justthoughtsnstuff

thursday the twenty-sixth of january, little ouseburn

2012-01-29T22:19:00.000Z

Dad’s funeral took place on Thursday.

He wanted to be buried in the Meysey-Thompson plot behind the Thompson Mausoleum in Little Ouseburn, Yorkshire--near Harrogate.

Dad’s mum’s family had lived at Kirby Hall, Little Ouseburn, until 1919 and the mausoleum had been where members of the family had been buried up until 1910. I’m not quite sure why burials in the mausoleum stopped but from the First World War onwards the family members were buried in the plot. The earliest graves in the plot are those of Dad’s grandfather, Lord Knaresborough, his wife and their son, Claude.

Claude was killed in the First World War and as a result his father decided to sell the hall and estate. All rather Downton Abbey. The hall was subsequently demolished. Only the entrance gates, the stable block and two lodges remain.

Dad provided information about the family's history when money was being raised to restore the mausoleum. Dad loved genealogy.

At the service, the reading I chose and read was taken from the Song of Solomon, chapter two verses eight to thirteen. The vicar asked me why I chose this reading. I have to confess that I started out trying to find a reading by googling funeral texts. It was when I saw the first lines of this reading that I remembered it from studying English at Keble. From what I remember the text had been referred to by a writer in the medieval or Renaissance period that I had been studying. The words seemed wholly appropriate to a gentle, loving man who adored the countryside.

The service, led by Father Parkin, was a lovely warm, enriching one. I was grateful to Father Parkin for reading the tribute to Dad that I had written--I could not have read this myself--and was very moved by the reminiscences of Dad’s army friend Jo.

In the graveyard, the spring sun shone.

Here is the text from the Song of Solomon.

8 The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.
9 My beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice.
10 My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
11 For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
12 The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;
13 The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

hedging, part two

2012-01-22T22:28:00.000Z

Very strong winds today. Made cycling tough--although I was pleased to have gone out there when I got back.

The light was beautiful. Really springlike.

Took these pics earlier in the week when I came across some more hedging--near Broadwell. The scene at the top--laid hedge, cuttings drawn into a pile and burnt--could have come straight from my childhood. Lovely to see hedges being laid in the traditional way in many different places round here.

The bottom photo is of an overgrown hedge near the one that has been laid. The pic shows what happens when a hedge is allowed to go wild. You end up with a lot of spindly poles and bushy thorns that eventually crowd each other out and lead to the death of the hedge. For a time this might be good for insects but in the end you'll get wind-throw--the poles being blown into the field or road--and the death of the hedge. The hedge will no longer be stock proof and in all probability will end up being grubbed up.

I think my dad would have loved seeing lots of hedges being laid in the traditional way.

dad

2012-01-20T23:05:00.000Z

It has been a very sad week. My dad died on Tuesday.

I saw him a few days before. We were all there as a family once again and for me I found that love had hollowed out a space in which to breath and when it was pulled free it filled our world.

On the morning after he died, I saw that the fire we lit when we got back from the hospital was still glowing and I put a log on the embers and kept the fire going throughout the day.

I remember how we all loved sitting by the fire when I was boy.

When my dad judged I was old enough we went to the farmyard and he showed me how to split wood.

frost, moonlight, oclw, energy, new term

2012-01-14T12:20:00.001Z

Quite a surprise to look out of the bedroom window and see the garden white with frost in the moonlight early this morning. A shock too as soon as I stepped outside to make holes in the ice on the frog pond. I'd forgotten how you have to tap extra reserves of energy when it's cold. Cycling was beautiful but hard going to begin with. (I delayed setting off until the sun was well up in order to try and avoid further accidents.)

It's been a better week as far as getting back to work is concerned. I feel I've done some productive things.

Mid-week, a friend emailed some information about lectures organised by the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing (OCLW), based at Wolfson College. She expected that I knew about the lectures already but sent the details just in case. I didn't know there was an OCLW, let alone that there were lectures. The series and the centre look fascinating--not least because I have become increasingly interested in life-writing since doing this blog (which I think of as a kind of real-time life-writing).

