derrickjknight

The Rainbow

Jackie drove us to Christchurch this morning in time for lunch at Boathouse, a rather good restaurant overlooking the River Avon quay. It was a beautiful day and the drive through the forest was gorgeous. I had a delicious fish pie whilst Jackie ate a pizza fire, which apparently lived up to its name. She then went off to the High Street whilst I sallied forth in search of the river path in the direction of the sea.

According to my lady I needed to turn left along the quay for the sea, or right to travel inland. I chose the sinister route and very soon found myself in the middle of a static caravan site which proved to be a dead end. One of the residents told me I needed to go back along the towpath and cross the bridges. Simple enough. Except I hadn’t come along the towpath in the first place, and wasn’t sure where the bridges were. I found myself walking the Convent Walk along what must be a towpath. Glancing up at the Priory church, I saw the glowing colours of the stained glass window of the Lady Chapel benefitting from the westerly sun that streamed in from the side. I came to one bridge and crossed to the other side of the road. My first attempt at continuing led me to what seemed to be conference centre. I passed a deep window in which I large group of young women were feasting. I caused them great hilarity, realised my error, and backtracked.

Another woman told me that to regain the river bank I needed to walk up to and along the High Street, and cross a dual carriage way where I would find the next bridge. This was one of those moments on my travels when I berate myself for not having brought a map. Nevertheless the element of uncertainty I gain this way is all part of the fun. Since I was in need of relief there was the bonus of the public lavatories in the main shopping centre. The wall of my cubicle bore the graffiti legend DEFEND ATLANTIS.

At the end of the High Street I used an underpass across a dual carriageway. It bore a helpful sign indicating Avon Valley Path. I followed it. And found myself in Waitrose Car Park. There a young man struggling to lead a string of supermarket trolleys to their stable was blown across my path. He wondered if I had come in search of a trolley. When I told him what I was searching for he confirmed that I should walk up to the motorway where I would find my path. Now, I should have guessed that the river which had burst its banks at Ringwood would have done the same here. If my path existed it was under several feet of the water which stretched as far as I could see. Seagulls swam around the bases of telegraph poles, electricity pylons and trees. What had been fields were now their landing strips. It was then that I began to wonder whether the Avon had its own submerged Atlantis. When I reached Stoney Lane railway bridge I decided it was time to turn back.

As it began to rain I entered The Priory Church. This splendid building, begun in the 11th Century, is both sturdy and elegant. There is a splendid marble Pieta carving as a monument to the poet Shelley, and much more of interest which will repay a further visit. It was in examining the stained glass from the inside that I was able to identify the windows I had photographed earlier. The building is more like a grand cathedral than a local parish church.

When I emerged into the light it was to a clear bright low sun and sparkling rain. I walked into the shower’s needle sharp shafts as I turned right along the quay. The arc which soon appeared in the sky provided evidence that conditions were perfect for a rainbow. I sped along the strand seeking a standpoint from which I would be able to photograph the whole semicircle of the most complete rainbow I have ever seen. I may have had better luck on the other side of the river. As I returned to the Priory car park where I was to meet Jackie, I witnessed a squabble of seagulls at the water’s edge screeching, flapping their wings, and stretching wide their beaks at each other. The origin of their collective noun became very clear.

Incidentally, ‘The Rainbow’ is the title of the D.H.Lawrence novel I have most enjoyed.

We had a light salad, followed by apple crumble leftovers enhanced with tinned madarin oranges, for our evening meal. Our wine was a most potable Breganze reserve Pinot Grigio 2011, ticket number 510 in last Saturday’s Merton Mind Christmas Fayre tombola.

Almost A Local

Today’s dawning put me in mind of the old adage: ‘Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight; red sky in the morning shepherd’s warning’. This was a morning of heavy frost, frozen pools, and slippery tarmac.

I walked to Lyndhurst via the A337 and back by way of Emery Down. The purpose of my trip was to collect my eye ointment. Jackie had taken the prescription in yesterday and so diverted herself making other purchases in the chemist that she forgot to wait and collect it.

As I crossed the cattle grid to our lower drive the sudden swish of fallen leaves alerted me to the starting, leaping, and bounding off in unison of three startled deer who disappeared deep into the forest. Their superbly synchronised scuts and elegant rear limbs would have graced an Olympic swimming pool. Four unperturbed ponies nonchalently continued chomping at the bracken, gently rustling the foliage underfoot. Their inelegant legs were matted with dried mud.

