Visitors, Residents, Arrivals, Departures

 

I was interested to see that the Mallard couple turned up for a second viewing  of the pond as a 'des res.' They'd also popped in a little earlier. Very matrimonial, keeping quite close together in a rather charming way. They managed  to wriggle under the anti-heron net and went for a long swim on the big pond as calm as you like. Rather proprietorial in fact. When they had finished and dried themselves off I went out but that of course spooked them and off they flew, without making an offer first. But I think they have been back again, for a third time to judge by some weird sounds early one morning, Who knows if they will move in permanently ?  They are not awfully good at keeping off the flower beds and leaving the bird food alone, so I am ambivalent as to whether I would like them as neighbours.

          

      Ferdinand is back too, that is our resident pheasant. Not really of course it's a different Ferdinand every year sometimes with his Isabella and occasionally even with chicks. Why those names ? Both Cherry and I did 16th Century History and some of the great names were the much studied Ferdinand  and Isabella who married, uniting  Aragon and Castile, respectively. From my earliest days at school I was always fascinated by them (set off by a charming coloured picture of them in an ancient book I came across) and the drama and romance of that period when they began to build  modern Spain.  Philippa was nearly Isabella, but Philippa of Hainault won in the end,  so we compromised on naming pheasants instead.  They make for alarming neighbours because often you come across them unknowingly, and they bucket off noisily into the sky from practically under your feet,  nearly giving you a heart attack. I also went into a part of the garden I rarely visit because I could see a large branch broken off a tree but still and caught up high and hanging rather too near the road. I thought I should retrieve it. In so doing I came across a large new, obviously fresh  burrow of some kind, too big for rabbits I would have thought. Maybe a badger, or perhaps a fox. Still moving in I should think.

                No such drama with the other great sighting of the week. After 7 hours on Zoom one day last week, I needed some fresh air and went for a late walk by the canal - towards dusk. I was just approaching   the bridge when  I spotted the V wake of something swimming up to it. Not a duck or anything mundane like that, but an otter. It swam under the bridge directly below me and went off towards the swing-bridge. Close and long views, and I was surprised at how big it was. I couldn't get my phone to work in time, so the pictures were long distance and very poor. I managed to run and catch up with it. All I could manage was a picture of its brown bottom disappearing into the reeds as a coot crashed away. Some eggs or chicks for supper I suppose. Nature red in tooth and claw.  The following day I read in a local nature magazine that although there are otters on the canal but they are very rarely seen, so  I was very lucky. If only I had had my camera with me ! Of course I went back a couple of times to the same place, camera in hand - but, needless to say, no otter.

                Departures ? A dead starling on the front lawn for one  and I see that the new people from London in the big house have had a huge chestnut trees near their front door taken down, which is sad to see. The village has already lost quite a few since we've been here. A long time ago I came to the conclusion that the English became a great naval power largely because they hated trees and couldn't think of anything else to do with the wood but build ships. Hence my membership of the Woodland trust !  The last indication of an arrival this week was this vacated egg shell. In my reprehensible youth in those unenlightened times (though the rule was you never took more than one and disturbed the sitter as little as possible) we all could easily identify bird's eggs but I've forgotten all that sadly

I think it is a blackbird's egg, so shall keep an eye out for fledglings. All the bird feeders are very busy, not least the one at my study window. Now they are quite used to me and don't mind me moving around inside. The dratted squirrel still makes the occasional hopeful appearance but with reducing prospects of success.

                There's a lot of talk at the moment about us all beginning to open up. I can report that the residents and visitors to the garden are doing that already.    

On Lichen, China and Tea

 

They say that healthy lichen implies healthy air. In which case the air of rural mid Wiltshire must be very clean. recent high winds brought down quite a lot of  small branches and I noticed how very licheny (if there's such a word) they were. Top of the crop, this one - a small twig with a great bunch of it on the end. Very comforting.