Meanwhile, the online creative writing course I teach has started and assignments from students on another course have arrived for marking. Walking along Broad Street in Oxford yesterday afternoon, I could feel the excitement and energy generated by the return of the students and the start of the new term.

hedging

2012-01-08T22:11:00.000Z

Loved seeing some traditional hedging this morning when I went cycling.

There are a few people in the village who keep the art alive even though most farmers use flail trimmers that might do the job quick but which over a number of years create gappy boundaries full of cramped out and diseased trees.

The hedge above will be stock-proof and the plants will be reinvigorated by the pleaching and laying.

I remember Percy Curtis hedgelaying on the farm when I was boy. I remember the smell of the fires he lit to burn the thinnings he'd taken out. He worked steadily all day, dressed in a suit, waistcoat and collarless shirt. Another world. It was another world for those times too really.

On my desk I have a small white penknife with two narrow blades that Percy used when rabitting. I've opened letters and sharpened pencils with it for nearly forty years now. A treasured possession.

shredding

2012-01-08T21:42:00.000Z

When our dog was a puppy, Jess used to give him cardboard boxes to play with, which he tore to pieces.

He'd not attacked a box for years before last Monday, when we were opening our last presents, but within a few minutes the sitting room floor was covered in debris. What had been in the box? A paper shredder.

cycling, ailments, flea, 2012

2012-01-01T17:54:00.001Z

Good to cycle this morning--very refreshing.

Feeling much better now--my cold has pretty well gone and problems with my left foot that flared up, painfully, the day after our Badbury walk, have almost subsided.

(Incidentally, it was during the first morning on which my cold was noticeably better that the foot trouble started--I couldn't believe it. Minor ailments have just about spanned the whole holiday but come Tuesday, I shall be as fit as a flea...in time to go back to work.)

Meanwhile I was looking at my New Year post for last year, which was rather gloomy-looking and downbeat about the future. Listening to the news on the radio today, the outlook for 2012 is much worse, but speaking personally I can't imagine that this year will surpass 2011 in terms of family unhappiness and shock. I certainly hope not. Having said that, 2011 was also marked by love and friendship that more than counteracted the sadness, which I am very grateful for.

I'm looking to the future now.

Have a great 2012!

(Pics taken in Jess' garden 1st January 2012--from top: cavolo nero, hebe, winter salads.)

new year, new year's eve, thanks

2011-12-31T15:29:00.001Z

Happy New Year!!! readers, friends and family who've already started 2012!!!

Enjoy tonight's New Year's Eve celebrations, everyone else!!!

Thanks for reading jtns in 2011!!!

sunny, better, badbury, great barn, plough, downton, shilton

2011-12-28T20:30:00.000Z

Unexpectedly sunny day. Cold much better.

After a late breakfast, we headed to Iron Age Badbury Hill beyond Faringdon, from where we walked to Coleshill (church shown above) and then to Great Coxwell, with its amazing old barn. (The Badbury Hill in my photo, by the way, doesn't look half as dramatic as it is in reality.)

The only new thing on the horizon was the wind farm below Coleshill--I'd glimpsed this from the road before now but not seen it clearly (it's way bigger than it looks in the pic).

On our way home we stopped off at the Plough at Kelmscott.

More Downton Abbey Series Two during lunch--hadn't realised that some filming had also been done at Shilton, a favourite nearby village (the charabanc drives through the ford, ostensibly at Kirkbymoorside, and stops by the pub where Mr Bates is working).

willow leaves, cold, chimney meadows, duxford, pints, downton

2011-12-27T23:32:00.000Z

Well, Christmas has come and gone--the day, that is. Fortunately the holiday continues and will do till next Monday. Back to work on the Tuesday but I'm not thinking about that.

Did the walk we last did in August today--Tadpole Bridge, Chimney Meadows, Shifford Lock, Duxford and Buckland Marsh. We also did the first half of this walk last year when the land was covered with snow. Such a contrast this winter--twelve degrees centigrade, a willow in leaf (second photo from top) and another in bud (third from top).

I had the proverbial 'stinking cold' and the walk was intended to help get the heart and lungs going in order to get rid of it. Not sure if it's worked but hopefully tomorrow the full effects will be felt.

