Things old and new

 

It’s shortly the year of the Fire Horse and it would be hard for Singaporeans not to be aware of that. This one stands, or rather rears,  in the middle of New Bridge Street which is a busy road that runs alongside Chinatown.

Upper Hokkien street feeds into it. I mention that since that’s where I get my Lapsang Souchong tea from (though it costs a lot more here than it does in Devizes, make of that what you will). The horse appeared almost overnight – a nice illustration of the blending of old and new. Old ideas, new format. That goes for Chinatown too and in fact everywhere in Singapore despite the surface modernity of much of it. Look closely, or around the corner, and you’ll find bits of the original still hanging in there. It’s why I like it, I suppose. 

Behind the horse for example you can see the Majestic theatre. It looks like an Art Deco cinema, but actually it was a Cantonese Opera House built in 1927 so it’s not very likely that either my father or Cherry’s went there when stationed here or passing through before the war. Cantonese opera is an acquired taste. They would certainly have recognised Chinatown, though, and the Tiger and Tsingtao beer is probably much the same. 

            Perhaps that train of thought was set off by my re-visiting the refurbishing Singapore national museum last weekend. It’s in a splendidly recycled colonial era building – probably the biggest in Southeast Asia – founded in the mid 19^th Century. To cover up the on-going refurbishment they put on two big displays of Singapore’s history, mercifully free of the anti-Imperial cant so common these days. One was a kind of sound and light show that you walked through by descending a circular ramp, starting with today and going down to the remote past. It was very effective and photogenic.

I liked this portrayal of the old kampong days, and the awfulness of the war was particularly well done. Equally so, its depiction of the sinking of the Prince of Wales and Repulse in December 1941. But the fore and after really comes across from old photos, like this one of the river just before the First World War.

 Now the river is almost completely empty apart from a few tourist boats chugging around – all the shipping has shifted now partly to Keppel Harbour and now to a brand-new ultra-modern, automated port at Tuas at the western end of the island. Building that was a gigantic project of extraordinary complexity that puts our shambling H2S to shame. There’s nothing like a bit of ‘guided democracy’ to get things done ! It’s the same at my university campus which was largely green when we first came here 20 odd years ago but now has no less than three underground stations being built on it with twisting overhead tracks all over the place. It’s still full of trees though. Likewise the shop-houses on the quayside behind the boats in the river are still there, though mainly restaurants and bars these days.

I go to college twice a week by public transport the underground -or MRT Mass Rapid Transport and bus (and once by minivan) and am always struck by how deeply underground my Downtown line is. The lift, if uninterrupted, takes a full minute travelling quite fast to get down to my platform. Some of the escalators are hugely long. And yet before the war when the military wanted to dig trenches on the Padang ( Singapore’s equivalent of a village green even with the cricket club nearby) for protection against Japanese planes, they were dissuaded by the locals who said the water table was so high they would flood. Or so we are told !

Anyhow enough of that.  I have been extremely busy teaching and participating in conferences and the like, not the leisured life I had been thinking of, but can still find time for the odd local excursion to favoured places. Unimaginative it might be, but the Botanical Garden just next door a great and easy lure. There’s nearly always something to see.

It might be a shot of a white-fronted waterhen picking his way across the lily-pads or a tiny Kingfisher, or this chap, a monitor lizard dozing at the water’s edge right by the path, so well camouflaged that most people walked past without seeing him, even though he was a good 5 feet long. 

I did spot him , and took the photo.  while I was so engaged, a small group of young French gentlemen came over to see. ‘Oooo la,la,’ one said, impressed. I didn’t know they really said that !

A sleeping dragon beginning to wake up. So, to summarise, out here one quietly continues to take delight in little things, be they old or new.    

Welcome home !

