Returning after four days of Platinum Jubilee celebrations, and after his painstaking preparation, Nick was able to
almost complete his ground floor painting today.
Afterwards Jackie and I took a short forest drive. Sailboarders were out on the Solent against the backdrop of the Isle of Wight. The colourful expert disappeared out of sight until turning up alongside the island. His companion was receiving instruction from our shore.
A solitary fisherman was perhaps hoping for a catch or two.
This evening we all dined on Jackie’s wholesome sausage casserole, spicy red cabbage, boiled potatoes; and Becky’s crunchy vegetable bake, with which Becky drank Zesty; Jackie and Ian, premium Weisbier; and Doom Bar for me.
First, donning a protective mask, and doing his best to prevent dust from entering our sitting room, he rubbed down the surfaces he had filled in yesterday, then began to apply the first coat of paint which he completed during our absence this afternoon.
After lunch the three of us spent the afternoon visiting the pharmacy at Milford on Sea for advice regarding a stye I have had first beneath my left eye; Otter Nurseries and The Perfumery in Lymington to buy presents for Jackie whose birthday it is today.
Hot compresses were advised for the eye; Flo bought a compost trowel, a kneeler and three plants; I bought some Guerlain perfume.
I walked along the High Street for a while the ladies enjoyed a drink and cake in Costa Coffee. The young girl rather photobombed my shot of the older woman examining her bag.
I photographed reflections from the stream flowing under the Church Lane bridge, on way to drop in to Elizabeth for a. short while.
On our return a group of Shetland ponies were engaged in cropping the green long Pilley Street.
We returned home for a while before setting out again for Lymington to dine at Lal Quilla. The meat in each of our main courses was chicken. Mine Jaljala; Flo’s, Shashlik; Jackie’s, Sally. We shared rices, an egg paratha, a peshwari naan, and saag paneer. Jackie and I drank Kingfisher and Flo drank J2O
Preparation is an oft overlooked essential part of house decoration – especially if this has not been adequately carried out for decades. Such has been the case with our home which Nick Hayter has transformed over the years.
He spent several hours on this today.
This afternoon I made him some prints from today and yesterday, notably yesterday’s opening portrait.
Later, Jackie and I took a forest drive.
We had hoped the postbox on Pilley Hill would have been decorated by the anonymous yarn artist in honour of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
We were not disappointed.
I crossed the moorland alongside Furzey Lane in order to photograph
ponies and their foals who rapidly showed me several clean quads of heels.
I was apparently less disturbing on the outskirts of Ran’s Wood
where an equine mother and baby group was clearly in progress. Realising that the young woman who was riding about among them was in conversation with some, I asked her if they were hers. Two of the mares and three of the foals were – she was happy to be a Commoner. We enjoyed a friendly discussion during which she confirmed our impression that grey mares never produced foals born with their colouring. The infants have much darker hides which may or may not lighten as they grow into adulthood, Even then it is not guaranteed.
This evening we dined on fusion leftovers: Jackie’s cottage pie; Angela’s chicken dish; vegetable samosas and sag aloo from Tesco; chicken sag and sag paneer from Red Chilli. This made for a truly tasty melange with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden, Flo drank raspberry and lemon Kombucha, and I drank more of the Malbec. Strawberries and ice cream finished us off.
This morning Nick Hayter made a start on decorating the last of the rooms in the house after the Kitchen Makers refurbishment.
He began with the entrance hall and the vestibule; his usual thorough preparation of the surfaces followed moving furniture about whilst retaining pieces for our access where possible. My computer desk in particular was left pulled forward from the wall so Nick could work behind it.
Unfortunately in the process Nick or I between us managed to disconnect us from the internet.
This required a call to Peacock Computers and a visit from Max this afternoon.
Be sure to admire his haircut obtained because he knew a visit to me meant he would be appearing on tonight’s blog post.
Here the two men discuss the problem.
This evening we dined on roast lamb; crisp Yorkshire pudding; boiled potatoes; crunchy carrots; firm Brussels sprouts; mint sauce, redcurrant jelly; and meaty gravy, with which Jackie drank Hofflegen, Flo drank Kombucha, and I drank more of the Barolo. Dessert was strawberries and ice cream.
