Early this morning Jackie wandered around the garden photographing
the overnight frost
and misty garden views.
Later we shopped at both Tesco and Lidl, by which time the mist and intermittent periods of sunshine had both lessened. We continued into the forest in search of more atmospheric scenes.
Grey ponies dotted the hazy moorland landscapes flanking Burley Road, where
skeletal trees were silhouetted against the rapidly changing cloudscapes.
The ancient steep viridescent verges alongside the hollowed out Charles’s Lane gathered bright green moss and ivy. Tall trees slipped into the
periodically descending mist, and the sun was once more a graven orb.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s spicy paprika pork and savoury rice with which she drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Fleurie.
Martin P spent the morning starting on the plastering left from our recent refurbishments. He will complete the job the day after tomorrow.
On another cold, bright, afternoon we took a trip to Ferndene Farm Shop to stock up on vegetables, then continued into the forest.
Jackie parked alongside the high point of Braggers Lane. I wandered up and down photographing
sunlit landscapes;
woodland;
and cattle.
A pair of donkeys grazed in a field beyond Sopley Mill, where
Jackie photographed me photographing the pattern of rippling railings reflected in the millstream.
She also focussed on the sunset viewed from the church of St Michael and all Angels, and on starlings perched on the weather vane atop the spire.
This evening we dined on succulent roast pork with crisp crackling; apple sauce; boiled baby new potatoes stir-fried with leeks; crunchy carrots and cauliflower; firm Brussels sprouts, and tasty gravy, Jackie drank Hoegaarden while I drank more of the Cabernet Sauvignon.
Jackie drove us to Ferndene Farm shop where she bought eggs, a leg of lamb, and vegetables while I photographed some of the produce displayed outside, including
pumpkins, cut flowers, cyclamen and pansies.
A pair of roofers worked across the road.
On this warm, damp, and largely overcast day the sun briefly signalled its presence when I stopped to commune with ponies outside Burley.
One grey indulged in a spot of pedicure.
A number of walkers enlivened the landscape.
I had no problem uploading pictures today, which is probably just as well since obtaining two multiple page forms concerning Mum’s probate was a different story.
As I eventually said when I got to speak to someone in the probate service, because I am an old man who didn’t grow up with computers I want to do as much as possible as an executor without going on line. Having previous experience in the case of my friend Wolf I knew that I needed Probate Application and Tax forms. www.gov.uk gives information about obtaining and completing these on line, but not about receiving them by post.
I therefore tried the telephone. After three differently accented machine voices led me through three different option numbers to press I eventually joined the muzak queue – for a good half hour. The man who eventually answered me and I enjoyed an amusing conversation when I explained that I wanted paper forms sent to me. Normally he could have done this, but not now. Why?
Because they are out of print. I can, of course, download them and print them myself.
I hoped to calm myself by reading a little more of ‘Dombey and Son’ and scanning the next four of Charles Keeping’s excellent illustrations.
‘Then came rows of houses’ displays one of the artist’s excellent street scenes, this time with chickens; and with the foreground portrait offering perspective.
‘Captain Cuttle advanced to the table’, and the next two drawings show more of Keeping’s excellent portraits.
‘The doctor was sitting in his portentous study’ is one;
‘Paul’s chair was next to Miss Blimber’ contains two.
The errors during uploading returned with a vengeance in these. I had so many attempts at the first that I couldn’t see straight. The process took a very long time, and I was then unable to edit them in the gallery. That will also have to be tackled mañana.
This evening we dined on tasty baked gammon; succulent ratatouille; firm roast potatoes, some of which were sweet; crunchy carrots; tender green beans; and piquant cauliflower cheese, with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank Montepulciano D’Abruzzo 2018.
This afternoon we drove to Screwfix in Lymington’s Ampress Industrial Estate to collect our new macerator, then explored the possibility of viewing the coast near the town. Quay Hill was crowded with visitors; there seemed no chance of finding a spot in the carpark which was in any case swarming with people.
We then drove on to Ferndene Farm Shop and abandoned entering that normally safe environment. Despite request notices on the shop door there was scarcely a mask in sight and the establishment was heaving with visitors, many of whom were children milling about inside. Ferndene has so far had an exemplary record for shoppers taking precautions.
All this despite government scientists warning today that unless the rising infection and casualty numbers reduce soon there is the possibility of another Christmas lockdown.
We fled to safer areas of the forest.
A string of mushrooms risks its life on the verge of Hordle Lane.
