paving – Page 2 – derrickjknight

To The Lighthouse

On another overcast morning Aaron, tasked with improving our stepping stone escape route from the Dead End Path to the patio, fetched some spare paving from his own home and

produced this level work. He was one stone short and will bring that next week.

I first read

in 1989. About 20 years later I read it again for the Upper Dicker Book Reading Group. Today I finished it once more in order to test my response to Louise DeSalvo’s biography. https://derrickjknight.com/2020/05/19/seeking-acquaintance/

I don’t remember ever reading another novel three times.

I enjoyed the work once more, no doubt with greater understanding. Perhaps all first novels are to some extent autobiographical, and, having been enlightened to the story of this most gifted writer’s childhood and adolescence, I have to agree that Mr and Mrs Ramsay are undoubtedly based on Mrs Woolf’s own parents. As it is my custom not to reveal spoiler details of the story, I will say no more about this.

This novel is an exceptional work of art. The symbol of the trip to the Lighthouse underpins the developing dissection of a family group’s relationships evoked with remarkable insight. As always the author’s language, given her abundance of detailed description, is elegantly economical. Every adjective, every adverb, every metaphor, every simile is made to count. (She makes good use of parenthesis and would not have countenanced this last sentence). Her punctuation is flawless, and her phrasing perfect, reflecting the numerous revisions she apparently made to her well crafted works.

Gilbert Phelps’s introduction is knowledgeable and educational.

The cloth boards are embossed with a design by the artist.

I confess to having been initially ambivalent about Maryclare Foa’s colour illustrations. Although very well composed with good palettes I found the distorted figures rather ponderous. Now, however, I believe the painter has captured the isolation of the individual characters much as Virginia’s sister Vanessa Bell did in her faceless paintings. It is a policy of the Folio Society to choose an illustrator who can represent the period.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s super savoury rice; a rack of pork ribs in barbecue sauce; salt and pepper prawns; and spring rolls with which she drank Becks and I drank more of the Douro.

Robert Gibbings Once More

In the summer of 1942 I blinked into the daylight as, making my first cry, I emerged from my mother’s womb – hardly “ripped untimely”, but, all the same, premature enough to require us both to remain in Leicester General Hospital long enough to make up the 7 weeks snatched from gestation.

At the same time Robert Gibbings was delivered of “Coming Down The Wye” from The Temple Press, Letchworth.

Clearly, despite falling in the midst of the Second World War, this was a vintage year. Apart from that world-wide devastation, life three quarters of a century ago was lived at a gentler, simpler, pace. Technology, albeit harnessed for the killing machines, was primitive compared with that of the 21st century.

My mother sees many parallels between the global battles of conflicting nations of the days of her young motherhood and the international war against the current pandemic.

Mr Gibbings’s book

bears a statement that its production conforms to wartime economy standard. I might add that, apart from slight foxing the stout quality of the paper and binding of my copy far exceeds normal trade production of today. The water damage seen at the very tops of the pages was probably sustained during the half century I have owned the work.

Anyone seeking inspiration really to look and listen to the delights of the nature that appears to be teaching the world lessons we would do well to heed, is encouraged to sample the pleasure of the splendid prose using fluent, lilting, language with which the author seemingly effortlessly evokes the experience of his exploration of another of his liquid lifelines. This time the River Wye.

Robert Gibbings’s observation is detailed and attentive; his ear acute and sensitive; and his knowledge of the natural world exemplary. He is widely read and able to include appropriate historical and poetic references. As usual he includes local conversations in the vernacular with a sauce of myth and legend.

The delightful writing is a perfect accompaniment to the work of the author as fine artist. As usual with this craftsman I have reproduced a plentiful selection of complete pages of the work in order that those who wish may be able to try the text for themselves;

and to demonstrate the power and delicacy of the engravings and their placement on the page.

While I was scanning the above pictures patient robin Ronnie was allowed on to the feeding tray by the greedy sparrows.

Jackie had begun weeding and tidying the footpath into the Rose Garden.

This afternoon she completed the task magnificently. Her photographs are pretty good, too.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s superb sausages in red wine; very creamy mashed potato; crunchy carrots, and tender green beans with which the Culinary Queen drank Budweiser and I drank more of the Rheinhessen.

Poppy Does Watering

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As we sat on the patio chairs with Aaron and his partner Leah, discussing the morning’s gardening, Poppy appeared in the kitchen doorway. Matthew soon followed, completing the pleasant surprise.

Granny was soon enjoying a cuddle.

Poppy pottered around playing with pebbles and a car given to her by Akram at Lal Quilla on her last visit there.

