The weather promised to be good, and all my colleagues in Newport are taking the day off. So I thought I would indulge myself with a day off too. Moreover I thought I deserved a rest and so indulged myself with a long delayed trip to the New Forest, where I am actually writing this. It’s pretty quiet although a little way off, I can hear some people come and go at Turf Hill. At one stage a cow rounded a big gorse bush in front of me just as I was making tea, saw me, stopped and backed off visibly dismayed. That was the main excitement of the day.
I took a long walk this morning, re-discovering the fact that there’s a lot more to this place than our frequent but usually brief visits to this convenient northern fringe of the forest usually have time for. I went all the way up the chillingly named Deadman Bottom (I believe there was one on a gibbet on the road above on the hill behind) looped around Millersford enclosure at the end and returned via what was the original Turf hill enclosure. Getting on for 10,000 steps- and it was hot !
The valley was used for practice by the Dam Busters in the war and the whole area has lots of reminders, if you know where to look for them, of its history as one of Bomber Command’s bombing ranges. Anciently, the end of the valley near Cunniger crossing, which has a touch of Dartmoor about it (although Dartmoor doesn't have that distinctive sweet coconut smell of heather and broom) was last visited by me in biking days across the Forest, a good 50 years ago. Things have changed a bit but it’s all quite recognisable. The pine saplings commanding hill-slopes I remember are now big trees and have turned into little copses of big trees
On my return, I spent three hours or so sitting in the shade under a large pine-tree. As a academic gesture I did a first review read of Chapter 6 of The Book, which I see was started in ay of last year when I was still in Newport. This was part of my first review of the whole MS and I could see that it does indeed need quite a bit of revision to fit in with all the rest and to resolve all the problems I ducked out of the first time through. I had a pic-nic lunch as ell which worked well, com notwithstanding.
Although comparatively quiet the two weeks since the Clovelly holiday had been quite arduous. My IT guru+ Nathan (my part-time gardener) came to the rescue when the keyboard of my main machine failed. I'm now operating much faster with a new one and all sorts of internal gizmos, the very latest version of Word etc. I had what engineers call a lash-up while this was being done and had to set up shop in the kitchen, which actually worked quite well and I haven't moved back yet since it's all been fixed. Not as nice though, in some ways at least as my office in the Forest.(the pink blob on the left is my finger I think)
Progress has also been made with the garden too. The paddock is now back under control with what I grandly call the Avenue clearly demarcated. In this connection we both tried out my almost new little tractor mower which was a great success. I don’t think I will be doing the environmentally good thing of leaving large areas of grass so long next time, as I did this year on advice in Garden magazine. They said it was good for pollinating insects and no doubt it was. They also said it was win-win because it saves you mowing time. That is simply not true. Clearing it all at the end, which even they say you need to do, is extremely time consuming and really hard work. Worst of all it encourages the ants. One small triangular block of grass in front of the gazebo had over 32 big ants’ nests. This puts a bit of a strain on my environmentally –friendly instincts !
Its also harvest time. Although much has been disappointing this year because of this weird combination of a savagely cold snap in spring which killed all my Broad Beans and most of the plum and apple blossom and a prolonged period of drought. However, I have loads of raspberries, runners, onions, bonus blackberries, and enough apple fallers to keep me busily peeling and chopping in the evenings.
There was also some wry amusement, to be had which from a package which arrived from the 'Office of Naval Attacks,' according to Devizes post-office. A while back I did a conference opener for the Thais ‘in’ Bangkok (virtually of course). At the time, they asked me for my address as they wanted to send me a present. It arrived this week, from the Naval Attaches office of the Thai Embassy. . A charmingly deferential letter of thanks. A conference tee-shirt, quite stylish, XL but their sizes being different from the standard European quite uncomfortable. A very nice naval tie-pin with a classic Jim Thompson tie with elephants on it. (Jim Thompson was an American ex-pat who ‘went native’ set up a shop but disappeared in the jungle and was never seen again. There’s a charming shop in Bangkok in his name that we visited a couple of times which I remember for its cappuccinos and water features). The only snag is that I have only used a tie once this year - but they will be nice additions to the collections of both. The problem was that they hadn’t paid enough postage so I had to shell out £3.50 for this lot, dubious value-for-money. One consolation though. I did a bit of teaching in Newport this week, and one of the students, a Thai, had attended the conference been there and seemed amusingly dazed by discovering I was a real person.
So, all in all I think I deserved this New Forest treat. In the US of course, it's Labor Day – so a day off for them with nothing arriving on my souped up laptop, so I thought, since the weather was going to be good, why not ? So here I am, or at least here I was.
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