While Nick Hayter continued with his transformation of our kitchen, I printed him a set of pictures of his progress “on the job”, including this one demonstrating his mask-less cutting-in skill produced this morning.
Downton Service Station had already provided our Modus with a new clutch and handbrake by 10 a.m., so we happily collected it.
Five chapters further on in ‘Little Dorrit’ provided me with five more of Charles Keeping’s illustrations to scan.
‘Leaning on Mr Merdle’s arm, Mr Dorrit descended the staircase’.
‘He approached his destination through the by-streets and water-side ways’.
‘Now, sir,’ said Mr Dorrit, turning round upon him and seizing him by the collar’.
‘All the guests were now in consternation’, just one displaying distress. Another double page spread.
Keeping has portrayed stubborn intransigence to perfection in ‘Each proudly cherishing her own anger’.
This afternoon Nick completed his redecoration project.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s succulent sausages in red wine; creamy mashed potatoes; crunchy carrots; and tender cabbage with which she drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Cabernet Sauvignon.
Today Nick Hayter continued turning our kitchen into a magazine-worthy product such as it can never have been since the house was built.
In the meantime I scanned another batch of colour slides from
Highgate West cemetery, mostly from September 2008.
The bluebells in this image including the gravestone of Henry and Eric Holgate, suggest and earlier month in the year.
The Egyptian Avenue reflects the Victorian fascination with that culture.
One of the mausoleums in another avenue contains the remains of Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall who still receives floral tributes after her death in 1943. brittanica.com writes of her:
‘Radclyffe Hall, byname of Marguerite Radclyffe-hall, (born Aug. 12, 1880, Bournemouth, Hampshire, Eng.—died Oct. 7, 1943, London), English writer whose novelThe Well of Loneliness (1928) created a scandal and was banned for a time in Britain for its treatment of lesbianism.
Hall was educated at King’s College, London, and then attended school in Germany. She began her literary career by writing verses, which were later collected into five volumes of poetry. The Blind Ploughman, one of her best-known poems, was set to music by Conigsby Clarke. By 1924 she had written her first two novels, The Forge and The Unlit Lamp. The latter book was her first to treat lesbian love. Adam’s Breed (1926), a sensitive novel about the life of a restaurant keeper, won the coveted Prix Fémina and the 1927 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.
Hall’s fame turned to notoriety with the publication of The Well ofLoneliness,in which she explored in detail the attachment between a young girl and an older woman. The intense and earnest love story was condemned by the British, and a London magistrate, Sir Chartres Biron, ruled that although the book was dignified and restrained, it presented an appeal to “decent people” to not only recognize lesbianism but also understand that the person so afflicted was not at fault. He judged the book an “obscene libel” and ordered all copies of it destroyed. Later, a decree handed down in a U.S. court disagreed with Biron, finding that discussion of homosexuality was not in itself obscene. The British ban on The Well of Loneliness was eventually overturned on appeal after Hall’s death.’
The plinth in the first of these two pictures bear a grieving bas-relief; others sculpted statues.
John Turpin and I were part of a group taking a booked and paid for tour which was the only way possible to visit Highgate West. I was admonished by what I considered to be an over-zealous guide as a stood on a further stretch of undergrowth to focus on the grave of Carl Rosa, his second wife, and a daughter. Like a good boy I did as I was told.
‘Carl August Nicholas Rosa (22 March 1842 – 30 April 1889) was a German-born musical impresario best remembered for founding an English opera company known as the Carl Rosa Opera Company. He started his company in 1869 together with his wife, Euphrosyne Parepa-Rosa, and popularised opera in Britain and America, performing standard repertory in English, as well as operas by English composers.
Rosa was born Karl August Nikolaus Rose in Hamburg, Germany, the son of Ludwig Rose, a Hamburg businessman, and Sophie Becker.[1]His father subsequently took him to Edinburgh. A child prodigy, Rosa toured in Scotland from age 12 to age 16, eventually earning glowing notices.[2][3] Beginning in 1859, he studied at the Conservatorium at Leipzig (where he met and became lifelong friends with Arthur Sullivan)[3]and, in 1862, in Paris.
