In my post https://derrickjknight.com/2012/07/06/the-drain/ I liken a butcher’s in the Leadenhall Market that I knew 60 Christmases ago to ‘a film set for ‘A Christmas Carol”. When, in 1960, Ronald Searle produced these endpapers for the Perpetua Books 1961 edition of Charles Dickens’s story of that name he surely would have had a similar scene in mind.
I scanned the illustrations to this book yesterday in readiness for today’s post.
Marley’s ghost haunts the frontispiece.
Dramatic black and white drawings are interspersed with
evocative two-page colour spreads which, like the endpapers, because of the large format of the publication, have to be scanned page at a time, struggling to make the presented images fit reasonably well.
At my initial attempt I scanned the double spreads which resulted in these first two pictures being trimmed at the sides, thus losing the lamp in number one and the mouse in the second – effectively ruining the artist’s whimsical compositions.
After more Christmas preparations we dined this evening on Jackie’s well-filled beef and onion pie; creamy mashed potato; crunchy carrots, tender cabbage, and thick, meaty gravy, with which the Culinary Queen drank Hoegaarden and I drank Recital red wine, 2018.
On a dull, blustery, yet mild, morning I took a stroll along Hordle Lane to Apple Court House and back. Bordering the drive to the house bergenia and primulas are blooming, on this, our shortest day of the year.
A motionless long-eared owl, no doubt on the lookout for small mammals, perches atop the newly, beautifully, thatched roof of a house on which Hallmark builders have been working for a week or so. Thatching is one of the country crafts still thriving in England. It is the practise of builders to place a decoy, usually of the avian variety, in order to deter other birds from grubbing around for insects, or nicking material for their nests.
Doing a little Googling in a rather unsuccessful attempt to check my facts, I found, which is not unusual, one of my own photographs on an information site. Just as my introduction to the owl above is one of my sad little jokes, so was that picture. Instead of describing a genuine decoy as a live creature, I likened a living pigeon to a thatcher’s creation.
Another of my photos, also used, portrays the skeletons of decoy ducks that have themselves lost their plumage to scavengers. I wonder how long it will take for my owl to grace a twitcher’s website. My Lesser Antillean Bullfinch does, after all, with my permission, grace Fatbirder’s Barbados page.
This afternoon we drove to Helen and Bill’s home in Poulner for a Christmas dinner with them and Shelley and Ron. We enjoyed a superb roast venison meal with roast potatoes and parsnips; and a full range of vegetables cooked by Helen. The gravy was delicious. Iced Christmas pudding and sherry trifle were the sweets, followed by cheese and biscuits, coffee and mints. My choice from the available beverages was a very good malbec. Apparently venison was, in earlier times, a traditional Christmas roast. In Dickens’s time, as described in ‘A Christmas Carol’, goose was the festive meat. One topic of our conversation centred on the even earlier, Tudor, practice of stuffing smaller birds inside larger ones. A swan, we believed, would contain a goose, which held a chicken, into which a duck would be pressed, and that in turn would house a quail; thus forming something like a set of culinary Russian dolls. Obviously only the very rich could afford such a banquet.
An exchange of presents, thus forming a Christmas rehearsal, took place afterwards. As was normal in the Rivett household in which the sisters had grown up, Helen followed their father’s practice of providing a large plastic bag for ‘herk’. This was a word he had coined for discarded wrapping paper that otherwise would have been flung excitedly to all corners of the living room.
Later, we took a break in our session of The Name Game, to squeeze in tea or more coffee and delicious homemade mince pies and/or shortbread. In this game one person represents a character that may or may not be human, real, or fictional. The others, within 20 questions, each of which must be answerable by ‘yes’ or ‘no’, must guess the identity. I might, when I was Arsene Wenger, not have misled my questioners had I known his true nationality. But they didn’t hold it against me. This was fun, as was the whole event.
Water was the only sustenance required when Jackie and I returned home.
P.S. Later this evening, Jackie did some further Googling on the subject of the owl, There doesn’t seem to be any real consensus on the term or the purpose of what I have called ‘decoys’, although my term is probably incorrect. The most consistent name is ‘finials’, and they could simply be decoration serving as a signature of the thatcher. Whilst ‘decoy’ may be incorrect I do like the deterrent idea. Here is the text of Jackie’s observations:
Not called decoys by thatchers (decoy ducks are used by hunters I believe) but known as straw finials, they are a west country tradition that came from decorating hay stacks and corn stacks, used on roofs since at least the 17th Cent, I found an East Anglian thatcher who advertises that altho’ straw finials are a west country tradition he is willing to incorporate them if the costumer should desire it!
