spider – Page 3 – derrickjknight

Beyond Rancid

The blackbird was bashing at the office window again this morning. Jackie has a theory that it is the mating season and our friend sees his own reflection and attacks it.

It will be some time before we can tackle the joys of the garden. At the moment we satisfy ourselves with watching what is emerging, such as cowslips and honesty.
Today I took my share of deep cleaning. We don’t use the family bathroom, but the smell as we pass it has been getting to us. I believe the heyday of wooden seats was in the 1980s. The one in this room has probably been receiving its incrustation since that time. Plasticine, whatever its original colours, always ends up brown. I like to think that the various materials adhering to the wood and the fixtures did once have a range of hues. Otherwise it is best not to contemplate what I spent the morning chipping away at. I eventually applied a hacksaw to the fixture. Kneeling with your head closer than you would like to the source of the aromas, and sliding the blade under the plates around the bolts in order to perform this task is probably best avoided. I didn’t really have that option. I then gave the porcelain a thorough scraping and polishing.
Flushed with success as I added the toilet seat to the skip pile, I decided to clean the bath.

This was a more straightforward task, although the sleepy spider I aroused, unused to being disturbed, found the unaccustomed smooth surface of the side of its home rather slippery.
Finally, we could not leave the washbasin unattended. Water left in there refused to budge at all. Jackie eventually baled it out and tackled it, to no avail, with a flexible plastic coated net-curtain rail. We then shifted the cupboard from around it and prised the pedestal from under the basin, whereupon I unscrewed the U-bend. This was blocked solid. And I do mean solid. It was as if someone had poured gravel mixed with liquid glue into it and allowed it to coagulate. I chipped and scraped away first with a straightened wire coat hanger, and finally with a steak knife. By the time I had finished, the gleaming U-bend put its surroundings to shame. So I had to give them a thorough going-over too. The cold tap produces no water, but that is a minor detail.
In the cupboard I found the missing plug from the bath, and gleefully slipped it into place. I then turned the circular plug adjuster. It was ineffective. I knew from The Gite From Hell experience that without the adjuster the bath could not be emptied, so I helped it out with the steak knife.
Then we had lunch. Jackie was impressed with the health and efficiency of the Neff hob as she used it for the first time to heat up an excellent mulligatawny soup from Tesco.

The kitchen is beginning to look quite homely now, especially with the addition of Luci and Wolf’s flower card and Shelly’s daffodils.
It has to be said that the bathroom featured above was beyond rancid, although that word word probably be adequate for the cobbled cupboard in the hall that Jackie cleaned this afternoon, whilst I weeded out papers that should have been scrapped years ago. This was all with the aim of getting some order into the office.
We had intended to dine this evening at Zaika in Milford on Sea, and drove there to do so. This was not possible because we had hit the town’s food week, for which each restaurant was required to do something different. Zaika was fully booked for their serve-yourself at the trough banquet. We therefore went on to New Milton to try Bombay Night which proved to be an excellent choice. The food was superb and the service friendly and efficient. We drank Kingfisher, and went home satisfied.

‘Bound For [Western] Australia’

8th October 2013

It was too late, and I was too tired, to post this entry on our return from Clutton yesterday, so I am doing it this morning.

Puddingstone Cottage in Clutton in Somerset is the home of our friends Ali and Steve. This is where Sam, Holly, Malachi, and Orlaith are spending a few days house and dog sitting before making their last farewells in England. Jackie and I arrived a couple of hours before Ali and Steve set off to visit their son James in Ukraine.

Next Tuesday my son and his family board a plane for Perth, where they will begin their life in Australia, starting at the home of Holly’s delightful parents.

Given that the children have spent their last six months living on a boat in the Mediterranean, I was not surprised that Orlaith wasn’t sure about me, but I was delighted at Malachi’s greeting. Stretched out on the sofa, he was so engrossed in the TV that he didn’t hear our arrival. I gently scratched the crown of his head; he gave an excited cry of ‘Grandpa’; leapt to his feet and wrapped all four of his tentacles around me; said ‘I’m just watching ‘The Rhymer’; and resumed his position. Fair enough, really. He soon climbed on to my lap to give me the pleasure of watching it with him, before giving Jackie a similar opportunity. He was, however, most displeased with her for not bringing her laptop on which he has enjoyed playing games.