Chimney Meadows are a rare group of ancient grassland fields which escaped modern agricultural methods and have a long and fascinating history--see both the BBOWT and Natural England websites (the Chimney Meadows--A Historical Perspective PDF on the former is especially fascinating). There are also a number of WWII pillboxes on the wetter parts of the meadows, which are more like marsh than grassland. A couple of stoutly built wooden bridges lead off the meadows over the Thames--the lower one for pedestrians, the upper one for farm vehicles (shown above).

Duxford is mostly made up of a handful of tall thatched-roofed cottages. Thatch used to be much more used round here than it is now. Our row of late-Victorian terraces replaced old tenements that had low walls (to about five feet) steep thatched roofs and earth floors.

Coming back through Buckland Marsh, we followed one of the deep ditches that used to be the chief means of draining the land in the Bampton area for farming during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A visitor during the latter century described the area as the Bampton polderlands. Most of the ditches have been filled in now, although some, together with a few of the sluice gates that controlled the flow of water, still remain.

After the walk we headed for a local pub, where we drank Bath cider (Jess) and Dartmoor ale (me) and opened the last of our Xmas cards.

Returned home for a late lunch and another instalment of Downton Abbey Series Two, which was partly filmed here in the spring (13th, 20th and 24th April).

wood, twinges, xmas shopping

2011-12-22T12:58:00.000Z

I thought the 21st December was the shortest day but according to Radio 4 it's the 22nd this time (I hadn't realised the date changed from year to year). Yesterday certainly felt like it was the shortest--dark, murky, cold and miserable. It was nice to be home (now on holiday), although catching up on my final work-related chores was draining. I wanted to get them done but also just wanted to stop. The last straw was my tax return and the mad scrabbling for receipts and payslips this entails. By the end of the day I was sickening for a cold, felt exhausted and was suffering aches, pains and twinges from the bike accident at the weekend.

But today is a different story--the sun's out, spring is in the air (with a bit of imagination) and I'm about to go Christmas shopping. Cold hasn't come to much either.

One nice thing yesterday was the Christmas log delivery. I love trundling the barrows of logs up the path and building the stack in the woodshed (an old privy). Meanwhile the leaflessness of the garden throws emphasis onto the textures of brick and timber and rusted metal. Photos taken today, of course--the camera wouldn't have worked yesterday it was so dark.

bampton square, moon x 2, ice, speedway

2011-12-17T11:05:00.000Z

Cold start this morning. The first time the frog pond has frozen over this year, I think.

Stopped by the village square, just after setting off on my bike ride, to take pictures of the Xmas tree. As I was doing so, the bus I usually catch during the week arrived. I was pleased not to be heading to Oxford today. (You might notice the two moons in the photo of the bus--I've always said Bampton was special. Actually, I don't think either of them is the moon--don't know what they are. Spooky.)

Cycling was OK on the main roads but I have to confess to taking a tumble at the junction of the Broadwell to Langford road and Calcroft lane (aka the gated road). The bike skittered on down the carriageway like machines do in speedway crashes, with me following behind. Amazingly, I was lucky and fell pretty well. There wasn't much damage, apart from a bit of bruising, the chain slipping off the bike and the headlamp not working (though this came back to life when I got home). I was surprised the headlamp survived because it exploded into two halves, the bulb unit and the batteries. I was fortunate that I was about half-way round the ride when the accident happened, so was able to regain my confidence. I started down the gated road very cautiously but it wasn't as bad as I expected and once it began to rain the ice melted. Funnily enough it was the pavements in the village that stayed icy--nearly came a cropper when I parked up the bike and headed to the newsagent.

It's been a hectic week at work on occasions and I'm looking forward to time off at Xmas and the New Year.

hay, llanthony, black mountains, freddie

2011-12-11T20:32:00.001Z

Well, as I said we had a great time walking near Hay-on-Wye.

A good place to forget the sadder bits of the year and think of the future.

Generally the weather was terrific, especially yesterday when we headed for Llanthony and the walking we used to enjoy when we stayed at the Priory years ago. The pub is built into these fantastic ruins in the bottom of this valley in the middle of the Black Mountains. The only surprise was when we went to the pub for a half of cider after our walk--only to to discover that dogs were banned.