I suppose I have to admit, though,  to polluting it a bit with my weekend treat woodburner, which we are now told are so bad, especially for oldies like me. All those micro-particulates. Why is it that so  much of what we really like is bad for us ? But actually a combination of the lighter evenings, the now obvious  advance of Spring and the fact that I have nearly run out of this winter's wood is already reducing my level of self indulgence.

          As far as my own well-being is concerned I try to compensate by drinking some of the stock of green tea that Cherry and I have accumulated with all our travelling in the Far East (not that that is what one is supposed to call it these days- far too Eurocentric). As far as I am concerned green tea confirms the sad conclusion referred to above - only in reverse; anything that tastes pretty foul must be good for you. So I drink it in that spirit, and weirdly find it  gradually getting rather less objectionable. The stuff I am working through at the moment was in a large and quite elegant tin, appropriately green in colour and covered in unrelenting mandarin. I have no idea what it is - except quite expensive I am pretty sure. Green sludge I call it.

          It's appropriate in another way too as at the moment I am doing quite a lot of work on China. I've just had the first go at the final chapter in 'The Book' is on the Chinese Navy. (Sadly it's not the last chapter as I have three earlier ones to do yet and then a prolonged review of the whole lot !). As far as China and the rest of us are concerned these are indeed 'interesting times.' Being enmeshed in the US Naval War College provides some real insights into the way things might well be going and they are not very encouraging. Some serious issues for Taiwan seem to be on the horizon, and there's no doubt that even with a much more balanced President, the US is on an appropriately competitive streak.

In that connection I mulled over contacting an acquaintance in China that we met several times. A Colonel in the Chinese Army and working at President Xi's military think tank the Academy of Military  Science in Beijing, she is very bright, speaks excellent English (in fact translating my book !) and seemed awfully young to be a Colonel. Since she retired into a university research job, I'd lost contact with her, but saw that she had done a critique of the latest US maritime strategy document. I wondered if she would look at my final last chapter.   So I tracked her down through another Chinese colleague, without saying why I wanted a renewed contact. A few days later I got her reply, so now have to wonder if that would be wise. What else might come attached to an enclosure such as my returned chapter  ? What a sad state we have got into....She started disarmingly with some tributes to Cherry although I hadn't mentioned her at all:  'I am so sorry for your loss of your wife. I still remember what she looked like although we just met once. She was such a cheerful person. Conversation with her was so delightful.' Then went on to explain about  the University where she now is. It's hard to reconcile that humanity with the awful things that China does

          I am still beavering away on my little panel. I wish I were more skilful but still find it therapeutic. One thing I am really surprised by is how soft, is the inside of 16th Century oak. It certainly seems to last well. But the colour is hard to match. I will do the best I can. The incentive is to clear the kitchen table as well as rescue the fragments from the fire !

          Other complications are how to respond to invitations at the moment. planning the future is so difficult in the current situation that we are all in, especially when juggling with different time, zones travel and other health restrictions on of of the normal choices that one has to make. In a couple of weeks for example, I shall be 'in' the US and then in Sweden 30 minutes later. Real teleporting. But I suppose all these challenges must be good for me - like green tea.       

 

Spring Has Sprung

So it's March 1st and a turning of the calendar pages. It's now a year since the first intimations of looming trouble appeared to me out in Newport.  There the lockdown shortly followed and Bellevue Avenue completely emptied. Fairly soon after Christopher phoned to find out if I was planning to come home early, warning me, in the light of advice he'd had from an epidemiologist friend  that this might not be over for months. Few of us at the time had any inkling that actually it was all going to be much longer than that - certainly not me ! Nor had I any inkling that getting on for a year of being more-or-less confined to barracks, that time, (apparently now to be limitless) would in fact prove to be in such short supply - for me at least. The reasons for this ? First and foremost, the opportunity to get cracking on the latest book, the unwise acceptance of new commitments and the extra consequences of being open to a continuing deluge of work-related e-mails and zoom sessions - because technologically it's now so much more difficult to hide away. The result is that I am busier than ever - and since I came home, I haven't even touched the family history project which I was looking forward to getting on with.