Displaying a rapid two-gun draw, she then began irrigating the paving

and washing an owl

Jackie employed a novel method of keeping the cans filled,

and Poppy trotted off to water the flowers in the Kitchen Bed.

For our dinner this evening, Matthew and Poppy joined Jackie in a trip to Mr Chatty Man Chan at Hordle Chinese Take Away, and returned with a scrumptious selection including our granddaughter’s favourite noodles.

She sampled most other items, including spare ribs.

Waking Up To Leatherhead

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Yesterday afternoon Jackie drove us to

Leatherhead Travelodge where we joined Helen and Bill, Shelly and Ron in order to watch the performance of

directed by the sisters’ cousin Pat O’Connell.

First, we watched the second half of the Six Nations rugby match between Scotland and Wales.

Next, we dined with the addition of Pat, Christine,and their daughter Olivia, at Piazza Firenze. This was quite the best of the three such establishments we have tried in Leatherhead. Red and white house wines were quaffed, the drivers in the company taking advantage of the fact they they were not having to drive home. My main course was sea bass and prawns served with green beans and boiled potatoes. For dessert I chose crepe Vesuvio, while Jackie selected lava cake, which seemed appropriate. My enjoyable dish consisted of vanilla ice cream wrapped in a pancake with a raspberry sauce poured over it. What added to the fun was that this was served on a flat piece of slate. Perhaps the idea was to keep me on my toes in order to keep the melting ice cream from flowing off onto the table.

There followed a spirited, amusing, and entertaining production with some good jokes, skilful individual performance, and well directed choreography. After this, we spent a delightful time of conversation and reminiscence in the theatre bar, before repairing to our respective hotel rooms.

The was the view from our fourth floor room.

With the sun making sporadic efforts to put in an appearance I wandered about outside the hotel. Leatherhead has received considerable expansion since my childhood in the ’40s and ’50s. One result is the High Street paving that is shared by both vehicles and pedestrians. These two shots looking up the street were taken through parts of a sculpture featuring aspects of the ancient town, such as the river and railway lines.

Like many of the more recent additions, the setting for this artwork is suffering. Slates are falling off, and graffiti has been applied.

The pavement at the base of the ornamental tree featured in the first two views of the sculpture is surrounded by a mixture of birdshit, chewing gum, and dog ends; people are meant to sit on the cylindrical structures arranged behind the tree and within the enclosure surrounding the elements of it.

A metre or so away a cycle rack bears evidence of a stolen machine.

We all breakfasted in the Edmund Tylney, a Wetherspoons pub opposite last evening’s restaurant. Edmund, a Leatherhead man, was Master of the Revels to Queen Elizabeth I, so he would probably be quite pleased to have a hostelry named after him.

Back at home, the Six Nations rugby match was between England and Italy.

This evening we dined on eggs, bacon, and toast followed by steamed syrup pudding nd ice cream.

Down The Lane

This morning I wandered through the garden, down Downton Lane and into Roger’s field and back.

The red Japanese maple is now coming into leaf, and we may soon have to refill the Waterboy’s shell.

The clematis Montana, retrained eighteen months ago, now festoons the dead tree;

and different, delicate, tulips are bursting into life.

Dandelions currently claim the lane’s verges,

where, soon, cow parsley will swamp primulas.

On this ivy leaf, I think, is a hoverfly masquerading as a wasp.

I exchanged waves with the friendly farmer as, attracting the usual avian entourage,

he drove up and down fertilising his field, with a backdrop of Christchurch Bay.

The oak trees are producing plumage. In the bottom right of this picture can be seen another amenable gentleman,

one of the staff of Transform Paving, working on the drive of number 23.

After lunch, I rendered token assistance to The Head Gardener in replenishing and redistributing soil, then cut the grass. The bed here demonstrates the soil rejuvenation process. To the left, clog clay soil has been removed and placed where it doesn’t matter much, then replaced by all-purpose compost. That to the right is, as yet, untreated. Anyone with a better knowledge than mine will recognise a self-seeded mimulus from last year in the left-hand section. They obviously do well there. That is why the wheelbarrow contains more of these plants, to be inserted tomorrow.

For the whole time we sat in the rose garden with our pre-dinner Hoegaarden and cabernet sauvignon, a big fat wood pigeon warbled his contribution to our conversation. Or perhaps he was simply calling to his mate.

There was plenty of last night’s menu for us to come back for more this evening.

