Shelly visited us briefly this morning, before we set off to Wroughton to see Frances and take her her pictures.
Our sister in law was pleased with her pictures, and we spent the afternoon speaking of recent weeks, of the impending funeral, and of more than forty years close relationship. Fiona arrived shortly before we left, and was able to join in.
This trip involved Jackie driving for a total of five hours, during which time we listened to Radio 4 a lot. The news items were repeated throughout the day, so much so, that were I, in later, years to be asked where I was when Oscar Pistorius’s sentencing was announced, I am fairly sure I would be able to answer the question.
On our return home we dined at The Jarna in New Milton. Jackie enjoyed her butter chicken and mushroom rice, as I did my lamb vindaloo and special rice. We shared an onion baji and a plain paratha, and both drank cobra. Although I like my curries very hot, I have not ordered a vindaloo for quite a number of years. This is because it doesn’t make sense to eat both potato and rice. Traditionally, in this country, vindaloo has been regarded as the hottest meal. It doesn’t need to be, because it just refers to the method of cooking, with vinegar and potato. Anyway, I thought I’d try it tonight. It was perfect, with very tender lamb, and only one potato.
Now naga chilis are more freely available, if they are on the menu, I will choose them, allegedly the hottest in the world. Interestingly, jalfrezi is often currently the hotter offering in restaurants.
Probably the naan is a more popular Asian bread than the paratha. Appetising enough, the former looks bigger because it comes puffed out. Jackie and I prefer the taste of the latter which is flatter and rather more buttery. The reason I like it is because it reminds me in look and taste of my mother’s potato cakes. 
Anyone familiar with the spot lighting in The Jarna will appreciate that this paratha is not actually green, but is tinged with the colour of the overhead bulb. Had we been seated in another alcove it may have been blue. This element does take a little getting used to.
Tag: The Jarna
Some Interesting Strands
I began the day with a wander around the garden in search of new flowers. It wasn’t difficult to find some not yet photographed.
In the bottom right hand corner of the aerial photograph is a tree with
fascinating variegated leaves that we have not yet identified. Above it, a rosa glauca has really benefited from the pruning we have undertaken around it. This one has no thorn and flowers abundantly.
A different mimulus than that displayed two days ago looks as if it has been scissored by a snail.
We have many different poppies fluttering in the breeze.
Here is a hebe.
The spirea gold mound, named for its yellow leaves, looks like a cluster of gems set around a flamboyant finger.
Some delicately striated irises I have not seen before are cropping up everywhere, and among those roses taking full advantage of their unaccustomed sunlight is the pink abundance overlooking a section of the renovated brick path, which, with all due deference to the suppliers label we are now quite sure is in fact apricot abundance.
This afternoon Jackie drove us to Wroughton, near Swindon, to visit Chris and Frances. My niece Fiona was also visiting, and went off to collect great-nephew James and bring him back to see us before taking him home. Elizabeth was also present as she is staying for a few days discussing research for the family history Chris has been working on for many years. We are nearing the time when the painstaking work can be turned into a book. Taking in the lines of both our parents, there are a number of very interesting strands going back three centuries. For some reason, my two siblings have decided that I am the author who should take on the work. Whilst this is most flattering, it comes with Chris’s judgement that I have verbal diarrhoea. Well, he is my younger brother, so it is appropriate that a compliment should come with trimmings. I expect I shall soon be inundated with documents.
On our way home Jackie and I dined at The Jarna, which was rather full for a Monday. This surprised the staff because football World Cup season always keeps people at home. This evening we sat near this tableau that I have not noticed before:
‘Look At That Book’
Jackie spent most of the day cleaning and renovating the rancid master bathroom.
This floor, unevenly tiled in some kind of rubbery squares, gives an example of what she was dealing with. The difference she has made is evident in this photograph taken as she began. When I returned from my walk the whole surface was the colour of the clean ones you see.
From Downton Lane I took the path through the fields and alongside the bluebell wood, into which I deviated.
The tractor ploughing against the backdrop of the Isle of Wight on the horizon attracted its usual entourage of gulls and rooks. When I reached the road I turned left and continued on past the bottom of our lane to Milford on Sea.
Cattle alongside this route seemed oblivious of the then distant ploughman.
As I marvelled at the weeds and grasses forcing their way through the tarmacked surface of the narrow path to Milford, I thought fondly of Dickie Hamer. Father Hamer, S.J. was the gentle, well-loved, Jesuit priest at Wimbledon College who guided us towards O Level French. I don’t remember why we called him Dickie. Perhaps his first name was Richard. It was he who had first told us of the power of something as slender as a blade of grass to battle its way into the sunlight in search of the energy for photosynthesis. One day, as he took a tour round the classroom, he admired the drawings Matthew Hutchinson had made in the margins of his exercise book. ‘I’ll have some of that’, I imagined. So, on another occasion, I started embellishing my pages. When Dickie reached my desk, instead of the hoped for praise, I received disappointed admonishment. ‘Look at that book’ exclaimed the schoolmaster. I hear his voice, see his face, and feel the shame to this day. The experience was worsened because I knew I could never match Matthew’s art.
A game of catch cricket was in progress on the Hordle Cliff top. When the ball was hit in my direction and I failed to grasp it, all round hilarity ensued. My unspoken excuse is that a cricketer accustomed to pouching a hard leather bound ball cannot catch a bouncy one designed for tennis. And anyway my effort was one-handed with the camera hanging from my wrist. Moreover, one bout of shame is enough for any one day.