 

 

Well, that’s what they said to me when I got back to Singapore after the Christmas break. That was because under my current contract I am resident of Singapore not a visitor, but it felt strange all the same as I had already had a very good welcome home beforehand ! Nice though, all the same. I had a hassle free flight to the UK arriving in the early hours of December 9^th, got home finding everything in order, unpacked and then went out straightaway to Devizes to get the necessary Christmas tree – or two if there was a suitable small one for the dining room. I was shocked to find the usual place of purchase almost completely denuded but managed just one and that was shorter than usual. The rest of the day everything went up and two months of postage was processed.

Team Powell arrived just after a big Sainsbury’s delivery which also had to be stashed away. The Walthamstow gang arrived the following day. The first Christmas dinner was at te King’s Arms – an enormous affair and very welcome. Fun and jollity followed. It was great  first part of an extended Christmas-New Year break. Packed with activity and two weeks completely free of academics, apart from emails, which just can’t be escaped.

A couple of days on my own, in which I sorted things out and started packing for my return flight and chased up an errant US bank account and arranged the fiendishly expensive travel insurance I now have to pay for an extended stay abroad. The to Cross-in-hand. On the way I treated my self to a trip to Bosham, a place connected with the House of Godwinson and the beginnings , I like to think, of the family history project I am aiming to do. Fascinating and lovely place well worth a visit. I parked at the water’s edge and enjoyed a sandwich before doing the local Church. It’s thought also to be the place where Cnut bade the tide stop rising. His 8 year old daughter is buried in the Church after having drowned in the harbour. It doesn't lookit from this angle but is one of the oldest Saxon/Early Norman Churches

It's also the place from which Harold Godwinson, the future victim of the Battle of Hastings, and the Tills' probable landlord set out on his ill-fated visit to William Duke of Normandy. This is how the Church is portrayed in the Bayeux tapestry. The church looks a bit different now but the great Saxon chancel arch is still there.

On Christmas eve,  a carol service in which we made our way around selected suitable sites, a pub appropriately called the star, and into a very upmarket stable (with a swimming pool in a local farmstead) with a real baby Jesus who only had a melt-down when being out back into his car having performed his role perfectly up to then. The Church itself of course and some moments around a blazing and most welcome bonfire. All very nice, and made up for the fact that at the last minute I couldn't get into Salisbury cathedral for its spectacular version because it was completely full. Christmas day itself was a jolly one and busy one, especially when all the Patricks came. Time also for a walk to a nearby wood and on Boxing day all the clan turned up for present exchanges more eating and drinking and of course the expected photo on the stairs.

Back to Wiltshire for a couple of days via another House of Godwin Church (Compton two miles north of West Marden the first documented Till residence in 1386). I largely finished packing for the flight back to Singapore, changed library books, got my next stash of pills, brought some firewood in from the garage and battened the garden down for what seemed likely to be a cold snap after I left. R,S + V arrived on the 30^th. The second Christmas supper out at the Peppermill in Devizes followed. New Year’s eve to the Savernake forest to track down – and measure ! – some of its collection of grand old  oaks, the  Big Belly Oak is especially famous, one of the 50 finest old national trees, right be the road unfortunately. The Seymour Oak 10 meters in circumference also had a hollow interior which Violet enjoyed and the equally impressive Cathedral oak. Here two members of the team peer out from the latter.

It was a beautiful day and the slightly misty woodland looked fantastic even without the big oaks.

The cows in Allington got a second visit, though Violet wasn’t as keen on being licked as Barney’s Ambrin was ! Then it was take-down and departure time. All hands to the plough. RS+V left at 1200, my Heathrow taxi an hour later. Timings were tight !

 

And that was that. Or so I thought. Because for only the second time in my life I was given an upgrade to First Class which turned out to be a very nice way to start the New Year !

Homewards bound ?

 

I hope that the title is not tempting Providence, but I’m checked in largely packed and nearly ready to go. The last few weeks have been busy with all the usual teaching routines. I am very pleased with the enthusiasm of my students, and in awe of their ability to engage in a language which for quite a few of them is not their own. It’s nice teaching note to go out on.

          And, talking of ‘going out’, an Australian colleague sent me an article  in a prestigious English language marine science journal in Indonesia which was largely about me and which ended with a glowing obituary, because I had sadly died back in 2017, aged 76. I was also born in Manchester I gather. Interesting.

