This morning I made a good start on clearing the upstairs sitting room for occupation. The many pictures have been stacked up for final sorting – those for passing on, others which have frames that may be useful to Charity Shops, and those which can be ditched. Eventually various items of furniture will find their own positions.
Our first stop was on Brockenhurst Road where ponies often gather and vie for shelter beneath two spindly trees.
An equine Kindergarten was taking place at the corner of Rhinefield and Meerut Roads. It was sleep time for the younger foals.
Further along bright woodland reflections lit the surface of the stream slowly flowing under Rhinefield Road.
This evening we all dined on tender roast lamb; roast potatoes, including the sweet variety; firm cauliflower, carrots, and broccoli, with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden; Becky, Zesty; Ian, Moretti; Flo, Elderflower Cordial; and I more of the Cabernet Sauvignon.
Ten years ago yesterday I began this blog as a daily diary in order to keep my children up to date with my activities. Since then I have taken, different additional directions, largely stimulated by the encouragement and interests of a quite unexpected number of followers and friends from all over the world. Until comparatively recently all posts were uncategorised, making some subjects difficult for new and longer standing readers to track.
One development has been writing about books, often illustrated. This morning I embarked upon the task of changing the category of posts featuring observations about them. “Books” entries will often be found contained within the other activities of the day. A simple example of this is https://derrickjknight.com/2013/09/05/carthage/
Since I have to trawl through almost 4,000 posts to find these, I might take some time.
This afternoon Jackie drove me into the forest for a short trip.
We took the Sandy Down route to
Church Lane. The second of the above images shows a gentleman making good progress on his postprandial constitution; the first is a section at right angles to
a bridge over the stream reflected in the water’s surface.
The lane slopes up to St John the Baptist parish church, where the Ukrainian flag heard flapping in the churchyard on this otherwise silent afternoon adds an extra poignancy to the many others flying in our locality.
Beside the church, ponies crop the verdant fields.
English bluebells still thrive along the way,
between the ancient hedgerow banks along which gnarled roots are exposed.
This evening we dined on well cooked roast lamb; crisp roast potatoes, sage and onion stuffing, and Yorkshire pudding; crunchy carrots; firm broccoli and cauliflower; mint sauce and meaty gravy, with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Malbec.
Ian returned to Southbourne for work this morning. After lunch Jackie and I drove to Tesco for some shopping, and continued into the forest.
As we turned into Hordle Lane yellow-brown ochre clouds flung a hatful of
every kind of precipitation at our windscreen as photographed by Jackie. Sleet and snow were lashed by brisk gusts of north wind making the 6C degree dropped temperature feel much colder.
During an apparent cessation I left the car to photograph an eponymous sculpture on Woodcock Lane, and was soon beset by further soft white flakes and ice-hard pellets which spared the ubiquitous laurel blossoms.
I wandered around the rippling Wootton stream alongside which a pair of discarded wellies aroused speculation. Lengthy striate arboreal shadows criss-crossed water surfaces and cropped banks alike. The last picture in this gallery is by Jackie.
Fluffy cotton clouds soon replaced the earlier heavily laden ones as cerulean skies returned.
The widening of the A35 bridge at Holmsley, scheduled to be completed next week will not now be finished before June. The causeway leading to it is not normally a road on which it is sensible to stop. Now it is closed we were able to sneak along it and I could nip out and photograph the woodland and its denizens below.
The landscape of Longslade Heath was dotted with grazing and reclining ponies.
South Sway Lane’s verges were enhanced by robins and primroses.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s beef pie meal and/or chicken and vegetable stewp with which I drank Patrick Chodot Fleurie 2019.
After a morning’s further catching up with ourselves and reminiscing, Becky and Flo spent much of the day registering for NHS and banking services; shopping; and various other administrative matters.
This afternoon Jackie drove me into the forest.
I wandered among ponies on Wilverley Plain, where a group of potential surfers failed to keep a kite in the air.
Outside Brockenhurst Jackie parked at the corner of Forest Park Road while I wandered among ponies in the woodland alongside, which was littered with
timber from broken trees in various stages of decomposition littering forest floor.