Veritable Carpets Of Offspring

Aaron this morning cleared more brick paths of weeds and began painting the Ace Reclaim bench with white Hammerite in order to combat rust; Jackie continued planting, weeding, and general maintenance work;

and I finished off spreading the Landscape Bark around the rose garden beds, thus offering The Head Gardener, who had begun the job yesterday, a certain minimal assistance. We need a few more bags to complete the task.

Each day now, we have more emerging varieties of

tulip,

daffodil,

pansy,

and primula.

Speckled fritillaria Jackie planted in the autumn thrive in the cryptomeria bed.

For ground cover we have such as

buttercup-yellow celandines

and deep-blue vincas.

Many self-seeders need to be kept under control. Cropping up everywhere we have, for example,

purple honesty,

and multi-hued hellebores which drop veritable carpets of offspring. Unmanaged, this dense brood would choke the rusty heuchera to death and cover the brick path onto which it is already encroaching.

We are still marginally ahead of the game in the race to have the garden ready for spring, but nature is catching up by the day.

This evening we dined at Lymington’s Lal Quilla. My choice was king prawn Ceylon, and Jackie’s, prawn bhuna. We shared egg fried rice, an egg paratha, and an onion bhaji; and both drank Kingfisher.

‘I’ll Show My Boss, To Prove I’ve Been Doing some Work’

Jackie drove me to New Milton Station, and Ian collected me there after I had travelled to Tas in The Cut for lunch with Carol.

On the train, I finished reading Isaac Asimov’s 1976 collection of stories entitled ‘The Bicentennial Man’. The author has almost expunged my antipathy towards science fiction. This is a largely fascinating set written by such a consummate teller of tales that I was prepared to forget my inability to understand some of the technical detail. The writing flows and keeps the reader engaged. The pieces are linked by a few short paragraphs describing how they came about.

The title tale was developed into a novel, and then a film, which Wikipedia describes thus:

‘Bicentennial Man is a 1999 American science fiction comedy-drama film starring Robin Williams, Sam Neill, Embeth Davidtz (in a dual role), Wendy Crewson, and Oliver Platt. Based on the novel The Positronic Man, co-written by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg, which is itself based on Asimov’s original novella titled The Bicentennial Man, the plot explores issues of humanity,slavery, prejudice, maturity, intellectual freedom, conformity, sex, love, and mortality. The film, a co-production between Touchstone Pictures and Columbia Pictures, was directed by Chris Columbus. The title comes from the main character existing to the age of two hundred years, and Asimov’s novella was published in the year that the U.S. had its bicentennial.’

The paving in Emma Cons Gardens, opposite The Old Vic, has sunk enough to retain a minor lake after the recent rainfall. I photographed it at the beginning of my walk down The Cut, and then again later.

A young London plane stands nearby. In the background is a ‘bendy’ bus, designed to concertina as it turns corners.

In The Cut itself the concrete pavement squares are equally sunken and cracked.

This waste bin has come adrift of its moorings.

Alleys on our left, like Windmill Walk, lead through to the railway arches.

This cycle rack is alongside The Young Vic. The traffic cone may or may not be meant to be there.

This picture of Costa Coffee bar compensates for my not having photographed New Milton’s one yesterday. Costa is all about the venue, where you can sit and play on your laptop to your heart’s content.

A few yards beyond Tas lies the Waterloo Campus of LESOCO, the Lewisham and Southwark College. It is quite the custom now to create graffiti to tart up the screens around building works,

and to leave viewing panels for inquisitive passers by.

The figures depicted seem to represent students and their possible careers.

Carol and I had our usual entertaining conversation and good meal at Tas. The waitress couldn’t cope with the fact that Carol only wanted one meze, so, because the menu offered two each, I had to eat three, which was, of course, no problem. My choice of main course was a beautifully tangy prawn casserole, and my house wine, red.

On my way back to Waterloo Station I noticed a young woman plying a theodolite reflected in the pool I had pictured earlier. She was quite happy to appear on the blog, commenting: ‘I’ll show my boss, to prove I have been doing some work.’

On my return journey I was already gripped by Gwen Wilson’s book ‘I Belong To No One’.

Normally the Tas meal would have done me for the day, but I was unable to resist joining in with Jackie’s meal of battered prawns, spring rolls, spare ribs, and savoury rice. She drank Hoegaarden and I drank another glass of El Sotillo.

I Was Transfixed

Ace Reclamation delivered our rose garden furniture this morning, and Jackie and I set it up.

Rose Alan Titchmarsh has bloomed.

