It was the second episode of the second series of ‘Inspector George Gently’ that we watched last night. Lee Ingleby’s Sergeant sidekick to Martin Shaw’s Inspector is an interesting departure from the usual device of a rapport between the two leading characters on which such productions hang. He is well played as an unpleasant, prejudiced, individual defending himself against his own vulnerability. This makes the partnership less than ideal, which works in a different way from the more amenable pairings that go back as far as Starsky and Hutch. I have to say that I am not convinced that the series would be compelling without this dynamic.
After television and aperitifs came a meal of spare rib casserole followed by a successful combination of chocolate cake topped with tiramisu, with which I drank a little red wine.
We then had a pleasant evening’s conversation with the usual cut and thrust between Maggie and me in which the others made helpful contributions. Prompted by the recent sex abuse trials of UK celebrities, we discussed the efficacy of the jury system. Neither Cath nor Maggie as served as members of ‘Twelve Good Men And True’, although Mike had once and I had twice.
I was rather surprised to be called a second time approximately ten years after my first stint because I had thought that each man or woman was expected to attend only once in their lifetime.My first spell had been in my late twenties when I played in insignificant role, although I do remember having persuaded a near neighbour I had never met to change his mind.
By my mid thirties my profession had made me proficient at managing and facilitating groups of people, and I am convinced that the jury system has more to do with group dynamics than anything else. Perhaps that is why, in six short cases, I was elected foreman five times.
One of the peculiarites of the English system is that we are expected to take no time at all in choosing our leader. We don’t know each other. Perhaps presence is significant. A larger group than the round dozen is called for compulsory duty. Each prospective member is presented to the defence barrister who has the right to reject anyone he or she does not like the look of. That way, although everyone must appear daily for the allotted period, individual juries have constantly changing membership. Sometimes, for the short cases we heard, there were people we had worked with before, but this is not necessarily so.
One gentleman proudly got himself rejected each time by wearing a pin-striped suit with a copy of The Times protruding conspicuously from his jacket pocket.
The one case that really sticks in my mind must have featured the shortest jury deliberation on record. We are not permitted to discuss trials outside the jury room. This comes after the summing up when we are herded together, given instructions, shut in, and told to press a bell either when we have reached a decision or we need something. As soon as we assembled on this occasion, without discussion, I asked: ‘Shall I ring the bell?’. All agreed. I did so. The usher entered the room and asked what we needed. I said we didn’t require anything because we had reached a verdict. We all trooped back and, when asked, I announced: ‘Not guilty’.
What had happened was that two key witnesses diverged so precisely that it was clear that one was lying. This had been so blatant that a senior police officer had appeared in the courtroom to observe what was going on. I, for one, regretted an earlier guilty verdict we had given had hinged on the evidence of that same witness for the prosecution.
This morning I began reading Susan Hill’s detective novel ‘The Betrayal of Trust’.
Before I went up to my usual Sunday perch outside Le Code Bar to send this post, I telephoned Jackie at home. She told me that on the evening of 14th 32 diners had been rescued from a coastal restaurant at Milford on Sea that had been pounded by large rocks thrown up by massive seas and powerful winds. The windows had been smashed by the terrifying missiles, giving the staff and sixteen couples a Valentine’s Night to remember. The house we are about to buy is about two miles inland from there.
Fortunately the weather here has cleared. This was the evening view of the garden immediately opposite our house.
Tag: Milford on Sea
Piquant Cauliflower Cheese
This morning I finished reading the preface to Madame Bovary. I hadn’t realised that Flaubert’s now acclaimed novel once enjoyed the limelight, like ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ by D.H. Lawrence, more than a century later, of an indecency trial before being published in book form. Lawrence’s mediocre novel was first published privately in Venice in 1928. Not until the obscenity trial of 1960 could it be published in UK. Naturally the trial’s publicity boosted Penguin’s sales enormously.
The day began dry, but dull and blustery. It soon brightened. I walked through London Minstead to Shave Wood where Jackie met me and drove us to New Milton’s Lidl for a shop, then to Milford on Sea for lunch at The Needles Eye cafe, after which we returned home via Bolderwood.
