Loggers and the first Christmas Tree

 

'Loggers' - that's an old Wiltshire word for the chalk-clay we get round here. It's presumed to be associated with the logs that were used to tether animals when there wasn't a convenient fence-post to hitch them to. Trying to walk through this stuff,  which is extremely adhesive, means one almost immediately accumulates a thick layer on one's wellies, so one's feet get heavier and heavier. Attempting to scrape it off with a stick from the hedge is pointless; indeed the effort increases the risk of toppling over and making things even worse. I had the opportunity to experience all this in my trudge to the village shop this weekend, through weather that was bleakly dismal, fog and chilly dampness all around. But I had no choice. I had run out of the new Kenco cappucino mix, so what else could I do? As I had expected, though, they didn't have any. Nonetheless I came back with rucksack laden with  other essentials like eggs and ham, all locally produced and environmentally friendly.

Not that I'm entirely dependent on the village shop and Sainsbury's deliveries. The garden is still producing although I think that greenhouse has produced the last punnet of tomatoes now. The white fly are welcome to what's left. No doubt because its been quite mild so far, next year's over-wintering broad beans and onions are already making their quite substantial appearance. being so early, though, they will be clobbered by the snow that some predict for early next year, The reports that I get from Newport suggest it's mild there too at the moment though.

The previous weekend when Team Powell came to share in the commemoration of Cherry's passing, was very different. She was a great one for family  fireworks so that was the main event. Aware of governmental strictures, we were all warily careful of contagion. They stayed in the Annex and all meetings were outside, the weather being reasonably cooperative. A great firebasket thing which Chiff brought with them, consumed some of my wood-burner logs and kept us all warm. Pleasantly idle chit-chat, some hugely enjoyed fish-and-chips and then the fireworks. Like so much else,  I had abjured all responsibility for getting these. Chiff found the normal ones in short supply so came with a load of fireworks that went off in sequences, like an artillery barrage. They were indeed dramatic. And loud. Our cleaning lady reported  on Tuesday that her dog hid at the noise. 'A nervous dog' she said. Maybe, but the real point was that they live the other side of All Cannings, three miles away. Whoops ! - as Chiff said. No-one complained. At least not to me - but perhaps no-one quite knew who to complain to, not being able to believe that the old chap in the cottage on the corner was actually re-staging the battle of Stalingrad in his back-garden.

The following day, more innocent pastimes. The sun gleamed so we went (in two cars naturally) to Avebury. We walked past the beech tree with all the talismanic ribbons on it and up the long track to the photogenic sarsen stones on Overton down. Left here by the retreat of the ice age many thousands of years ago most of these stones have been used for ancient monuments and more modern building purposes so there are not many places where they are still in their original position, but this one of them. I find them fascinating . We came here three years ago, but this time, the hills were alive with the sight of walkers all escaping the confines of Covid. But it was nice though, especially with some fleeting sunshine.

            Team Powell left soon after and I had a particularly busy week zooming to Singapore on Monday, Santiago Chile on Tuesday and Brussels  for the last three days, occasionally popping in to Newport Rhode Island  en passant.Oh, and I forgot I attended something in Stuttgart too.  I certainly couldn't have done that by air and this way was a lot better for the planet. Business like this is a great and very welcome distraction of course, but all the same it was a sensitive week.

            We had the custom of setting up the first small and originally more elegant Christmas tree in the Dining Room to celebrate Cherry's birthday and so of course I did that. After some musings I decided to dig up the one from the  garden that's already done sterling service now for three or four years. Sadly it got very neglected while I was away in Newport earlier this year, and is, shall we say, less than perfect. But covered with tinsel it doesn't look too bad, from a distance at any rate and gets the festive season off to an early start. Though what Christmas will be like this year is anybody's guess. Different, I'm assuming, but we'll see.  

  

Light at the End of the Tunnel ?

 

We're now well into our second lock-down and like many other people apparently I made the most of my last relatively unfettered day - with an early morning run to Devizes. Unfortunately the market operates on Thursdays - the day the lockdown started - so I couldn't stock up with essentials like anchovy stuffed olives, but even so came back laden with Wiltshire pasties and other things of that sort. At 0900, I discovered Devizes was like a ghost town  with hardly anyone, anywhere.