Orlaith did us the honour of standing unaided for the first time in our presence. She scampers around everywhere, and demonstrated a skill in climbing that possibly will rival her brother’s, as she clambered up his armchair in an endeavour to steal his chocolate biscuit.

Malachi impressed me with his reading, then we did some jigsaw puzzles. Whilst Sam drove Ali and Steve to the railway station the plan was that Jackie and I should take Malachi to the children’s playground, down a footpath to the side of the house and past Clutton Primary School. Because of a certain confusion about left and right in Sam’s directions, it was a good thing that Malachi knew the way. We passed the school just at the time the children were all being released to their parents. A school crossing keeper held up the traffic for us and many other parental figures, some of whom pushed the next generation of pupils in buggies. Our next marker was what had been correctly described as a path that looked like someone’s drive, leading past well tended allotments with a country church in the distance. Then we were in business.

Rain drizzled down all the time, but we enjoyed ourselves anyway, and my grandson had a dry pair of trousers at home. It only took one trip on the slide to demonstrate that he would need them. Steve’s waterproof jacket was a bit tight for me, so I left off my own casual one.

There are several entertaining structures on which to climb. One takes the form of a boat. Malachi, of course, knows all about steering and turning the motor on and off. He recognised the galley stove on which he cooked some stones and bark chippings. Unfortunately, my pleas that I was too big to enter the craft cut no ice. I was forced to get up there. It was in fact more difficult to disembark because I had to turn around to apply my feet to the metallic steps.

Another climbing frame takes the form of a large wooden arachnid. It was this that was responsible for metamorphosing me into a monster, for it gave Malachi the bright idea that I should pretend to be one. So, all the way back to the house, as a cross between Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein and Geoffrey Rush’s Davy Jones, I stumbled along, breathing like blasts from a pair of bellows, and waving my own tentacles about. Sometimes Mal would hide behind Jackie and I would have to pretend to look for him. At one point this charade took place alongside a garden in which an elderly woman was working. There was nothing for it but to ask her in monster speak if she had seen a little boy. Fortunately she had her back to me and appeared hard of hearing. I didn’t persist. A variation on the game gave me minimal respite. Malachi, by shooting me with his snorkel was able to transform me from monster to Grandpa and vice versa at the squeeze of a trigger. Back at the house, Holly informed me that Malachi’s maternal grandfather had always played the monster. Mick O’Neill, you have a lot to answer for.

Between them, Holly and Sam produced a flavoursome fish pie followed by cheese and biscuits and fruit cake. Before this, we had a game of cards, in which Orlaith insisted on joining.

There was an hiatus before cheese whilst bedtime duties were carried out. Sam ingratiatingly sidled out of the bedtime story by informing his son that I would be very good at it. Now, as a grandparent, you can never be exactly sure about parents’ discipline and routines. So, it wasn’t until my shoulders began to ache a little, that I came to the conclusion that it was less than reasonable to be expected to read a précis version of ‘The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe’ with a four-year-old perched upon them, his legs joined around your windpipe, and his feet pummelling your sternum. I had to get a bit stern. When I had finished it was Mal’s turn to read to me. He does this very well, but has a penchant for deliberately changing the order of the words. Have we, I wondered, a budding Mordred here?

The four adults had a relaxed couple of hours before Jackie drove me back to Minstead.

It was the 1961 Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem version of ‘Bound For South Australia’, that reverberated in my ears this morning. The Pogues have covered it more recently. Sam and Holly and their family are not going by boat, and Perth is not quite the destination of the shanty song, but perhaps the rousing refrain is pertinent.

Anansi

This afternoon I walked the two underpasses route via the Sir Walter Tyrrell.

The wall of Yew Tree Cottage at Stoney Cross bore evidence of the season on which I had focussed last week in France, as did the row of logs laid out to keep cars at their distance.

I was to see many more mushrooms on my walk across the North side of the A31. The heathland felt and sounded as if I were walking across a thick-piled Wilton carpet.

Although still warm, it was a dull day on which holly and rowan berries provided the occasional welcome gleam.

As I tramped downhill towards the above-mentioned pub, I encountered two Eastern European gentlemen who didn’t have much English, but did know their mushrooms.