Alan Fred Titchmarsh, MBE, DL, (b. 2.5.49) , was the subject of quite a bit of banter on yesterday’s post, but, in all seriousness, if anyone deserves to have a rose named after him it is this well known garden expert. An English gardener, broadcaster, and novelist after working as a professional gardener and a gardening journalist, he has established himself as a media personality through appearances on TV gardening programmes, the current one being ‘Love Your Garden’. In this series, members of the public who have been nominated by others for his garden makeover are the recipients of an instant, themed, creation.

Elsewhere in the garden many scented roses, like Compassion are well into their second flowering.

Here is a view of the Shady Path across the Dragon’s Bed:

Elizabeth visited briefly for lunch.

This afternoon Aaron finished his paving, by carefully inserting fiddly bits he had cut out with an angle grinder. Along the eastern fence lies old timber and spikes for him to build a support for climbers on that side. The lighter wood just visible is our old stair rail. The view is from the bench.

Others are from the entrance; from the rose arch; from Elizabeth’s bed; and from the second armchair.

Whilst digging a hole for a rose, quite some way down, Jackie unearthed another historic coin of the realm. What’s historic about a 1983 £1? If thirty two years doesn’t seem a particularly long time ago, you may well ask.

When was the first £1 coin issued? You’ve guessed it. Jackie may well have dug up one of the very first minted. It bears a young head of the current Queen, Elizabeth II, and has clearly not benefited from perhaps more than three decades underground. When this piece was shiny and new in April 1983 it would have bought a packet of 20 cigarettes, five pints of milk or 30 minutes at a Manchester United match. Today you pay closer to £8 for the fags, £2.50 for the milk and see only three minutes of the football. But some things are cheaper: while £1 would only get you four minutes on a landline phone call at peak time in 1983, today it would give you at least 10 minutes.

Kept in a soil, gravel, and clay safe, its value has not really been enhanced.

Throughout my first 41 years £1 sterling was paper money. It wasn’t even the lowest denomination note. Until decimalisation in 1971, that was ten shillings or 50% of £1. These notes both feature in ‘Then The Tableau Spoke’. I found two at different times before about 1952. It was then worth taking one to the police station and handing them in as found property. If such items were unclaimed after one month, they were yours. I recovered each one.

Nowadays, I doubt whether anyone would consider £5 to be worth going to that trouble. Our current £5 note is a pathetic little scrap in comparison with the “White Fiver” of my first fifteen years. The 1793 design, with black printing on white paper, remained in circulation essentially unchanged until 21 February 1957, when the multicoloured notes were first introduced. You could still use the old note until it was withdrawn on 13 March 1961.

When I was about seven, I found myself in a shop, probably queueing. I really don’t know what the establishment was, or who was with me. But I can still see the large, thin, sheet of printed paper measuring, I now know, 211mm x 133mm, brandished by a gentleman. ‘Know what that is, boy?’ he asked. The question was rhetorical. He quickly followed up with the answer. ‘A £5 note’. So transfixed was I by that object that I have no idea what the man looked like. I’d never heard of such a sum, and never saw another “White Fiver”.

This evening I watched the highlights of the second day of the Edgbaston Ashes Test. England completed their first innings with a lead of 145. Australia followed this with 168 for 7. In other words, a five day match was virtually over in two days.

Our dinner consisted of chicken Kiev, chips, and baked beans. I know, It sounds dicey, but it was delicious, especially with the Georges du Beuf beujolais 3 villages 2013 Danni and Andy gave me for my birthday. Jackie, of course, drank Hoegaarden.

P.S. After posting this, we watched a TV adaptation of Agatha Christie’s ‘A Secret Adversary’, starring Jessica Raine and David Walliams. Very early on, Jessica Raine’s character had her mouth stuffed with screwed up flimsy paper I instantly recognised as a “White Fiver”.

The Butterfly Net

Jackie and I spent the morning weeding whilst Aaron and Robin continued refining their paving. This involves finishing of the ends with brick cut to shape with an angle iron. There are only the central joins left to be completed. We are so fortunate that the proprietor of A.P. Maintenance is such a perfectionist.

We now have several crocosmia blooming.

According to my research, this one is Xcrocosmiiflora. Jackie says it’s ‘common or garden monbretia’;

about Lucifer, there is no doubt.

Jackie grew these marigolds from seed.

‘When did you take that?’ bemoaned The Head Gardener. ‘I dead-headed those this morning’.

The air was positively aflutter with butterflies this afternoon.

Commas abound. Here one seeks camouflage on an echinacea;

as did this Peacock on a dead stump. It kept me waiting, back bent, lens poised, before opening its wings. With these closed, the creature looked just like a crack in the bark.

I think this, on a verbena bonarensis, is a Green-veined White.

