thrush – Page 2 – derrickjknight

The following were the human beings I saw when walking The Splash ampersand this sultry morning: a few isolated car drivers on the road; a postman getting into his van outside the study centre; a woman in a nurse’s uniform leaving a house and walking to her car; one man crossing a road to another house; a psychotherapist walking from her home to post a letter in the box on the green opposite; two woman chatting in a cottage doorway; and a teacher with a group of schoolchildren having a lesson in a shady spot by The Splash. That’s it. Contrast the peace with yesterday’s heaving pavements. By mid-day, even the birds were mostly quiet. The rhythm of my sandals slapping the tarmac was at one point interrupted by the sound of a squealing gate that emanated from a donkey in need of lubrication.

A very small lamb was silhouetted against the sky visible through a hole in the Furzey Gardens road hedge.

A bunch of horses in a Fleetwater field had me wondering whether Kevin Pietersen had branched out into equestrian breeding.

Beside The Splash it was the eager voices of the schoolchildren I heard first. Peering through the foliage I spied the sun-dappled group seated around the stream. For them it was a quite different experience than that of the children I had heard yesterday in Shrewsbury Road.

On my return to the flat, the painters were, in a most relaxed fashion, availing themselves of the facilities offered by Jackie. John Broad expressed the idea that they should cancel next week’s job and come back here instead. Dean was exchanging texts with a friend to whom he had just sent photographs of the setting in which they were working.

I am experiencing a niggling discomfort very similar to one I suffered when I was a child in about 1949. It is strange to feel the same annoyance from a nagging gnasher at seventy as I did at seven. I have a wisdom tooth the root of which was partly exposed many years ago when its next door neighbour was extracted. It is now gradually attempting to prise itself loose from its moorings. If only I could get a good grip on it I feel certain I would be able to help it on its way, just as Mum did with one of my milk teeth. I whinged all day because it was sore, but couldn’t pluck up the courage for the final lift off. Neither would I let my mother near it. I had seen a cartoon in either the Dandy or the Beano where a parent tied a string round a bad tooth and the other end to a door knob, slammed the door shut, and had the tooth literally hanging from a thread. When I eventually allowed my mother to wrap her fingers around my molar it came off in her hand with no tugging at all. It had been metaphorically hanging by a thread. This enables me to imagine what it was like for six year old Jessica just before her front teeth fell out.

This evening, sitting in the garden before dinner, we watched a thrush competing with a blackbird and various tits for theirs. The thrush actually seems to be more alarmed by other birds now than by us.

Dinner was Jackie’s slow roasted pork with superb crackling (tip) and crisp vegetables, followed by sticky toffee pudding. My accompaniement was Berberana rioja 2012; hers was Hoegaarden.

At last, this morning, the preparation of the new bed was completed. This involved composting the soil and tidying up the edges. I had to fetch bracken compost, having mixed it with horse manure, in several trips with a wheelbarrow; spread the mixture across the recently prepared area; and dig it all in. Having done this, I made a defined trench between the bed and the grass with a hand trowel. A thrush which had obviously been watching me, waited until I sat down, then hopped into the trench and began to pull up and consume worms and other creatures. Had it been the robin, he would, no doubt, have done his foraging under my feet. The thrush, being a more timid bird, waited until the coast was clear.

Jackie continued with her planting and weeding. She also changed the location of plants which were not thriving because of the nature of the soil, or the amount of sun or shade they were subject to.

After lunch we sat with Elizabeth on the benches by what will become the scented bed, and marvelled at the range of insects swarming on the Joe Pye Weed, which is a variant of Hemp Agrimony. Apparently Red Admirals use it for breeding on. This cluster has also a number of different flies, bees, and butterflies. I had never knowingly seen a hoverfly before today.

After this, Jackie and I went shopping in Sainsbury’s for some of the ingredients for tonight’s meal.

We then went to visit Mum for a while. She is getting about better now, although she still needs two sticks.

Jackie had bought some samosas yesterday, which I forgot about until she reminded me as we were about to start eating tonight’s Jalfrezi. That didn’t go down too well, especially as Elizabeth, Danni, and I opted to continue drinking Lussac St. Emilion, which we had been consuming whilst I cooked, rather than the Kingfisher Jackie had bought especially. Jackie stuck with the Kingfisher. The vegetable samosas themselves, however, did go down well, as we ate them before the sweets which consisted of blackberry and apple crumble made by Jackie, or apple tart made by the supermarket.

Being an avid reader of these posts, Danni was rather disappointed to discover yesterday what she was going to be eating this evening. She prefers to read about the Knight/Keenan meals after the event. In explaining why we had eaten the same meal two night’s running, I had given her advance notice. Sadly, she knew that tonight we would be consuming chicken Jalfrezi, and that therefore there would be no culinary news to read about. But I could not leave my niece in her unhappy state. And I could not produce a wholly different meal. It seemed logical to add boiled eggs to the dish, thus transforming it in a perfectly legitimate manner.

Now, Danni, whenever anyone poses the old conundrum about which came first, the chicken or the egg, you will always have a ready answer.

Tag: thrush

Hanging By A Thread

A Chicken And Egg Situation