                Of course one can't work all the time. The exigencies of daily living take up extra time ( all that wiping down and hand-washing !) and I have also taken on some of the domestic jobs around the house and garden that I haven't had time for in the last decade when we were travelling so much. So, it is pretty full-on at the moment - far, far more than I had anticipated. At the beginning I fondly imagined that being locked down would mean less time commuting and more time sitting in front of the telly with a glass of wine. So I feel myself falling into that old trope of an 'old man in a hurry' -like Mr Gladstone ! Busy days shuffle past unendingly, all pretty much the same if  with minor variations.

                The last few have been warmish and brilliantly sunny, very spring like and hopeful. The snowdrops are going over, having done their job. For the first time I’ve noticed the winter flowering hellibores and they are still going strong. Muted white and mauves, their heads demurely downwards. The only problem with that is that to see their faces you need to lie down on your back and look upwards, not ideal in the kind of wet winter we’ve had. On a recent trip to the postbox on the village path through the wood opposite, I even noticed  a clump of primrose out. So things are definitely on the move. The loud sharp chirping of chaffinches in the bare branches always reminds me of family trips to Grandma in the New Forest at Easter time. We tended to spend the whole two weeks there. Those breaks nearly always seemed hopeful, promising new and better times ahead. The traditional walk on Standlynch Down followed by late Easter lunch. Happy Days !

                Another job has been clearing one corner of the paddock of a scrub of sloe and bullace saplings to resurrect the old damson tree in the middle. This was  with Chris the occasional Gardener's help. Again this is a job I have been meaning to do for years. The wood when I have sawed it up will be put away for next winter, some to be used to house the weird mushroom factory No 2 son sent me, as a Christmas challenge. 

                I have also been busy re-aligning the path through the paddock, turning it into a mini-Avenue with a National Trust garden seat at the other end acting as a focal point. We got it about five years ago but it was cheaply made and collapsed soon after the first winter. It spent two years or so unceremoniously dumped in a hedge, but I’ve resurrected it and tied it up with a mixture of wire from dead sparklers and left over iron thatching rods. With care it can be sat on.

                The really cold snap we had a few weeks ago killed about half my Broad Beans so I have been sowing fill-ins from aged packets and pots found around the recently cleaned up green house. A  tub of tomato seedlings which started life in the airing cupboard are now exulting in the sunshine on one of the dining room window sills. I fear the cucumber seeds have failed me though. Two things have appeared in that tray but I have no idea what they are. Some kind of weed no doubt - or a flower in the wrong place as we are now supposed to think of them.

                So I’ve had a bit of a break from wrestling with ancient wood work but it is still waiting for me, spread across the kitchen table. I know that Cherry wouldn't have approved and really feel quite guilty about it, so I need to get on with the job and clear up. The tomato plants on the window sill would I think have been more acceptable to her though.

                And in connection with the woodworking enterprise, I had what for me in the present circumstances counts as a real adventure. I had a routine trip to the Doctor’s – and this time was allowed to wait actually in the building along with one other person eying me suspiciously from some ten feet away. The Doctor was in the full PPE kit. Afterwards I visited the nearby ironmonger’s shop which is presumably regarded as essential and so open for such indispensable things as wood stain and wood filler for the linen-fold panel fragment and associated bits and pieces  that are now cluttering up the kitchen table. My first shop visit for six weeks or so. I really enjoyed it. Pathetic !

                In this way I contrive to keep myself amused when not poring over tomes on the Chinese Navy and dealing with the hundreds of e-mails that come in every day from colleagues, similarly placed. I also just about manage 10,000 steps a day. And I know that I am lucky in all this. Others are much, much worse off.