          So when I was taken out last night to

a Chinese restaurant by a couple of my long-time ex-students, I was pleased to encounter this which is basically a promise of a long life and lots of money. As you can see the décor was largely given over to gambling. Talking of money  my insurance company finally paid up my medical expenses last may which was a considerable relief.

I’m not as fat as I look in the picture it was just the way I was slouching in my chair. A lot of Ipoh noodles and fish balls to process. One of the reasons why the weight is under control before the fast approaching Christmas splurge is that I’ve been a regular hiker through the Botanic gardens. There are always things to see. Their collection of trees is fantastic and this time in a remote part of it that I had never got to before, I found some delightful parkland with a couple of bizarrely but attractive colonial buildings. One called ‘Iverturret’ which looked like it sounds and housed an interesting botanical museum with to my astonishment housed a collection of really enviable 15-17the botanical books. Surely they must have been replicas, but the notices didn’t say so.

    Another fun day was one out with the navy it was an occasion for naval families but I was shown round by a couple of my ex-students. We visited  a landing ship, dressed overall as they say, and I got in some more sea time by chugging round the harbour in a little landing craft around Sentosa island which Cherry and I liked to frequent for some swimming and beach time. Nice to see it again this time from the sea.

One the memorable events though was not Singaporean at all, namely a stupendous and very large exhibition of the Impressionists at the National Gallery. There were at least a couple of hundred of them. Must have been worth a fortune. They were nearly all from the Boston Art Gallery so I suppose I must have seen at least some of them before as Cherry and I visited the latter several times in our last ten years, but I couldn't  say I remembered any of them. But it did remind me of how much I liked Pisarro, radical revolutionary though he might have been.

         

Another treat was being invited to the Christmas party at the High Commission. It was packed and very British. Carols sung by a choir of little girls from the ‘Brighton School, ’ mulled wine and some really nice mince pies.  And so on that un-Singaporean note, this ends with the usual Season’s greetings, outside one of the shopping malls nearby. But somehow the sunshine and hot temperatures make this look all wrong !

Prowling in the City of Cats

 

My time away in Singapore certainly began with a bang. I arrived on Friday evening, settled in over the weekend, got some groceries, unpacked 3 suit cases and a big box, then packed for a departure on Monday. This was after a morning at work meeting my students for the first time. No time to register and get access to any of the office systems,  but straight off to a workshop on Maritime Law Enforcement  that was organised by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Kuching, Sarawak.

The clientele were about 60 officers from 5 Southeast Asian coastguards. It sounds tedious but was actually rather fun. I especially enjoyed being part of an inspection team going aboard a suspect vessel, and finding dodgy paperwork, 4 stowaways, three ill and possibly contagious, and the fourth carrying a bag of white powder. For me it was an eye-opener in how complicated all these procedures are, and how sticking to the letter of the law (in order to secure a conviction) makes things so difficult in a boat heaving about on the sea. (Ours wasn’t). The Trump administration’s approach is certainly simpler. Although the purposes were serious, it was fun all the same.

        My lot christened themselves ‘Team Geoff’ in my honour and very solicitously made sure I didn’t fall down any hatchways, There was lots of socialising and good eating, but of course since this was official business in a Muslim country no booze. Here's me at the podium, not wandering around as I usually do.

 However the foreign elder experts ( two ex-naval captains, one Spanish and one Colombian and me ) were recommended a restaurant in the city where we could satisfy any such cravings. It was excellent and so was the food. And then it was all over.