Meanwhile, some lovely times spent in Hay at Kilvert's, where Freddie and Tufty got on very well. Feel really relaxed after the break.

kilverts, llanthony, scary guy, man in the high castle, in proportion

2011-12-10T19:32:00.001Z

Staying at Kilverts in Hay-on-Wye. Great to get away for a few days. Amazing walk above Llanthony Priory earlier--I'll post some pics over the next day or two.

Met the Scary Guy in the bar last night, Interesting conversation.

Love the new Hay Xmas decs and the fairy-land look they give the old buildings.

Restrained book buying--just one, apart from presents: A Berkley Medallion edition of The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick (1974).

The term was SO busy and this is the first time I've had to catch up with myself for ages. Work over the last few months has taken my mind off the family business but this did start entering my head when we first arrived here. I'm pleased that I've managed to keep it all in proportion. I guess that although the last year or so has been horrific, it wasn't that unexpected and I got over the worst experiences about fifteen years ago. I'm OK.

dawn tree, busy, busy, end of term

2011-12-03T09:06:00.001Z

Photographed this scene back in late July, when the tree was surrounded by ripening corn. Took another pic a month later after the field had been harvested and cultivated. Today it looked stark against the breaking dawn. This is actually a relatively high point in our flat landscape and the land in the background falls and you can see all the way to the escarpment beyond the Thames Valley.

Enjoyed cycling this morning--much warmer today and it was good to exercise the busy week out of my head...In preparation for a busy weekend continuing to mark assignments.

On Thursday, I did both my last tutorial of the term and the final seminar in my undergraduate diploma long fiction series. Loved doing these--I was working with great people--but I'm still pleased to be heading towards next Thursday, when I can take things a bit easier. Everyone at the University seems to have working harder than ever this autumn.

wispy bits of mist, americano to go, xmas lights, mad dash

2011-12-02T18:25:00.000Z

Frosty start to the day. Seasonal. With atmospheric wispy bits of mist above the canal. Not as visible in the photo as they seemed to be in real life, sadly.

Meanwhile, St Giles' was blocked off by the time I was heading to collect my regular Americano to go from Green's. Preparations were underway for an Xmas fair coinciding with turning on the lights. Throughout the day the sound system got tested--lots of muffled noises of the 'one-two, one-two' kind reached my office, interspersed with sudden irruptions of music that shattered the peace before stopping dead.

It was only when I was saying to a colleague at 5 pm that I had to catch my bus that it occurred to me that my bus was not going to be travelling through St Giles'. A speedwalk up Woodstock Road left me collapsing but at least I'm now on my bus.

autumn colour, work, msts, kate b, siamese dream

2011-11-26T09:20:00.001Z

Into Oxford early this morning. Saturday duty--crops up every so often.

Drawn to the colours of graffiti in the now quite bare and bleak autumn cityscape. Curious, the effect of the plants growing over it and the leaves framing the top one. It must be a pain to clean off, though, and I would hate it if someone spray-painted my house or a beloved building.

Nearly the end of the Oxford term and as usual it is going to the wire. So much to do. Mostly satisfying work, however.

Was really nice to get lovely emails from the two people I supervised on the MSt last year. Hope we'll hear more of them in the future.

Great Kate Bush interview on Radio 4's Front Row during the week. Made me guilty that I exited her songs from my phone last Sunday... Also loved Zane Lowe's Smashing Pumpkins Siamese Dream 'Masterpiece' feature.

OK, a Green's regular Americano downed, and I'm off to work. (Looking forward to late lunch at Hollybush, Witney.)

embers, infinitas gracias, music to go, lie-in

2011-11-19T09:56:00.001Z

Before I went cycling, I swept the grate, as I always do early in the morning, and the remnants of log glowed orange and red, and smouldered, and gave off heat that warmed my fingers in the now cold room. As I put my cycling jacket on, an owl hooted outside in the garden. In the countryside there was a light mist and in the sky a slice of moon. Soon the sun rose and on the way back, along Calcroft Lane, there were lots of creamy flowers still out, most sheltering in the ditch by the road. Dandelion, those hogweedy things I mentioned last time, yarrow and meadowsweet are the ones shown above. Although it felt considerably cooler it was still warm--about six or seven degrees C. Strange year. In the garden a late Mexican canna lily has just gone over and the frogs are hopping about in the flower beds.