P.P.S. Barrie Haynes has sent me an equally enlightening comment: Most surprised to see a thatcher has placed an owl on a roof as when I was a child, many of the old New Forest people (my mother was a ‘Cooke’ from Emerydown) thought owls anywhere near the house brought bad luck!
Although not having got round its baffle, the crow is back trampling the petunias on the chimney pot. The squirrel, on the other hand, earned a meal this morning. It made a successful launch from the eucalyptus, crash landed on top of the corvine baffle, slipped underneath it, and scoffed away. Given that the rodent has now rivalled Eddie the Eagle, Jackie moved the feeder further from the tree. The next lift-off point will doubtless be the new arch. Google can supply further information both on our aforementioned Olympic skier and yesterday’s Greg Rutherford reference. We returned, briefly, to Castle Malwood Lodge this morning to retrieve two garden recliners we had left behind; and for a chat with Mo. Jackie then drove us to Ringwood where I deposited two pairs of shoes for repair; back home for lunch; then on to New Milton for me to catch the London train to visit Carol. The corner around our old flat is well stocked with self-seeded blooms from Jackie’s temporary garden; and
the little meadow alongside New Milton station has an abundance of wild flowers.
Today I finished reading Cicero’s ‘Pro Roscio Amerino’ (For Roscius of Ameria). This is an eloquent and subtle defence of a man facing a trumped-up charge of parricide, and is significant for its being the young advocate’s first speech in a criminal court, and for his courage in taking on powerful political elements. No doubt aided by D.H.Berry’s able translation, the writing flows, and is very readable and entertaining. It is to be inferred from my last sentence that I did not read this in the original, which would have been far beyond me. I am no Latin scholar, as was proven by my first three years at Wimbledon College. My Grammar school was then notable for its emphasis on the classics. Keen to obtain as many OxBridge university places as possible, Latin and Greek were the school’s most valued subjects, for in those 1950s days, a Latin qualification was a requirement for entry into our two leading centres of learning. I was never subjected to Greek, and my Latin was so abysmal that, long before the O level stage, I was transferred to Geography, not then considered of prime importance. Being top of the class in French, it was always a mystery to me that I could not grasp Latin. At school, I thought maybe it was because it seemed to be all about wars that didn’t particularly interest me. Not very many years ago, I twigged the reason for the imbalance. It was partially about word order, but more significantly about ignorance of grammatical terms. Without understanding these, I could manage the modern language, not that dissimilar in construction to our own. Meeting concepts like ‘subjunctive’ which were not considered needing explanation for passers of the eleven plus exam, I didn’t just swim, I sank. Latin gave me up. And Geography teaching was hit and miss, so I failed that too. So. In English. I went on to read ‘In Verrem 1’ (Against Verres). This was a necessarily short piece used as a device to circumvent the delaying tactics of the defence of a patently guilty man. It was so successful that Verres withdrew and further prepared speeches were not required. Each of the Orations in my Folio Society edition is preceded by a helpful introduction by the translator. I began Berry’s piece on ‘The Catilinarian Conspiracy’.
From Waterloo I walked across Westminster Bridge to Carol’s in Rochester Row. I have seen this route even more crowded than today, but it was still a struggle to reach and walk across the bridge and past the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey.
At the junction of Great Smith Street and Victoria Street a woman struggled with a chain of keys that would have done credit to Dickens’s Jacob Marley from ‘A Christmas Carol’, to free her bicycle from its fixture on a set of railings. Having succeeded, she dropped the cluster on the pavement and loaded her steed. Given her apparel and the content of her baskets, I wondered how she would manage to ride off. She didn’t. She donned her furry hat over the straw one, pushed the bike across the road, and continued down the street. I took the 507 bus from Carol’s back to Waterloo and boarded the train to New Milton where my chauffeuse was waiting to drive me home; show me her planting and tidying of the garden; and feed me on fresh vegetables with beef casserole, the method of cooking of which is given in yesterday’s post. She drank Hoegaarden, and I abstained.