Since then like everyone else who can, though I guess more than most, I have hunkered down these last two weeks and have only ventured out once to squelch across the canal and the fields for an emergency run to the village shop, this time for washing liquid. Surprisingly I met three people I know, and a couple I didn't so it was all very chatty if at a respectful distance. It was a miserable drizzly day, bleak and slippery. The little winterbourne that winds through and mysteriously under the village, the so-called Gog, was full, running fast and crystal clear, clattering over miniature waterfalls. Low clouds wreathed the hills. Geese honked on the pond through skeins of mist.

Set off by beginning to sort out my tax affairs for last year, I've worked it out and I think this is the longest near continuous time I have lived at home, with just a short 3 night break up in Yorkshire with Christopher and Beth, and other summer days in Clovelly with Team Powell for a decade or more. It's certainly the first Autumn I've seen out as that was the time we usually went to Singapore. And it's been fantastic. The colours of the trees have been extraordinary. The Acer tree in the front is scarlet, brighter than flame. Everyone keeps saying how an awakened appreciation of Nature, with capital N, has been an unanticipated consequence of the pandemic. Some truth in that I think.

I'm lucky in that I can access it simply by looking out of the window or stepping outside, and that limits the sense of isolation and entrapment. There's a real prospect of Nature making its mark on me more physically.  Apples the size of Tudor cannonballs are still dropping from the cooking apple tree that I walk under every morning. They've missed me so far but I see that the tree still has some reserve ammunition up there. I've been peeling and stewing apples on an industrial scale and all three freezers and freezer compartments are stuffed with the consequences. This despite the fact that everything less than cannonball size is tossed into the hedge for the wildlife. Some of the projectiles are simply enormous and could do serious damage if they connected. 

Being busy, and more importantly being able to be busy, really helps of course. What with keeping up with everything the garden can throw at me, doing some hedging work, stocking up with wood for next year (I like it properly seasoned) and the general exigencies of living there hardly seem enough hours in the day.  Despite my Luddite tendencies, technology helps as well of course. Academic work these days involves a lot of it. One day last week I had commitments that involved me in four different time zones around the world. At the end of it I had difficulty remembering who I was, let alone where I was and what I was supposed to be doing.

So far then, my tunnel hasn't been particularly dark. Certainly in comparison with many other people and the prospect of a vaccine and of the promise of seeing the family properly again helps a lot of course. All the same the approach of the third anniversary of Cherry's death reminds me that there's not much light at the end of that particular and much more permanent and frankly darker tunnel. One adapts but one doesn't forget.      

Two triumphs, a touch of sadness and some pots

 

After the disasters recorded last time, I was really pleased to enjoy two domestic triumphs. The baked on apple spill-over on the hob had proved totally resistant to quite firm scraping and, frankly, hammering with a flat wooden spatula. At a loss, and it was time for bed anyway, I thought simply to pour some oven cleaner I had come across on to it and to leave it overnight. The following morning I found it had worked. Not completely, but it was certainly a whole lot better than it had been. Shortly afterwards I found I had done apparently irreparable damage to the top of an early 19th Century music stand that we had bought back in Meopham. In my continuing bid to live in gilded splendour I have adopted Cherry's liking for bringing flowers and the like into the house and had put an earthenware vase on top of it. Although there was no sign of any leakage, I found a big perfect white circle right in the middle of the marquetry  top. Dismayed I thought to try the same thing with it and sprayed on a thick layer of Pledge. Sure enough after a few hours that worked too, and the white circle completely disappeared ! Perhaps I should abandon 'boats' (as Philippa likes to call the subject of my academic endeavours) and write a book on household tips instead !  

