This morning began with an hilarious exchange with Becky who corrected our ageing memories over the Apple Juice story. This necessitated amendments in the form of a postscript.
The very heavy rain kindly desisted as I walked the two fords Q later on. The sun put in enough of an appearance to set twinkling the streams running downhill in the ditches, and on the tarmac and verges into Minstead. The blustery wind had not given up. Its thrumming blended well with the tinkling of water on gravel.
Silently dripping from branches above, the rainwater described expanding ripples on the pools beneath, and the torrents pouring under the concrete surfaces of the fords swirled and bubbled, far too fast for me to get a shot in focus. The roughness of the aggregate’s texture produced a criss-cross effect as it disturbed the flow of water upon it.
Minstead’s drains are not yet clogged up, but they will be, and the downhill streams will then proliferate.
I am not sure whether it is Adam or Eve that has lost a large limb to the winds. This bough would certainly have blocked the road until removed by the foresters.
Heaps of crumbled tarmac have been laid across Primrose and Champion‘s gateway in an effort to make their winter feeding a less soggy affair.
Vociferous rooks filled the sky and a silent squirrel sped across the road in front of me on the approach to Running Hill. As I walked up it, tall beeches swaying aloft creaked alarmingly.
This evening we dined on one of their very reasonably priced and excellent set meals and T’sing Tao beer in the friendly atmosphere of Totton’s Family House Chinese restaurant.
Tag: beeches
Apple Juice
This morning I made a start on sorting and scanning 20 years of random film negatives. The first strip was not my own. It was taken in January 1984 by John Gordon, a friend of my sister Elizabeth. 
This shot featured in the Southampton Daily Echo. Sponsored in aid of Hilldene, her son Adam Keenan’s day nursery, I (701) was taking part in a ten mile race. ‘Race’ simply describes the event. No way was I in contention. I was merely happy to beat my own personal best. This one was completed in 64 minutes, and was a new best time, probably because it was snowing when we began. That does tend to make one rather nippy. I felt rather smug when Elizabeth told me that the photographer had said it would be a comparatively easy task to run alongside me for the pictures, and found it wasn’t. The reason long distance runners look much slower than they really are is the heel/toe action which requires the heels to land first in the stride.
Today was twelfth night, and therefore time to take the Christmas decorations down. First their storage boxes had to be removed from the garage. Carrying the stack of containers through the kitchen, I walked into a metal chair and bruised my shins. The stack rose above my eye line, and I hadn’t thought about it in advance.
My running days are over now, but what promises to be the longest running joke of all time continues to surprise. As Jackie stripped the Christmas tree she let out a cry that must have been heard in Emsworth. It was even louder than mine when I clouted the chair.
Perhaps three years ago now, Jackie and I took Becky and Flo for a meal at Frankie & Benny’s in Ampere Way, Purley. Our granddaughter, as is her wont, drank apple juice. The container bore a green sticker. As we parted company in the car park, Flo slapped the passenger side front window and ran off smartish.
There, adhering to my window pane was the apple juice label. Naturally, when someone plays such a prank, one must retaliate. About a month later, Becky found the item on a part of her car that I do not remember. Backwards and forwards went this transitional object, returned in the most devious of ways. The gaps between the transfers were gradually extended. This was essential because you had to give your victim time to have forgotten about it.
Have you, dear reader, remembered that Jackie was stripping the Christmas tree? Well, you know what she found hidden among the artificial foliage, don’t you?
Given that we last hid the offending article in Flo’s Christmas present in 2012, one has to admire her patience. Yes, Flo, we had forgotten about it. But we’ll get you back. In the immortal words of Vera Lynn, ‘Don’t know where, don’t know when’. You do know that, don’t you? (Vera Lynn, known as ‘The Forces’ Sweetheart’, raised innumerable spirits during World War II with, among others, her rendering of ‘We’ll meet again’, which can be found on Youtube).
Adam Keenan grew up to be a skilled and much sought after animatronics creator. Three years ago he made a realistic mechanically animated dragon for Flo’s birthday. One of its joints became dislocated. This necessitated a spell in my nephew’s hospital. I well remember my tube journey back to Morden on the day I collected the cured lifelike creature. I took great pleasure sitting in a crowded tube train surreptitiously pulling levers which made its eyes open and shut; its head turn and its tail sweep; and watching the faces opposite me.