A black terrier who lives on Seamans Lane, the self-appointed guardian of his home usually menaces me with savagery when I walk past. Today; either he lost interest in leaping up and down, barking, and showing his fangs; or he has become accustomed to my presence, because he suddenly relaxed, stuck his head through the wire fence, and gazed calmly down the road.
The two heaps of sold timber lying on the forest verge at Hazel Hill would seem to be still awaiting collection.
There was a little difficulty in obtaining a shopping trolley at Lidl. As anyone familiar with these devices will know, you have to press a £1 coin into a slot to release a metal tag entering the mechanism through the other side to enable you to pull out your chosen steed from a string of others. Someone had jammed a coin into ours and it wouldn’t budge. We could neither withdraw it nor put a new one in. So we had to move to another set of trolleys and successfully try our luck there. When I reported the problem to an attendant, his manner, although polite enough, suggested he thought I had inserted the dodgy bit of currency.
We didn’t stay long on the sea front at Milford on Sea. I swear even the seagulls were shivering on the shingle and the sea wall, not fancying any encounter with the winds and the waves. Those that did attempt to fly didn’t stay long in the air.
The waves hurled themselves and buckets of shingle at and over the wall and created pools on the walkways with their myriad drops of spray. A couple of times whilst attempting to photograph the scene I was required to take evasive action, and a deposit of salt was encrusted on my viewfinder by the time I had finished.
Our return journey took us alongside the Rhinefield Ornamental Drive near where a 
number of very large trees had been ripped from their shallow roots and lay waiting to be dealt with by The Forestry Commission’s clearance crews.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s beautifully blended smoked haddock and cauliflower cheese meal. I believe the splendid special piquancy of this dish comes from the cheese sauce.
Its method of preparation is this:
To make enough sauce to cover quite a small cauliflower take: approx. 1 ounce of butter; 3 ounces of strong Cheddar cheese, cubed; a little less than 3/4 pint of semi skimmed milk; 1 3/4 oz plain flour; 1 teaspoonful of made up English mustard (for colour and piquancy).
Consistency 1
Consistency 2
Consistency 3
Consistency 4
Place a small saucepan containing all but the milk over a high heat and stir constantly, adding the milk a little at a time once the butter has melted and is absorbed into the flour. The cheese will slowly melt into the mixture. Once consistency 4 is reached you can use it to dress the cauliflower, having lightly boiled that along the way.
Then add grated cheese and pop it in the oven to bubble away until it browns.
Today’s mashed potato included swede and onion. With it we shared the last of the Nobilo. Afterwards we ate jam tart and lemon meringue pie.
Contrasting Skies
In January 1964 I took four colour slide photographs of birds being fed at the Tower of London. The best of these has been lost. I had used it to produce a calendar for Mum a year or so later. Sadly, of the twelve pictures selected for that present, this is the only one that has sunk without trace. Two others are just not good enough for my eye which is far more discerning now than it was then. If you have just one or two of something in a collection, maybe you are more likely to retain what would be better thrown away. If you have thousands amassed over fifty years, you don’t mind creating a few gaps. These two are now in the bin.
This is the one that, with a considerable amount of retouching, survived for my posterity collection. It is feeding time for the gulls and pigeons that no doubt still gather to snap up the offerings of those generous souls giving up their lunch hours to line the railings and toss bread for the birds as yesterday’s Ibsley woman tossed carrots for the ponies. I fondly speculate that I still occasionally photograph descendants of these very avian symbols of London and The River Thames. Well, I am given to the occasional romantic thought. The woman nearest the camera was a daily visitor. The lost picture contains her outstretched arm and shower of airborne crumbs glinting in the low winter sunshine. I see it still.
A perhaps less romantic observation is that the dockers whose cranes, so prevalent in 1964, no longer line the shores, are long gone from the scene. Five years after this photograph was taken London Docks were finally closed to shipping and sold to the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, who set about redeveloping them for residential purposes. Further vast improvements to the area were, of course, undertaken for the 2012 London Olympics.
