pony – Page 7 – derrickjknight

The Benefits Of Hearing

A new visitor alighted on the bird table today. Jackie was able to view this creature from the hide she had constructed in the kitchen. As usual, as for the would-be panda photographer in the Kitkat television advert, when I arrived with the camera, the bird disappeared. She had to look it up in Dave Farrow’s ‘A Guide to the birds of Britain and Northern Europe’. At first studying the illustration for an apparently rare garden sparrow, she eventually settled on the female blackcap. A pied wagtail did battle with another bird that it saw off so quickly we couldn’t identify it. A blue tit showed a preference for the fat balls.

In celebration of a much brighter day, blossom has come to Castle Malwood Lodge garden, and fresh lemon coloured leaves are beginning to festoon Running Hill. I chose the first ford Q walk this morning. A distant cuckoo intruded upon the conversation of other forest birds, just as its chicks will intrude upon their unwilling foster parents.

The lambs that caught my eye as I walked towards the bridle path were black with white faces. Two of them vied with each other for either shelter or suckle under their mother. In a display of modesty the ewe, as I peered in their direction, waddled awkwardly off. How, I wondered, did those thin legs support that ungainly, wool-covered body? Her offspring hopped and skipped over each other, trying to latch onto their moving target.

At the top end of the path I tried a new route by taking Tom’s Lane. On a bend I soon saw a notice that made me change my mind. I was first inclined to ignore it, because it had probably been there some time. However, around the bend there were two houses, neither of which possessed a gate. Discretion was called for, so I retraced my steps and took Forest Road, beside which bony cattle basked in the morning sunlight. Walking back through Newtown, watching ponies grazing, I marvelled at the amount of unrelenting mandibular exercise required to feed these animals for a day. It is little wonder they don’t do much else.

On two occasions I had differing reasons for being grateful for the sense of hearing. About to approach the hill back into Minstead from ‘The Splash’ ford, the familiar clopping of an as yet out of sight horse drawn cart alerted me to the photo opportunity that was on its way. I was therefore able to take up a suitable position. As the carriage passed me the riders laughed at my poised lens. ‘I’ll bet you have lots of these taken’, I cried, as I clicked. ‘Just a few’, was the reply.

There is a particular blind bend on the road up to Seamans Corner. As usual I walked up the narrow road on my right hand side, so I would face cars coming towards me on their left. Round the bend sped a car I had only heard. The driver was looking in the direction of her passenger. Had I not pinned my back to a thorn hedge in anticipation, the vehicle would have hit me.

This afternoon, my granddaughter, Alice, visiting Soho with her Mum and Dad, sent me a photograph of the front door of Nos. 1 – 2 Horse and Dolphin Yard, where Michael had lived with Jessica and me during the 1970s. It was the roof of this building that formed part of the route to Michael’s rabbit pens described in my post of 21st May last year.

Jackie’s luscious lamb’s liver casserole followed by bread and butter pudding was for dinner. This was accompanied by Hoegaarden by Jackie, whilst I finished the Piccini.

Robin Ghyll

Even at midday today a block of ice filled the birdbath. After lunch I walked the Shave Wood loop. Apart from Ari and Jackie who stopped their car for a long chat, I saw no other humans. Only three ponies were in evidence. One tore dead branches from a fallen tree, perhaps for the lichen. They certainly are experiencing food harder and harder to find.

Many forest car parks, like the one at Hazel Hill, have been padlocked for the winter. Now we have passed the alleged first day of spring, they have been opened up. I see no sign of people rushing to fill them.

We are going back a couple of years in Elizabeth’s ‘through the ages’ series. The featured picture, number 11, was taken by Jessica in August 1979 during one of our holidays in the Lake District. Before I explain the location, I need to confess to spending a couple of hours locating ‘Pictures’ on my iMac. This is because I decided to scan and adjust Elizabeth’s version of the photograph, which was the wrong way round and bore some faint but unfortunate parallel lines across it. In fairness to my delightful sibling, when she first scanned this for one of Mum’s birthdays perhaps ten years ago, equipment was not so good, and how was she to know it was my right hand on which I was resting my face?

I saved the scan to ‘Pictures’ which has a different icon than ‘pictures in iPhoto. I couldn’t work on the picture from ‘Preview’, and I couldn’t find the separate ‘Pictures’. After much frustration and a reluctance to phone Apple helpline yet again, I found how to move the picture to iPhoto. It didn’t really need any enhancement, but at least I can now manage any that do. If I can remember how to do it, that is.