Except for me. I had arranged to stay on a couple of days as I wanted to redo Kuching which we had visited and much liked I guess about 20 years ago. It's supposed to have an association with cats and you see cat motifs all over the place,

statues, restaurant names, pictures etc etc. Staying on was a very good decision and I really enjoyed myself goggling at temples, doing all the museums, finding all the old colonial buildings left over from the extraordinary and amazingly enlightened times of the three famous British Rajahs called Brooks (whose family home I think was near Sheepstor in southern Dartmoor, as different as different could be) who ran the place until the Second World War. Quite a riposte to the all-pervading anti-Empire tropes of today. One price of this which, incidentally comes over very clearly wandering around the memorials in the Anglican cathedral in Singapore. Hardly any of them lived beyond 50, though I suppose that's partly because they would normally have gone back to the UK on retirement. Even so the poignancy is noticeable.  Certainly to judge by many of the street names, the locals have no problem with their colonial past. How about this as the colonnade of the general post office. The only corinthian columns in Borneo.

The best of the museums was the ultramodern Borneo Cultures Museum which certainly had things to goggle at, like this carved head. Talking of heads, the remains of that of the so-called Niah Lady who had been formally buried in a cave  with some rock art of boats an incredible 35,000 years ago was a real eye-opener.  Still on the subject of heads, some of the locals were head-hunters, of course. One of the museum’s displays had 5 of them suspended from the roof of the replica  ‘head house, ’ all blackened by the smoke of countless files, but still just about  recognisable. I presume they were real !

Anyhow enough of Kuching. I have a big class for my elective, the biggest ever in fact. Here are some of them. All very keen and so far at least bright. Very varied, a senior Malaysian policeman, a Chinese naval officer, civil servants from Singapore, a contingent from India and a young lady from Honduras. Etc etc.  The fees here are not negligible, so they must really want it ! Otherwise I have been settling back into the university routine, getting my residency permit that kind of thing.

Not that much sight-seeing so far. settling means getting supplies,doing my bit for King and country with some patriotic cheese,

setting out my work area etc. All outings for a purpose, but I have patronised my favoured locales, got some more tea from the Wang San Yang Tea Merchant, bought some books inevitably, pottered around antique shops and off to meetings in the British High Commission tomorrow. I managed to get a bit more sea-time with the Navy going out on one of the tank landing craft on a day reserved for naval families. I tried to find candles to light for Cherry but nothing doing at either of the Cathedrals or even the Armenian church.

Many of these outings do enable one to get little pleasures like coming across this charming mix of interwar shop-houses with what looks like a 1937 Art Deco cinema squashed in the middle.

But being right next to the Singapore Botanic Gardens, the natural tendency is to take the soft though usually very hot option of having a poke around there. You never know what you’ll spot. It might be working out why the denizens of the ponds are called red eared terrapins. 

Last time I was looking a bit vaguely at a bunch of flowers but became aware of something big buzzing around and managed to get an excellent shot of the culprit hovering above a big flower before diving in so deep only a little bit of black bottom was visible. I am told it was a broad footed carpenter bee. He was about 4 centimetres long. Quite a sight !  

Farewell and adieu

 

The title seems appropriate, even though there are no Spanish ladies in sight. Beth would get the allusion. After an unusually long time at home I am on my travels again – in fact typing this on the plane to Singapore. Although it’s split in two by a short flit home for Christmas, this will be the last long trip away, as I have definitely reached the end of the road as far as this sort of thing is concerned. It’s not that being away in itself is bad, it’s all the opportunity costs that accumulate and await one’s return like assassins in the dark. Quite apart from missing out on precious family occasions, it’s all the domestic business disorder, the garden on the verge of going completely wild and the house on the edge of potentially uninsured collapse. It’s not that my part time gardeners an cleaning ladies have been slacking at their jobs. They have no more spare time to compensate for my absence than I do – a condition that seems to afflict  all of us these frenetic days.

The upshot is that the last three months or so, have passed not with relaxed time sitting about in a sunny garden that I had been half expecting (or at least hoping for) but instead with a blur of activity in all three domains (personal business, garden and house) interspersed with one trip to Sweden and several family occasions in which I could do none of them ! On top of that there was a super-abundant harvest to cope with. In carrots, just as the apples, greengages and potatoes mentioned earlier. My best ever production of copious numbers of carrots that looked just as they should – unearthed the day before my departure, and demanding preservation. 

