The Case of the Counterfeit Cat

 

I was roundly pulled up by Philippa for the cat picture in the last blog.  Of course it wasn't of Lyra, the new addition to the Team Powell household. Instead not being fully master of the associated technologies, I had muddled up my What'sApp pictures. It was of the nameless  cat of a new colleague over in Newport that had gone missing when they moved there recently from Wisconsin. It turned up later of course, cats being cats.  Clearly Lyra is more attractive and superior in every way.

            However, now that she's safely settled in her new home she seems to be taking her adoring hosts rather more for granted and casually than they would like. No lap-sitting , and even nose rubbing has markedly declined. I suggested that when she’s put in a cattery in a few weeks for the summer holiday in Devon & Cornwall, the people there should be  asked to kick her around a bit to make her more grateful for a secure and loving home when she's collected !

           My capacity to observe all this was provided by the great family get together at Cross-in-Hand  in Sussex over the weekend. The first time we have all been together for months. Barbecues, splashing around in their huge somewhat milky looking paddling  pool, frisby throwing and needle matches in boules were the order of a splendid day.  This was great. It was also nice in that the gathering gave me the excuse to do some more fun family researching in West Sussex on the way there and back. With the advantage  of a new large scale survey map  I have managed to locate the ‘Northwode’ that Thomas Tille rented from the Earl of Arundel in 1376. It’s now ‘Northwood Farm’, just where I expected it to be. The building itself is basically 16^th Century, and therefore long after the event in question of course. I dropped in on the off-chance and had a wander around but sadly no-one was in.

On the way back after the gathering, on a blisteringly hot Sunday I went up to the Trundle above Singleton. I was surprised that it was so unpopulated. ‘Everyone’s at the beach’ explained the ice cream man  there. On my way round the earthwork,  I realised how over-the-top my pleasure at seeing ‘pyramidical orchids’ in my re-wilded/neglected  bits of the garden was. At the Trundle, instead of one or two dotted around, there were hundreds of them on the slopes of the big ditch.

Common as muck apparently. I popped into the local churchyard to look at the Till gravestone there. Decades ago they uprooted them all to make grass cutting easier. Ours was in a corner the third one long, going West. Now its completely covered in ivy. Its a good job I took down all the details many years ago. Some of the other ones are still perfectly legible ones, almost as good as new. It's the luck of the draw I suppose. The last visit on the return journey was to Ludgershall castle. Its unmanned and quiet. I had it all to myself and took coffee in the shade of the Great Tower  

  

Reverting to the counterfeit cat, it seems likely that at some stage, I will actually meet its owner, my new Newport colleague in person because the College is, rather to my surprise, clearly pursuing my preferred option of a part-time extension to the contract.  To their surprise, however, they have discovered that the current arrangement is 'non compliant with higher DOD directives.'  Presumably for security reasons, employees are not allowed to 'telework' from outside the United States, though there are waivers. The realisation that of all people an 'alien' is doing it may have to be swept under the nearest carpet. Sorting all this out will take time, which is fine as far as I am concerned ! 

Otherwise life goes on, pleasantly enough. One major project was industrial scale stewing of rhubarb one rainy weekend.  Twenty pots should keep me going and make up for the fact that so far the raspberries are not looking too good and the gooseberry harvest may be significantly less than last year. I realised halfway through that I had run out of sweetener so threw in a lot of currents plus some bottom of the jar scraps of Devon honey.

  The result isn't too bad - it doesn't bring quite so many tears to the eyes, at least.  All this rain is making everything grow - especially things one doesn't necessarily want to grow. I found one route over the Ditch into the paddock completely blocked by some kind of greenery - and in fact only found the ditch by falling into it. Chris the Gardener hasn't been able to come recently, and it shows.

A pleasant interruption occurred last Sunday. As I was bustling about, I noticed three people over the road who seemed very interested in the house. I didn't pay much attention as this quite often happens but an older lady came over and asked if they could come in and take a photo  of it. It turned out she lived here as a very young child but rather oddly at virtually the same time - the early part of the Second World War - as the other group who popped by this time last year. I invited them in for a tour and what turned out to be a fascinating chat.  Apparently she was the daughter of a French family who were evacuated to London from France just before its fall. They then moved to Herne Bay, but who had to move again with the possibility of invasion. They ended up renting the cottage when it came vacant (probably after last year's family left). I was very impressed by the quality of her memory at 84 and was pleased when what she said about the house confirmed all the conclusions I had come to about the way the main house has been altered over the years. They went off for a visit to the next place she had  moved to in Somerset, but we parted very pleased with each other  and with promises of the exchange of questions, answers and photographs.  A special census was done in late 1939 as part of preparing for the war- so now I have a name to look for - Guy, when, of course,  I have time ! How I wish there was more of it !     