I returned by the Shorefield route at the beginning of which is a house that in dry weather has baskets of books outside for sale in aid of children’s charities. A couple had parked their car and stopped to make a selection of purchases.
This afternoon I made a start on the garden. In the immortal words of Captain Lawrence Oates, ‘I may be some time’.
For one of my birthdays in the early Newark years, Jessica gave me a cast iron replica of the Nottingham Castle benches. This has accompanied me on most of my moves since, and brought to Downton from storage by the splendid Globe Removals team. There are twelve hardwood slats linking, by bolts, the very heavy metal sides. Whilst at Sutherland Place I replaced some of the deteriorated wooden sections with iroko I had cobbled from a picnic bench. The bench has been dismantled for transit. I decided to put it together again.
The cast iron pieces lay beneath the heaviest skip pile consisting largely of IKEA contiboard. I shifted all that and dragged the iron out. Then I couldn’t find the nuts that held the bolts in place.
So I had to do something else, and made a start on weeding the paths. I didn’t get very far before diverting myself by looking up at the shattered tree. The main trunk of this as yet unidentified plant had obviously suffered in the winter gales. I had to cut the top off. There was no time like the present. I sawed off the damaged section, lopped up the branches just coming into leaf, and carried them to the far end of the garden where there has obviously been a bonfire at some time.
All this time Jackie continued to work like Helen, or maybe another Trojan, upstairs, apart from a small break when she pruned a climbing rose in an effort to preserve my scalp when walking underneath it.
I suppose every garden has its pernicious weed that defies all efforts to eradicate it.
Ours I recognise, but cannot name, from the garden at Lindum House. It is a long trailing and climbing creature with velcro epidermis that clings to anything. The creeper emanates from a buried, elongated lichee like object burrowing underground. All I will have time for this year will be to pull the greenery up by the handful before its little white flowers appear.
Extracting one such cluster revealed this fascinating little plant:
Each set of petals is about the size of a daisy. I don’t know what it is.
This evening we dined at The Jarna restaurant, the decor of which was described two days ago, when I vowed to return with my camera:
Sam was doing deliveries himself tonight. At one point he went out into a heavy shower of rain. He placed his container beside his car whilst he opened up the boot.
This could be seen through the tiger left in the window glass otherwise covered by a laminate.
Ceiling lights of different hues imparted their glow to the diners, to their napkins, and to Sam’s head as he took the orders. Ours was green.
The food was good too.
P.S. Jackie put this comment on Facebook: Just done some research, seems that Ladies bedstraw is slightly different, it is Gallium verum , the weed in our garden is Gallium aparine , AKA- catchweed, everlasting friendship, Robin-run-the-hedge, even sticky Jack, and my favourite, Sticky Willy!!
The Nursery Field
This morning I walked along Christchurch Road to New Milton to meet friend Alison at the railway station. Jackie collected us from there, took us to Old Post House, and returned our guest later.
This road winds and undulates but is still busy enough to sound like a formula one racing circuit on telly. Much skipping to and fro across the road was required to ensure that I kept, as far as possible, facing the oncoming traffic. Because I always had to make sure I was seen by the drivers, on bends like the one I am approaching in the photograph I had to cross the road and present my rear to those driving on the left. I was quite relieved to reach Caird Avenue and the footpath into the town.
The verge on the edge of this wide tarmacked path was being trimmed.
Turning into Station Road I enjoyed the dusting of buttercups, daisies, and clover on the grass lining this thoroughfare. I expect they will be next for the chop.
Alongside Christchurch Road itself, a narrow cut has been applied to the otherwise pathless grasses. Cow parsley, bluebells, dandelion clocks, daisies, violets, and the occasional wild aquilegias have escaped the whirling blades.
The early lambs are fattening up nicely, making one feel slightly uncomfortable about mint sauce.
The nursery field still has a smattering of new occupants.
Wandering round our own garden early this evening, I was reminded of how much attention it needs. We cannot wait to get started on it, but it has to take second place to the inside of the house at the moment.
Jackie did tireless work cleaning, scraping off careless paint, polishing, and fixing loose fittings upstairs, so it seemed only right to take her out for a meal this evening.
We chose The Jarna Bangladeshi restaurant in Old Milton. Its unprepossessing modern exterior in no way prepares the visitor for the cavernous interior modelled, according to Sam, the proprietor, on a cross between a Mogul palace and The Orient Express. Sam is proud of his heritage, as demonstrated by his dating the traditional cooking methods. Forget the flock wallpaper, The Jarna’s seating, walls, and even ceilings are clad in velvet. Naive paintings depicting scenes of Bangladesh are bordered by tied back curtain fabric and sculpted velvet. There are two sets of chandeliers and a number of discrete cubicles.
What is particularly marked about this place is how spotlessly clean everything is. With such soft, plush, fabrics this would seem to be impossible. Sam explained that four or five of them set to once a week with Vanish. It shows.
The food was excellent. My choice was Shath koraa, being this establishment’s version of the Hatkora I have eaten at Ringwood’s Curry Garden. Jackie enjoyed chicken dopiaza. We both drank Cobra.
Next time I will most definitely take my camera. There will be a next time.