                Cherry would have been somewhat startled at the whole idea, domestic expertise never having been my strong point. I find myself thinking of her even more as the three year anniversary approaches and there was a bit of extra sadness when I heard from friends in Singapore that our great friend Sam Bateman had suddenly died. A retired Commodore in the Australian navy, he became arguably the leading figure on maritime security in the Asia-Pacific. He 'went native'  after leaving the Navy, espousing liberal interpretations and causes (on things like the South China Sea dispute) that went against official opinion. The Americans in particular liked him as a person but were uncomfortable with his views. He was extraordinarily popular and prolific around the region. He never entirely shook off the habits of naval command though. I remember once we were being taken out to an island off Taiwan by the Taiwanese navy in a patrol boat bucketing over the waves, when he was enraged at the fact that all the young sailors were staring at the screens of their displays and no-one was looking out of the window. He certainly give them the benefit of his views. Hardly anyone looked at the screens on the way back. He could be formidable on the very rare occasions when a taxi driver tried to 'take us for a ride' as well.

                But this was atypical for he was a truly genial and friendly soul. He took a shine to Cherry and I when we first went out to Singapore as green Westerners and really introduced us to an entirely different way of life out there, far removed from the usual touristy sort of things(which of course we also did but off our own bat). He took us to all sorts of places in Singapore to sample the 'real thing' (with only one adverse gastronomic consequence, which he had more than us, curiously) both there and in countless conference venues around the region. After I had written to her, his daughter answered that he was always saying how much he had enjoyed our company. We certainly enjoyed his; Cherry was very fond of him and would have been much upset at the news. In a way losing him has reinforced my sense of having lost her. There's another link gone.    

                But others survive. I hosted a meeting of the old University group, Tony, Maya, John and Melanie at the Peppermill in Devizes, taking advantage of the fact that the Southwest was then in the lowest category of anti-Covid regulation, with Wiltshire having figures in the middle of the local range. Generally but not always we dine and wine 'chez host' but I really didn't think I could offer fish-finger butties or  baked potato with cheddar and baked beans - which is pretty much the height of my culinary accomplishment, that is when the seas are fair and the wind is following. But we did repair to the cottage for tea and the woodburner. The trouble was that no-one really wanted the goodies I had brought in, so I will just have to wolf down the cake and biscuits myself.

                At least this will set me up against the lockdown. The garden is still producing as we head into November. More tomatoes than I can cope with and still more apples !  Also, to help, I took a walk to the village shop to stock up on some essential supplies. I found that I was down to my last half-a-dozen Yorkshire tea bags !  Disaster. It was after a morning of heavy rain, so in my wellies I squelched across to the canal via the swing-bridge and through a sodden field of cut-down corn-on-the-cob, ankle deep in water in places. It was Halloween and some of the village kids and parents were out on a daylight pumpkin trail, rather than trick-or-treating in these hazardous times. I came back, laden rucksack on my back,  the long  way via the main bridge and by the time I reached home, another 8000 or so steps on the clock, I really needed one of those tea bags.

                On the way of course I had passed the field where Deb and I picked up all those pottery bits over a year ago. Last week I had managed to get the read-out of what the more interesting bits were. It was a curious but nice experience, booking into the Museum in Devizes and being conducted to a little backroom, where two young enthusiasts were operating with their laptops carefully isolating. They are both part-timers now. Despite that, it was all amazingly efficient. Now all the bits are recorded digitally, complete with long descriptions of each piece by a specialist in Oxford. They printed off the reports for me.  Fascinating - most of it was Roman, including one small piece of Samian made in France from 2-4th Century AD (on the left below). With a darker red top surface. Another piece (on the right) was a little later, made near Oxford and designed to look like Samian ware, which was quite high-class apparently.  There were also medieval pieces including some made in the north of the New Forest. I found all this hugely interesting. There must have been some quite substantial settlement nearby in Iron Age/Roman times. Deb, who is on the point of moving to Portsmouth unfortunately, came over to unload a last box of his local history stuff on me and to get the read-out. I also showed her a squashed brass button I had found on the little lane that goes through the village. In the middle of the road, bare of earth just lying there. We pored over it with a magnifying glass noting the GR initials with a crown above, and managed to decipher the manufacturer on the back. Then five minutes on the internet - to find out that it probably fell off a postman's uniform almost certainly just before the First World War. But what it was doing in the middle of the road beats me !

So all in all a busy, sociable time, but it doesn't look likely to continue over the next few weeks I fear. So, everyone, hunker down again and keep safe......