Now, to the holiday. The family of Jessica’s sister Sue Trevelyan owned the house at Robin Ghyll near Langdale in the Lake district. We would sometimes stay with the Trevs, sometimes on our own, taking Matthew and Becky with us. On this occasion our friends the Biebuycks accompanied us. This was a large, spacious, house shared by the Trevelyan brothers, and available for all their relatives. A dry stone wall surrounded the rocky garden that overlooked the Lakeland hills. There were numerous popular walks, some of which, (see ‘Vertigo’, posted 14th July last year) scared the life out of me. It was on one of these holidays that I discovered the delights of Theakston’s ‘Old Peculiar”.

If the truth be known, I probably chose to wrestle with the computer to avoid tackling the assembly of the IKEA bookcases which were delivered this morning. But I couldn’t put it off for ever. Were I to claim that I, or even we, unpacked these heavy boxes; studied the picture book instructions; checked the contents and laid them out in a sensible order on the floor; collected the necessary tools together; and built the furniture, I would be stretching credibility. So I won’t. This afternoon, Jackie was the surgeon. I performed the roles of hospital orderly and theatre nurse. We settled for one operation. There is always another day or three for the others.

Last night’s jalfrezi meal and Kingfisher was repeated this evening with the addition of mixed fruit crumble. Delicious.

The A31/M27

We found the password for BT Yahoo, so I was able to get direct access to the Internet on my Apple. This didn’t last. I kept being informed that the password was incorrect. It was perfectly adequate the first time.

So I went for a walk. Down to the village hall; right past Furzey Gardens; up to the remnants of Stoney Cross; under the A31; straight across heathland to a road junction; right to Fritham where Jackie met me.

The temperature had plummeted and a bitterly cold East wind was getting up. I really had to keep up a brisk pace and was regretting not having worn a topcoat when I stopped to talk to a sheep farmer. We stood for a while, each trying to rub life into our hands. Interestingly, he, too would warm up after half an hour. Unfortunately neither of us had yet done the required amount of exercise. After passing Furzey Gardens this road becomes very rough, full of holes, and usually muddy. This morning, like the criss-crossing trails of various hoofed animals on the other side of the A31, the mud was frozen and therefore much easier to negotiate. Iced over pools crackled underfoot.

The path across the heath was a wide cycle track broadened by the cropping of ponies whose aforementioned hoof prints made numerous patterns involving overlapping rings. I tried in vain to find a perfect Olympic symbol. There were plenty of droppings interspersed with the prints, but it was not until the track turned right on meeting its junction with the road to Fritham, that I actually met any animals. First I encountered Eyore, Winnie the Pooh’s assinine friend, who tore himself away from his gorse to stare at me gloomily, and was not prepared to budge from his advantageous position. This was quite unlike the pair of magpies that flew from their lofty perch at my approach. The terrain was cropped smooth and other donkeys and ponies were feasting on the prickly yellow-flowering shrubs. The wind up here, with no trees to take the edge off it, was fierce.

Lining either side of the road at Fritham were a number of the smallest ponies I have yet seen. One looked like a cuddly toy having curled itself into a ball, bounced out of its small owner’s bed, and rolled out into the open for a taste of freedom.

‘Where shall I meet you?’, Jackie had asked. ‘It’ll only be a small place’, I’d replied. ‘We’ll find each other. I’ll stand in the middle of the road if I have to.’ As I did, in fact, stand in the middle of the road at a junction into Fritham, bitterly (as in freezingly) regretting this statement, I began to wish I could have been more specific. What I hadn’t realised was that this was a much larger village than the few buildings nestled around me. Jackie had quite sensibly gone to the Royal Oak first. But, being quite accustomed to being a search party of one, she tracked me down, thawed me out, and drove me back to the pub where she enjoyed Peroni and I did Ringwood Best until time for lunch which was ham and barley broth, and mixed gammon and cheese ploughman’s respectively. This hostelry probably well deserved the Good Beer Guide’s award for Hampshire’s country pub of the year. Apart from the excellent ales and food there are some really good local oil paintings on the walls. There is far more seating outside than in, but today all the customers were inside as near as they could get to the log fires.

After lunch we travelled by car to Ringwood for shopping, then on to Helen and Bill’s for a brief celebratory visit on Helen’s birthday. Incredibly, we were unable to find strip lighting in Ringwood and had to go to Hedge End Home Base, in quite the opposite direction, to make our purchase of these.

We are so well sited alongside the A31 just before it joins the M27 going East, that it is easy to forget that it has cut the forest down the middle. This major east/west route enables us to cover distances in short spaces of time unheard of in London. The road to Fritham bears one reminder of the damage to communities that seems to have been the price. The signpost to Fritham also bears a sign to Stoney Cross. If you follow this you just come to the A31 onto which you must turn right and travel to the Cadnam roundabout before you can come all the way back to a few buildings which you could easily miss. There are signs in Minstead bearing the same legend. What I have, in my second paragraph, called the ‘remnants of Stoney Cross’ are a few houses, a garage, and a Little Chef, which is all I have been able to find. Maybe other properties were demolished to make way for the road. Cadnam, although a larger place, appears to have suffered the same fate. Nevertheless, we were able to drive backwards and forwards from Ringwood to Hedge end in search of a few strip lights. So how can I object?

