Today's Potato Harvest

Today's potato harvest, posted purely for consistency with last week's photograph. The two varieties in question are Ratte (the small elongated ones) and Valor (a main crop). As far as can be determined, this photograph contains no naughtiness of any kind, posed or otherwise, and has therefore received the Frightfully Upstanding Certificate (King Indicative Number, General, High Express Long Lasting) stamp of approval.

Yesterday's Potato Harvest

Contains naughty vegetables. Not suitable for children under fourteen years of age.

There's Something Wrong with this Blackcurrant, Sarge....

We're in the second week of October, its leaves are turning brown and dropping off, but otherwise it thinks it's spring -- as this photograph shows, there are new buds forming!

A Quick Catch-Up

Lobbing in here after several weeks of busy-ness, but not having time right now to post much of a catch-up. Last time, I celebrated the abundance of our fruit and tomato crops; but while the fruit has continued to do very well (we've had so much of it that we've had to make at least one apple-and-pear pie a week in order to keep up -- when a fruit pie is something we usually make only once or twice a year), the summer weather (or lack-of-weather) has heavily impacted the tomatoes. The summer has been no damper than usual, but the cooler temperatures and lack of sunshine that we've experienced since the highs of May have magnified the impact of the damp, and much of what was on display in the photographs posted less than six weeks ago has succumbed to blight, and has had to be yanked out and thrown away. Judith will perhaps be able to provide a better estimate, but I reckon we've lost at least a third and possibly as much as a half of the crop. Bum donkey poo smells! (as we say here)

On the other hand, we have kept up the leisure travel and culture programme -- a weekend in Hastings with a side visit to Bodiam Castle on 13-14 August, followed by a few days in Weymouth on 8-11 September, with a walk around the Isle of Portland (partly in and sometimes above the low-level cloud blowing in from Lyme Bay to the west) and a walk along The Fleet from Abbotsbury to Weymouth, part of it in the rain. But at least we can say we've finally done it....

....and in a few days' time we're off to Eastern Crete with the holiday company Travel Editions, with whom we visited Western and Central Crete in 2007. Part of the reason for going back is (as it were) to "complete Crete", so that we can tick it off the list; another part of the reason is that our guide will be the same hugely knowledgeable and enthusiastic local we had in 2007, which was a real bonus. After which, winter will be closing in, and it will be time to concentrate on my promised (to myself) winter projects: albumising the physical photographs of our trips to Andalucia, Madrid and Catalonia in 1998, 1999 and 2005, and uploading to Facebook public photo albums of our visits to Sicily (2007), Provence and the Loire Valley (both 2009), Purbeck aka The Land of My Boyhood (2009 and 2010 -- and in due course 2012 as well) and of course Crete. In the meantime, here's a photograph from the window of our B&B in Weymouth, one of a terrace of tall Regency-era houses at the southern end of The Esplanade backing onto the harbour. Under its former name of Melcombe Regis, it was through this port that the Black Death entered England in 1348, resulting in the loss of a third of the population and -- as a consequence -- the end of the feudal system.

This Year's Crop

We planted fruit trees in our garden in the first couple of years we were here -- a cherry tree, a redcurrant bush, three apple trees, a pear tree and a plum. The plum died almost instantly; the redcurrant succumbed to woolly moth after a few years and had to be dug out and burned; one of the three apple trees took years to produce its first flowers and for years afterwards never gave us more than a couple of fruits, so was eventually dug out as well; the cherry produced lots of fruit every year but was generally stripped bare by the birds before we got anything, so that eventually went as well. That has left us with two apples and one pear tree, plus a blackcurrant bush purchased later and inserted into a likely-seeming gap, and a blackberry bramble which The Wugster introduced and which we have to keep severely under control lest it take over one whole side of the garden.

So that's round about fifteen years that we've been growing fruit in one form or another, and for most of those fifteen years we've never got very much -- the blackcurrant and the blackberry are fairly reliable, but the apple and pear trees generally crop poorly. They give us lots of blossom in the spring, but then seem to lose a good half of their buds in the "June drop" while those remaining are either nibbled by squirrels or invaded by coddling moths. Most of the time, the fruit is boiled for its pectin, used to help jam set; we seem to eat very little of the fruit as fruit.