The building pointed out by Lindsey yesterday as having been the Post Office is Hungerford Cottage which lies on Running Hill shortly before Seamans Corner. Villages throughout Britain have, in recent decades, lost their Post Offices. Another example is Upper Dicker in East Sussex, home of the Village Shop run by Tess Flower posted on 12th May. That shop once included a Post Office counter which, despite much local objection, was withdrawn about three years ago. Incredibly this was just after Tess, as a recent subpostmistress, had been sent on a training course by the Post Office decision makers.

Ice pattern 12.12

When a small car containing two women who asked me directions stopped in Lyndurst road I was rather pleased to be able to point the way to Minstead Lodge in Seamans Lane.

Four more ponies, which I have seen before, were grazing by the twig circle I noticed two days ago. I reflected that these animals are often seen at this site. I then remembered that last night, driving back in the dark, I had recognised the pony from outside Perry Farm just a bit further up the road than usual. Arriving at Seamans Corner two and a half hours after I had passed the first quartet of ponies, I saw that three of them had made it this far down Running Hill. I now begin to understand how Jeanie, who I met on the 30th November, recognises photographs of her ponies. They seem to have their own preferred or allocated territories and, contrary to my uneducated original impression, they do not all look alike. Obviously they have different colouring, bearing different shades of white; and browns ranging from ochre to chocolate; with white, golden, black, or brown manes.

I am beginning to know my equine neighbours; those streets that do have names; the names of some buildings I pass; even one or two actual people. Hey, I’m almost a local.

This evening’s meal consisted of Jackie’s succulent cottage pie followed by apple crumble. I finished the McGuigan Estate shiraz and Jackie didn’t.

A Swan In The System

This morning I took a train up to Waterloo to visit Norman then Carol. Because Jackie’s car was being repaired I needed a cab to Southampton Parkway. Lindsey from Point to Point arrived bang on time. He explained he was taking the safe route through London Minstead because crossing the A31 was too dangerous. I agreed. As we travelled through the village he pointed out houses that had been used for other purposes when he was a child growing up there. Examples were the old post office and a second village shop. On a corner in London Minstead he pointed out where the Knight family had lived. He has been a patient at the Lyndhurst surgery all his life, and spoke very highly of it. He offered himself as a fount of local stories.

The station was packed when I arrived. The man selling tickets informed me that there was a two hour delay in getting to London. The platform announcer told us that the train, normally consisting of eight coaches, contained four. On entering a carriage I was one of the few people who managed to secure a seat. Actually it was only half a seat with room for just one buttock. Checking out the time delay with other passengers, I was relieved to learn that this only applied in the other direction. I would be able to keep my appointments but not get home on time, for the problem would not be rectified before midnight. The concourse at Waterloo was filled with serried ranks of hopeful travellers, eyes fixed on the departure boards. This did not augur well for the return journey, and, indeed, by 6.45 p.m. the sight was the same.

From Waterloo I walked to Green Park by the route described on 22nd November. From The Embankment to Green Park crowds of people photographed each other against their chosen backdrop. Geese, having abandoned the lake in St. James’s Park in search of tourists’ proffered titbits, drank from puddles on the paths.

I took the Jubilee Line to Neasden and walked to Norman’s where he fed us on roast duck followed by Christmas pudding, accompanied by a fine chianti. After going on by tube to visit Carol, and spending a couple of hours with her, I boarded a 507 bus to Waterloo. There was no let-up in the morning’s disruption, although the train I did catch was only about 40 minutes late in arriving at Southampton.

It was, however, standing room only on the ten carriage train. I could get no further than the second coach. Even in the first, first class, carriage there were no seats available. A certain amount of hilarity was engendered by the guard’s announcement that there was a buffet car at the front of the train, which it would have been impossible to reach. I was able to give Jackie an accurate estimate of the arrival time and she was there to meet me as I came out of the station.

Today’s problem, across the region, had been cause by ice on the tracks at Woking. In December 1987 I had set out optimistically from Kings Cross on the very first evening of my commuting back home to Newark. This journey, normally lasting 80 minutes, took four hours. The train came to a standstill when a swan became stuck in the braking system. It could not be freed, so a replacement locomotive had to be sent down from somewhere in the far North. As I arrived home some time after midnight I wondered: ‘What have I done?’. Fortunately it was never as bad again.

