seagull – derrickjknight

Patience Rewarded

A few days ago, our friend Barrie sent me a CD of his weekly radio programme in which he had featured my post ‘Death Of The Brown Velvet Suit’. A day or so afterwards I received a ripped open envelope with nothing inside, packaged in The Post Office’s transparent apology envelopes. These containers bear a phone number for complainants to use. Suspecting a deliberate act here, I retained the package, intending to check with Barrie.

Today, a lengthening thread on Streetlife, the local internet noticeboard, was begun. Apparently this is now rife in our area. I smelt a rotten apple, and telephoned the complaints department. This is what I then posted on Streetlife:

‘I have just phoned the complaints department. After the usual string of options, I got a person. I made it clear that this problem is rife in the area, and that ‘someone in your office is tampering with our mail’. I was given a reference number, a promise to report it immediately, and also of a written response. Watch this space’.

My own notes have been added to the envelope.

Jackie has done a marvellous job of eradicating most of the more persistent brambles and sticky Willies. Today I put in my twopenn’orth and cleared the few I could find.

Here is the now customary bee picture. This one collects nectar from a geranium.

The parent starlings, striving to satisfy their boisterous brood, are now becoming quite cantankerous with me. In fact I was thankful I was not another starling, such as the one Jackie had seen yesterday daring to approach this family’s territory. Starlings normally gather in a murmuration, such as that collective that stole the chips at Mudeford on September 9th 2013. But not, apparently, when they are rearing chicks. Our pair saw off the intruder in no uncertain terms. They are satisfied with warning me off from a safe distance.

Now they perch on the rooftop for a while, squawking at me, fly off in a feint

then return,

drop down, and dive into the facia.

How they can create such a racket with their beaks so full is beyond me. It took three days of intermittent standing with varying degrees of patience to get these shots.

There was a queue outside Mr Pink’s fish and chip shop in Milford on Sea, where another bout of stationary waiting around was rewarded by the usual fresh and crisp cod, chips, and pickled onions that we enjoyed sitting in the car on the sea front.

The gentleman in the check shirt told me that this queue was nothing. It usually trailed many yards down the road. Whilst enjoying our meal and, in Jackie’s case, Hoegaarden, and mine, the last of the Cotes du Rhone, we watched a soaring seagull make a beeline for the P&O cruise ship Adonia passing yachts and the Isle of Wight on its way out to the ocean.

This made me think of our friend Jessie, who is rather partial to her cruises.

Flo’s Frog

Soon after midday Jackie and I drove to New Milton to collect our friend Sheila who has joined the family group. After lunch, Jackie, Flo, Sheila, and I went on a hunt for Becky, Ian, and Scooby, who had gone ‘to the beach’. They were not at Milford on Sea. They were not at Barton on Sea. We left them various mobile messages which they eventually picked up when they got home, and we were at Barton on Sea. Inevitable, I suppose. We joined them at home, where they told us the story of the Scotch egg. Whilst on the beach they watched a family having a picnic. A seagull swooped on the food and made off with a whole Scotch egg. This was clearly too heavy for it. It dropped it. Right under their dog, Scooby’s, nose. Manna from Heaven. He didn’t stop to question his luck. He devoured it immediately.
Our conversations ranged through cricket, crosswords, community projects like Commonside in Mitcham, and local politics. Commonside, where Becky worked for ten years, is in the London Borough of Merton; Jackie worked for Merton Social Services Department for more that thirty years; Sheila, Director of Merton Mind until the funding ran out earlier in the year, and a Merton Councillor for more than fifty years, had trained as a Social Worker with me at Croydon in the class of 1969/70. We had not known it before, but in our teens Sheila and I both frequented the Oval, Surrey County Cricket ground, and Sheila had worked opposite Mitcham Cricket Club’s ground which prompted the story of ‘Six Leg Byes’ told on 17th June 2012. The main cricket focus today came from this the third day of the Old Trafford Test match between England and India. England won the game in very quick time, two days early.
I accompanied Jackie giving Sheila a tour of the garden. We have an even darker pink variety of Japanese anemone now in bloom, and the penstemons are flourishing.
In addition to the jewellery Flo is spending her time making, she has started to produce wire animals, bringing all her natural skill in reproducing a wide range of creatures, perfectly proportioned and with life-like stances, in a variety of art forms. She used my camera to photograph a frog and e-mail it to a friend. She was very patient as I stumbled my way through explaining the the process on my iMac.
This evening we all dined on Jackie’s superb sausage casserole (recipe), mashed potato, and crisp vegetables, followed by jelly and ice cream. Lambrusco, Marquis de St.Vincent Medoc 2012, and Hoegaarden were the drinks on offer.

Downton

We are running out of storage space, so Jackie and I visited David Fergusson’s House Clearance shop in Highcliffe, where we bought three chests of drawers which will be delivered next week. There we met the fascinating proprietor who has an impressive knowledge of art. He is still waiting for that miraculous find, but clearly appreciates and values some of the items he collects. They do not all find their way into his shop. His home must be a treasure trove.
It is not now quite so scary a prospect to accommodate the belongings we then collected from Shelly and Ron’s afterwards. At their home we also met Anthony, their son, Jane their daughter, and her boyfriend Chris. Ron is recovering from his operation on his broken heel. We had an enjoyable chat with welcome mugs of coffee.