It's been a busy week. A highlight was a trip to the British Library for a meeting and a visit afterwards to a wonderful exhibition at the Wellcome Collection called Infinitas Gracias: Mexican Miracle Paintings. (I love by the way the Wellcome Collection's subtitle: "A free destination of the incurably curious".) As the exhibition's website says,

"Mexican votives are small paintings, usually executed on tin roof tiles or small plaques, depicting the moment of personal humility when an individual asks a saint for help and is delivered from disaster and sometimes death. 'Infinitas Gracias' will feature over 100 votive paintings drawn from five collections held by museums in and around Mexico City and two sanctuaries located in mining communities in the Bajío region to the north: the city of Guanajuato and the distant mountain town of Real de Catorce. Together with images, news reports, photographs, devotional artefacts, film and interviews, the exhibition will illustrate the depth of the votive tradition in Mexico."

The paintings ranged in sophistication from professional to childlike representations of people and livestock but all told little stories about the individuals, families and ways of life. It was also fascinating to see how things changed over the two hundred years covered by the exhibits--horses and carriages giving way to cars and buses and so on. There was also an extraordinary wall of modern ad hoc votives done on photocopying machines or scribbled on polystyrene plates, carrying on the tradition in new, incredibly personal and moving ways.

Meanwhile, I've decided to delete most of the music from my phone--after backing it up, of course. I've been assembling this collection for over five years and now I want a change. I'll keep the most recent stuff and one or two old favourites and start again. Good feeling.

Looking forward to a lie-in tomorrow.

sun, lichen, hogweed?, new role

2011-11-13T13:09:00.001Z

Awoke to amazing sunny autumn day. Such a welcome day after this week's run of miserable gloom, during which the night hardly seemed to lift.

Loved the way the lichens on the willows along the Great Brook were lit up on the bare branches. Still some flowers out, though, like the hogweed above on which bees and flies gathered. (If indeed it is a hogweed.)

Tiring but fulfilling week--so much going on in all the different areas of my working life. Started new library role too, which was really exciting.

Today, however, is a day of fun and rest. Which is great!

cycling, oak, family rumbles, sparklers, mad dog

2011-11-05T10:10:00.000Z

Cycled earlier this morning. First time for a couple of weeks due to marking, the Brazilian visit last weekend and one or two other commitments.

The countryside had changed--and it was also considerably darker than before.

After the false autumns of the late summer, autumn really does seem to be here, although the hot weather fools you into thinking that we can't possibly be into November yet.

Good autumn colour this morning, once the sun rose. Including the leaning oak off Calcroft Lane that I photographed earlier in the year (27th August and 27th March).

Working today till 3 pm but after that I'll be able to relax. I'm taking on some interesting new library duties in December and am due to meet the people I'll be working with next week, so want to be fresh for that.

Meanwhile the family stuff rumbles on--mercifully in the background now. What an utter waste of time that is--and has been for the last thirty-plus years.

Enough of that. Just checked the sparkler supply--plenty there for some fun. They were talking on the radio this morning about dogs cowering under the furniture on Bonfire Night. Our dog tries to jump up and grab fizzing sparklers out of your hand and has to be restrained. As you light the garden fireworks and leg it back to the house, he's straining at the lead to tear off and pounce. Mad boy.

Church btw is the one at neighbouring village of Broadwell.

following keble, lucy's dragon, lock, treasures, biztro

2011-10-29T14:28:00.001+01:00

When I walked down the Oxford canal yesterday morning, I followed a College Cruisers narrowboat named Keble--strangely comforting and appropriate on a somewhat bleak misty day, I thought, given that I was an undergraduate at Keble. The things that keep me amused!

Following a narrowboat, you realise at what a gentle pace these boats travel. I'd catch up with Keble then stop to take a picture. The boat would glide off round the next bend but when I started walking, I'd soon catch it up again. Hopefully, the three photos above give a sense of the urban canalside environment in Oxford. Some stretches are rural enough for you to imagine you're in the countryside, especially in summer when the foliage is thick, while others are more like Docklands in London.