Gracedale Road S.W.

Just before mid-day I took the upper drive route down to Minstead; turned right by the red phone box; walked up through Fleetwater; took the right turn at the junction towards Stoney Cross; and right again on the A31 back to Castle Malwood Lodge.

The thatchers in Minstead continued their work. A house in Fleetwater had been demolished and a wooden structure was being built. I couldn’t tell whether it was a replacement house or a rather splendid shed.

Walking up from the ford by the school you encounter a fork in the road by a clearing at the edge of the forest. The left fork takes you nearer to Emery Down, and the right to Fleetwater. I was intrigued by a large perfect circle of twigs laid out, some way off the road, on the turf. Is this The New Forest’s answer to miraculous crop circles?

On the road past Fleetwater which runs between the A31 and Lyndhurst there were numerous ponies of varying sizes. One came trotting down the tarmac towards me, as if straight out of a Thelwell drawing. Its mane covered its eyes and almost reached the ground beneath its short, stubby, legs. I half expected to see a similarly shaped dazed schoolgirl in jodhpurs and a crash helmet, planted in the bracken festooned with saddle and trappings, having been dumped by her dumpy steed. Another silver haired grey-dappled horse, much taller than the others, blended beautifully with the forest birches. Many of the ponies were haloed against the light of the low winter sun.

Arriving at Stoney Cross, and not wishing to walk back along the scary A31 which has no footpath, I did my best to find a path running parallel to that road which should return me to upper drive. I was unsuccessful and therefore had to brave the buffeting of blasts from the vast vans speeding past.

In Fleetwater I spoke to a man who was blowing leaves from his drive. He was proud of the old LNER cast iron sign he had fixed to his gate. LNER was the London and North East Railway that had been one of the four major companies which ran UK’s pre-Nationalised railways in their earlier privatised incarnation. Forty shillings was a lot of money in those days. Once upon a time most street name signs were made of similar material painted black and white. They can still be found, but are gradually being replaced, in London at least, by lighter, less substantial signs put up by the Boroughs which came into being in 1965. In 1987, Gracedale Road, SW16, in Wandsworth, just before Jessica, Sam, Louisa, and I left it for Newark in Nottinghamshire, boasted such a sign at each end. Two weeks before our departure flimsy substitutes replaced them both. One old one was left in the gutter and never removed. Not until we departed, that is. With the sign in our car. Matthew cleaned up the trophy, gave it a fresh coat of suitable paint, and bolted it to the brick wall of the old boiler house attached to the back of Lindum House. I like to think that little part of Nottinghamshire still bears the legend:

For our evening meal Jackie produced an excellent chicken korai with an elaborate pilau rice which was eaten with paratas from Portswood International Stores. She drank Hoegaarden whilst I imbibed McGuigan Estate shiraz 2010. For sweet we had gulabjam. Jackie was a bit concerned that she hadn’t any cream to go with it, but the evaporated milk we used was a good complement. When I suggested cold custard she called me a philistine.

‘Some Handlebars’

This morning I walked to Lyndhurst via Minstead and Emery Down. Thatchers in Minstead, ignoring the light rain, perched on a roof renewing a pretty thatch. The gentle clopping of hooves from behind alerted me to the presence of a cart drawn by two horses who became quite skittery when face to face with a massive motor coach. This was a single track section of the road leading up from the ford. There was quite a queue in this less travelled road by the time the coach had edged past the vehicle of yesteryear which was tucked in by a fortunately placed farm entrance.

Approaching Emery Down there is a long uphill stretch that, for a cyclist emerging from the village, is an exciting downhill plunge. Rapidly descending towards me, grey locks flying splayed out on each side, grasping soaring handlebars which would have graced an ‘Easy Rider’ type machine, was really quite an elderly woman. ‘Some handlebars!’, I cried as she whizzed past. ‘Yayyyee!’ she replied, her voice tailing off in the distance.

I met Jackie in the car park at Lyndhurst. We went to register at the Lyndhurst G.P. Surgery which, amazingly, has the same address, 2, Church Lane, as the G.P.’s that had been Jackie’s in Merton for forty four years. On our return, gamely cycling up the slope was my ageing easy rider.

