What I did on my holidays

The imminence of my first foreign work trip, and a guilty feeling that it’s an awfully long time since my last transmission has inspired a last minute attempt to catch up. The title seems broadly appropriate since academic endeavours have taken a back seat these last few weeks. But of course one can never get away from them altogether. I usually have to spend one to two hours every day going through my feeds. What with the Ukraine and Iran wars  going on, there’s a lot of the maritime to keep up with, and one must keep current. Plus academic discourse with colleagues around the world. Plus the completion of a book chapter on the maritime dynamics of North East Asia. Even so this has taken up a much smaller proportion of my waking time than usual and so constitutes a ‘holiday’ of a sort.

I have partly justified this by the need to correct the cumulative neglect of virtually every aspect of my domestic circumstances that has built up over the past few years  when my flitting about all over the place, and of course, the absence of Cherry to keep an eye of things, meant letting things drift along without checking. I hadn’t quite realised quite how bad things had got until mid Summer. 

Take the garden for example. My disappearing gardeners, my absences and the drought had turned parts of the garden into a version of Borneo and others into the Sahara. The weight of the overgrown and untrimmed roses and clematis on the pond pergola was starting to destroy it, cutting it back is difficult because the boarding underneath has rotted putting one at high risk of falling into a pond, now low and covered in green slime. Soil shrinkage under many of the brick walling in the kitchen garden has collapsed much of it, fences are rotten, gates won’t open, parts of the garden frankly impenetrable. I could go on. Not all bad of course, leeks, carrots and tomatoes doing well, and the various wild animals inhabiting the garden seem happy enough. 

The Cross-in-Hand gang did most of the grafting in turning at least some of my apples into juice. It’s been a weird season with weird apples and we ended up with nearly 10 big bottles of what can only be called apple juice concentrate ! Never was a celebratory supper in the King’s Arms more deserved. The standard walk round the village was included in their visit and a close encounter with some very curious cows.

My business arrangements have been in much the same state. Issues slowly being knocked off one by one. Apart from Income tax, the biggest issue now remaining is gouging a fee I am owed out of the Pentagon  an operation which I regard as something of a forlorn hope.

So, much to do in this holiday, and much has been done. The acquisition of a gardener who actually turns up when he is supposed to has made a tremendous difference and the Garden Restoration Project is now well underway and things are beginning to look very different. New fencing installed. Major works on-going around and between the ponds etc. Etc etc. Likewise the house. I was forced to shift house insurance when my current insurer which had been taken over by one of the big companies said they couldn’t cover me any more. Finding a new one led to the discovery that these days one has to have one’s electricity system checked for conformity with current regulations every 5 years. Ours hadn’t been since 1997 when we moved in ! The check revealed 48 major faults which it took two very obliging young men a week to fix, crawling and hammering all over the place. With success, and I was presented with a 52 page certificate of compliance – and a big bill at the end of it all. Having thatch and a wood-burner also freaks some insurers out. The relevant chimney has to be 1.4 m above the thatch. Proving this meant taking a good picture of the chimney counting up the layers of bricks and showing that it was amply tall enough. The picture also showed that I did not have a spark guard ( a bad thing apparently) but did have an anti-bird guard (a good thing). You learn something every day. And of course, a bit of the thatch does need doing, so that’s all arranged too ! But for that to feasible some serious tree clearing will be necessary. One thing leading to another.....

A variety of minor works as well. Simon managed to get into the apex of the kids’ room to paint over an objectionable bit of bodging by the previous owner which has been bothering me for the last 29 years. Also,  a  long time ago a friend of mine sold me some 16^th Century linenfold panelling, which we got installed very nicely in various parts of the house. What he didn’t tell me was that he had a few more bits left over which he gave me on his last visit. For the last five years or so they’ve been knocking around in my garage. I can’t bear the thought of them being burnt or chucked away by any future owner of the house. But now, at last I’ve found someone who can renovate and install them and the process is underway. And so on and so forth.

Much the same with my health. All manner of the kind of issues that ancients like me suffer from, being given their equivalent of a MOT. Blood, eyes, turbulent tum, feet etc etc all now being attended to in order to delay my shuffling off this mortal coil quite yet.

I don’t want to give the impression of unrelieved industry during this holiday period of course. I have met up with a number of old friends including an ex-naval type who once hosted us for several glorious days in Hawaii. We lunched at Polly’s in Marlborough which Cherry and I patronised when passing through at the end of our honeymoon 58 years ago for heaven’s sake. Several village events and a whisky party over the road with my ancient ex SBS colleague and two lady police officers. (Too complicated to explain !)

 A local church tour for which as usual I was the unofficial photographer – providing pics for their magazine. A highlight of this was a visit to the chapel at the College where No 2 son resided for his A levels. His former history master was the guide. Also got to see the neolithic mound in the grounds and this seriously weird beech tree.

And, later in a busy day when I was chauffeuring a friend from the village on the tour,  a handless Tudor family after an attack on their tomb by a parliamentary fanatic during the Civil War. What strange things activists do !

And then of course there was the Clovelly week with Team Powell. I had my reservations about whether I would be able to keep up with their high-powered operational tempo, but all was well as it turned out. I went a day early to revisit the church and the court gardens and do the walk down to Marsland mouth  right on the Cornish/Devon border. It was where an excellent TV version of Sense and Sensibility was filmed. I actually prefer it to the famous one with Emma Thompson, but haven’t yet seen the very latest version.

I also managed the long slog back up to the cottage in the dark after supper at the Red Lion, pictured here. Every where was very quiet as though we were the only visitors. Magical.

I was also pleased to do some surfing with the traditional wooden board. Got some good runs too, but ignominiously had sometimes to be helped up after I had ‘grounded’ ! Of course, I tailored my efforts carefully. Didn’t follow them out to the sand at Buck’s Mill at low tide which meant scrambling over several hundred yards of slippery rock, but even so was able to keep my eye on them from the high-tide line. My quite modest  telephoto lens helped. Look at these two pics. One of the general scene. The second shows them at the base of the square looking rock in the middle of the first pic on the sea horizon. You can just make out  Grandaughter No 1, reading ‘The Origin of Species ‘ in preparation for her debut at Oxford the following week. Cameras still do have some advantages over phones !

My trips to and from Clovelly usually involve a nostalgic visit to Dulverton starting with a morning cappuccino at a very nice coffee shop and of course the marvellous second-hand book shop, where I was delighted to find a book listing all the Sussex holdings in the Domesday book. On the way back I came across Knighton Combe one of those entrancing hidden little wooded valleys where the deer hide - Knighton combe.

 So actually, there was actually quite a bit of holiday ! Maybe it also explains why I think I need another one.