Monthly Bulletin

Well where has that month gone?  As I said in an email to someone the other day, H and I have been like the man and woman in the weather house (did you have one of those as a child?).  Not inappropriate when you consider how many wet days we've had since I last blogged!

Three kind souls missed me  and emailed to ask whether I was OK - I have now replied to you all so I hope you got the emails,  but for any one else wondering here's a brief list:

In no particular order I have been:-

Holding the fort quite a lot as H has been out, involved in a lot of musical pursuits.  This, unfortunately, does not give me time to blog or sew as M seems to have a constant stream of requirements

Taking advantage of my accrued brownie points to leave H to cope when he is here and spending time with daughter pottering and having lunch and teas out - bad for the figure but good for morale

Watching a very expensive fence taking shape at the end of the garden and now trying to aquire some topsoil to make a nice new border (it'll be lovely when it's done :-) Photos will follow at a later date.

Spending a day in Worcester to see the Queen when she visited, and as always, marvelling at the number of people who will turn out for the smallest glimpse even in the rain

Frantically sewing a playmat and buying suitable toys for great nephews aged 4 months and 16 months who visited for 3 days - great fun, but they've unfortunately left H and M with rotten colds!

Enjoying newly painted spareroom, stairway to basement and bedroom, thanks to another visit by Adrian and Sharon our lovely decorators

Knitting and sewing for new baby P - sister to little E

Cooking rather a lot of soup and comfort food to accommodate the weather and now looking forward to salads instead

Deciding not to risk Art in Action due to the weather, having earlier been nearly stranded in a pond which appeared in the road  whilst I was trying to go and see friend who lives in Shropshire (did finally go to see her the following week)

Looking forward to my birthday on Sunday although I shall be into my next decade, and making plans to go to the Festval of Quilts in August- anyone else going?

Trying to make myself deal with a pile of accounts and returns which always appear at this time of year and which I know don't take long but I can't quite make myself start - deadlines have their uses

Re-reading a lot of favourite novels as I always do in Summer and finding the new re-prints of Barbara Pym reduced at The BookPeople (some of mine are falling apart)

Disovering a baby bat hanging on a storage box in our bedroom and seeing it safely dealt with through the Bat Conservation Trust - a really beautiful little animal clad in dark brown fur

Hoping I can enjoy August this year as I broke my arm this time last year, and looking forward to September when exciting things may be happening

Finding that I have two copies of this The Knitter's Year when I tided the book shelves.  Leave a comment if you'd like it and I'll pick a name out of a hat if there's more than one person interested

Enjoying the BBC Shakespeare - especially Ben Wishaw as Richard II

Not looking forward to the Olympics in theory, but know I shall enjoy the Dressage and the Diving if I can workout the complicated instructions to find out how to watch them

Hoping it doesn't pour with rain as other people will be disappointed, but have to warn that it always rains on my birthday

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Sorry this is short on photos - computer is being difficult - hopefully I'll rectify this next time and you can see the fence and the awful hedge, some of my sewing and the baby bat!
And finally, for those who have been waiting with bated breath, of course M didn't pop her clogs on the last night of Wimbledon and has now decided that she'll wait till after the Olympics.... Hope it's hot and sunny where you are.

Oxford revisited

The first time I visited Oxford I was 19.  I went to Ruskin College (not one of the University Colleges) for an interview for a course I needed to take for the profession I was then following.   I didn't care much for Oxford in 1971, it was crowded and grimy and I much preferred Cambridge which I'd known since childhood - colder in a bleaker landscape but with wider skies and room to breathe, or so it seemed to me.  I was offered a place on the course, but also a place on a similar one in Birmingham which was better suited to my needs and offered accommodation and placements.  It was a good choice and I enjoyed my time - I didn't regret rejecting Oxford.