Aldi’s haddock and chips provided our evening repast with which I drank Adnam’s ale and Jackie didn’t.

After the meal we took part in The Amberwood pub quiz. Our team improved somewhat from last week, finishing in fifth place, just two away from the prizes.

Maawwah!

Clear frosty light sreaked across the lawn outside the kitchen window this morning.

I walked through London Minstead to the A337 and back to meet Jackie by Seamans Cottages to be driven to Southampton. In Seamans Lane a boy spun around on a skateboard, as I slid along on the slippery road. A smaller lad was busy cracking the ice on the surfaces of the frozen puddles. Further on another boy bounced up and down on a trampoline in his garden. A cock crew in Hazel Hill Yard where hens seemed to be queueing for his attention. Outside Perry Farm a wagtail shared grazing rights with a forest pony.

The reason we were going to Southampton was to buy some Infected Eye Optrex for my eye which is a bit sore again. Having looked it up on the Internet we saw there was a Boots open in Unit 6 of the dreaded West Quay shopping centre. This being a Sunday that seemed to be our only opportunity. We couldn’t find it. After driving around for an age we saw a Boots sign on the back of a building, drove as near as we could to the front of it, and started to walk to where it should be. Unfortunately we asked a couple if we were on the right track. They were adamant there was no Boots in West Quay. What we had to do was walk to the multistorey carpark, take a lift to the seventh floor, then from there traverse a bridge across the road and into the High Street where we would find the only branch of Nottingham’s finest. It was only five minutes. It was in fact ten, despite the fact that we were hurrying. We queued for the antibiotic which is available without prescription over the counter. The assistant refused to sell it to us because I hadn’t been to a G.P. I exploded. We returned to the car. I had remained convinced that had we walked fifty yards around the corner before asking the couple for directions we would have found the West Quay Boots. I just had to satisfy myself, so we drove around and there it was. Jackie wanted to try our luck there. I didn’t. She was determined to do it even if it meant leaving me in the car. Seeking another parking spot, the next arrow on the tarmac she followed took her out of West Quay and into the main road. Even she had had enough then and we returned empty-handed to Castle Malwood Lodge where we were due to give lunch to Mum and Elizabeth.

I am now firmly of the opinion that anyone wishing to lay out a town in the most confusing manner possible would do well to take inspiration and ideas from Southampton.

After lunch we all visited the fortnightly antiques fair at Minstead Hall where Jackie bought a tablecloth for our new table and three Asterix books, allegedly for visiting children; and Elizabeth bought us housewarming presents of a 1930s wooden jigsaw puzzle and a substantial glass cakestand.

We then had a portraiture session in which I produced a choice of photographs for Elizabeth to put on her website.

As Mum struggled to her feet from the sofa, I spoke of a game I had played in yesterday’s Santa performance. I would ham up struggling to my feet and stand looking vaguely into the middle distance, carefully not noticing that Lisa and Dan were placing a toy hedgehog on my seat. I would then sit down, feel the prickles on this actually very soft object, and jump up grimacing in pain. I did not repeat the roar that had been a feature of my impersonation of Mr. Bumble, the Beadle from Oliver Twist, of which this little charade reminded us all. When Sam, Louisa, Adam, and Danielle had all been small, they would approach me at the meal table, bowls in hand, and ask: ‘Please, Sir, may I have some more?’. My reply, eyes bulging, red-faced and hoarser and hoarser with each repetition, would be: ‘MAAWWAH?’. And there would be repetitions. As with yesterday’s hedgehog, adults tire of these games much sooner than do children. Mum remembered that when Louisa played Mr. Bumble it could be heard on the other side of Newark.

This evening we revisited Friday’s roast pork; I drank Piccini Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Riserva 2009, and Jackie had some more Three Choirs.

‘What Was Derrick Doing There?’

Watching the sun come up behind the bare trees and frosted lawns seen from our windows brought home the fact that we will be acutely aware of the changing seasons in The New Forest.

We set off early this morning for another trip to London. This was for the purpose of fulfilling a promise to appear as Father Christmas and Santa’s Little Helper for Merton Mind in St. Mark’s Church Hall in Mitcham. We had a brief diversion to The Firs to collect my Wellington boots that were to be part of Santa’s outfit. The bright sunlight on the foggy frosted fields of Hampshire and Surrey created such beautiful scenes that had we had time to stop for photography we would probably never have arrived in Mitcham. As it was we were a little late and I had to explain that it had been foggy in Greenland. Dan was more specific about where we had come from. He knew it had been The North Pole.