I think at least the man with the basket did understand when I told them about Jessica’s avid interest in the foraging that they were undertaking.

This meeting reminded me of Anansi. Sometime in the late 1980s I was facilitating a series of team building days with a staff group of residential social workers at varying levels in the hierarchy. I very soon realised I had my work cut out because most of these people only met during handover periods; no two individuals shared the same nationality, gender, racial characteristics or sexual orientation; and there were 17 of them.

By the end of the first day it was all in danger of going horribly wrong. Racking my brains overnight, I came up with the idea of the West African mythical storyteller, and Little Miss Muffet.

Abandoning the programme I had prepared earlier, I took a flip-chart and drew a spider hanging from a web on the large sheet of paper. I asked the group members to tell us what they thought and felt when seeing this drawing. As always, it took a minute or two for the first volunteer to tell us about her thoughts. Slowly, people began to rush to tell theirs. And eventually fear or reverence could be expressed. Anansi, the spider, is loved for his storytelling; whereas it was a spider who ‘frightened Miss Muffet away’.

On another sheet of paper I portrayed a set of cricket stumps with a West Indian male wicket-keeper crouching behind them. I went on to tell of Tony Pinder, the best keeper who ever received my bowling, and how he and his brother Winston, who, when I began playing club cricket in 1957 had been the first black people I had ever met. I spoke of their influence on me, and, in particular, the father figure that Winston, known as Bunny, had struck.

I had their interest. This waned momentarily when I invited them to take their turns at drawing anything relevant to their culture or history that they would like to tell us about. That was scary. However, the floodgates soon opened. At the end of the day many people had not had time for a turn, but all wanted to spend the following, last, day finishing the task. Many brought their own art materials.

Then came what, to me, was the greatest, and most satisfying, surprise. A white Central European woman and a black African man both described mushroom gathering from their childhoods. They realised that they had, after all, something in common. I have always hoped that the team continued to build on the discoveries that emerged from these exercises. Once we accept our differences and look beyond them, we are quite similar, really.

Helen sent me her pig pictures, one of which I inserted into yesterday’s post.

This evening Jackie fed us on her classic chicken jalfrezi with mushroom rice and Kingfisher beer.

The Answer Must Lie In The Postcodes

Billingford Mill is maintained by The Norfolk Windmills Trust:

There may be more water pumps than mills, for these former relics of times past were used to pump out water from the county’s precarious terrain reclaimed from the sea.

Were it not for the rooftop in between, the Billingford Mill would have been beautifully framed by our hotel bedroom window. It was this that drew me out early on this dewy morning to wander into the field in which it stood, and along footpaths around it. Sunlight lent a glistening sheen to the willowherb running to seed, and a warning glitter to delineate the strands of the spider’s webs thus deterring flies from entering. These circular spun traps festooned the long grasses bent under the weight of the recent rain.

Returning to the side road by the pub, I passed The Old Smithy, The Old Bakery, and various other cottage dwellings, and walked down to a junction at which I turned right to Brome and Oakley before retracing my steps in time for breakfast.

Shorn stubble stubbornly protruded from some of the fields. In others cattle were enjoying their own morning fodder. The road crossed a surprisingly fast-flowing stream.

As Jackie and I descended the fire escape on our way to the bar, a fast-moving vehicle pointed out a hitherto unnoticed fact. The fire escape led directly, and I mean directly, into the road. There was, in any case, no pavement.

Our most congenial hostess provided a breakfast equally as excellent as yesterday’s. She confirmed she had, indeed, prepared all the Sunday lunches herself, having a little waiting help. I have revised my impressions of this establishment, which is in fact much more pleasant than the rather basic room suggested.

Pondering the two Billingfords conundrum, I decided the answer must lie in the postcodes. That of The Horseshoes begins IP (Ipswich); whereas Sue and John’s home, The Old Chapel, starts with NR (Norwich). Maybe The Horshoes was once in Suffolk, the county of Ipswich. Newark, after all, in Nottinghamshire, was originally part of Lincolnshire. My former home there, Lindum House, translated from the Latin, would read Lincoln House. Our landlady said she sometimes receives mail which should go to The Street in the other Billingford.