In the 1980's Oxford came back into my life.  H needed to choose whether to pursue his PhD there or stay at the University of Wales. Finances were a big factor, we couldn't afford two homes or to make the move ,so he chose to stay with the Department he already knew (he may he have once regretted that but it's water under many bridges now). But due to the field of his research,working in the Bodelian was essential, so he spent many hours inside, and I spent many wandering around Oxford, often with small daughter in tow, waiting in the Bodelian courtyard at the end of the day for my scholar to tear himself away from its riches.  It's a good place to people watch, but there's nowhere to sit!

In the 1990's, H finished his thesis and went back to teaching.  I had a job working in a university department.  Part of this involved organising conferences - national and international, and dealing with a lot of academics and students.  Oxford became a place I visited professionally, but even on a private shopping trip I would  meet people I knew - often academics from overseas on sabbaticals or students taking postgrad courses or on fellowships and scholarships.  H was still researching and gathering teaching material but without the pressure of an impending viva.  There was more time to linger over coffee or browse in Blackwells - where visiting the appropriate section I could find weighty tomes written by people I'd met in person, and even some that I'd helped to typeset and index - with my own name in the acknowledgements.  I'd come to enjoy Oxford, if not quite to love it.

In 2004, H was diagnosed with a health problem which meant he gave up full-time teaching and, by a miracle, our finances were stable  During this halcyon period, we indulged in short breaks in Oxford staying in the incomparable Randolph Hotel.  We enjoyed golden early-summer mornings before the tourist rush, wandering around in the early light before eating wonderful breakfasts in wood-panelled diningroom, and coming back in the afternoon to indulge in long leisurely teas - teapots constantly replenished and delicious food making dinner later totally unneccesary.  Despite Morse and Lewis there were no murders  in the times we stayed.  We still met a few people we knew - H 's supervisor had moved back after retiring and a few postgrads were now academics or fellows, but we were happy wandering around the colleges, museums and the botanical garden, just taking time out.  Looking for the Oxford of Barbara Pym and Evelyn Waugh, I suppose - a bit Crampton Hodnett* .

There are still a smattering of Oxford eccentrics if you know where to look, and Ede and Ravenscroft stands firm, but Fuller's and Ellison's are long gone (mentioned in Pym's novel)  You do still see Sweet's AngloSaxon Reader in bookshops though it's largely been replaced by more modern text books and AngloSaxon is now called Old English (don't know if anyone's told Aelfric or Bede).

Now, of course, leisure time is limited.  H's interest lie more in the field of early music rather than literature these days, and  last week he went to the AGM of one of the societies he's involved in. (Long term readers may remember that last time he went to one of these he missed the train and it was all chaotic.)  Fortunately, I was able to go with him this time. I had a quiet day - the academics I knew are retired or living abroad and I doubt I'd recognise the students now so I didn't see anyone I knew, but I pottered, lingered in coffee shops, wandered in the covered market and browsed in the bookshops.  There weren't too many people about and the buses that once crowded the High belching diesel fumes have been abolished, replaced by mime artists and people selling bubblemakers. 

When I met H, after his meeting, he said rather wistfully that being in Oxford again was like having a break from reality and it would have been nice not to go home.  It would have been nice to have had tea at the Ranolph but 'always at our backs... Times winged chariot......'* * It's only a short drive from here (less than 2 hours) but it felt like another lifetime.

Footnotes: 

* A non-existant village conjured up by a character in the novel as the home of a fictional friend - an excuse for missing evensong.  This is one of the funniest novels I know if you like quiet English humour, do read it if you can get a copy.

**Paraphrased from To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell 1621-1678, a poem I have loved for many decades, though if I start talking about Metaphysical Poets this post will go on  too long.  At present, the last eight lines might seem the most appropriate:

Rather at once our time devour Than languish in his slow-chapt power.   40 Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Thorough the iron gates of life: Thus, though we cannot make our sun   45 Stand still, yet we will make him run.

With thanks to Daughter, without whom the day out would not have been possible x.

Taking photos at night to show the beacon brought home to me that I was really out of practice with my good camera.  Anything taken quickly, without thought to settings, produces atmosheric photos which are quite pleasing but don't record the actual sight in front of you. 

