Tag: St Mark’s Church Pennington

Blackthorn Time

We woke this morning to frost on the kitchen extension roof and ice on the water features. The day continued cold and overcast with a top temperature of 7C.

The quotation from Christina Rossetti’s ‘Spring’ given by Libre Paley in

https://librepaley.com/2021/04/06/alive-in-everything/

sent me to reread the work in

my copy of her poems illustrated by Florence Harrison, published by Blackie and Son 1n 1910, with an introduction by Alice Meynell. Many of the entries are illustrated with full page tipped in colour plates protected by tissue sheets. Others, like ‘Spring’ are topped and tailed by line drawing vignettes.

This gave me the idea of intermittently adding an example to my normal posts, beginning with this one. Thank you for the inspiration, Libre.

A little later, Francesca, from Kitchen Makers, visited to measure and advise on our potential next house refurbishment projects.

After lunch we visited the Pharmacy at Milford on Sea, and went on for a drive.

Pennington Church has a bright crocheted banner along its front hedge.

A fallen tree lies in the stream that reflects branches still intact overhead and is crossed by the Boldre end of Church Lane. I stood on the bridge and photographed some of the

creamy blackthorn froth that currently lathers the spring hedgerows.

A pair of bay ponies slaked their thirst and satisfied their hunger on the edge of the lake on Jordan’s Lane, adding their reflections to those of the surrounding trees and the nearby buildings. The dominant member of the partnership tossed her head and sprayed water in the direction of her companion, as if to say “keep off my gazpacho”.

This evening we dined on oven battered haddock and chips, garden peas, pickled onions, and gherkins, with which we both drank Conch y Toro Casillero del Diablo Sauvignon Blanc 2020.

We Will Remember Them

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When James of Peacock Computers set up our EE Mobile internet he had searched the house for the optimum site for the modem. This was situated in the single bedroom upstairs, not beside my iMac downstairs. Although I managed to post yesterday with the borrowed dongle, the lead for which is not very long, I could find no signal this morning. A phone call to James produced the necessary advice. He suggested I switched SIM cards, and rather crucially, told me how to do it. These cards were smaller than the finger nail with which I prised out the one for the dongle. That from the EE hub required the insertion of a needle. I carried out the operation with surgical precision, otherwise you would not be reading this.
Sporting a knitted poppy she had bought, Jackie had waited for me yesterday in Costa Coffee in Lymington. Whilst there a woman had asked her if she had made it herself. She replied that that would have been rather mean. They both laughed and her interlocutor told her about

the knitted poppies fixed to the hedge around St Mark’s Church, Pennington.

We visited them on the way to visiting Mum this afternoon. My mother is growing stronger by the day, and was able to swing her legs out of bed as Jackie helped her into her chair.

On our return home we took a diversion up Roger Penny Way, where pannage pigs, beneath pink/indigo clouds, grunted contentedly as they rooted beneath oak leaves in search of acorns. As usual, they wandered across the road at will.

After the ever-earlier sunset we turned back at Godshill.

By the time we reached the darting pigs again, the area was pitch-black, and lit by the searchlights of crawling cars whose drivers were doing their best to avoid taking home roadkill of pannage pork from the eager Exocets darting hither and thither.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s classic cottage pie; crisp carrots and cauliflower; and flavoursome Brussels sprouts, with which she drank Hoegaarden and I drank Joseph Scalzi Corse 2016 while Elizabeth abstained