Someone had locked the side doors to the building, so I had been unable to sneak in wearing my civvies. I had to go in the main entrance and pretend to be a potential purchaser from the stalls, hoping no-one would recognise me when I emerged from the gents wearing the outfit Jackie had been provided with. Our friend Sheila, the Director of the organisation, had lurked outside whilst I changed into my red and white garments, so she could show me my station in the hall.

There was a bit of a queue, so I had to get straight into the business of what people wanted for Christmas. As soon as two likely accomplices arrived I said that I just must get out of my boots because my feet were killing me. Dan and his sister Lisa eagerly heaved away to relieve me of my cumbersome footwear. This revealed the socks Becky had given me last Christmas which have the merit of not going with everything. For some reason this caused the children and their mother great amusement.

These two became firmly attached to Father Christmas and gave him and his Little Helper a share in all the spoils they managed to win on the various stalls at the fete. Dan, in fact, gradually usurped Jackie’s role, rendering her somewhat superfluous. This bright little lad sussed that I couldn’t be a real Santa because he had seen another one the week before, but he played the game well, including asking me lots of complicated questions. Lisa didn’t really know what she wanted, but he did. He wanted a PSP. As Father Christmas didn’t know what that was he delegated the task of Googling it to his original Little Helper.

Other children came along at intervals and had conversations with Saint Nicholas’s impersonator. It was lovely to experience their wonderment. One little girl had said she wanted a little doll. A little later a man brought along a musical doll which he said was surplus to his requirements. He thought Father Christmas might want to give it to a little girl. Dan had the bright idea that the child who had asked for a doll might like it. Off he went in search of her. This, unfortunately was in vain, for she and her mother had left. However, it naturally wound up with Lisa who was delighted with it.

The last time I played Father Christmas was almost fifty years ago when one of the children being entertained was my three year old brother Joe. Feeling rather complacent about having pulled off the disguise and fooled my little sibling, I returned home to be advised by my mother that when he had come home he had asked her: ‘What was Derrick doing there?’

After the fete Jackie and I visited Becky, Flo, and Ian before driving back to Ringwood for a Curry Garden meal accompanied by draught Kingfisher. Then it was an early night.

The Avon In Spate

There are nine very tall panels to our bay window where the dining table is situated. This gives us a kind of treble tryptich view of the beautiful lawns and trees beyond. Over lunch we watched a pied wagtail running around, it’s bobbing appendage providing evidence of the aptness of its name. A robin was hopping in the background.

Having to wait in for TV technicians, we did not go out until mid-afternoon. Jackie drove us to Ringwood where she went shopping and I went walking. From the main car park I walked through Meeting House Shopping Centre, across the High Street, and down Kings Arms Lane to Riverside Walk, along the bank of the river Avon and back to the car park to meet Jackie for our return home. Still standing in the shopping centre is John Conway’s tomb. It looks to be about eighteenth century, but is now worn illegible. Instead of grass and daisies it is adorned by bricks, chewing gum spots, and dog-ends. The other night it bore an empty drinks can.

At the end of Kings Arms Lane a village green now has a pond which surely wasn’t planned. A bare tree does a dance on its surface.

As I approached the actual riverside I was amazed to see the path I would have expected to walk along completely submerged and the gate to it padlocked. Trees sprung out of fast-flowing water and, as Jackie put it when seeing other such waterlogged fields, tufts of greenery stood up like the marsh symbols on Ordnance Survey maps. I walked around some houses and crossed a bridge which had a torrent running only just beneath it. The Walk itself was on a high enough level to be traversible, but either side of it the terrain was covered with water, with streams pouring into fields. This was a combination of the Millstream and the River Avon. It was hard to tell which was which.

As I gazed across a field that was now a lake, I saw two ponies apparently tethered to a horse box on one of the few areas of solid ground. I wondered if they were about to be rescued from a watery grave.