While the light faded I began altering shutter speed and playing with the flash and eventually a truer scene started to emerge

Until eventually I managed a fairly clear photo of distant Worcester at night that I was quite pleased with...

Not much going on here that can be blogged about - a bit of knitting, some actual sewing (!),  decorators in to paint a couple of bedrooms and the fence is being done, starting the end of this week (after which funds will be sadly depleted and we shall still have to fight the battle of the hedge).   The Three Counties Show starts on Friday and we are debating whether the weather will be good enough to make a trip feasible - plus complications from other people wanting/needing to be out and who's going to get M's lunch.  We shall see.

Hope you haven't been flooded, rain has poured off the hills making the road down to the Three Counties Showground like a small river on the left hand side.  M has been disgruntled because tennis has been delayed at the French Open, and Queen's didn't start yesterday.  Her current mantra, repeated to anyone who will listen, is that she wants to die in her sleep on the night Wimbledon finishes - what can one say to that?   Tennis is a mixed blessing as she takes it all so seriously and gets so sulky when it finishes and she's then bored.  It also means she moves less as she's glued to the set and therefore we get more problems with movement as a result,  and she has long, loud phone conversations with her friends telling them all her knowledge about the players which makes her even more self-important.  Pity we can't just go on holiday until mid-July really.  (Sarcastic laughter :-))

I've got one of those birthdays that end 0 at the end of July - my diamond Jubilee.  It always rains on my birthday but I'm wondering how I might celebrate by doing my own thing.  Goodness knows what M will be like by then having been defied by the Almighty. Last year we had a month or two of hell as she wanted to die after her birhday and it didn't happen.  Anyone who didn't know her would think we were joking when we tell them these stories.  Oh, well, let's carry on carrying on, it's not actually raining.....

Is that the Jubilee beacon or are the French coming?

H was the first to notice the beacon had been lit on the Malvern Hills.  About 15 minutes later, darkness had really fallen and I was able to see the beacon to the north that had signalled to ours - poor photo I'm afraid but just about visible in the top right corner after I used zoom and edited the photo.

Our beacon was glowing nicely by now

 Then a flash caught my eye and I was able to see the next beacon with the aid of the powerful zoom.

And then there to the East it glowed: a red spot on the horizon signalling its message beyond my sight.

Having never been able to see a single beacon for any of the previous occasions they've been lit in my memory, this time seemed little short of magic.  How must it have been  in earlier times when important messages were sent this way to suddenly see the hilltop beacon leap into life.  Until I saw these three, I had not really appreciated not only how far they could be seen, but what a moving sight they were.  

We all take ease of communication for granted - it's changed out of all recognition in the 60 years of the Queen's reign that is the whole of my lifetime.  In my childhood, few people in the innercity area  of Bristol where we lived had a telephone.  During my teenage years we still had to phone an operator to make a non-local call (who else remembers 'trunks?') our phone number in rural Essex was still 3 digit and London areas were still called by name not dial codes: 'Regency 245 caller?, putting you through now.'  Telegrams telex and to some extent fax have all come and gone, and landlines are hardly used by the young - we had to ask permission and always offer to pay for a call if using someone else's phone and phone boxes had two buttons A and B to take your money and put you through.  Going out with a friend required making sure you had change to ring home if you missed a bus or were delayed.

Now I can Skype my Australian Brother-in-law as easily as I speak to my brother in Essex (and often on a better connection.) and my smart phone and computer puts a world of information at my fingertips.  But they don't have quite the same thrill as seeing a flame leap up in the dark.

Early one morning..

At about 8.00 a.m a few people had already arrived,

then a few more...

They seemed to be having a jolly time.

