ponies – Page 74 – derrickjknight

Right Said Fred

I took the upper drive route down to Minstead this morning which has a little more forest to walk through before arriving at the road. This meant passing the new lakes that have formed since we arrived here. Turning right at the Furzey Gardens sign I continued past the gardens along an increasingly muddy and pool-ridden path until I came to what I took to be the elusive Stoney Cross. As Jackie said, this is just a few houses. From there I could see another underpass under the A31, further West than the one leading to Malwood Farm. The equine hoofprints and piles of droppings lent credence to my speculation that the ponies use these underground passages to cross to the other sides of the forest. This is not necessarily a definitive answer to how the animals cross the road. The evidence may have been provided by such as the horse being ridden by the young woman cantering past me up the hill leading to Stoney Cross. Nevertheless it will suffice until I do actually spot something more conclusive.

A small child’s coat hung on a gate by the waterlogged underpass, which led to very soggy terrain covered in small lakes and piles of equine excretia. Crossing this would, I felt sure, lead me to the road to Rufus Stone (see 19th November post). There were no footpaths, and it all looked a bit risky. Then I saw the trail of hoofprints peppered with heaps of poo. The ponies surely had picked out a route. I followed it, reached the road I wanted, turned right, crossed over the A31 and returned home.

I have always wondered where and how the forest animals sleep. I still don’t know, but today outside Furzey Gardens, I saw ponies lying down for the first time.

Before going for my walk, Jackie and I had moved my desk from the sitting room to our bedroom. On 12th November I had suggested that this item, which was proving problematic to get into the sitting room, might go through the window. The removal men had thought it wouldn’t. It did. This had been how the desk had been manoeuvred into the study in Sutherland Place. It had gone into the sitting room window, through that room to the dining room, through the dining room window, whence it had been lowered to the basement floor and through a set of French windows. Before that, in Leinster Mews, it had served as a dining table, which it was to do again in Links Avenue, and, until today, in Castle Malwood Lodge.

I had bought this piece from Norman King, the husband of the couple from whom Jessica and I had purchased Lindum House in 1987. He could not fit it into the house to which they were moving. His study became my study, and there the desk remained for the next nineteen years. It has accompanied me on my several moves since. Psychoanalysts would no doubt call it my transitional object. Jackie and I found it reasonably straightforward to take it out of our sitting room the way it came in, and to transfer it to our bedroom by the same method.

The reason for this further move is that our recently purchased dining table and chairs were to be delivered this afternoon. I had explained that the only way the table could be admitted to the room was through the window, and I wasn’t even sure about that. Chris was optimistic. For some time after the two delivery men’s arrival, Jackie and I got to know Chris and John rather well. For Chris, as he actually said, the glass was always half full. John, cheerful and friendly enough, had his doubts. The central leaf had already been removed and the winding mechanism employed to make the circumference smaller. I stationed myself in the room. Jackie placed a couple of cushions on the window ledge. The men lifted the table up from the outside and passed two legs through the window. Table legs, that is. I grasped them and slid them across. As far as they would go, that is. Which wasn’t far enough. Another window was tried, with the same result. There was nothing for it but to try bringing the table up the hall and through the door of the room. This meant moving stuff out of the hall, and putting it into the nearest available bedroom. Because we didn’t start to move some loaded bookshelves until it had become apparent to John and me that there was no way the table was going through the door, Jackie and Chris had to do this, because I was in the doorway and couldn’t get past John who was hanging on to the table for dear life. Eventually even Chris was becoming a little less optimistic, until I offered another suggestion. This was that the casters should be removed. He brightened considerably at this idea. I was still trapped in the sitting room, so Jackie provided screwdrivers for Chris to begin removing the wheels from the feet of the table. This procedure took some time. I had to assist by holding a torch with which to offer some light to help Chris to locate the screw heads. Now the bookshelves were moved, John was able to wriggle round the table and tackle some of the feet himself. Jackie stacked a pile of screws and casters in the spare bedroom and we tried again. Still no joy. It just wasn’t going to go. Jackie suggested that if the winding mechanism were unscrewed it looked as if the table would become two pieces. Chris was wary about that.

But maybe now there were no casters it could be slotted through the window. Another bright idea of mine. Back the men went, through our front door, across the two communal hallways with their very heavy doors, and round the side of the building to the window. The previous procedure was followed, with the same result. Chris, who was absolutely determined that this table was going to fit into our bay, then came up with the solution. It should be up-ended with its length vertical, taking advantage of the height of the window. It slipped in beautifully, but not exactly a great deal more easily. Central leaf was wound in, casters screwed back, and we had lift-off. As the chairs were brought in I had You Tube on full volume on my laptop playing Bernard Cribbens’ 1962 hit record ‘Right Said Fred’. If you don’t know it, or even if you do, it is well worth a listen.