When we prepared to move on a number of the ponies crossed the road to disrupt the traffic and to impede our departure.
Our last stop was the Blackwater Car Park, from which I wandered among the woodland and photographed rippling reflections on the stream flowing under the bridge.
This evening we dined on second helpings of yesterday’s sausages in red wine with fresh vegetables; Jackie and I drank the same beverages as last night; Flo drank fruit juice; Becky abstained.
By lunchtime the storm winds had dropped considerably, cotton clouds drifted across a bright, clear sky, and the sun maintained a presence.
There is still no sign of power returning to Pilley. We accompanied Elizabeth to her home in order for her to gather up and leave out her rubbish for tomorrow’s collection, and the three of us continued further into the forest.
A pair of ponies occupied a field beside Undershore. As always I needed to be quick to picture the animals in their environment, because as soon as they see me they trot over to ask for treats.
While Elizabeth set about her rubbish we photographed her house and garden. This first gallery is by Jackie;
I focussed on her felled fence, the sheepfold opposite and raucous rooks against the sky.
We each pictured picotee-edged camellias. Jackie’s is the first image.
Our next stop was at Ran’s Wood where Elizabeth and I photographed ponies. The final image in this gallery is one of my sister’s showing the chestnut pony returning from the stream where it had slaked its thirst.
We both photographed the woodland. The last four of these images are Elizabeth’s, the final one being in the form of an owl as a tribute to Jackie,
who added her own group to the mix. The second picture is “Where’s Derrick (7)”.
Elizabeth also photographed the stream,
and, as we left Furzey Lane, a cockerel weather vane.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s sausages in red wine; creamy mashed potatoes; and crunchy carrots and cauliflower with tender leaves of the latter, with which the Culinary Queen drank Hoegaarden while Elizabeth and I drank Stefano di Blasi Toscana 2019.
After lunch we took advantage of a spell of sunshine and drove into the forest.
At the Roger Penny Way end of Cadnam Lane
we stopped to converse with the pair of Gloucester Old Spots we often see there; and a robin that we don’t.
Reflections rippled over the stream spanned by the road bridge.
Jackie’s photographs are the last two in this woodland gallery incorporating a large decaying stump.
Further along ponies chomped on hay against the backdrop of a sheep field.
The ford fence that I had reported in a state of collapse on a recent visit has now been repaired; a trio of sows and a solitary pony will now be safe to cross.
On the lane to Bramshaw we kept meeting and passing a friendly equestrienne until I finally called out of the window “We’ll leave you alone now.”
This afternoon’s Six Nations rugby match between Scotland and Wales failed to record, so later I watched the game between France and Ireland.
We then dined on Jackie’s wholesome chicken and vegetable stewp with fresh crusty bread.
After lunch Jackie drove us to Helen and Bill’s home at Fordingbridge to drop off a present.
Attracted by a couple of large mushrooms on the verges at I disembarked and wandered along photographing, in addition, bracken nestling beside an oak trunk, and lichen attached to fallen twigs on the forest floor and decorating another trunk.
The forded stream was racing and rippling along at a rate we have not seen before.
Cars sped splashing across;
a troop of donkeys gathered on the edge of the road-bridge, contemplated the torrent, then, deciding they didn’t fancy it, leaving one of their members with its foal to slake their thirst, turned back and
lined themselves neatly along the shrubbery for Jackie to photograph them through her windscreen and after stepping out of the car.
We returned via Woodgreen where I photographed the landscape around the River Avon, its swans and mallards, and cattle lolling alongside.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s warming winter meat and vegetable stewp, with fresh crusty bread. The Culinary Queen drank Hoegaarden and I finished the Cotes du Rhone.
On another warm, humid, and largely overcast morning garden maintenance was continued.