This evening Jackie produced an excellent meal of stir fried chicken in chilli and black bean sauce; with egg fried rice; followed by bread and butter pudding and evaporated milk; and accompanied by a shared bottle of Lamberhurst Estate Bacchus Reserve 2011.

Rufus Stone

Just as I was preparing for today’s walk, Jackie set my pulses racing. She informed me that there were no instructions for the assembly of the IKEA bed. As I reached for my mobile phone she found them hidden away in one of the boxes.

I calmed down and set off to cross the A31 in search of an historic monument. After studying this, I carried on through Brook to the B3079 from where I retraced my steps back to Minstead.

As a truly ancient monument, the Rufus Stone lacks a certain authenticity. However, the legend on the obelisk that stands on an allegedly historic spot has saved me a certain amount of writing. All I would add to this inscription is that King William was a son of William the Conqueror, and that the authenticity of the story will never be established. Whether Sir Walter’s shot was an accident or an assassination has been the subject of speculative debate for centuries. I must say that anyone venturing off the A31 in a westerly direction to take the turn off to see the ‘stone’ is taking a very risky manoeuvre. It is marginally more dangerous to carry this out by car than it is to do it on foot.

A little further along the road to Brook the Sir Walter Tyrrell inn bears a sign commemorating the legendary event.

Brook itself seems to be a small hamlet. I do not know the derivation of its name, but interestingly, although it is on high ground, there is a ford and footbridge on the road beneath it.

I wondered what the jacketed horse in a field made of its free ranging relative grazing on the grass by the wayside.

When I returned to flat 4 Jackie had begun to assemble the bed. We completed the operation, which was remarkably smooth, after lunch, before setting off for Aldi in Romsey where, according to Which magazine, we should find a well recommended Christmas pudding. Naturally that wasn’t all we bought. Now Jackie has a decent sized fridge and freezer there is no stopping her, especially with the festive season coming up.

As we were in Romsey it made sense to visit the Purbani restaurant we had discovered two years ago. On that occasion my poppadom theory was tested and found not to be foolproof. The hypothesis is that the quality of the poppadoms is a good indication of what is to follow. Crisp, warm, poppadoms with fresh, tasty, pickles means the rest of the meal will be good, and vice versa. On our first visit the poppadoms were so limp that I had to send them back. They were changed without question, and our meals were excellent. Today everything was fresh, well cooked, and flavoursome. As we had arrived before they opened, we had a drink in the Oak Tree pub, a small, homely, establishment which was, complete with strobe lighting, preparing for a twenty first birthday party. That is probably why Jackie couldn’t finish her Kingfisher, and I struggled with my Cobra.

Deceptive Appearances

Orlaith Beth came in at 9lb 5oz. She is expected home with her Mum today.

This morning I walked along Seamans Lane and through London Minstead to Shave Wood, turning right there and back to Minstead, emerging at Football Green whence I walked back home via the Village Shop where I bought tickets for tonight’s play at Minstead Hall.

Although there is still much colour in the forest, many deciduous trees are now almost devoid of leaves. Their branches fan out, one, for example, tracing the outline of a Spanish senorita’s fully extended cooling accessory.

Driving along this route a couple of days ago our way had been blocked by six cattle, four of whom had their front halves buried in hedges, in the manner of the one pictured on 12th November. Today I think I spotted the reason for the fascination of hedges. Much of the land on the far sides of these hedges lies at a higher level, and the lazy cows don’t have to bend down for their fodder. I assume the tag on the pictured animal’s ear indicates to which verderer this protected wanderer belongs.

Further on, Jackie had pointed out another primeval creature she had seen the day before. The pony which had been grazing alongside this relic of pre-history seemed to have crossed the road and was now consorting with a giant Galapagos tortoise.

Leaving Minstead behind as I approached Castle Malwood Lodge I met the man I am due to impersonate on 1st December. He was in civvies, of course. He encouraged me to persevere with my less prolific growth and suggested I gave his picture the caption: ‘This is what I aspire to be’.

Early this evening the bed we bought yesterday was delivered by IKEA. A next day delivery as promised went some way towards improving our feeling about the company. All we have to do is assemble it. Coincidentally, we learned from Becky that the wardrobe we left behind for her in Links Avenue has been collected by Mat and Ian. Jackie and I had assembled that when we moved in there eighteen months ago.

It was touch and go whether we would be able to attend the performance of ‘Dish of The Day’ by Christine Woodhead, for which I had purchased tickets this morning, because we had to wait in for the deliverymen. But we made it, after Jackie had produced a meal of omelettes and baked beans. We finished the wines begun two days ago.