A number of vehicles occupied The Smugglers Road carpark near Burley. Their drivers and passengers were probably walking in the hilly moorland. Jackie parked the Modus and began tackling her puzzle book while I wandered off into the landscape
where more fungi were to be found among the green grasses and the
browning bracken.
I appreciated the fleeting appearances of the sun during this period brightening the otherwise generally overcast yet warmer day.
Some of the ground was decidedly soggy. A winterbourne pool contained reflections and a car numberplate.
As we drove away I noticed the glinting dishes on a telephone mast towering from the hillside. Perhaps the grey pony to the right of the landscape had wandered down the trail seen beneath the mast.
I am really struggling to enter photographs into the WordPress media files at the moment. The process is very slow and a good 25% of images “cannot be uploaded because an error occurred during uploading”. This means I have to try again individually. Each one takes 2+ more attempts. This time I abandoned one which had taken 5 goes. I did the same with one yesterday. Today’s header picture is not one on which I was prepared to give up.
This evening we dined on tender and succulent baked gammon; moist yet firm cauliflower cheese; firm boiled potatoes firm carrots; with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Fleurie, which involved opening another bottle.
I have been without a watch for a day or two. My Tissot needed a new strap and my Longines a battery. This morning Jackie found time to drive me to Robert Allan Jewellers in New Milton to have replacements fitted. We left the timepieces in the shop and drove into the forest before collecting them later from this excellent establishment which does the job quickly and efficiently.
Pastel skies streaked over the browning moorland flanking
the ever-crumbling Holmsley Passage
alongside which wild rose hips
rise above the rippling, reflective, stream.
From the passage we crossed Burley Road into Bisterne Close beside which the woods took on a decidedly creepy persona.
Beech nuts lined the forest floor.
The ditches
and the verge pool are filling up with the heavy rainwater we have been receiving lately.
A Travis Perkins lorry delivering bags of sand brought us to a halt. The driver was most apologetic. He had driven as close to the house entrance as he could, and would only be a few minutes. He underestimated how long it would take to tote one bag at a time up the drive. Having once been stuck on a verge with a similar drop to the one she would have to risk if we didn’t wait, my Chauffeuse reversed the Modus and took a longer back to New Milton.
This afternoon Dave, the plumber, visited to advise us on the replacement for our macerator which seems to be developing a death rattle; and Anne from Kitchen Makers advised that the handles we had chosen for some of our various new cupboards were not available and invited us to choose alternatives. After ordering the masticator of human refuse from Screwfit we called in on Anne and selected alternative grips.
This evening we dined on oven fish and chips, baked beans, and cornichons pickled in chilli. Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Fleurie.
On a still sultry afternoon we took a drive around the forest.
Dumped beside the entrance to the paddock on Braggers Lane was a burnt out Daihatsu Fourtrak.
Whoever left it there did not destroy the number plate.
Looking over the landscape at Rockford End. we could see a sunlit distant marina.
Jackie parked beside the very narrow lane while I wandered about with my camera and photographed
a grassy verge; tumbling farm buildings in an overgrown field; a dappled bank; and a gate into a similar field
From the lane up to Gorley Common and Hyde we observed a basking herd of deer.
At the top of the hill ponies shared the pasturage with cattle. One pony found its tail in a tangle; one cow stopped the traffic.
At North Gorley three donkeys were employed clipping a hedge, and
a huntsman and hound took note of the wind direction.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s wholesome cottage pie; crunchy carrots; tender cabbage and runner beans, with meaty gravy. The Culinary Queen drank Hoegaarden and I drank Cepa Lebrel Gran Reserva Rioja 2011.
This morning we drove to New Milton to collect my new specs from Boots and dry cleaning from Whites, then, on a hot and sunny day, continued into the forest
Some way outside Burley we stopped for me to photograph a trio of ponies, including a clinging suckling foal, cropping the roadside verge. I have noticed how the new mare mothers all seem to have bony ribs.
On the approach to Wootton Bridge, Jackie parked beside one of the many hawthorn trees that inhabit the woodlands, and I crossed the road to visit another foal and its family. The dam was another who displayed the spare ribs effect.
These recent mothers all seem to spend time taking in their own nourishment whilst supplying their persistent offspring, Maybe that is why this one led her infant across the road for apparently richer pickings.
I wandered down past bright buttercups, daisies, and young ferns, and crossed to the stream becoming drier by the day. Blown seeds rolled among the shadows; a child kicked an inflated ball while her carers sunbathed.
