The Approach of Winter and the Bounty of the Land

They say that in the midst of the pandemic we are all re-discovering - or more remarkably discovering - Nature with a capital N. I think that's true. The slower life-style means many of us can look around more at the things that we've hardly noticed before. It certainly applies to me. Being at home for months on end and with no immediate prospect of that changing I've been busy making up for the neglects of the past decade or so around house and garden. I've profited mightily from a reasonable Summer and an amazing harvest of things, so amazing in fact that it has teetered on the edge of being overwhelming. Some of it can be pressed into immediate and beneficial service. My breakfasts recently, largely culled from the garden and nearby hedgerows, have been astonishingly healthy and so I am infused by a great sense of virtue, alongside tucking away what is genuinely tasty and good for me. Other produce provides more of a challenge because of its sheer volume. <

This certainly applies to apples, greengages and plums. The family rescued me again this year by congregating at the house a couple of days before the 'Rule of Six' ( Has Boris been reading too much Sherlock Holmes in his spare time ?) came into force. We observed the existing rules though maintaining three bubbles, with one of them camped out in the garden, another in the annex and the third in the main house but using a separate bathroom. Fortunately the weather was cooperative - warm and sunny in the last days of what looks like an 'Indian Summer. Otherwise picking the apples and pressing them into the kind of apple jounce that bears no resemblance to the stuff one gets in the shops was a totally industrial enterprise, with people working in shifts and swapping jobs periodically. The result was a record far out stripping previous years 63 litres in 54 bottles and other containers ! We all needed a evening of relaxation under the stars and the tented illuminated gazebo which Team Powell brought with them, warmed by the 'Swedish Torch Log' that Peter kindly gave me a couple of years ago. It was brilliant ! And so was the much needed barbecue....

The following day we all trekked around the hills in the Marlborough Downs just behind us, which again was blessed with ideally cooperative weather. The views were quite spectacular. Back for a pic-nic lunch in the garden and then the inevitable break up and departure, Heaven only knowing when 'we ten shall meet again.'

One very much welcomed distraction in the midst of the folding of tents, stowing of bottles of apple juice and departure preparations was a group of passers-by who called in to say that one of their number had lived in the house long before us. Needless to say, I was out there like a shot since producing a history of the house is one of my many projects. It turned out, that the 'old chap' (even older than me !) had lived here as a farm hand-tractor driver between 1938 and 1945 when the house was in a near derelict state. Normally I would have invited them in to have a look round and cup of tea but the timing was all wrong, but I got their address and have since written eager for more information, and even better, photos !! Now everyone has gone and with prospect of another quite long semi-lockdown I am on my own again. One aspect of this which I still hven't quite got used to, is not having someone immediately to talk to about things that arise. What to make of the semi-tame pigeon that seems to have taken up residence in the garden. It sits on the back of the bench by the pond and eyes me across the table. It's not an exhausted carrier pigeon as far as I can tell. It also likes to sit on top of the greenhouse which I am painting up with preserving paint for the winter.

This raises another topic I would have raised with Cherry. How do get to the top part between the two upper windows ? One option is to take out one slide of glass and get to it from inside the greenhouse but that involves dismantling the rain gutter system and looking at the evident warping of the bars suggests that wouldn't be as easy as it sounds. Another would be to spread boards across the bars so that they could all bear the weight but I didn't fancy that idea at all. I finally concluded I'd leave it for now on the principle that it's normally the bottom of windows that go rather than the top. I discussed all this with myself of course, but it's not the same.

Obviously, I do still talk to Cherry even after nearly three years, not least near her pictures and what Philippa calls her 'shrine' - where the urn is. I don't think its macabre at all. So I was cheered to read of an archaeological discovery in Wiltshire of Bronze Age people preserving and keeping the bones of their ancestors. According to the archaeologist, "It's indicative of a broader mind-set where the line between the living and the dead was more blurred than it is today. There wasn't a mindset that human remains go in the ground and you forget about them. They were always present among the living." Nice to think I have a broader mind-set, (but no surprise of course) even if it is a tad old-fashioned.

Resuming Normal Business ?

After the irritation of discovering - by trial and error that one of the three browsers I was using no longer supports this blog system, which resulted in the last but one very unprofessional transmission, I am now hopefully back on track and so capable of resuming normal business. Whatever 'normal' means these days ! It's become a word that's much bandied about. The latest sign is the return of kids to school this week and the promise of UK universities doing the same quite shortly. The first must be a cause of some concern for despite all care and attention it might very well 'kill a granny' - or in my case grandpa- or in fact quite a few of them, since while kids don't usually significantly suffer from Covid 19 (they do sometimes of course) they can pass it on as well as anyone else. But the argument that they should return to school anyhow is a strong one. But I really don't think that argument applies to the Universities to anything like the same degree, since your average student falls into the category (as in some ways they should !) of being the least likely to obey the mitigation regulations. More importantly, students they come from all over the place and are not geographically restricted in the way that state schools are. Accordingly there's more chance of nat outbreaks rather than more containable local ones. In that respect, public school pupils are the same of course, but obviously it would be ioohibitively difficult to treat schools that have a local pupil cohort differently from those that don't. What really set me wondering about the universities is the contrast between expectations in the UK about this and the service academies in the US, including the Naval War College my own. At the moment, Newport is doing virtually all its business on-line and distantly, and the campus itself is closed for all but 'mission essential' personnel (cleaners, security guards and the like) and we have been told not to expect significant change in this for months. The contrast between this and local schools is stark. So how come institutions focusing on steely-eyed war-fighters are so much more risk averse compared to schools ? It has some my US colleagues wondering I must say. The only reason I can think of is that the US Navy doesn't want to do anything that might compromise its real mission. This isn't educating its people (that's just an enabler); instead it's maintaining the fleet at sea, and there have been several much publicised examples of where the spread of the disease has made that difficult. Because they don't want less-important (or at least less urgent) activities to get in the way, they prefer us to hunker down for a while. Especially as the Chinese Navy seems largely unaffected by Covid-19. Getting back to the point, I don't really understand why UK Universities are taking the risks and why they can't try to do the same as Newport. It would be very nice to shrug all this off and trust the government's recommendations. But since a recent report I have seen puts us at 155th in the league of 179 countries measured against how well they are handling the pandemic, blithe trust isn't that easy. But away from all this gloom and despondency, much of this suits me very well of course and life is good. I can still do what I would have done in Newport perfectly well here in the UK. In fact in some ways I am more productive here than I would be there, since I have all my books and other material more readily available (though there are still instances where the book I want is the other side of the Atlantic - but that is less true now). Also I don't have any wasteful commuting time (though to be fair that that is less much less than an hour a day in Newport). However in Newport I don't have to cut the grass, look after the house etc which I do here !. But all the same on balance I can function perfectly well in this new normal. Aided, of course, by the fact that all my colleagues around the world, are all in the same boat. I'm slowly evolving a new routine flexible enough to cope with the changing circumstances. it starts with an earlyish pre-breakfast perambulate around the estate to make plans and to get the steps up on my pedometer, pick up apples, feed the fish etc. Since I've been back Breakfast has been based on various kinds of fruit from around the garden and is still going strong though the end is in sight I think as the blackberries ripen and the plums fall.

I'm hoping that the big family get together for the apple-pressing weekend will be able to go ahead as usual but suspect it might be the last big gathering for some time. In the meantime I had a late summer visitation from Team Powell which was nice and allowed some returns to favourite places such as the New Forest and Avebury. Sorry it's all come out as one paragraph again, but at least there are photos this time !