The performance was an hilarious one by the local Minstead Players. The piece was well written, set in an Italian restaurant run solely by a woman clearly modelled on Julie Walters’ Mrs. Overall who did, indeed, turn out to be the cleaner. The three tables were occupied by a couple with an elderly mother, three young women on a hen night, and a dating agency rendezvous. One rather clever moment was when one person from each table simultaneously received a call on their mobile phone, and the individual conversations fitted together as if they were all three speaking to each other.

Autumn

This morning I walked back to Lyndhurst, and in the process discovered where I had gone wrong yesterday. In the gloom of evening I had not seen a road sign. Jackie and I rendezvoused in the car park and completed the mail redirection process in the Post Office. We then had a wander around the town, making a few purchases, including a fine pair of leather gloves in the Age UK shop.

Ponies and cattle possessed the road, as nonchalently chomping away and wandering down the street through Minstead, as usual. At one point I helped out the driver of a small white van patiently waiting for a gap to open between a cow and calf so that he could squeeze through. It just wasn’t going to happen until I walked towards the pair prompting the calf to set off down the road. The adult, its head in a hedge, took no notice.

By the time we returned to Castle Malwood, what had begun as a rather murky day had metamorphosed into a gloriously clear, bright, seasonal one. We have learned that the two drives off the forest roads leading to our building are called ‘upper’ and ‘lower’. As we straddled the bars of the cattle grid at the ‘upper’ entrance we were both entranced by the leaf-carpeted bank beside it. I reflected, as I have done many times this week, that we are so fortunate to be arriving, in the autumn of our years, at such a picturesque area in such a spectacular season.

After another afternoon sorting out our new home we dined on a fabulous beef stew Jackie made. I was a little disappointed because I had seen her buy a blackberry and apple pie in Lyndhurst and thought that would be for our pud. It wasn’t, because we had no custard or cream. This was not really a problem. I just had another helping of stew. Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I imbibed Marques de Montino rioja reserva 2007.

Serendipity

This morning Jackie and I drove over to Minstead to do a little more research into what is to be our local village. As we arrived, signs proclaimed that there was an antiques and bric-a-brac fair at Minstead Hall. Since we had come upon it by accident, the organisation’s name, ‘Serendipity’, seemed fortuitous. After we had got past the man in the entrance hall who was wishing to sell us a set of prints he thought were watercolours, we spotted, on the very first stall, two similar vases. They were of a dark green ceramic material in a shape which was certainly used in the 1880s; when Castle Malwood Lodge was built; with delightful floral designs appliqued in a hard paste. We don’t think it’s necessarily a good idea to buy from the first stall you see, but we bought these and were well pleased. It was, of course, mandatory to try out The Trusty Servant, if this was going to be our local. With excellent real ale, a choice of lagers for Jackie, and first-rate plentiful food it turned out to be a winner. Despite the fact that the bar was quite busy, all three staff behind the counter greeted us with winning smiles as we entered, and the service continued to be efficient and cheerful. We both lunched on roast pork.

On the grass verge opposite the pub, a row of cattle grazed. We have much to learn about the New Forest, but we believe these animals to belong to verderers, a group of people with ancient rights to graze their cattle and pigs, who in modern times have responsibility for management of the woodland. A short distance away was a group of New Forest ponies. These animals, owned by the New Forest Commoners, roam freely throughout the forest and the villages therein. I am particularly amazed at how still these creatures are, when not actually cropping the grass. Last year in a car park in Burley I had been convinced that those I saw individually positioned, sometimes almost touching cars, were incredibly realistic sculptures. It took a very close examination to reveal that they were alive. Jackie says that it is important for them to conserve energy otherwise they would have to eat an awful lot of grass.

We also checked out the village shop which is reasonably stocked, sells newspapers, and offers a tea room. Not quite in the class of Tess’s establishment in Upper Dicker (see post of 12th May), it is certainly a very good asset, and only half a mile from the Lodge. Jackie bought the Ordnance Survey Leisure map for the New Forest.

This evening we dined on left-overs. This of course conjures up the image of a concoction produced from small amounts left over from recent meals. Sainsburys, I think it was, who ran a television advertising programme after the 2008 credit crunch, recommending people to make use of left-overs to create wonderful new meals which most of the older generation had been producing for years. Now, left-overs from a 90th birthday party are certainly not scraps. We could choose from whole roast chickens; unopened quiches; platefuls of ham; cooled salmon; a good half dozen French sticks; untouched cakes; baked potatoes; and still fresh coleslaw; with half empty bottles of assorted red wines, and, in Jackie’s case, a previously unopened bottle of Stella. We’ll probably get some more at some stage tomorrow.