Except this year. This year, for what must be the first time ever, we have a bumper crop of apples and pears -- fruit which looks as though it's staying on the trees to ripen, which is not being pecked or nibbled or attacked, which is starting to give me the lunch I take to work every day. Here's some photographs:




Our tomatoes are also doing rather well -- there's a lot of green fruit at the moment, because the weather's been rather cool and damp, but those in the greenhouse are starting to turn and soon those outside will follow. Ace!

Another Visit

This afternoon we went to Fulham Palace in west London, but saw rather less than we expected because parts of it (the Tudor Great Hall, the Gallery, the Chapel) had been taken over for a private function (a wedding, by the look of it) and therefore weren't open to the public. (Hire of venues such as this for private functions is one of the many things that small museums in local authority ownership have to do these days in order to support themselves. As the chair of the Friends group for our own local authority-owned museum, I understand this completely.) As the museum's helpful volunteer staff pointed out, the fact of the closure was posted on their website; we should have checked beforehand (and therefore only have ourselves to blame. Poot).

Oh well. It's only in west London, after all, so we can always go back in the autumn. In the meantime, here are some photographs of, in order, the Tudor west court (seen through the gate -- we were allowed to at least look at it); the Tudor chapel with its diagonals of darker brickwork (fired clay bricks were then a new and expensive building material, and those who could afford them wished to show them off); the 1814-1818 extension (creating another court to the east of the Tudor original) with its "gothick" windows allegedly inspired by Horace Walpole's gothick "castle" at Strawberry Hill; the restored interior of Bishop Sherlock's room in the 1814-1818 extension (much of the decorative plasterwork had to be recreated from scratch because decades of municipal use had damaged the original work beyond repair); and The Wugster seated in a chair carved from (and attached to the stump of) a huge elm tree in the grounds of the palace which was felled in the Great Storm of 1987. Zena will undoubtedly recognise the jacket as one she donated way back when.

Back at the Allotment Again

It was the first sunny day after a fortnight of overcast and rain, so we spent several hours at the allotment this afternoon. Afternoon and early evening, in fact -- we returned home only half-an-hour ago. (It's potatoes, salad leaves and the last of the broad beans for dinner tonight.) On our next visit -- hopefully next weekend, if the changed weather holds -- I shall have to do some serious grass-cutting and grass-strimming. In the meantime, here's a photograph of a frog on the edge of the pond. We don't often see frogs at the allotment pond because, unlike the frogs in the garden pond, they're not as habituated to our presence, so tend to hide in the pond vegetation when we're there. However, this one held still for long enough for me to take its picture before thrusting itself into the woodpile and out of sight.

Something for Daniel's History Exam

Probably a few months too late for Daniel's history exam, in fact, but if the Battle of Agincourt comes round again he might like to have a look at some recent research by Leeds University which suggests that the armour worn by the French knights was so heavy that by the time they closed with the English lines they would have been too exhausted to actually fight:

...people wearing armour expended up to 2.3 times as much energy while walking and 1.9 times as much energy while running compared with wearing no armour ... The doubling effect was greater than could be accounted for by the extra weight of the armour alone. The researchers worked out that if the knights had carried the total weight of the armour in a backpack, they would have experienced just 1.7 times their unloaded energy expenditure.

"Carrying a load of about 30kg spread around the body requires more energy than carrying the same load in a backpack ... because, in a suit of armour, the limbs are loaded with weight which means it takes more effort to swing them with each stride" ... In addition, the armour constricts breathing. "Being wrapped up in a tight shell of thick steel makes one feel invincible, but also unable to take a deep breath," said Federico Formenti of the University of Auckland, who was a co-author of the research. "You feel breathless as soon as you move around in medieval armour."

The news report (with video of a volunteer running on a treadmill in armour to measure his respiration rate) is here, with a link to the abstract of the scientific report here.

Back on the Tourist Trail

Following an enforced hiatus, our "leisure visit programme" (i.e., what we do when we're not gardening or working) resumed last weekend with a trip up to Oxford to visit the exhibition of Macedonian artefacts from the royal tombs at Aegae which is currently at the Ashmolean Museum, followed by a visit to the nearby Pitt Rivers Museum to marvel at its eclectic jumble of ethnographic materials, all still arranged in their nineteenth century cases (and thus in many ways a museum of itself). Today, we went across to Harrow in northeast London to visit the recently restored (and thus re-opened to the public) Headstone Manor House, the only surviving moated medieval house in the London area and the centrepiece of Harrow Museum's collections. Not that there's much to the collections beyond the buildings themselves -- the manor house, the two post-medieval barns, and the granary, but since it was the old buildings we were going to see that didn't matter too much.

