Grandfather's back

 

But no I don’t mean me, Instead I’m referring to the family longcase clock. About 6 months ago, ‘his’ rope broke. This is a circular loop of rope used to wind he mechanism. To make  the required loop , one end has to be spliced with the other. This is a skilled and lengthy process but always produces a join which inevitably acts as  a critical point of failure however well done. For this reason more modern long case clocks have chains rather than ropes. When it finally went, I had to dismantle the clock and take his innards to a very traditional clock doctor in Salisbury whose family have been looking after him since the 1950s. I remember the first time that I assumed responsibility for arranging his care when they came to my mother’s house in the mid 1970s. ‘Ooo’ they said ‘this an oldie….look an external striking mechanism.’ Soon after I did some research on the maker – a John Price of Chichester who was active for a brief period in the 1780s, when the clock probably came into the family, then living at West Dean five miles north of Chichester. Anyhow, he’s now back tick-tocking away remarkably accurately despite his 250 years. Not worth much, as such clock aren’t in fashion but very nice for someone like me to have around still. I really missed him.

It’s the family associations as much as anything of course. My father, an engineer, did much too reconstitute his workings and polish him up apparently, so family lore says after a couple of decades of black-faced silence, propped up against an angled floor in a Portsmouth house condemned as it was sliding into a bog ! And that sort of association goes for much else in the house that many others might well regard as clutter.

I was thinking about his on my latest foreign trip, a brief hop-over o Rotterdam where the conference organisers have put me up – and I do mean ‘up’ – on the top 23^rd  floor of an uncompromisingly modern hotel by the harbour. It’s one of those pretentious places I most dislike. It could be anywhere, its avowedly minimalist, with no handles to the drawers, the cupboard doors or the coffee mug. In its desire to be different even the wood in the three cornered pencil is black. There’s no place to put anything, or even to work despite the generous size of the room. The coffee set is crammed onto a tiny space too small to operate it in. You have to take stuff out and put it on the floor. For all its determined stylishness, the whole place is ridiculous  - and I daresay not cheap. Give me my clutter anyday !

This break in the UK has been almost free of academic endeavour and very refreshing too, though equally busy. Lots of family events (including family trips to Bodiam castle and Bowood House and adventure playground)  which I won’t recount as many of my audience have participated in them but a joy for me having been away from them all so long. All sorts of other little things too, like being reminded that it’s not just Singapore that has fantastic trees – this 

‘weeping plane’ was amazing.

 

Some family history of course, especially in the form of side-trips when going to, and returning from, Burgess Hill which provides options for explorations of different  bits of ‘Till Country’. On one of them I even managed a walk in the New Forest and seeing signs of in-coming spring all around.

More recently, when returning from shopping in Devizes, I saw that I still had 12 ‘free’ electric miles on the clock and on an impulse decided to visit Adam’s grave on the hills behind the house. Partly to see whether I could make it, when feeling slightly under the weather. Pleased to say I could. Threading my way through thousands of cow-slips  I got to the top. Magnificent views all around and apart from the wind I had it all to myself. A first encounter with larks ascending. Downland is my favourite country I think, perhaps not surprising since the family seems to have lived in it for a thousand years !

It was all very quiet and peaceful – in strong contrast to the roar of battle here back in 715 when the Mercians first attacked and defeated the forces of Wessex. Looking north it was easy to see the way they would have come following the little modern road snaking its way through a valley in the downs. From there it was only a gentle though long rise to the earthen fortifications around the Adam’s grave burial mound where the Wessex force had probably established themselves. Behind the Wessex forces a steep drop down into Pewsey vale, awful country for a retreat after defeat. Wessex got its revenge however a century later in 825 at nearby Wroughton.

Then there were two exhibitions at the British Museum one on the Samurai (with a dramatic battle rendition clearly echoing the first one in the Tom Cruise film) and another on Hawaii (with a cloak made of the feathers of what must have been thousands of little birds) .

Add to that an ‘Old Boys’ session at a village pub south of Salisbury, a Friends of Wiltshire Churches meeting, checking on one’s various life support systems, linking up with long-term colleague etc, together with  restoring the garden, getting the tractor mended, arranging for a new gardener and having some tree surgeons in, I haven’t been idle. Less constructively but equally necessary, a huge variety of dangerously overdue business affairs, not least of which has been trying to access a long closed bank account in the US. The byzantine convolutions one has to go through in order to lay one’s hands on one’s own money is quite staggering. Much more pleasant to potter about in the garden building up collapsed brick vegetable patch surrounds, get things mowed, feeding the birds, putting in more beans,  and so on. 

But I have to say that this little trip to Rotterdam illustrates the point that the academics haven’t entirely gone away. Stuff is still coming in on the internet and always in the background Ukraine and Trump’s ‘Epic Fury’ against Iran (or Epic something else – a 6 lettered hyphenated word with the same first two letters, as its known in the Washington think-tank community.)  It won’t be long before I’m fully immersed in such stuff again as I return to Singapore, if only for quite a brief while.