streams – Page 2 – derrickjknight

The Decade That Fashion Forgot

The 1970s have variously been described as the decade that fashion, or taste, forgot. Anyone watching early episodes of such as ‘The Sweeney’, that iconic TV detective series, will probably dissolve into laughter at the sight of the flares, or trousers with wide flared bottoms, that were all you could buy in those days. Orange, brown, and purple synthetic fabrics were all the rage, as were huge shirt collars.

Had I been given a choice, I would probably have avoided buying any clothes until that mad period had been left behind. Unfortunately, in the last three months of 1972, the first apart from Jackie, I lost so much weight that it was either new trousers or continually trip myself up.

These two colour slides from March 1973 demonstrate to what I was reduced.

Jackie took the first picture in the garden of Amity Grove, on the day I produced yesterday’s images of the children. The second was probably taken by Pat, one of the Southwark Social Workers who had accompanied us to North Wales. Jackie had made my magnificent fringed garment.

In my post ‘Vertigo’ I tell a story of Matthew and Becky rushing around the perimeter of a very deep, disused, water-filled, slate quarry. That took place on this trip.

I was much more comfortable with their paddling in streams, fishing for pebbles.

This evening I drank a glass of Chapel Hill pinot noir 2014 to accompany chilli con carne and savoury rice my choice from Jackie’s hot buffet selection, followed by beef casserole, then forest fruits strudel and custard.

Ian and I watched the highlights of the second day of the Oval Test Match. The topsy tyrvy nature of this series continued, as Australia took their total to 481, and England ended the day on 107 for 8

Darkness At Noon

It was a bright and cheerful morning when I set off this morning to walk the Shave Wood loop and survey the effects of yesterday’s storm. No more trees seem to have been uprooted or severely damaged, but there is more surface water than I have seen before.

Water runs down the slightest incline, be it on the roads or in the forest. Where there is no slope new pools and streams are forming. Ditches follow the same logic. If there is a hill they are fast flowing; if there is a plateau they swell and join the ponds on the open land and among the trees. A tennis ball bobbed about in one running rivulet.
Many areas of scrubland normally cropped by the ponies now bear darkened patches and trails that are inchoate lakes and streams. At the moment Football Green retains enough dryish terrain to support animal sustenance. Further into the forest the skies are brought down to earth in their reflections.
The rose bush that had scratched at the side of the car has been cut back and tossed onto the muddy verge near the Minstead village sign.

At the corner of Shave Wood near the A337 an elderly tree suffering from osteoporosis appears to be using one of its branches as a crutch to prevent it from staggering into the road.
As the wind got up and the rain came down again, with each howling gust the tall creaking beeches caused me to become somewhat wary. In the darkening skies of noon, Minstead Lodge looked even more the Gothic pile. (Thank you, Arthur Koestler, for writing your 1940 novel giving me today’s title). The day remained changeable. Soon after this photograph was taken, we were treated to a rainbow, yet by the time I reached home I was beset by rain falling from dark clouds and buffeted across the cattle grid on Lower Drive.
This afternoon we visited Elizabeth. When Danni returned home with Andy we dined on Elizabeth’s spaghetti Bolognese, followed by a Firs Mess. We began with an English bacchus wine, after which Elizabeth, Danni and I drank various red wines and Andy consumed cider. After this we went home.

Genealogy

With my coffee this morning I began reading another of Ann’s books, ‘Dear Dodie’, being Valerie Grove’s biography of the writer Dodie Smith.

I was grateful for the cool breeze offering relief from the strong sun occupying a clear blue sky as I began the long ascent up to Pomport to walk the loop that offers a much steeper descent from the plateau surrounding the village via a winding road past fields and through woods and back into Sigoules. I passed the ornamental garden in rue de La Mayade at 10.20 a.m. and arrived at number 6 on the stroke of midday when my outside thermometer read 24 degrees.

The landscape sparkled. An intrepid cyclist laboured past me up the slope. As always I spared a prayer for two Frenchmen when I passed their roadside monument. This time I scanned the village war memorial seeking their Christian names. There they were: Robert Siron and Gabriel Lamy, who had been shot by Germans, presumably at that spot, when I was just 21 months old. I had been more fortunate in the land and time of my birth. My own father survived his time in the British Army in France. Could these two men have otherwise been alive today?

The only other pedestrian I met was a woman pushing a buggy in which, dummy firmly esconced, lay a sleeping toddler. A light aircraft chugged and droned overhead. Butterflies fluttered by. A small rodent scuttled across last autumns dried fallen leaves. Sweetly sonorous birdsong accompanied the ubiquitous golden symphony of spring flowers, not yet eclipsed either by tall grasses and sprouting nettles or by the still knotty heavily pruned vines. Far off in the woods the melody was interrupted by a discordant clamour no doubt set up by parent birds to deter an egg-collecting magpie and drown its warning clatter. Fruit trees blossomed.

The now shallower streams glittered temptingly as I began to look forward to the refreshing glass of water I would extract from the kitchen tap on my return.

Having put Chris and Gay, two ardent genealogists, in touch with each other, I am now copied into their exchanges of e-mails. Gay, in Australia, has managed to provide my brother with documentation about the Knights that he did not have, and to discover that her daughter Holly and my son Sam each have antecedents hailing from villages four miles apart in Devon. I was delighted to be able to tell Sam’s mother-in-law, seeking information about Jean Knight, nee Hunter, that my nonagenarian mother is still very much alive. She will be able to answer any questions herself.

Today’s poem was ‘Ballade Des Dames Du Temps Jadis’ by Francois Villon (1431 -1465). It presented no problems.

Lunch was last week’s sausage casserole accompanied by a final glass of Sofiene’s gift of a superb Groupe Austoni Bariolees 2010 that Bill and I hadn’t finished a couple of nights ago after we’d polished off his Cotes du Rhone. Lemon sorbet was for afters.

Sunday in Sigoules offers a day without straining to hear and speak French. The birds were today’s relaxing companions.