Walking left along the riverside I came to a road and turned back to follow the other direction, meeting a friendly man who told me some of the local history. It was he who confirmed I had been watching the Millstream and the River Avon. He was walking his two small terriers. This was Mike Hooper, who turned out to have been working at Paddington Station in the 1970s when I had been working in the area. He had lived in Ringwood for the last twelve years and had never seen the area so flooded. He said the water level was usually three feet below the bridge I had crossed. He pointed out new houses at risk of flooding, and a caravan site where the residents needed to wear Wellington boots to cross to their field. Another man’s huge garden had become a lake. He told me there had been twenty ponies in the now waterlogged field not long ago, and that they were being moved out. They had been standing in water. He thought the two I had seen were probably the last of the group which had been being kept in a field rented from the farmer who owned the land. Swans, egrets, and other water birds now claimed residence.

After I parted from Mike I saw some activity at the horsebox. The ponies were being coaxed into it. I spoke to the woman doing this. She was a very pleasant person who was the owner of all the ponies who had been in the field. These were the last two being removed. There had been twenty one in all, and I was watching ‘the awkward ones’. One had developed a certain lameness since yesterday. Whilst the woman, Jeanie, was talking to me, one of her horses emerged from the box. We were leaning on a stile some yards away. ‘Get back in that box’, said Jeanie, kindly but firmly. Like a reluctant dog being told to sit, the animal lifted a tentative hoof, and reluctantly, stutteringly, began to comply. I learned from Jeanie that the forest ponies, although roaming free, are actually owned by people who have ‘forest rights’. There are sales of them just as there are of other livestock. She has some in the forest and some in fields. On a couple of occasions she has recognised her own ponies in photographs in the media. A local newspaper has put some on disc for her.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s superb roast pork with crunchy crackling. I drank more of the McGuigan Bin 736 whilst Jackie preferred the English Three Choirs Annum 2011.

Orlaigh

Today we spent six and a half hours in the car on a journey to visit Sam and Holly and their children Malachi and Orlaigh, in Homerton, East London. The return took four of those hours.

Orlaigh Beth, the latest family member, was born on 15th. November. Holding this new life in my arms I was reminded of my own daughters, especially Becky with whom there is a resemblance. But she is Orlaigh, not just who she looks like, but a twenty first century child who will know things I could never dream of.

I also thought of Holly’s parents, Gay and Mick O’Neill, who I hope to see at Christmas. They are not yet able to see their grandchildren as often as they would like, because they live on the other side of the world. Gay, your turn will come next week.

When Jackie and I arrived, Malachi was at Pre-School. After his sister had been brought down and presented to her UK grandfather, Sam went off to collect him. In the meantime Orlaigh uncomplainingly was held by both Jackie and me. She screwed her face up a few times and searched for an absent nipple, but otherwise she slept on until a while later, when she made it clear she was hungry.

Malachi arrived, excited to see us, so much so that he called through the letter box before Sam came to open the door. After lunch we had to play hide and seek. He did what all little children do and gave the game away by giggling in his hiding place. Jackie did a grand job of not finding him in all the obvious places, before his laughter could no longer be ignored.

After this it was drawing. He enjoyed being artistic alongside me, and helping Holly with a picture. By the time he got his train set out it was time for us to leave.

On our very lengthy return journey, when I was not asleep, I contemplated my life with children. In my seventy first year, the only time there has not been a baby or young child in my life was the fourteen months before my brother Chris came along. I was the eldest of five, and my brother Joe was only three when Michael, my eldest, was born. Matthew, Becky, Sam, and Louisa followed soon enough; and Emily, the first of six granddaughters arrived nineteen years ago. Oliver, almost seventeen, felt some relief of pressure when Malachi joined him nearly four years ago. Orlaith keeps the tradition going. Thank you, Sam and Holly.

After a pretty difficult journey home we went on to Curry Garden in Ringwood where we had an excellent meal accompanied by Kingfisher beer and a long exchange of life stories with the manager who lives in Bethnal Green, not so far from where we had been today.

Right Said Fred

I took the upper drive route down to Minstead this morning which has a little more forest to walk through before arriving at the road. This meant passing the new lakes that have formed since we arrived here. Turning right at the Furzey Gardens sign I continued past the gardens along an increasingly muddy and pool-ridden path until I came to what I took to be the elusive Stoney Cross. As Jackie said, this is just a few houses. From there I could see another underpass under the A31, further West than the one leading to Malwood Farm. The equine hoofprints and piles of droppings lent credence to my speculation that the ponies use these underground passages to cross to the other sides of the forest. This is not necessarily a definitive answer to how the animals cross the road. The evidence may have been provided by such as the horse being ridden by the young woman cantering past me up the hill leading to Stoney Cross. Nevertheless it will suffice until I do actually spot something more conclusive.