In 1863, Rosa was appointed Konzertmeister at Hamburg, where he had occasional opportunities to conduct.[1] Three years later he visited England, appearing as a soloist at the Crystal Palace. He had considerable success as a conductor both in England and the United States. He travelled to America in 1866 as a member of a concert troupe promoted by the Baltimore impresario Hezekiah Linthicum Bateman that also included the Scottish operatic soprano Euphrosyne Parepa. During this tour, on 26 February 1867 in New York City, he married Parepa, who became known as Madame Parepa-Rosa.[4]
In 1869, in collaboration with the Chicago impresario C. D. Hess, the couple formed the Parepa Rosa English Opera Company in New York and toured in America for three seasons, with Parepa as the star and Rosa as the conductor. It brought grand opera to places in America that had never seen any, performing Italian operas in English, which made them more accessible to American audiences. In 1872, the Rosas returned to England and also visited Europe and Egypt.[4] Rosa changed the spelling of his name after he moved to England, where people took “Rose” as a monosyllable.[1]
In 1873 Rosa and his wife started the Carl Rosa Opera Company (the change in name reflecting her pregnancy) with a performance of William Vincent Wallace‘s Maritana in Manchester on 1 September,[5] and then toured England and Ireland. Rosa’s policy was to present operas in English, and that remained the company’s practice.[6] That year, Rosa invited the dramatist W. S. Gilbert to write a libretto for Rosa to present as part of a planned 1874 season at the Drury Lane Theatre. Gilbert expanded one of the comic Bab Ballads that he had written for Fun magazine[7]into a one-act libretto titled Trial by Jury.[8] Parepa died in January 1874; Rosa dropped the project and cancelled his planned 1874 season.[8][n 1]Rosa later endowed a Parepa-Rosa scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He married a second time in 1881. With his second wife, Josephine (d. 1927), he had four children.[1]Carl Rosa startled by the bogey of Italian Opera in an 1886 cartoon by Alfred Bryan
The company’s first London season opened at the Princess’s Theatre in September 1875, playing The Marriage of Figaro, with Charles Santley as Figaro and Rose Hersee as Susanna. In 1876, Rosa staged a second London season, which featured the first performance in English of The Flying Dutchman with Santley in the title role.[5] For the next fifteen years, under Rosa’s guidance, the company prospered and earned good notices, with provincial tours and London seasons, frequently in conjunction with Augustus Harris at the Drury Lane Theatre.[1] Such was the success of the company that at one point three Carl Rosa touring troupes were set up.[5] Rosa hired Alberto Randegger as the musical director of the company from 1879 to 1885. In 1880, George Grove wrote: “The careful way in which the pieces are put on the stage, the number of rehearsals, the eminence of the performers and the excellence of the performers have begun to bear their legitimate fruit, and the Carl Rosa Opera Company bids fair to become a permanent English institution.”[10] In 1892, Rosa’s Grand Opera Company gave a command performance of La fille du régiment at Balmoral Castle.[5]
Rosa introduced many works of important opera repertoire to England for the first time, performing some 150 different operas over the years. Besides Santley and Hersee, Minnie Hauk, Joseph Maas, Barton McGuckin and Giulia Warwick were some of the famous singers associated with the company during its early years.[11] Rosa also encouraged and supported new works by English composers. Frederic Hymen Cowen‘s Pauline (1876), Arthur Goring Thomas‘s Esmeralda (1883), Alexander Mackenzie‘s Colomba (1883) and The Troubabour, and Charles Villiers Stanford‘s The Canterbury Pilgrims (1884) were commissioned by the company. Earlier English operas by Wallace, Balfe and Julius Benedict were also included in the company’s repertoire.[4] An obituarist noted, “He had long looked forward to the time when Sir Arthur Sullivan would have undertaken a grand opera, and to the last had hoped to have been able to produce such a work.”[2] Shortly before his death, Rosa launched a light opera company that debuted with Robert Planquette‘s Paul Jones.[1]Tomb of Rosa, his second wife Josephine and daughter Violet, Highgate Cemetery, London’ (Wikipedia)
For this evening’s dinner Jackie produced a thick and fluffy cheese and onion omelette and oven chips with which she drank Hoegaarden and I drank Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 2019.
This morning Nick Hayter performed more painstaking preparation work on our kitchen. Apart from exemplary decorating he exhibits enviable flexibility.
An Antipodean friend, in order the more safely to transport some important paperwork to another part of the UK, e-mailed the documents to me to print out and post in snail mail. This mission was carried out this afternoon. Jackie drove me to Everton Post Office where I posted the package.