Today’s weather did not improve in the afternoon, although the storms were not as violent as they had been yesterday. We drove Flo through rain, hailstones, and darkening skies, to blink through drops running down the car windows at the home in Downton we hope to buy. In mid-afternoon it seemed like nightfall to the east whilst a golden sun pierced clouds to the west. I could even see small patches of blue sky in Jackie’s wing mirror.
This dramatic contrast was even more apparent on the beach at Milford on Sea. We went on there for Flo to give Scooby a run around on the coastal footpaths, as the choppy waves crashed on the granite rocks below the cliffs. 
Turner would have painted the nearer clouds to our right as the sun slowly subsided in a clear blue sky. A young man stood contemplating the scene. 
At the same time the lighthouse light warning of The Needles, on our left, flashed away, clearly visible against a patch of open sky beneath the untinged blanket of cloud. You will need to zoom in on the picture to see what we could see. I found it amazing that looking out across the same stretch of water, simply by changing one’s angle of view, one was seeing such differently hued cloudscapes.
Scooby trotted up and down for a bit, whilst Flo gave me the benefit of her artistic direction. It was cold, so we didn’t stay outside long enough for Jackie to get into her programme on the car radio. We then showed Flo the town and shopped in the Old Milton Tesco.
This evening Jackie fed us on succulent sausage casserole with the usual array of vegetables. I drank a glass of Trottwood 2011 shiraz, whilst Jackie’s preference was for Hoegaarden,
‘They Are Her Friends Now’
After a frosty night we were treated to another crisp, clear, and cold morning, so Jackie and I made an early start for a trip to Milford on Sea.
The morning sun on the trees bordering the A35 beckoned beguilingly, so Jackie parked on a suitable verge for me to go on a photo foray. 
As I passed through a walker’s gate into the woods I glimpsed, in the far distance a group of siren deer. This time I was a little quicker on the draw and did not allow them to tempt me off into the unknown as, sharpish, they scarpered.
From Paddy’s Point car park in Milford on Sea, I walked down steps to the beach and along the shoreline, grating on sliding shingle, 
as far as the 
end of a row of beach huts from whence I climbed up more steps on the crumbling cliff and back along the top to the car. Every few yards along the path was placed one of a row of memorial benches dedicated to people who had spent their last years contemplating The Needles from this point.
Along the shoreline unceasing, gently receding, wavelets in the slowly ebbing tide, covered, then revealed, glistening pebbles and glimpses of sand. Bobbing up and down, a seagull sedately surfed until seen off by another.
Back in the car, as we blinked into the bright morning sun making its way up the clear blue sky, a rather ragged peacock butterfly rested for a few moments on the windscreen before flitting off to oblivion.
Yesterday I had noticed a bonfire across the Beaulieu River. Today we brunched in The Needle’s Eye cafe from where I watched smoke from another on the Isle of Wight playing along the sides of what appeared to be hills. My full English breakfast and Jackie’s tuna in baked potato were very good. You are always given marmalade with the full English toast. I never eat the sweet spread. Don’t get me wrong, I love marmalade. I just don’t think it sits right with a fry-up.
We stopped for a little Christmas shopping in New Milton on the way back. As you leave Bashley there is a sign by the roadside warning that there are pigs on the road. We have occasionally seen them but they were absent today. This prompted me to voice my puzzlement about how it is that all the various different animals are allowed to roam in the forest but, sticking to their own localities, don’t seem often to get lost. I was soon to receive the answer.
After a rest we drove out to Frogham to witness the sunset across the heath from Abbots Well car park. This is the point from which Jackie watches me finish my walks across the heath. The sunset sat well on the pond.
The track into the car park is pitted with deep pools. A nasty grating thump somewhere in the nether regions of the car didn’t seem to have done any damage. Following us in was a 4X4 which had much less difficulty negotiating the tricky terrain. 
The driver got out and studied the heath through a pair of field glasses. He explained that he was looking for a cow that had been missing for eight weeks. He had just found it, and was trying to work out how he was going to reach it. Miraculously, because I had several times walked over that terrain, I was able to be of some minor assistance. Either that, or the gentleman was being very polite.