And in the background of course the unending task of keeping up with the news, lest it embarrassingly invalidates the judgements arrived at in my forthcoming book, now with publishers. So far so good ! Anyhow, by teetering about on the top of ladders painting window in the top story of the house or sawing off the tops of overgrown Thorn trees, endless trans-Atlantic business phone calls (now embargoed by the US shutdown), digging extra flood defences, etc, much has been achieved.  But it was decidedly not a rest cure.

It was not, however, all unremitting hard labour. There were quite a few family occasions to remind me of what really matters. There was the opportunity to participate in the primitive fire banner processions of Sussex with the Cross-in-Hand gang and, more recently, a stay with Team Powell in Burgess Hill with a tour of the fort and port of Newhaven, on a bleak day which made the whole area look like the end of the world. I had thought it was another Martello tower built to keep Napoleon at bay. Actually, it was an extensive late Victorian coastal artillery fort which morphed into a naval base for fast boat operations in the Channel during World War II. It was certainly big enough to have room after room of miliary displays of the whole period. A great place for small boys - with long corridors to run through, spectacular views of the sea down below and any number of mysterious nooks, crannies and rusting bits of aggressive looking military kit.

I also played host to an ex-student from Newport days over here for a course. Now a Captain in the Chilean Navy he presented me with a  bottle of wine, commissioned by the submarine he commanded. It’ll take some resolution to drink something so special. In return I gave him my de luxe special Wiltshire weekend – a guided tour of the Caen locks and Devizes, Stonehenge, Salisbury Cathedral including the Magna Carta, the doom painting in St Thomas’ church, the watermill, lunch in the top floor of he Antique centre, Old Sarum, West Kennett long barrow, Silbury Hill, the stone circle, dovecot, old barn, manor gardens and Church at Avebury ! I had a whale of a time. Even being presented with the first picture of myself outside the front door of the Arts building of my school in the Cathedral close !

I think he enjoyed himself, too. He certainly took lots of ace pictures. I really like this picture of Stonehenge though it’s a pity about the people on the right.  At least he went away knowing a lot more about Wiltshire, than he started with. 

Very interested in the house, and that weird stuff on the roof. He seemed  pleased about all this at least since with a name like Green, he is of British/Italian extraction. Chileans keep the surnames of both parents,  but normally follow the male line). His English is impressively fluent. Altogether a high-flyer. The tour was over 2.5 days and there were more restful evenings at the Peppermill and the Kings Arms of course where  the steak supper for two was good enough to impress a Chilean which is really saying something.

There was, though, a sombre side to my time here with two particular friends bravely battling through a cancer diagnoses and my needing to attend the funeral of a close naval colleague. He was another ex-student, brilliant, and going on to become a law professor, after leaving the service. Much younger than me and a real shock. I suppose I have reached the age where one must expect that kind of thing. I was also struck by the announced death of Shirley Abacaire – an Australian zither player of all things  A bjg name in the 1950s, (how innocent that sounds !) but not thought of for decades and certainly one  that means nothing to anyone now in the family, although it does to me.  The transience of things.  Such news, though reminds me how lucky I am especially after my fun and games in May. It certainly puts an overgrown garden and administrative hassles into their proper perspective.

…and finally here is proof that I made it to Singapore ! The black case, though wasn’t mine. It was brought in from store by mistake by the very nice people running the apartment block. Even I don’t travel with four large suitcases, a big cardboard box full of kitchen paraphernalia and two carry-ons, heavy with laptops etc.

Bonkers in Brussels and elsewhere

  

I was pleased but not surprised to see that the stuffed horse was still there next to the stairs at the back of the King of Spain an old-fashioned pub/restaurant on Brussels’ Grande Place.

But why would anyone want to stuff a horse ?? It’s absolutely bonkers but I have been giving that horse a comforting pat for decades from the first time I visited the city with the Royal Navy staff course back in the 1980s. There must be real story .  He’s still hanging in there a bit more part-worn and moth-eaten perhaps.