The overflowing ditch at the corner of Woodcock Lane sports an excellent puddle with reflections and the possibility for passing motorists to splash potential stalactites to drip in sub zero temperatures.
Striated skies streaked over Walhampton.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s spicy chicken jalfrezi and pilau rice with vegetable samosas. I drank more of the Recital.
while Nick Hayter continued decorating our kitchen after Barry had repaired the leaking roof, I watched the fourth day’s play of the Test match between India and England at Chennai broadcast on Channel 4.
This afternoon we drove to Grove Pharmacy at Christchurch Hospital for Jackie’s first Covid-19 vaccination. Her procedure was even quicker and smoother than mine.
We took a short diversion through the forest on our way home. With the temperature having plummeted to 0 degrees centigrade we experienced very fine snow throughout our trip.
Just outside Burley the moorland pools were iced over and bearing locked in branches.
The one shaggy haired, muddy legged foraging pony we encountered seemed oblivious of the falling fine floury precipitation.
Deer on Burley Manor lawn hugged the fenced boundaries, maybe seeking shelter from the hedges beyond.
Our next stops were at Otter and Everton Garden Centres where we bought a solar lamp and a shepherd’s crook on which to hang it for Elizabeth whose birthday it is today. We delivered them and stuck them in her lawn.
We have noticed a new phenomenon, one example of which Jackie photographed alongside Jordan’s Lane. It seems that cars are throwing up spray from the pools on the tarmac which have frozen in the process of dripping.
This evening we dined on oven fish and chips, baked beans, pickled onions, and gherkins, with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank Languedoc Montpeyroux Recital 2018.
As we gradually return items to our sitting room we faced a dilemma that Nick has set us.
How on earth can we bang nails and hooks for pictures into his sublime walls? We certainly won’t being doing that for some time yet.
Nick Hayter, Painter and Decorator, is to be highly recommended for his skill, his attention to detail, his tidiness, his punctuality, his reliability, and his pleasant company. He charges by the hour and works hard and fast throughout every one.
Of all the out-of-season blooms our garden currently enjoys perhaps this gladiolus is the most extraordinary.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s flavoursome savoury rice topped by a large fluffy omelette, accompanying prawns of three different preparations, namely tempura, spicy, and salt and pepper. The Culinary Queen drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Cotes du Rhone Villages.
blooming yesterday morning. Here are the Assistant Photographer’s contributions. The first three are of Mrs Popple fuchsias and a giant which has lost its label; next is a white solanum with the bright blue Ali Baba planter in the background; the hanging baskets following contain petunias and bacopas; next, not actually a flower, are bejewelled weeping birch catkins; and finally we have raindrops on black eyed Susans.
Mine were chrysanthemums of varying hues, still hot lips, and, believe it or not, yellow antirrhinums.
Before lunch today we took a short drive into the forest, via
Lower Sandy Down which offered
a number of autumn scenes.
Church Lane, running up and down from Boldre to Pilley, came next.
Jackie parked on a verge while I stood on the road bridge contemplating
the now fast-flowing stream and its reflections.
This tangle of oak branches and the weeping willow tresses were also visible from my vantage point.
At Pilley we encountered a number of ponies beside the lake,
and noticed that Foxglove and Twinkle now have chickens for company.
The cyclist who squeezed past these donkeys on the road must have been intrigued at the number of times we passed him as we wandered around in circles at this point.
Back at home Nick continued working proficiently yet at a rate of knots. Moving from room to room as he put curtains back up and another coat of paint on the door in the sitting room; he further prepared the kitchen and added paint to walls and ceiling. One of the horrors he had to deal with was the hole in the lath and plaster wall into which had been driven by our predecessors a bracket on which swung a large fridge that blocked the doorway during their residence.
Unfortunately our craftsman will have to leave the work in the kitchen until after 19th January which is the earliest that Barry Chislett-Bruce can repair our leak. Reflecting their reliability and the quality of their work, both these men, thorough experts in their fields, are very busy, so we are happy to wait.
This evening we dined on crisp oven fish and chips; green peas; piquant pickled onions and gherkins, with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank Prestige de Calvet Cotes du Rhone Villages 2019.