Here are some photographs of the Headstone Manor estate (the remnants of what was once a large working farm) -- the Small Barn, the Tithe Barn (so-called -- it never was one during its working life, but the moniker seems to get attached to any barn of this size), the Granary, and two views of (respectively) the front and back of the manor house. Note that, in the second of the manor house views, the oldest part of the structure is the yellow lime-washed tower to the left; the half-timbered part to the right is actually later, added in the eighteenth century (and the small lean-to arrangement at the extreme right is later still: a Victorian laundry, added in the nineteenth century). The front view shows the Georgian brick facade added in the eighteenth century to smarten it up by concealing the timber-frame and lime-washed wattle-and-daub of which much of the house is actually made.

For further information about these buildings (and the two Oxford museums), follow the links embedded in the introductory paragraph.

The Final Flight (Photographic Evidence)

Two photographs by my brother Ian, showing the Sea King helicopter approaching The Cobb from the Charmouth direction and (on its second pass) emptying the urn containing Vati's ashes into the sea off Monmouth Beach. As the Boscombe Down people said, "This was a real pleasure, especially to mark the passing of someone so influential in our Air T[esting]&E[valuation] heritage".

I have some video of my own, which I hope to upload once I've edited it to remove the rough patches and similar. For now, enjoy the photographs.

The Final Flight

Vati's ashes were scattered in the sea adjacent to The Cobb in Lyme Regis yesterday afternoon, from a military Sea King helicopter on a "routine training flight" from Boscombe Down. It was in accord with his wishes, and the family gathered on the end of The Cobb to witness it, on a warm sunny day with a gentle onshore breeze.

We weren't the only people there, of course, but we were certainly the only people who knew to expect it. And at "1400 local" there it was, appearing through the Charmouth gap and skimming across the sea directly towards us. The crew had a flight plan, but of course had to wait for us to identify ourselves; we waved vigorously, and as the helicopter clattered overhead we made eye contact with the pilot, who nodded his acknowledgement of us.

The helicopter slowed, and made a wide circle to port off Monmouth Beach, to the west of The Cobb. As it circled back towards us, its speed slowing and its nose pitching up in forward hover mode, we could see that the starboard door had been slid back and that the winchman was in position, with the urn collected from my mother that morning. The helicopter came back abreast of us; and as we watched a couple of plumes of diffuse grey matter went streaming back from the doorway. Vati's remains, drifting down into the water.

The helicopter made another wide circle to port, coming back to present its starboard side to us again. We waved again at the crew; the crew waved back. Then the Sea King's door was closed, its nose lifted, its speed increased, and it set off back inland over the Undercliff to the west of The Cobb.

The other people on The Cobb who'd witnessed the event were looking at us with some curiosity. But although it was a public act, it had an entirely private meaning, and we felt under no obligation to explain anything to them. Instead, we walked back to The Royal Standard Inn, on the seafront, and had a few beers in Vati's memory.

Last Thursday

Vati's funeral took place last Thursday, and was surprisingly religious for someone who had evinced no religious sentiment throughout his entire adult life and as far as I know hadn't been to church since he was a boy (apart from weddings and other people's funerals, that is). The order of service, which he himself had drawn up before his death, included two hymns, two prayers, an address by one of the local vicars....and two tributes, one from a former colleague in the aeroplane business which had been his career and the other by the eldest of my brother's two sons. (Although I had previously thought that the turn-out from former work colleagues would be low, the number attending was larger than first calculated. And we have received a huge stack of cards from the various people who knew him.) Both sons were a bit teary, as were I and my three siblings. Not to mention my mother, who looked utterly bewildered by the whole thing -- as one might, when one's just lost a life-partner of such long standing (their sixtieth anniversary was last September).

At the wake afterwards, I was approached by a number of people who remembered me from when I was a child and hadn't seen me for fifty years or thereabouts, but of whom I had no memory at all. Apparently this isn't unusual -- "childhood amnesia" is the technical term for it, and most of us have only sketchy and isolated mental snapshots of our first few years (whereas of course the adults who remember us as children have the clearer memories that come with being an adult). But this amnesia should only apply to the first three or four years of life, not the first eight to ten -- so what does it say about me that so much of my life before we moved to the bungalow in Porton, near Salisbury in 1963 is such a blank?