A small child’s coat hung on a gate by the waterlogged underpass, which led to very soggy terrain covered in small lakes and piles of equine excretia. Crossing this would, I felt sure, lead me to the road to Rufus Stone (see 19th November post). There were no footpaths, and it all looked a bit risky. Then I saw the trail of hoofprints peppered with heaps of poo. The ponies surely had picked out a route. I followed it, reached the road I wanted, turned right, crossed over the A31 and returned home.

I have always wondered where and how the forest animals sleep. I still don’t know, but today outside Furzey Gardens, I saw ponies lying down for the first time.

Before going for my walk, Jackie and I had moved my desk from the sitting room to our bedroom. On 12th November I had suggested that this item, which was proving problematic to get into the sitting room, might go through the window. The removal men had thought it wouldn’t. It did. This had been how the desk had been manoeuvred into the study in Sutherland Place. It had gone into the sitting room window, through that room to the dining room, through the dining room window, whence it had been lowered to the basement floor and through a set of French windows. Before that, in Leinster Mews, it had served as a dining table, which it was to do again in Links Avenue, and, until today, in Castle Malwood Lodge.

I had bought this piece from Norman King, the husband of the couple from whom Jessica and I had purchased Lindum House in 1987. He could not fit it into the house to which they were moving. His study became my study, and there the desk remained for the next nineteen years. It has accompanied me on my several moves since. Psychoanalysts would no doubt call it my transitional object. Jackie and I found it reasonably straightforward to take it out of our sitting room the way it came in, and to transfer it to our bedroom by the same method.

The reason for this further move is that our recently purchased dining table and chairs were to be delivered this afternoon. I had explained that the only way the table could be admitted to the room was through the window, and I wasn’t even sure about that. Chris was optimistic. For some time after the two delivery men’s arrival, Jackie and I got to know Chris and John rather well. For Chris, as he actually said, the glass was always half full. John, cheerful and friendly enough, had his doubts. The central leaf had already been removed and the winding mechanism employed to make the circumference smaller. I stationed myself in the room. Jackie placed a couple of cushions on the window ledge. The men lifted the table up from the outside and passed two legs through the window. Table legs, that is. I grasped them and slid them across. As far as they would go, that is. Which wasn’t far enough. Another window was tried, with the same result. There was nothing for it but to try bringing the table up the hall and through the door of the room. This meant moving stuff out of the hall, and putting it into the nearest available bedroom. Because we didn’t start to move some loaded bookshelves until it had become apparent to John and me that there was no way the table was going through the door, Jackie and Chris had to do this, because I was in the doorway and couldn’t get past John who was hanging on to the table for dear life. Eventually even Chris was becoming a little less optimistic, until I offered another suggestion. This was that the casters should be removed. He brightened considerably at this idea. I was still trapped in the sitting room, so Jackie provided screwdrivers for Chris to begin removing the wheels from the feet of the table. This procedure took some time. I had to assist by holding a torch with which to offer some light to help Chris to locate the screw heads. Now the bookshelves were moved, John was able to wriggle round the table and tackle some of the feet himself. Jackie stacked a pile of screws and casters in the spare bedroom and we tried again. Still no joy. It just wasn’t going to go. Jackie suggested that if the winding mechanism were unscrewed it looked as if the table would become two pieces. Chris was wary about that.

But maybe now there were no casters it could be slotted through the window. Another bright idea of mine. Back the men went, through our front door, across the two communal hallways with their very heavy doors, and round the side of the building to the window. The previous procedure was followed, with the same result. Chris, who was absolutely determined that this table was going to fit into our bay, then came up with the solution. It should be up-ended with its length vertical, taking advantage of the height of the window. It slipped in beautifully, but not exactly a great deal more easily. Central leaf was wound in, casters screwed back, and we had lift-off. As the chairs were brought in I had You Tube on full volume on my laptop playing Bernard Cribbens’ 1962 hit record ‘Right Said Fred’. If you don’t know it, or even if you do, it is well worth a listen.

Jackie christened our new table with a luscious lamb stew. I drank McGuigan Bin 736 2011 and she didn’t.