At that time Jackie and I were holders of the drink sticker. So, of course, when Flo opened the box containing the repaired treasured animal, it had a suitable label round its neck.
Far too much rain for the forest and its environs to cope with continued to fall as, this afternoon, we drove to Totton for a mega post-Christmas provisions shop. Reminiscent of last year, brown water flowed from the overfilled drains in the gutters across the centre of the main road into this suburb of Southampton. We followed a petrol tanker most of the way, feeling rather grateful that we were not one of those cars, waiting to turn out of side roads, that got the benefit of the bow waves as the large wheeled lozenge sped past. As Jackie said, there would not be much point in having a car wash at the moment.
On our return someone played ducks and drakes with huge hailstones bouncing from the water-bound tarmac to the car windows and vice versa.
Two fallen beeches in the road from London Minstead to the A337 bear the legend:
Each is too long to fill the frame of one photograph. This had us speculating that the purchasers may have been wood-carvers, for craft fairs, after the great storm of 1987, were filled with the work of those who had benefited from the trees that fell throughout the South of England.
This evening we dined on beef hotpot and cabbage, followed by the last of our Christmas pudding. I drank La Serrana tempranillo 2012, whilst Jackie drank Hoegaarden.
P.S. In her Facebook comment on this post, my daughter Becky has corrected a few details concerning the label. Firstly the restaurant was Frankie and Benny’s. She reminds me that the game began when, during the meal, Flo stuck the object on the back of my hand and I left it there all evening. That amused our granddaughter. As we were leaving I placed it on the back of her hand and dashed away. Plonking it on our window was her retaliation. But that didn’t take place immediately, Jackie now remembers. We left the restaurant in convoy. When stopped at traffic lights Flo emerged from the gloom and planted it on the driver’s window, not mine. Our last transfer took place a little more than a year ago when we hid it in a kitchen canister.
Now, had this all taken place when I was Flo’s age I probably would have needed no memory jogging. On the other hand, it couldn’t have, could it?
A Gift From Norway
We drove early this morning to Ringwood for a bit more shopping, then went on to visit Helen and Bill in Poulner, after which we meandered around the northern forest villages seeking a particular photographic subject for a card idea that Jackie had. We returned home along Roger Penny Way.
The plane trees around Ringwood car park are now mostly devoid of leaves, although many of the forest trees remain festooned with persistent clingers. Along Roger Penny Way, the rounded shapes of the oaks and beeches with their golden foliage are set off nicely by the pointed evergreen pines behind them. The gnarled and arthritic limbs of the oaks are beginning to reveal themselves.
Ponies, cattle, and donkeys were all motionless soon after midday. All these roamers seem to be growing winter coats. The equine varieties stood stock still, whereas the bovines lay basking in the sunshine glinting on their variously coloured ear tags.
High above the fields and chimney pots of Ibsley, a trio of helicopters, possibly military, glided silently across the skies. As Jackie brought the car to a standstill alongside someone’s house, and I leapt out to photograph the airborne vehicles, I rather alarmed a woman who stood quizzically shielding her eyes. I therefore felt obliged to explain what I was doing, by which time I had all but missed the shot.
Back in Minstead, where the horses of the Freshwater Stud were now wearing man made winter coats, we found the picture we had been looking for all along. 
This afternoon I worked on the prints required.
Yesterday, the Christmas season officially opened in Central London with the switching on of the lights to the Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree. Our annual gift from the people of Norway in recognition of Britain’s help during World War Two, the tree has been a feature of the capital since 1947. This is how I, with my Kodak Retinette 1b, recorded the scene fifty years ago:
The rows of people to the left of the picture are carol singers. Different groups still perform nightly carols raising funds for various charities.
This evening we dined at The Family House Chinese restaurant in Totton, on the excellent buffet meal. Although called a buffet this is rather different in that for £18 a head you do have all you can eat, but you actually select from a normal full menu , and are given all the time you need with breaks in between. If you over-order and cannot eat it all you pay normal prices for the uneaten portions. It seems to work rather well. Once again we remarked on the friendliness of the atmosphere, with the staff seeming to be on very good terms with all the customers. I always eat the decorative chillis and cucumber. When taking our first set of empty plates away, the waiter, seeing that I hadn’t eaten the lemon slice, from which I had at least squeezed the juice, suggested he should put it on my bill (as an uneaten portion). With our meal Jackie and I both drank T’sing Tao beer.