A bit like me, I suppose, giving my 20^th (?) little annual maritime strategy package to a bevy of two dozen or so NATO naval officers and associated academics and researchers. I have enjoyed it and found their questions and comments as challenging and illuminating as ever always. It was a very convivial occasions with quite a few repeat punters from Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands and so on – but of of new people as well – including one very bright chap from Poland who made his views of the Russian threat very clear.

Also who wouldn’t enjoy Brussels with its food specialisations and Leffe Brun beer. For me there’s always the option of taking along my little laptop and getting some useful work done sitting there in one of the little window seats in the King of Spain looking down at the tourists in the main square and enjoying its stupendously attractive buildings.(I was at one of the small round windows between the ground and first floor of this 1652 building. The other alternative is the fin-de-siecle Grand café next to the Bourse). On both my free evenings,  I spent a happy couple of hours plus doing exactly that. The third evening was a jolly occasion where we all dined and chuntered in the Brasserie St Hubert. It was quite a walk back; associated activity in Brussels and before may explain the otherwise incomprehensible absence of more than a negligible weight increase, after stuffing myself silly on Brussels food and drink for three days….

This trip followed on directly from a weekend at Cross-in-Hand initially to see the annua; parade of the Sussex bonfire societies. The huge devotion to their cause of the members of this society through the year is completely bizarre, so much concentrated enthusiasm for such a weird and potentially dangerous event. Great drumming though !

From Cross-in-hand we went to see a Battle of Hastings re-enactment, which was great fun, extremely well attended and actually interestingly informative. Needless to say,  we were impressed by the dedication, dare one say fanaticism of the re-enactors.

Another set of perfectly sane and reasonable people doing things that looked absolutely bonkers. Like sleeping out the night before in role in a site they said which was as spooky as it was cold.

Needless to say we all cheered on the Saxons. In our case,  this made sense since ancestors of ‘our lot’ were  most likely to  have been living in the royal estate of (King) Harold Godwinson in West Sussex. Either they kept their heads down and gave the call to arms a good ignoring, or they didn’t make it to the battlefield in time like so many others, or they were lucky enough to have survived the collapse of the ‘shield wall,‘  and subsequent slaughter. It must have been one of the three - otherwise we wouldn’t be here !  In the evening Team Powell, minus Barney already at Lancaster Uni came for a jolly evening together. [I missed getting a fuller house of family that weekend because Christopher’s Eurostar train for Amsterdam left before mine to Brussels, but he was at least able to transmit the comforting info that the new entry regulations to the EU were not yet in place at St Pancras and things were quieter than normal.]

All this this followed another busy week in London, when I stayed in a hotel on Tower Hill for a workshop in the magnificent Trinity House where at the last minute I got drafted in to fill in for the key-note speaker on the Protection of shipping.

Trinity House and its immediate vicinity is steeped in history has spectacular views of the Tower of London.

I also managed to ‘do’ four local historical churches, one where the great Samuel Pepys  and his wife were buried. The area was badly bombed of course and this means there are contrasts between old and new to be seen - not least this spectacular view of the Shard looming over the little street and protruding bracket clock  of St Mary-at-Hill.

A bit more unusually I was invited to go to the International Maritime Organisation on the Thames and help the Peruvian navy celebrate  its 204^th anniversary. Here's me with some of  our hosts.

 Lots of chat (mainly with Brazilians !)  small eats, 4 splendid Pisco Sours and some folk-dancing – who could want for more ? Three hours on one's feet though !

So perhaps we're all bonkers in our different ways

Notaries Public and Other Challenges

 

A nice quiet period, allowing some time for a catch-up of business and maintenance issues disgracefully neglected over the past several years. Some of these have proved quite serious and difficult to sort out in retrospect. One was suddenly realising that I had never had a response to my insurance claim for flood damage in February last year. Fortunately, my tendency to hoard things just in case, allowed me to resurrect all this and the insurers have duly paid up. It was much the same reviving a bank account in the US that I had allowed to go dormant, which the bank then had handed over to the State of Rhode Island about the same time as the flood.