Is this poor, battered, Red Admiral a reincarnation of February’s Battle-Scarred example?

I have written before of the penchant of Chris and I, when we were very little boys, for collecting various insects. Between us, my brother and I did not possess a camera, but we did have a butterfly net. Many happy hours were spent, mostly unsuccessfully, dashing around what were, to us, head-high fields, gleefully waving this weapon in the vague direction of the adult versions of the caterpillars that had so horrified our grandmother. What we actually did with the unfortunates we did manage to snare was not meant to be unkind. After all, when we stuffed them into jam jars, we did insert a few leaves and bits of grass, and punctured the lids so that they could breathe. I don’t imagine that these imagos lived out their, albeit brief, natural span. My current collecting is done with a camera.

Anyone driving to us for the first time, is likely to miss the existing sign on the front wall facing directly out onto the road. Jackie has therefore made another that she has fixed to the angled wall so that at least people coming from the direction of Christchurch, can’t miss

If you aren’t interested in cricket, you may prefer to skip the next paragraph. If you are an English cricket fan, you may prefer to skip the next paragraph. If you are an Australian, whether interested in cricket or not, you probably wouldn’t want to skip the next paragraph.

I made the mistake of watching the TV highlights of the second Test match at Lords. Australia had, in their first innings, scored 566 runs for eight wickets. They then bowled England out for 312. Before lunch today, the visitors had taken their overnight second innings score to 254 for 2, at which point they declared their innings closed, leaving England 509 to make in more than a day and a half. Less than five hours later, England were all out for 103. It was nothing short of slaughter.

This evening, Jackie and I shared our hob in producing fried egg, bacon, tomatoes, and mushrooms, baked beans, and toast. We enjoyed the rest of Shelly’s apple pie and cream, with half each of a chocolate mint brought back from the Veranda last night. Jackie drank Hoegaarden, and, despite it not being the most suitable accompaniment for a fry-up, I drank Louis de Camponac merlot 2014.

Yarnton’s Cardoon

After an application of Vanish, two cold washes in the machine, and a dedicated press, Jackie has achieved a renovation of the linen jacket, which was beyond the dry cleaners. And it still fits.

I began the day with a walk through Roger’s footpath, where I again met Pete, who, on this far more overcast day, I did not recognise without his sunglasses and hat.

Hoverflies and bluebottles needed their head- and tail-lights among the gloomy brambles of the hedgerows.

Can you smell the leaking slurry. I certainly could.

Encouraged by the success of the arancus, Jackie planted an astilbe in similar conditions.

While Aaron completed stage five of the rose garden paving,

Jackie and I completed the clearance of her work area in readiness for the garden shed.

The structure in the background is the central heating fuel tank, necessary because we don’t have mains gas. Until we have had a visit to the communal dump, it is probably not politic to display the various places where we have decanted the items the new structure will replace.

Common thistles grow along the footpath visited earlier,

and we now know that our giant is not a cardoon, but a cotton thistle.

This is a shame, because we had the former in Newark. Never mind, I can still talk about Yarnton’s cardoon.

Yarnton Mills was an elderly family friend of Jessica’s late parents. His wife kept sheep. She farmed her flock somewhere in Europe, where, in order to improve the quality of their milk, she fed them on cardoon. The location may have been in Spain or Portugal where ewe’s milk is used in the production of cheese. I always wondered how the animals, not being donkeys, managed to eat these thistle-like plants. I therefore amused myself with a little internet research. FIBRA explains that the crop is reduced to silage for feed. The benefits are described by Fernández-Salguero, J., Tejada, L. & Gómez, R. (2002), who tell us: ‘The use of plant proteinases from flowers of cardoon Cynara cardunculus as milk coagulants is of particular interest because they are natural enzymes whose strong proteolytic action eventually leads to the extensive breakdown of caseins, thereby giving rise to cheeses with a soft buttery texture, a genuine aroma and a slightly piquant and creamy flavour. These cheeses are highly valued for their taste and quality and can be targeted at the lacto-vegetarian and organic markets. This type of plant coagulant can also be certified Kosher and Halal.’

Yarnton presented Jessica with a seed which we planted in the kitchen garden, and enjoyed for the story and for the towering plant’s sculptural qualities

This evening Jackie and I dined on gammon steaks topped with fried eggs; fresh crisp chips; and an interesting melange of recycled pasta and meatballs, green and baked beans, and the odd limp chip. Very tasty it all was, too. This was followed by mixed fruit crumble and custard. Jackie drank Hoegaarden, and I finished the bordeaux.