Jackie christened our new table with a luscious lamb stew. I drank McGuigan Bin 736 2011 and she didn’t.

IKEA 3 (R18)

On this clear, cold, and sunny morning I took yesterday’s walk in reverse. Smoking chimneys enlivened the line of the horizon. Distant cattle lowed; cocks crowed; steam rose from one sunlit ditch whilst a blackbird spuddled in another; the occasional cyclist whirred, and the occasional car sped, past. Otherwise it was just me and the ponies.

Walking back through London Minstead, I was greeted by another Father Christmas (see yesterday’s post). The word must have got around.

Later in the morning we decided to assemble our IKEA bed. Extracting the headboard, Jackie realised it was too wide to fit our carefully measured space. Too wide by 17cm. I got out all the paperwork and checked the identification numbers on the boxes against the measurements given on both our Self Service Picking List and the Sales Receipt. Consistently shown on each docket and on each box are the measurements 140 x 200; thus the three bed frame items are marked BED FRM 140 x 200. Our bedstead was 157cm wide.

Now, as my readers know, I will always find the humorous side of any situation. If it is possible. We were not amused. Not in the least. I reached for my phone and dialled customer services. A machine warned me that there was a waiting time for calls being answered from between 20 and 30 minutes. After being notified for the second time that I was number 13 in the queue, I blew a gasket and was all for going straight back to IKEA there and then. In the meantime, Jackie had consulted a 2013 catalogue which she had picked up on departure from the store. She found the bed frames listed as 157 x 211cm. These were to take a 140 x 200 mattress. If that were so, then why are the boxes and documentation for the frames given as 140 x 200? And why didn’t our extremely helpful shop assistant not make this clear? Did she know any more than we did? I was no calmer. They could have the whole lot back and refund all the money including delivery charge.

Jackie, however, remained calm and thought again about the layout of the room. If we moved a portable cupboard and brought the bed up to the large French windows we could just about make it feasible. We could squeeze past the bed to open the windows when necessary. What we couldn’t have was a bedhead jutting into the doorway. So far, so good. All we have to do now is put it all together. Tomorrow.

After lunch we drove to Totton for a vast Lidl shop. In the process we found a very good quality double airbed for 10% of the cost of the IKEA bed. So we bought one. There is plenty of room in the sitting room for this, which means we can now accomodate two couples. We had momentarily considered that we should have had an airbed for the spare room and still sent the IKEA one back. Then we remembered nights in Louisa and Errol’s spare single room on a double air mattress on the floor with no way of heaving ourselves up because there was no space around the bed, and thought better of it. Have you ever tried to prise yourself up from the middle of an airbed whilst in intense pain from a hip requiring replacement?

Before dinner I made a few amendments to my next Independent crossword puzzle scheduled for 27th. We then ate spare ribs in barbecue sauce with vegetable rice followed by baklavas. Jackie, having taken the entire contents of Lidl shelves, drank Hoegaarden, and I consumed Cono Sur reserva 2010, an excellent wine of which, unfortunately, we cannot remember the source.

Nobby Bates

The hot water problem resolved itself. We had hot water in the morning, and the Dimplex radiators we had not managed to get to come on, did function in the small hours. We are apparently on Economy 7 which I have heard about but never investigated. Through this system electricity is drawn at night and stored for the day.

Throughout the morning, as we continued unpacking and sorting out our home, we watched, through our immense windows, a gardener blowing leaves, using a kind of reverse vacuum cleaner. As fast as the poor man cleared a patch, more foliage fluttered down from the trees.

This afternoon I walked through Minstead and along Lyndurst Road, then right along the A337 to Lyndhurst to collect postal redirection forms. Postal redirection is a service offered by the Post Office whereby any post sent to your old address is intercepted and diverted to your new one. On the way I received a call from Lynne Bailey of KLS, the landlords of Links Avenue. One of the matters she called about was the return of the keys to number 40. This was handy because I could post them there and then from the Lyndhurst Post Office.

Ponies grazed alongside the minor roads, or lolloped or loitered on the tarmac, all traffic respectfully ceding passage. Wire fences and cattle grids protect the animals from straying onto the A337, where the fast-flowing streams of traffic render the road dangerous for them. Lacking a footpath, it is not too safe for humans either. On my way back I must have turned off this major road a bit too soon, for I wound up in Emery Down, and had to call Jackie to come and rescue me. Well, I suppose it was bound to happen. As it was well after dusk when this occured, I learned that, on the minor roads, it must be far safer in the dark for the protected New Forest fauna than for stray septuagenarians.