Jackie mostly concentrated on the Rose Garden, then produced her own gallery. It was the cricket on Absolutely Fabulous that sent her indoors for her camera. She also spotted a bee and a beetle on Rosa Gallica. Winchester Cathedral, For Your Eyes Only, and Lady Emma Hamilton were all ready for their close-ups. The beetle on the leaf in the first Rosa Gallica picture may be an invasive ladybug
My work was wider-ranging weeding, dead-heading, and feeding the compost bin and bags for the dump with suitable material.
With the cordyline Australis and the Wedding Day rose in full bloom it seemed opportune for me to stick my camera lenses through the upstairs windows and produce some
shots from above. So I did.
I then spent a while completing Jackie’s driving licence renewal application on line, only to get to the very last item and be told that there had been a technical hitch which resulted in the whole effort being cancelled. Mrs Knight then repeated the process with a paper application in half the time.
Afterwards we posted the application at Everton Post Office; collected a prescription from Milford on Sea Pharmacy; visited Rosie Lea tea house, formerly The Hobler Inn, to book a meal for which Danni had given Jackie a voucher for her birthday; and, following a forest drive, purchased three more bags of compost at Ferndene Farm Shop.
Beside the stream at the start of Cadnam Lane, apparently exhausted in the heat, a trio of pigs lay flaked out. They occasionally twitched in an effort to shift the horseflies from their flanks. One sow found the energy to rise to her feet and slowly yawn.
Round the next bend ponies sought shelter in the woodland. They, too, received their share of flies.
This evening we indeed on Jackie’s succulent beef and onion pie; new potatoes, firm carrots, and tender runner beans, with meaty gravy. The Culinary Queen drank Hoegaarden and I drank Les Dauphins Cotes du Rhone 2019.
The recently completed thatched roof across the road in Gorley Lynch bears effigies of a fox stalking a row of ducklings following their mother along the crown of the roof. The little one bringing up the rear turns and surely must be alerting mother with “he’s after us, Mum”. She, however, carries on regardless, well aware that he will never catch them.
The shallow stream flowing over the ford at Ibsley bore glassy reflections, and
a drinking pony which, having tempted me out of the car, lifted its head, took one look, and calmly ambled off up the hill.
The longer Chekhov story I read this afternoon uses its division into 8 short chapters to vary the settings and to focus on different relationships of the main protagonists, much like the acts in a play – in this case a tragedy. I will try to review the work without giving away the details of the tale.
Normally translated as ‘The Grasshopper’, Elisaveta Fen, our translator, has opted to call this ‘The Dragonfly’, because she sees the flighty young female lead as ‘a dragonfly darting about between flowers in pursuit of its prey’.
Essentially we have a struggle between the calm common sense of science and the more immediate attractions of art. Fen offers the opinion that this is ‘exceptional among Chekhov stories in that the ‘artistic’ milieu……is portrayed with a hint of acidity, not to say maliciousness, which suggests a degree of personal grudge against the ‘artists’, who all but ignore the existence of the ‘scientists’, including doctors of medicine, and seem to hold them in contempt.’
This is how illustrator Nigel Lambourne has pictured ‘ ‘Dymov,’ Olga told him, ‘You reject both music and painting’
The narrative is well crafted with deceptively simple language conveying vivid descriptions of place, surroundings, and personnel.
This morning we drove to New Milton to collect my new specs from Boots and dry cleaning from Whites, then, on a hot and sunny day, continued into the forest
Some way outside Burley we stopped for me to photograph a trio of ponies, including a clinging suckling foal, cropping the roadside verge. I have noticed how the new mare mothers all seem to have bony ribs.
On the approach to Wootton Bridge, Jackie parked beside one of the many hawthorn trees that inhabit the woodlands, and I crossed the road to visit another foal and its family. The dam was another who displayed the spare ribs effect.
These recent mothers all seem to spend time taking in their own nourishment whilst supplying their persistent offspring, Maybe that is why this one led her infant across the road for apparently richer pickings.
I wandered down past bright buttercups, daisies, and young ferns, and crossed to the stream becoming drier by the day. Blown seeds rolled among the shadows; a child kicked an inflated ball while her carers sunbathed.
This evening we enjoyed a second sitting of the excellent Hordle Chinese Take Away, with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Cotes de Gascogne.
