Monsters

What I love about blogs is people’s honesty. They make me realise that, however cheerful we all pretend to be most of the time, we all have monsters lurking somewhere.

    I’ve been blogging for nearly a year now and I’ve introduced you to most of the peripherals of my life. Perhaps it’s time now to go deeper and admit to some of my monsters.

Sunday

The day after a migraine. As nearly always, after a day in bed concentrating on nothing but pain, I feel clear-headed and released from burdens. Even the dog behaves – more or less. She keeps quite close as we walk up the lane and then at the top of the hill when we stop under one of the three beech trees she sits beside me.



The three beech trees on the hill

I love these trees. I think they are the remnant of a hedge as part of their roots are visible. I always feel happy when I sit under them. Perhaps it’s the view – all the way down to the sea and over to Dartmoor. Perhaps it’s because they remind me of a tree my brother and I loved to sit in when we were very young. We called it the ‘goblin tree’.



One of my beloved beech trees (in December 2010)

It doesn’t take long though before Ellie is fidgeting. First she crunches on a beech nut. Then she tears a stick to pieces. Finally, she starts digging a hole under my bottom, showering me with earth. I get the message.

    On the way down the path she spies a lone walker behind us and, ignoring my calls, races up to him and puts muddy footprints all over his trousers. Not surprisingly, he is peeved.

    All afternoon, as Frog does something mysterious in his semi-underground music room/den and I do some work towards a possible new writing project up in my loft room, she whines in the kitchen.

    The kitchen is like a medieval great hall. It is in the centre of the house and every room opens off it. Both Frog and I have our doors open. My room is a gallery over the kitchen. Ellie is not separated from us. In any case, even if I do allow her to come upstairs with me, she still whines.   

Monday

On Monday mornings Jo comes round and spends two hours scouring the house for us. (I know, I should do it myself, shouldn’t I. I’m disgustingly privileged. My excuse is Frog’s clutter. It’s a full-time job keeping space clear for me.)

    Anyway, Jo is a dog person too and she understands only too well about me and Ellie. We discuss the collars that give dogs a small electric shock. They have a remarkable effect apparently on dogs’ obedience and you only have to use the shock bit once. After that you just use the ‘vibrate’ button.

    ‘Look,’ said Jo. ‘I know you are the sort of person who bends over backwards not to hurt anybody or anything, but at the moment it’s a battle between you and Ellie, and Ellie is winning. She’s a diva. She’s taken over your life.’

    I can’t speak.

    Ellie goes to the dogminder and I sit on the hill and cry. I want my life back.   

Winter strips us naked

Winter strips us naked.

We have no leaves to protect us from the sky.

Our roots struggle to hold on to the sodden earth.

And when storms come

some of us fall.

Winter, what winter?

Here is a list of the wild plants I saw in flower when out walking yesterday, some admittedly rather bedraggled and difficult to identify, but even so.

gorse

herb Robert

red campion

honeysuckle

daisy

periwinkle

greater stitchwort

wild strawberry

dog rose

bramble

dandelion

yarrow

buttercup

mayweed

field madder

wild pansy

speedwell

cow parsley

hogweed

black nightshade

sowthistle

herb Bennett?

goat’s beard?

charlock?

red deadnettle?

This, I couldn't identify.



What I did on my hols

Maybe it's my Scandinavian blood, but I like nothing better than a walk on the moors in drizzle and gloom.






The Ightham Mote Cobnuts Project

I was brought up in Kent in south-east England. Although close to London, Kent was and still is largely rural, famed for its orchards, its hop fields and its cobnuts.

    Hops are a wild plant, used as an ingredient for beer. Up until the 1960s when mechanical picking was introduced, the poor inhabitants of London’s East End used to come down to Kent in September and camp in the countryside for several weeks in order to pick the fruit-clusters. That was their holiday. I don’t remember the pickers, but I do remember the tall trellises on which the hops were grown and which I still see when I go back to Kent for a visit.

    We were five children, all born within seven years, so my mother had to buy food in bulk – sacks of potatoes, sides of ham, and crates of fruit. I remember in particular her driving to a local orchard and coming back with a crate of cherries, a Kentish speciality. Such riches. We gorged ourselves, having spitting competitions with the stones. I read however that 85 per cent of Kent’s orchards have been lost in the last fifty years – since my childhood in other words.

    Although my father worked in London, we lived on a farm. We let most of the fields but kept a few cows and George, who lived in a flat over what had once been stables, looked after them, and told us children off when we played in the haystacks, destroying the bales with our jumps and slides.

    We also played in and on top of derelict pigsties, running along the precarious corrugated-iron roofs, hoping they wouldn’t collapse underneath us and pitch us on to the concrete below. I shouldn’t think that was permitted either but nobody knew except us.

    Next to the pigsties was a vast walled kitchen garden, again largely derelict, and an orchard. In the orchard were quinces, from which my mother occasionally made jam, and cobnuts. Cobnuts are a type of hazelnut. You eat them green (ie not dried) and what I remember most is the work involved in cracking the thick shell – out of proportion it seemed to me with what you actually got to eat. Still, hazelnuts have been cultivated since at least the middle ages and ‘Kentish cobs’ since the nineteenth century.

    All of which is a preamble to introducing you to a blog recently set up by a friend, the Ightham Mote Cobnuts Project (http://www.motecobnutsproject.blogspot.com/ ). (In spite of its outlandish spelling, the name 'Ightham' is pronounced  exactly like the simple four-letter word 'item', ie ite-m.) Ightham Mote is a medieval moated manor house owned by the National Trust. It looks glorious in the pictures but I am ashamed to say that I have never visited it, even though it is only a few miles away from where we lived. Gill, who still lives in Kent, and whose family owned a cobnut ‘plat’ or plantation, has taken on the task of restoring a derelict plat at Ightham Mote.

    I felt quite choked seeing Gill’s pictures, as they took me straight back to Kent and my childhood. Goodness knows why, as although the Kent climate and countryside are very different from that of Devon, I can't pin down why that's apparent in the pictures.
    Anyway, whether or not you're a Kentish lass, do check out Gill's blog as this is a fascinating and worthwhile project. And I look forward, Gill, to lots more posts about what you’re getting up to - and perhaps more about your childhood in Kent as well.