This evening we enjoyed a second sitting of the excellent Hordle Chinese Take Away, with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Cotes de Gascogne.
It was just about warm enough on a not very bright morning for us to visit Mum in the
beautifully designed, planted, and well maintained, garden at Woodpeckers this morning.
While waiting for my mother to be wheeled out I enjoyed a conversation with the gardener who works on this plot with the help of a group of volunteers.
Our visit lasted an hour with much more to talk about than is possible inside and through a screen. There was no difficulty with hearing each other and we could listen to and discuss chirping smaller birds and chattering jackdaws while watching a pair of robins darting backwards and forwards with beaks full of wriggling things.
This was Mum responding to the story about my fall in the flower bed. She was delighted to know that her photograph would be going round the world..
Afterwards we drove to Helen and Bill’s at Fordingbridge, briefly to deliver Jackie’s sister’s sunglasses and sunflowers she had left at our house a couple of days ago.
At Hale, while its mother picked daisies, a foal stirred itself to roll over and attempt to rise at the sight of my camera, then, deciding it couldn’t be bothered and flopped back into its ditch-bed.
The spreading limbs of an ancient oak framed the cropped landscapes of the green.
Along with a couple of other groups we picnicked overlooking the moorland below Abbotswell.
Beside the well-stocked woodland verge of a North Gorley lane
sprawled the gnarled arms of a broadly smiling Green Man.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s flavoursome savoury rice as a base for succulent roast chicken thighs, and prawns, both hot a spicy and salt and pepper preparations, with which she drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Shiraz..
Yesterday evening I reached a point past nine more of Charles Keeping’s illustrations to “Nicholas Nickleby”. and scanned them today.
Keeping depicts such movement in ‘The animals were no sooner released than they trotted back to the stable they had just left’.
‘A female bounced into the room, and seizing Mr Squeers by the throat gave him two loud kisses’. When repeated further in the book these portraits will be most recognisable.
The three boys in the foreground of ‘Mrs Squeers stood at one of the desks, presiding over an immense basin of brimstone and treacle’ are recent arrivals. Keeping shows by the chubby, innocent, profile of one that they have not yet adopted the description, including the harelip, Charles Dickens gives to the others. The mixture of sulphur and molasses was commonly used as a cure-all at the time. Here it was mainly employed as an appetite suppressant.
‘When they were both touched up to their entire satisfaction, they went down-stairs in full state’
‘The timid country girl shrunk through the crowd that hurried up and down the streets, clinging closely to Ralph’ displays the artist’s mastery of perspective.
‘They stopped in front of a large old dingy house that appeared to have been uninhabited for years’ displays historically accurate buildings.
‘The poor soul was poring hard over a tattered book with the traces of recent tears still upon his face’ represents the portrait given in the book’s frontispiece.
‘Pinning him by the throat, Nicholas beat the ruffian until he roared for mercy’
‘Dingy, ill-plumed, drowsy flutterers, sent to get a livelihood in the streets’ is one of Mr Keeping’s text sandwiches.
Between showers we prepared a site for the new, as yet unopened, wooden bench.
Later this afternoon we drove to Everton Nurseries where Jackie bought some trailing petunias, and continued into the forest.
where I was tempted from the car by the sight of groups of ponies who had been much more in evidence today than yesterday.
Purple violets beneath a yellow gorse bush; scattered bluebells; and a fossilised hand caught my attention.
I thought I could discern at least two foals in the distance.
To reach them I needed to follow a track across the running stream created by the ponies above.
That reminds me. The pony in the foreground of the first picture in this gallery determinedly emerged in my direction and took up a position with splayed legs right in front of me. It had made me rather nervous. Fortunately missing my feet it released a powerful stream from its rear end. Naturally I lifted my lens enough for decency. This was still creating its own little puddle when its companion did exactly the same thing. Were they trying to tell me something?
This was quite an undulating landscape.
Climbing up to the next level I was rewarded by the sight of two foals.
As its mother wandered away the first of these rose to its feet, stretched its limbs, trotted after her, then felt safe enough to look me in the eye.
On our journey home through East Boldre we encountered a group of donkeys and their foals.
Perhaps attempting to arouse the attention of its comatose mother,
one excited youngster repeatedly ran rings round the gorse bushes, causing Jackie to exclaim: “He’s just found he’s got legs”.
This evening we dined on plump lemon chicken thighs; creamy mashed potatoes; spicy hot ratatouille; and firm cauliflower, with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank Trivento Reserve Malbec 2019.