On the children’s recent visit I explained to Jessica the purpose of cattle grids. I had thought I was speaking to both the girls who were in the back of the car, but it transpired that I was talking to the top of Imogen’s head, because, seconds after getting into the car she had slumped forward in slumber, prevented only by her seatbelt from taking a nosedive. Jessica, however, knew all about cattle grids and hedgehogs falling down them and having to be rescued. Rather amazed, I asked her how she knew this. She said she had read it in a book. I still didn’t twig until I mentioned this to Louisa, who explained that she read to the girls ‘Operation Hedgehog’ by Margaret Lane, just as I and her mother had read the book, which I had bought, to her when she was little. It had been one of Louisa’s favourites and was now loved by her own daughters. This was the tale of Nobby Bates, who lived in a cottage in The New Forest and devised an escape route for hedgehogs who had fallen down the cattle grids.

This evening we drove to Ringwood in search of an Indian restaurant we had discovered eighteen months ago. Settling on India Cottage we had some debate about whether it had been that establishment. It was good enough, but only when returning to the car and passing the earlier eating place were we sure that we had been in the wrong one. We both drank Kingfisher.

Blonds Burn More Easily

From the garden room whilst having our morning coffee. Jackie and I watched a pigeon in the process of landing and take-off in the bay tree beside us. Apparently being a poor judge of available space and the weight-bearing capacity of a slender twig, this large, ungainly, bird flopped onto its chosen perch which was neither long nor strong enough. The result was a lot of flailing about, such as one might expect from a tightrope walker about to fall off. The twig broke, the bird fell and dropped as if it had no parachute, suddenly remembered its wings, stopped in mid descent like a cartoon character, steadied itself, and flapped off, probably looking a bit sheepish.

Jackie drove me to Cotswold in Hedge End where I at last bought some Wellington boots. Still reluctant to encounter much mud again I decided to follow a road. We travelled to Blackwater car park on the Rhinefield ornamental drive where Jackie left me and went off to the deer sanctuary car park at Bolderwood in order to meet me after I had walked there. I walked roughly parallel to the road, sometimes on dryish gravel paths, sometimes on more soggy terrain. It was a beautiful, crisp day.

At one point I heard a rhythmic clatter approaching from round a bend. As I looked up, four ponies came careering round the corner headed straight for me on the path. Their leader was a splendid white beast, bearing down on me with nostrils flaring. It had got quite close before I realised it was not likely to lead its companions to one side of me, whereupon I deftly stepped aside, feeling like an ace matador, and watched the animals canter off into the forest. Pondering on discretion being the better part of valour, especially when faced with stampeding ungulates, I heard a further clattering approaching from the same direction, this time on the opposite side of the road. I watched four more ponies rush by from a safe distance. In truth, far more frightening were the two groups of racing cyclists who followed soon after, possibly breaking the speed limit of 40 mph. I suspect they had spooked the horses.

As I neared my goal I watched a small boy repeatedly throwing his Woody (the character from Toy Story) into a tree. There were no conkers or nuts which could serve as a target, so I was rather puzzled as to the nature of his game. When Woody eventually stayed in the tree, the answer became clear. The boy’s mother had to lift him up so he could shake the branches vigorously until his toy descended. Naturally this had me thinking of socks and rugby boots (see post of 10th October), the story of which I told the boy’s Mum.

The ground dappled with the woodland sunlight took me back to July 1967. It was in a wood in Sussex that Michael and I had stopped off for a play en route to Brighton where, the summer after Vivien died, I planned a bed-and -breakfast tour of the south coast with our son. The photograph I took of that scene could well have been captioned ‘Where’s Michael?’. After our break we travelled on to Brighton to find a bed and breakfast establishment. Of course we had to spend some time on the beach first. Although the weather was hot and humid the sky was completely overcast, so I thought a short time would be safe enough. Not so. After 50 minutes Michael was covered in blisters which required dressing in a hospital casualty department. The nurse there was very understanding and gentle in her explanation to this rather daft Dad that the sun can penetrate cloud cover and blonds burn more easily than people with dark hair. That was the end of our holiday. Michael was safer whilst I was able to receive the benefit of advice from Veronica Rivett, my future mother-in-law, with whom we then stayed.

This evening’s meal consisted of Jackie’s flavoursome Cottage pie followed by Sainsbury’s berry fruits trifle with Fitou for Eizabeth and me and Hoegaarden for the cook.