London for real

 

Well this was a major event for me, and no mistake. I attended the first day of a three day workshop on the historic and current significance of the Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap - at the IISS in London and actually in person. They didn't put pressure on me but clearly wanted me to be there as they were advertising the event as 'hybrid' - part virtual/part real. I was the only 'real' speaker - the rest were either from abroad (mainly US and two from Newport who I knew) or retired naval officers from the UK speaking from home. To get over my concerns about using public transport, they sent me a car so I really had no excuse ! 

I'll admit to being just a touch nervous about the whole thing, but it all turned out to be perfectly safe (well, as safe as one can hope for these days) and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I knew quite a lot of the other people, including the NOs from the old days, which was nice. Best of all my driver took a route past sights in London I haven't seen for what seems like a couple of years - the London Eye, Marble Arch, Oxford Street, Buck House etc and there were a lot more people than I am used to seeing. The view of the London skyline from the top of the IISS building was great too. Since the IISS is literally just around the corner from King's it was very much home territory. The workshop itself was quite interesting too. Nice coffee.

Inside the building they certainly took great care. Masks everywhere except during the sessions. Chairman, Nick Childs formerly of the BBC, and all the other staff members carefully distanced. Even getting to the top floor was carefully choreographed. One young person put me in my own lift, then ran up 5 flights of stairs to meet me, puffing a bit at the top ! Him not me.  All great fun. But I didn't get home until 2000 - a timely reminder of how much travelling time/commuting that I and everyone else has been saved this past year and a bit.

Otherwise, life at Wansdyke continues pretty much as usual. I am beginning to have my doubts about the 'wilding' of bits of the lawn  just as I think Chris my gardener anticipated. It is starting to look uncomfortably close to neglect, with tall, unpretty things appearing everywhere. But I have to say there are real bonuses for me as well as for the bees and other pollinators. Orchids have appeared, one surely a pyramidical orchid  and others the same colour but not the same shape. I've never seen them before but presumably they were there all the time simply getting mown away before making themselves felt.

The big occasion though, was a weekend away first at Burgess Hill with Team Powell and then at Cross-in-Hand with Ruth, Simon and Violet. The occasion was the need for a mass signing of documents  to do with the settlement of my estate as my financial lady like to call it.  Christopher and Beth participated remotely because they were away on holiday in Devon. I took the opportunity of ruthlessly exploiting poor Chiff's expertise with phones. Basically the NHS App couldn't bring itself to work on my American phone, and my UK phone (being one of the originals) had jammed up with too much data to cope. I need the App to show President Biden that I have been jabbed just in case he ever decides to let me back into the US. So Chiff got me a new phone and case, rationalised and transferred data, so I now have two working phones, one for the UK and one for the US, which in due course I will be able to cancel without too much hassle. The camera system on the new phone is amazing.

This is just as well, because on my journey to Burgess Hill I discovered that the lens (not the outer glass cover) on my expensive  Nikon camera had cracked and broken in some totally mysterious way. I found this out when investigating Stoughton and East Marden Churches in the Till country of southwest Sussex.

I have absolutely no idea how this happened, or even could happen. I begin to think some malign influence is at work, as this Nikon was a replacement for a previous one that had stopped working when water got into it one rainy day on Dartmoor a few years ago. Not sure what to do next.

Despite this, the weekend was a great success, with a splendid  outside sign-in dynasty breakfast at Burgess Hill. Another delight there was meeting the new arrival - a pussy-cat cleared for Chiff's allergy.  Currently named Audry, she spent much of the time either hiding under the sofa (especially during football matches) or rubbing noses. 

I was also  very impressed at the improvements to the garden both there and also at Cross-in-Hand, not least their scale since I was last at both places which of course is some considerable time.  At the latter, there was also time for a couple of walks between rain showers around the sunken leafy lanes of what I suppose is the Weald. It's quite different country to the downlands further south and the wide open spaces of my part of Wiltshire -  enclosed, secret, steeply up and down, distinguished by big rich-looking houses behind electronic  gates. Their manicured grounds half glimpsed through the trees.  A reminder if one were needed that one is still quite far down in the food chain. It was all very interesting and gave my lots of opportunities to try out the swanky telefoto system on my new (UK) phone.

The last reward of the weekend was the opportunity to pick up my bust of Nelson, which in-law Mike had picked up for me from the Ardingly antiques fair. Actually it's too small for the garden as it turns out but will look super (and of course highly appropriate) somewhere in the house. I shall enjoy trying him out. And sending a picture of him to my American colleagues. To judge by the medallion encased in the base, it was made by a firm called Fredericks and exhibited, surely rather oddly, at the 1889  Exposition Exceptionelle  in Paris.  One of many I have no doubt since I've found other examples ,  exactly the same, on the web. No doubt he will add gravitas to the dining room. The picture though shows that the camera is still better but has unsustainable problems.