We had a more pleasant drive back to The Firs where we learnt that visitors had continued to trickle in during our absence, and my cards had continued to sell. After a short stay we returned home, Jackie having intended then to drive us to Walkford with a present and card for Shelly, whose actual birthday it is today. In the event, after driving several hundred miles in three days, she decided she couldn’t do it.

Berties (sic) has moved to Lyndhurst. This fish and chip shop graced Lymington Road in Highcliffe for about forty years before being sold to the current owners, who moved to our nearest large village in 2012. Unfortunately for the proprietors and prospective diners, builders let everyone down over the work in the new restaurant, so locals have, until very recently, made do with a takeaway. Having eagerly awaited the opening, we learned that it has at last happened. When she woke from a well-earned sleep, Jackie drove us there where we enjoyed large haddock meals. Jackie drank coffee, while I had tea.

‘There’s No Need For That To Be In The Road’

Being a firm adherent of the adage attached to Robert the Bruce: ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again’, I set off this morning in search of Dave’s lakes which I had failed to find yesterday. For those who don’t know the story, King Robert I of Scotland, their fourteenth century monarch who fought against England, wasn’t doing very well. He was doing so badly in fact that he sought refuge in a cave. Whilst sitting there, pondering his next move, he watched a spider struggling to attach the thread of its web to the wall. Back and forth, up and down, went the arachnid in its attempt to secure its fly trap. Eventually the apparently hopeless task was achieved. Inspired by this, King Robert continued his guerrilla warfare until, at Bannockburn in 1314, a resounding victory secured independent sovereignty for his nation. What is good for a spider and a king is good enough for me. This time I took a map and continued on the path the other side of Forest Road past Andrew’s Mare car park. There I was given encouragement by the number of dog walkers coming to and going from their vehicles. They must be travelling somewhere for pet frolics. I fell in with a couple who confirmed that I was headed in the right direction. The woman, identifying her dogs for my benefit, described them rather uncomplimentarily as ‘idiot Saluki crosses’. Apparently all the exercise they take is chasing each other after sticks thrown into the large lake. After watching the canine cavorting for I while, and feeling somewhat satisfied to have got this far without mishap, I studied my Ordnance Survey map very hard, and decided I would attempt to descend to Acres Down before returning via Newtown. I selected my path and strode across the heath. Had I paid a little more attention to the contour lines I would have realised that the one I had chosen descended steeply to a ford and rose equally as steeply on the other side. Ascending the flinty gravel surface put me in mind of the very scary unstable scree that had made me cop out of the final push up Cumbria’s Scap Fell many years ago. Anyone who has a similar phobia of heights will know that it becomes much worse when children are involved. On this occasion, Louisa, then very young, had slipped on the loose stones. That was enough to paralyse me. Louisa, with her far more intrepid mother, reached the top. I didn’t. This was, however, a much gentler slope and not so far above sea level. A stream was forded just after a stone memorial Dave had told me I would pass yesterday. But, as we know, I was nowhere near it then. Finding Murray’s memorial filled me with confidence and a certain smug satisfaction. Admiral Murray was killed whilst hunting on Backley Plain on 17th September 1901. If you ask me, Sir Walter Tyrrell has a lot to answer for. It was he who, allegedly accidentally, shot William Rufus not far away, thus setting an unfortunate precedent. The story is told in photographs of the Rufus Stone posted on 19th November last year. That memorial is about three or four miles away on the other side of the A31. Seeking further information about Admiral Murray and his manner of passing all I could find was a notice in the New Zealand Herald of 23rd November 1901 stating that he had been killed in the New Forest and had had a distinguished naval career. This may or may not suggest he was a New Zealander. Our antipodean friends seem to be a little short of pressworthy material, judging by The National, whose quiz Jackie and her workmates were encouraged to attempt each week by her native colleague Brent. She still regularly attempts this puzzle. At the top of the slope is that rare thing, a signpost, leading to Murray’s Passage. Not much good to anyone approaching it, as I did, from the lakes. Skirting Stonard Wood, as the map told me, I could go for broke and turn right down to Acres Down just to prove I could do it, or I could quit whilst I was ahead and aim for Newtown. I chose the latter. Once I correctly turned left the footpaths seemed to have been deliberately arranged in a series of celtic knots just to confuse me. Had I always taken the right fork I would have arrived at my intended point on the Forest Road, the crossroads leading to Acres Down and Newtown. I did sometimes. But not always. When I noticed a cairn I had passed yesterday I didn’t know whether to be pleased or not. This could either mean everything had gone horribly wrong or I was on the right track. As confirmed by a pair of familiar rowan trees a bit further along, it was a bit of both. I did emerge more or less on Forest Road, but not at my targeted crossroads. I arrived at the Forestry Commission gate at the path to the lakes that I had gone through too early yesterday, about fifty or sixty yards from the A31. Well, I wasn’t going back along the road to the Newtown crossroads, so I retraced my steps alongside the major road, continuing rather precariously after the footpath petered out by Little Chef. This earned me a ship’s foghorn blast from a huge lorry. I think that was rather unnecessary. After all, the traffic was nowhere near as fast as usual, when the slipstream blows you off your feet, and I was wading through brambles at the time. The speed restriction was because of an accident that had slowed things up. An ambulance crew in a lay-by were checking out two unhurt young Asians gazing wistfully at the bashed-in offside front wing of their sprauncy red car. Don’t ask me what make it was. Be satisfied that I even noticed the colour. One medic emerged from some bushes carrying what must once have been a bright new, red, bumper. ‘There’s no need for that to be in the road’, he said to me. Unbeknown to me Helen and Bill had passed me on the A31 on their way to Castle Malwood Lodge. They drew level with me as I walked down Upper Drive. This time they offered me a lift. I declined, reasoning that I could probably make it across our lawn. As we all walked into our flat together Jackie informed me that she had just sent me a text asking if I wanted a lift. She knew that, after yesterday, there was no way I would ask for one, yet it was getting a little late. Had that come earlier I could have done with it. My left calf is complaining somewhat of overwork. My one-time-sister-and-brother-in-law stayed for a pleasant conversation about Lincoln and its environs, where they had been on holiday and once lived, and which I know quite well. This evening Jackie and I dined on her marvellous mixed meat stew with no apparent trace of sausage, followed by gooseberry and rhubarb crumble and custard.