Our garden becomes more resplendent as the month proceeds.

Another Camellia is in bloom, as is a tree peony offering shelter to a bee. The elegant weeping birch flickers with dangling new leaves.

After lunch I walked down Downton Lane, taking the footpath off to the right. From the stubbled field alongside, I could see the original hamlet of Downton stretched out along Christchurch Road. Enlarging the picture offers a glimpse of our pale blue washed house centre right.

To the left The Solent sparkled in the distance, and the cloudy smoke from a bonfire blended well with the bulky form of the Isle of Wight.

A solitary rook vied with the seagulls for pickings from a recently ploughed field.

I took the left turn alongside the bluebell wood which also contained wood anemones among many other wild flowers.

After crossing the stream I optimistically diverged from the marked path, turned left through an opening in the barbed wire fence and circumperambulated

a steep grassy field with clumps of gorse at its summit, looking down on

a splendid bluebell bank beside the road.

It soon became apparent that there was no other egress, so I retraced my steps and returned home.
This evening Jackie fed Flo and me (and herself) on Pizza and penne bolognese sprinkled with parmesan cheese. Strawberry jelly and Kelly’s Cornish clotted cream ice cream. I finished the Isla Negra and Jackie drank a little more of her Hoegaarden.
As I post this, I am listening to the ticking of two clocks. One, keeping perfect time, is a battery operated modern one bought by Jackie in one of Morden’s ‘cheapie places’. The other, a splendid reproduction station waiting room clock was given to Jessica and me by Michael when he was seventeen. It still needs a little adjustment to its new environment as it loses a few minutes a day. This is the clock that survived being stolen with the rosewood wine table that stands beneath it.

The London Eye

This morning Jackie drove me to Southampton Parkway railway station where I boarded a train to Waterloo for lunch with Norman and late afternoon coffee with Carol. From Waterloo I walked along the Embankment to Westminster Bridge which I crossed, continuing into Birdcage Walk, and taking the route to Green Park underground station detailed on 25th September.

Passing The London Eye on the Embankment I thought of my trip on this modern landmark, erected to celebrate the second millennium. I gazed on it from Westminster Bridge, on which a bagpiper was in full flow.

Ten years ago, after a river trip celebrating Norman’s 70th birthday, Jessica and I took a flight on the Eye, for which numerous people were queueing today. It was a very cold, cloudless day in March, and the view, for those who could look at it, of the serpentine River Thames and its world-famous cityscape, would have been stupendous. It was with much trepidation that I bought the tickets along with more film for my camera so I could photograph the scene from a great height. This was one of my many unsuccessful attempts to cure my acrophobia. At that time I had not yet conquered my fear of flying either.

The Eye is a vast wheel on the circumference of which, at regular intervals, are fixed ovoid glass people-containers. This construction rotates excruciatingly slowly transporting passengers from ground level to the skies and back down the other side. I understand that most people subject themselves to this ‘flight’ for fun.

Entering the transparent pod in which I was to endure the next forty five minutes of my life, I made an immediate beeline for the central seat and remained there throughout the ordeal. So paralysed was I that I was unable even to load the camera, let alone look at the view. What made the experience even more terrifying was the two small children clambering on and swinging precariously from the handrail which circled the glass walls of the capsule. My brain simply computed an unprotected rail suspended in mid-air, from which they were bound to fall. As with all phobias, there was no point in applying logical thought to the situation. When perched at the very top of the wheel you are looking down on the Shell building, which is pretty tall itself, and it takes ten minutes even to start the descent. Not an experience I have any intention of repeating.

On the Embankment wall opposite the Aquarium, once the headquarters of the Greater London Council, a vociferous seagull was holding forth.

There was a film crew on Westminster Bridge, their equipment trained on a group of Japanese. The forceful wind tearing along the Thames was so strong as to blow a very slight young woman off balance and into my arms.

St. James’ Park was still full of tourists with their cameras. Squirrels were queueing up to have their photographs taken, especially if the photographers’ assistants held tasty morsels of food in their outstretched fingers. Later, I was to read in A.L.Rowse’s history of Elizabethan England that John Norden’s map of Westminster in his book ‘Middlesex’, published in the 1590s, contains illustrations of ‘deer leaping in’ this very park.

As I walked along Piccadilly I became aware that I was approaching the source of a repetitive chant which turned out to be a chorus of ‘Barclay Brothers, pay your taxes’ outside the side entrance of the Ritz, one of London’s most salubrious hotels. Presumably these two men, residents of Sark, are having a holiday in London and someone has got wind of it. They have been accused of forging a fortune and ferreting it away in offshore accounts to avoid paying their dues.

I took the Jubilee Line to Neasden and walked to Norman’s where I was fed on lamb shank followed by jam rolypoly accompanied by a very good red Bordeaux. Norman gave us a housewarming present of a dish made for him by Alvin Betteridge at Chandlers Ford in the late 1960s. Alvin turns out to be a friend of our friend Margery Clarke.

After this it was by tube to Carol’s, then to Waterloo where I caught a commuter train back to Southampton to be collected by Jackie. Looking around me on board this transport in which I had been fortunate to find a seat, I was relieved that my commuting years are over.

As I felt Jackie struggling to keep her steering level whilst being buffeted by winds on the M27 I had some idea of what that slender young woman on Westminster Bridge had been up against.