Claiming it back from them isn’t straight-forwards. One aspect that ruined a recent Friday was having to have one’s signature witnessed and checked by a Notary Public. They do quite rigorous identity checks, discovering whether one is a ‘sanctioned person’ or not, etc. These turn out to be as rare as hen’s teeth in rural Wiltshire. There was one in Devizes but she was on maternity leave. There were rumours of another in Malmesbury and a definite was known in Salisbury, so after a morning trudging around solicitor’s offices in Devizes, I sped down to Salisbury not realising my quarry was to be found in Castle Road not, as I had gathered, Castle Street – and of course neither of my phones would cooperate. With the help of some very nice people in an estate agent to which I resorted in sheer desperation I managed to locate and contact her and sped off again, leaving my bag (with documents, wallet etc) behind ! It all got done in the end of course, but with some stress !  I was struck though by how very kind and helpful everyone was to me. Perhaps they feared I might otherwise expire as well as perspire (it was a hot day) on the spot.

The other big event was chasing up my medical claim for the fun and games in Singapore in May. It was discovered that their portal hadn’t been able to open up one of the zillion forms they needed and no-one had told me. These people have to be constantly harried I realise, just the kind of thing I don’t normally have time for.

Anyhow enough of that. The other major consumer of time was dealing with the apple crop. ‘Cider to the power of Ten’ the Guardian has called it. Huge crops of apples a bit smaller than usual but much sweeter and juicier. I had major help from most of the family who produced a very efficient apple-juicing combined task force.

The process and the product were on an industrial scale. The result was 60+ litres and we only called a halt because I ran out of bottles and other containers (which included plastic boxes once used for fat balls for birds, milk and wine bottles intended for anti-mole garden edging purposes, and so forth). As much to the point, I and all concerned ran out of storage space. There’s so much in my main freezer (together with greengages, stewed apple and plums) that it started to flash over-loading lights, and still hasn’t recovered. So on top of everything else I had to move dangerous things like meat and fish out into the inside freezer plus two fridge compartments. And there’s still three trees completely untouched !  I have pegged old sheets under them so when the apples fall they can be hauled away straight to the compost heap. Eventually they will markedly improve garden soil, I hope.

Such tasks apart I enjoyed a

Church visit in Somerset with Wilts group, and have now got the hang of how best to avoid excessive rush and competition for often very limited parking space. It’s all about advance and careful preparation !  There’s a moral there somewhere I expect. I like supplying the magazine with photos. I thought this one of the great abbey church next to Downside public school was weird but spectacular, though I must admit entirely accidental ! 

I also like views through open doorways to another different world – like 17th century Dutch interiors. Nearly always there’s something not quite right about my pics – usually not handling the camera properly – so my challenge to Henri Cartier-Bresson may be a bit delayed.

Another treat was a consoling trip to the China ceramics gallery at the British Museum. I say consoling since I had got up at 0500 to catch the first 0615 train to London, only to park offsite (free !) get my oldie ticket in the machine ( for me a real achievement) and find the train was nearly an hour late. I caught the 0640 instead (surprised at the number of passengers) but missed the first 45 minutes of my session on the dark fleet. A light breakfast in the BM members’ room and several hours in the very well organised China gallery restored me and was a real delight. (It’s much better done than at the V&A). Dynasty after dynasty. Terrific. First potters 16,000 BC. Some of their ceramics were as thin as eggshells. Also glorious meticulous glazes like these Tang dynasty Buddhist ceramics 1200 years ago. They could well take back the world, I think. Food for thought. 

  

The final treat of the period was a flying visit from S and V. She is tackling the stone age at school and the intent was do some fieldwork in the Avebury area. Here she is doing some careful measurements at The Sanctuary.

.....And examining the

pagan offerings left in the centre of the stone circle. 

It’s the first time I have been there for decades and looking round the rolling scenery on a grey, damp and chilly day, I had one of those moments of euphoria thinking what a wonderful county Wiltshire actually is, even if Notaries Public are rather thin on the ground.