Great expectation

The torch arrived and was lit from the one that had gone through Great Malvern

And then it was off along the A449 

The joys of having a camera with an excellent zoom meant I could stand on our top landing and watch - even H couldn't resist watching from the kitchen, though only because he was eating his breakfast .. .  I'm no great fan of the Olympics, but if this gives people pleasure and gets them out on the streets smiling and talking to each other there has to be some good in it.  M is disgruntled as the torch isn't going to W***** - H says that's the best reason to support it he knows :-}

The shopkeepers in Great Malvern are putting on a street party on June 4th for the Jubilee.  We can't go but it sounds fun, especially if the weather holds, and the town is already festooned with union jack bunting and window displays.  As it's such an old-fashioned place it's really like stepping back to an earlier era. 

Could be worse...

When the weather's this good, I'd like to go over the hills and far away (especially when M's in one of her tantrums).  Sadly, it isn't possible, but the view from the top floor of the house is some compensation.  There is a world out there even if one can't be in it - I especially love the blue horizons.  I was reminded today of A  E Houseman's 'blue remembered hills' :

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills
What spires, what farms are those? 

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

 We can't quite see his Shropshire hills from here, they're over the next ridge to the North, but the sentiment is with us constantly at the moment, as M is going through another 'Why did I come here' phase.

On a brighter note, the chestnut tree next door, which looked sick fit to die last year, has made a great recovery, and is covered in blossom.  If they had cut it down our view would be even more spectacular, but I'm glad it's lived to see another spring nonetheless - don't feel so charitable towards their blessed trees that take the light from the kitchen and bathroom or the laurel hedge to the side that's demolished the fence!

,

The Olympic torch goes past the end of the road on Friday morning - we should be able to see it from our kitchen window.  They've been sprucing up the rough patch of grass at the top of our cul-de-sac and I can now see that it has a huge patch of peonies that were hidden before - lovely deep red ones.  A bench has arrived from somewhere to make it all look a bit more useable as it's normally just rough grass and overgrown shrubs - one of those patches where no-one seems to claim ownership but it looks now as if it's the council's job to sort it out.  At the point formed by our lane and the main road and another lane running at right angles is the fountain (page takes a little while to load) constructed for Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee in 1887 - you can just about get it to give you Malvern spring water if it's in a good mood but the standpipe further up into the hills is much nicer and the water is freezing cold and tastes blissfully of nothing.  Better than paying for it by the bottle!

It is a delight to live in this funny, quirky place with its gas lamps and wells and springs - and of course its views and hills.  It's easy to get fed-up with being stuck here all the time, but it could be so much worse - we could be stuck in W***** where M was living (and is, of course, the most wonderful place on earth being a rather uninspiring Surrey commuter town  with shops full of cross, rude shop assistants, houses that cost the earth, and generally an inflated sense of its own importance.  (Apologies if you live there and love it, but I've never met anyone except M who does - people usually say they live there as it's got such a good train service to other places!).

Well, that's me in counting my blessings mode - well someone around here has to.....  Oh, I nearly  forgot, I did get to the quilt show.  Photography was nigh on impossible but I did manage to get the head of this lovely dragon.  Apologies to the maker as I couldn't get near the label for a large crowd of Welsh ladies, but I loved the quilt, whoever you are.

No idea why the text has suddenly gone into italics!

Daughter offered to Granny sit last week so we took her up on it and escaped.  Unfortunately, the weather wasn't actually doing us any favours, cold wet rain most of the time, so we went here.   I must admit the interior of the house wasn't a total success with us, there's so much to see and even with timed entry it was crowded and hot - so a bit claustrophobic and difficult to concentrate.  Outside, however, is lovely, only marred by the rotten weather on the day we went.

I'm afraid I rushed out without the decent camera so these are off my phone. The lovely tones of the Cotswold stone aren't brought out so well by the grey day but it would spectacular in the sunshine.  There were lots of nice things in the shop, but H wasn't in browsing mood so I didn't spend anything!

The Spring garden show is on at the Three Counties showground at the moment but I can't go this year - can see the carpark which is absolutely packed from first thing.   There's a Quilt show on Thursday until Sunday so I might manage that as a friend is coming up from Cardiff - depends how other things pan out this week.  Lots of things going on here but not for blogging about.  We struggle on ......