That evening, I, my siblings, Judith and my elder sister's husband took my mother out for a slap-up meal of expensive oysters and such at Hix's overlooking The Cobb at Lyme Regis, at which many toasts were offered and much champagne quaffed. (The restaurant's young maitre'd was very sympathetic, since his own grandfather had died just a few months before. But he didn't give us any discounts.) Apart from the toasts, our repartee was fairly inconsequential family and work-related stuff; but that was probably exactly right for the occasion.

Keeping You Up To Speed

Vati (my father) died in Exeter hospital early on Monday morning, having been unwell -- low blood pressure, not eating -- for many weeks. We got a call from the hospital late on Saturday to say that the end was near, so most of us were able to travel down to see him on Sunday afternoon and make our goodbyes. He was in a terrible state -- shrunken to perhaps a third of his bodyweight, unable to speak, the sight already gone in one eye. By the time we left later that day, he was beginning to slip in and out of consciousness; that he passed away so shortly afterwards was perhaps a merciful release.

There's nothing else I can think to say right now.

One for Daniel

Two of the twelve books I read during our recent Australian holiday -- on the parts of it when I was hiding from the kiddies in the bedroom at Albany, rather than the parts of it when we were swimming in waterfalls, photographing crocodiles and flying over the Arnhem Escarpment in the Top End -- concerned Alexander the Great. He is clearly something of an obsession of mine, although it's taken me some years to realise this -- you buy a book on post-Alexandrian Hellenism in the early 1990s, watch Michael Wood's In The Footsteps Of... television series later that decade, buy the DVD of Oliver Stone's film some years later, read the classic biography by Robin Lane Fox....

Anway, a few days after we returned to the UK, I ambled into the branch of Model Zone near my office, looking for a box of model figurines entitled "Ancient Life" -- featuring characters reclining on couches drinking wine, reciting poetry and all the other things that ancient characters did at home -- which had been drawn to my attention by Maureen and which I thought might be quite amusing to assemble and paint. The shop didn't have that, but rather than leave immediately I found my attention drawn to the various boxes of model soldiers of the ancient world produced by the same (Russian) company -- Republican Romans, Carthaginians, Scythians, cataphracts of an indeterminate nationality....and Macedonians and Greeks of the 4th-3rd centuries BCE, as led by Alexander into Asia to destroy the Persian Empire.

Yes. (You're surely ahead of me here.) I bought a box each of Macedonian cavalry, a Macedonian phalanx, and Greek hoplites. "It's just as well you have plenty of free time, isn't it?" said Judith when I showed them to her later. Indeed it is. With a bit of luck, I might even get around to painting and mounting them before I retire from full-time work in a couple of years' time. Even though I really ought to acquire some Persian model soldiers to oppose them as well....

Home Again Home Again, Bippety-Boop

We are back home in London again, safe and well, save for one moment of excitement as we approached Singapore Changi airport at the end of the Darwin-Singapore leg of the flight: the aircraft descended towards the runway, the flaps extended, the wheels were lowered, the engines began to be throttled back, the runway lights slipped past underneath us....and then suddenly the nose pitched upwards at a sharp angle, the engine noise increased to a roar, and the aircraft climbed back into the sky. I suggested to Judith that the landing had been aborted at the last moment because of another aircraft on the runway; this was confirmed a few minutes later by the pilot apologising for the "missed approach" because of a "slower than expected" aircraft ahead of us. "Two landings for the price of one," said Judith. How close we came to going KABAM! KABOOM! KABAMMY-BOOM! may be known only to the Singapore Air Traffic Control people investigating the incident (and perhaps to the inattentive ATC officer who may now be in peril of their job). Certainly, if we'd actually touched down before the abort instruction had been given, it would have been very difficult to take off again....

I then slept most of the way from Singapore to London (more than Judith, in fact); since arrival home, we have unpacked, been to Tesco to replenish the larder, had an early lunch (because we had an early breakfast, at 4.00am, so it feels later than it actually is), and then I cut the grass and sorted my mail while Judith napped for a couple of hours. She is now processing the worm compost in preparation for a trip to the allotment tomorrow, to catch up with things there. The only other issue of note to report is that our robin's nest has not survived our absence, having been pulled out of its hiding place on the fence (presumably by a cat or, more likely, a fox). What happened to the chicks (if indeed they hatched) we cannot say. However, it seems unlikely that any bird would wish to use that nest site again: thus the end of the first and perhaps last attempt by a bird to nest in our garden. Bum poo donkey smells, as we sometimes say.