A Fernery

First thing this morning I watched savage nature in action. The early sun glinted on a side-lit spider’s web, displaying the splendid shape of this wonderfully crafted construction. A child’s chalk drawing of an airplane streaked across the clear sky above. A bright blue fly darted straight into the unwound skein. In a fraction of a second, a spider emerged from a corner and was on the fly. Quick as a flash, I was upstairs in search of my camera. Quick as I was, on my return the spider had already wrapped up its prey which now looked like a ball of grey wool almost as large as itself. My attempt at securing a photograph was rushed, and consequently out of focus. During the brief moment it had taken me to ascertain this, arachnid and prey had disappeared. I could not locate them in the foliage. After a great deal of persistence I spied the predator so well camouflaged against a dying leaf as to be well-nigh invisible.

I found another golf ball on the lawn. This set me wondering whether to emulate Winchester City Mill. They have a web-cam carrying out an otter watch. Otters can then be filmed whenever they investigate the millstream. If we set up a web-cam we could satisfy ourselves as to the identity of the phantom supplier (see 8th. September post).

After lunch the three of us visited Arturi’s garden centre to buy some ferns for a new bed Jackie has created. She and I drove Elizabeth back to The Firs and shopped at Hillier’s for snowdrops, narcissi, and grape hyacinth bulbs; pansies; and all-purpose compost. I then finished mowing the lawns I had begun this morning, and Jackie planted up her fernery. This fills a very shady corner bearing compacted soil covering massed tree roots. Our head gardener has created a decorative container for shade-loving plants by encircling a nutritious mix with the sawn up sections of the acacia which fell down during the May storms (see 26th. May). The mix consists of a layer of pond weed extracted a year ago which has produced wonderful compost; then seaweed enhanced plant growth stimulant; next a layer of bracken, and finally multi-purpose, composts. The centrepiece is a garden ornament known by us as ‘The Three Graces’, which had previously stood at the edge of the front lawn.

For our evening meal Jackie produced fillet steak with which she drank Hoegaarden and Elizabeth and I Roc des Chevaliers Brodeaux 2010.