylor, about whom I have found no information. This featured copy is the top one; the second, even less blemished, is pristine. Anyone lacking a jacket should apply for a replacement in writing enclosing a large cheque.

Clinging to the top of the closed pages was a desiccated spider complete with clustered cobweb.

After starting on my next antibiotics I turned back to Maria de Zayas and the penultimate story in my Folio Society selection.

Very reminiscent of the Whitehall farces of the 1950s and ’60s presented by Brian Rix involving unlikely scenarios, although lacking their humour, this offering by Maria involves her usual themes of love, honour, deception, treachery, bed-hopping, and murder designed to demonstrate “that, in the end, no crime goes unpunished”.

Here is Eric Fraser’s illustration to this narrative.

This evening we dined on Hordle Chinese Take Away’s excellent fare, taken on our knees in front of the TV catching up on episodes of Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams, a truly inspirational series which I will review when I have seen them all.