Apparently, the animals are safely left to roam because they like to stay with their friends. 
This particular cow, which, because of its black ears, he recognised, through his binoculars, among a group of white ones, had not been out much before and had wandered off alone. After all this time the cattle she was with were now her friends. Off went our acquaintance to spoil a marvellous friendship. 
Jackie soon spotted him driving across the heath.
The Forester’s Arms in Frogham has been closed when we have attempted to visit it before. It has reopened under new ownership, and we very much enjoyed the atmosphere there as we stopped for a drink on the way home.
Jackie then produced a splendidly spiky chicken jalfrezi with fragrant onion rice, followed by spicy bread pudding and custard. I finished the Saint-Emilion whilst Jackie drank Hoegaarden.
Goose Fat
I awoke to a most unsympathetic witticism from my beloved daughter Becky. She has, for some years now, inexplicably been obsessed with what she sees as a likeness between me and Jon Pertwee’s portrayal of Worzel Gummidge. I can’t see it myself. Never missing an opportunity to offer this public humiliation, she appended a quartet of mug shots to the Facebook link of yesterday’s post. And Danni just had to join in. I must have erred in the respect and discipline department.
Undeterred, the inhalation treatment continued today.
The source of the eucalyptus ingredient is Vick’s Vapour Rub. Apart from melting this waxy substance in a bowl of hot water and holding the victim’s face firmly in place under a towel and over it, Vick’s can be rubbed on chests to relieve all manner of respiratory complaints. Whilst undergoing the torture, to which I might add one could become addicted, this morning I allowed my mind to wander over this and other similar remedies. Well, it gets boring otherwise.
A traditional preventive or curative application certainly still in use in the nineteenth century in England was goose fat. In those days ailments like TB which are rare or largely eradicated today, were dreaded. Even ordinary chest infections were likely to prove fatal. Goose fat was the poor person’s vapour rub. This product of the extremely oily farmyard fowl was in plentiful supply as there was always a huge amount drained off when one was roasted.
Generations of no doubt progressively rancid children lived, from November to May, sewn into cotton vests inside which were sheets of brown paper covering layers of the goose grease smeared onto scrawny pectorals. Pondering this, under my towelling turban, I asked Jackie to remind me about her old friend Mrs. Hooper. A nonagenarian when Jackie knew her, this woman would have been about 140 were she alive today. As a little girl she had been subjected to the preventative casing, and loved to describe it and many other aspects of a bygone childhood. Without this testimony one might imagine some exaggeration in the tale.
It had been 13th October last year, and therefore a little early for autumn colour, when I first walked the Rhinefield Ornamental Drive. This afternoon Jackie drove us to Bolderwood from where we leapfrogged along the drive. This took the form of Jackie driving us a bit; stopping and letting me out; me walking on a little more; her catching me up after an agreed time; 
me riding until the next likely photoshoot possibility;
then repeating the process.
After this we needed petrol. There aren’t too many petrol stations in the vicinity, but travelling to Bashley for fuel seemed a little bit out of our way, until Jackie pointed out that Milford on Sea wasn’t far away. So we just had to have a look at the coastline and The Needles opposite. On the beach beneath the cliff stands a row of beach huts I hadn’t noticed before. 
Looking down on them I remembered photographing the hang gliding further along the coast at Barton when in July I had been so engrossed I almost walked off the edge.
This evening pumpkin pie followed chilli con carne with a mix of wild and perfectly calm savoury basmati rice. Feeling the positive effects of my various treatments I was able to drink a couple of glasses of Marques de Montino rioja reserva 2008.
A Clear And Present Danger
On a bright and blustery morning Jackie drove me to Milford on Sea, so I could walk along Hurst Spit whilst she sat in the car with her puzzles. 
I walked the length of the wall protected by Norwegian rocks, with Sturt 
Pond on my left and, beyond the waves on my right, The Needles. As it was pretty cold up there, my return was alongside the channel and the pond. Thus I avoided the chill wind coming off the Solent. the stretch of water between the mainland and the Isle of Wight.
Various waterfowl and sea birds bobbed and floated on the pond or scavenged among the mud pools. Suddenly spooked by something 
unseen, the Brent geese all left the surface of the water, and, setting up a cacophonous honking above the howl of the wind, filled the skies overhead, before eventually settling down again.
At the far end of the spit, beyond the granite rocks, the terrain drops and the deep shingle is banked up. As I trudged across this my footsteps were echoed by the gravelly tones of stones seeking new levels after their disturbance. They slipped into place with sliding sounds similar to those of ‘Dover Beach’ described so eloquently by the poet Matthew Arnold.
The channel that had made Jackie and me think of ‘Star Wars’ on an 
earlier trip leads to a harbour where yachts are moored before one reaches Hurst Castle. This is where I turned round and set off back to the car. Because of the ‘Star Wars’ memory and the idea that I might be able to photograph a gull from the level of the stream, I stepped down the bank by one of the two bridges that each span a section of this stretch of water.
I didn’t spot a suitable flier, so, as far as that picture was concerned, I went empty handed. Fortunately I also left empty handed from something else I spotted just in time.
It soon became apparent, as I tracked the stream, that I was going to run out of dry land, so I decided it was time to climb back up the now steeper bank. This required the use of both hands and feet. Peering over the top and clawing at a tussock with my left hand, my right one poised for planting and restoring balance, I noticed this was destined to descend into a neat pile of coagulating dog turds. I could no longer rely entirely on my sinister arm. Not being as dextrous as I once was, and not wishing to hear an unpleasant squelching sound whilst my nose was rather too close to its source, in mid-air with an impressive display of reflexes, I adjusted the trajectory of my right palm, swivelled out of control on my left, and fell over instead. In that split second I had realised that brushing dried sandy mud off my clothing later was preferable to the likely necessity presented by the immediate ‘clear and present danger’. I trust Tom Clancy will forgive me for borrowing his title.
Our sustenance this evening was provided by battered pollock and chips; pickled onions and cornichons; mushy peas and bread and butter; followed by rice pudding with strawberry jam and evaporated milk. I drank water.
A Buffeting
For the last four days I have been trying to ignore the symptoms of a chest infection. It won’t let me, so this morning I spent doing six months worth of filing in my dressing gown. It was me in the garment, not the files.
As the saying goes ‘feed a cold’, I was treated to a marvellous fry-up before we drove to the solicitor’s in Ringwood to repeat yesterday’s process of proving who we are and where we live for the purchase of The Old Post House.
Jackie then wanted to try out Holland’s in Milford on Sea which we hope will be our nearest general store. This is just two miles from the house, the sea front being rather nearer. For a change I stayed in the car while Jackie shopped. 
She then drove us to the waterfront where the normally clearly visible Needles were obscured from view by the strong winds, spray, and choppy sea. I don’t think it was really raining, but it seemed so, and the nearby Sturt Pond overflowed its banks.
Despite the conditions it was still quite a warm day, so I just had to get out 
and experience the buffeting wind and the white foam riding the ochre water against the grey-brown sky. Any gulls that had ventured above the height of the cars fought, sometimes unsuccessfully, to prevent themselves from being blown backwards. Most sheltered at ground level among those few vehicles that were present.
A distant kite and a nearer gull were almost obliterated by walls of spray. Realising the kite must be being flown from the vicinity of the pond, Jackie drove me to it and I attempted to catch up with the flyer, who was walking in the shelter of a steep bank along the top of which runs the sea path. The pools of water and the lack of wellies meant I didn’t quite manage the encounter. The buffeting was, however, pleasantly bracing.
After this interval we made our way back to Minstead, where, this evening Jackie fed my cold with a deep crusty pie filled with lean beef, chestnut mushrooms and onions; leaks and cauliflower; carrots and runner beans; mashed potato and swede. Meaty home-made gravy was poured over all this. After a necessary break, rice pudding was to follow. I drank a glass of Roc des Chevaliers bordeaux superieur 2011, while Jackie imbibed her Hoegaarden.