The big--and to my mind rather successful--development shown in the bottom pic stands on the site of the old Lucy's iron works, which I remember from not that long ago (honest). When we lived in Oxford I used to walk the opposite bank in summer and every once in a while the kilns would be lit, glowing in the twilight, fans roaring like dragons and heat belching across the water. It was a dramatic sight that felt like it belonged in another age.

On the College Cruisers' website by the way, Keble is described as, 'Our most compact boat. Cosy, comfortable and a must if you are looking for a few days away with the one you love!' Which sounds great, I have to say. Ironic, though, that the boat is the smallest, given the vastness of the college it's named after.

I have to admit that although I set scenes in The Lock on a narrowboat and have had supper with friends on their barge, I've never travelled on one. Perhaps a short break on Keble will be a good way to start. Serendipity.

Meanwhile, today I had to make an unexpected trip into Oxford to give a tour of the Bodleian to the Brazilian Minster of Justice and his party. It was a pleasure not just to talk about the library but to have the chance of spending time in the Divinity School, Convocation and Duke Humfrey's with the autumn sunlight streaming through the traceried windows. After the tour we visited the fabulous Bodleian Treasures exhibition. A must see. Great website too!

Meanwhile a new brasserie opens up in Bampton today called Biztro. There's an open/taster day there this afternoon and evening. Will check it out later.

digging, luxury uptake, football, che guevara, apex

2011-10-22T12:04:00.001+01:00

Up to the allotment early. Dug over the last bit--although there are a few yards in front of the compost bins that I turned in September, which could do with going over again because the hot weather has made the couch sprout. I'll see. It wouldn't be a disaster if I couldn't dig this corner again before the inevitable November rains (the allotment, being on Oxford clay, holds water and some parts, including the area with the couch, soon become quicksand). I say 'the inevitable November rains' but what happened to the inevitable October ones?

I also spread some of the ash from the rubbish heap fire over the ground I was digging. That part had some ash on it a couple of years ago. Hope I'm not overdoing things. I have a dim memory of Mr Wiseman, our plant husbandry lecturer at Cirencester, talking about 'luxury uptake of potash'. Not sure if this was good or bad and how it came about. Fingers crossed.

The area to the right of the ash heap, by the way, is left as couch nowadays because the eucalyptus that overshadows it (the tree's on our neighbour's plot) has rendered it pretty much useless for growing anything else. I think the trees leach goodness out or maybe change the pH of the soil. Anyway, they're quite selfish, eucalyptuses--though I do like the tree being there. The only tree on the whole allotment site. Sometimes in late spring or summer, when you've been working hard, it's nice to step under the tree's shade and cool down.

The first shed picture shows the patched roof pitch--it'll do, I reckon--whereas the second one shows the felt I put on the other pitch last autumn.

Earlier in the week, I went for a walk in the University Parks in Oxford after my lunchtime sandwich. Some students were playing football and as I passed, the ball came bouncing towards me. I tried to ignore it but none of the players were chasing after it. Clearly they were hoping that I might kick it back. I felt the coercion of their gazes and decided that I couldn't just walk on. But then memories of school football started filling my brain and I could hear the sickening thud of a mis-kick, and see the ball either leaping into the air and thudding to a standstill a yard away, or else bananaing into an impenetrable clump of bushes. What was I doing even trying this? And when I kicked this ball I was actually looking at the impenetrable clump of bushes off to the side in full anticipation of disaster. Doc Marten connected with plastic. The ball curved gracefully up and flew towards the students. Amazing! Cries of thanks followed and someone punched the air with what looked like a Che Guevara salute.

I wondered what they thought. Some middle aged office worker in his blue overcoat reliving the glittering football career of his boyhood? No, they'd seen the apex of my footballing career!

sunrise, mostly books, grubbing, patching and scarifying

2011-10-16T16:12:00.000+01:00

Good cycle early yesterday morning. Another dramatic sunrise.

Loved reading at the Kennington Literary Festival in the afternoon. Thanks to Sylvia Vetta for inviting me. Good to meet Mark Thornton from Mostly Books, Abingdon at long last, who was running the festival bookshop.

Today was a gardening day--taking advantage of the extraordinary hot weather.

Burning the big heap of couch and other weeds on the allotment, then taking down the runner bean wigwams and grubbing up the courgette plants, before digging over half that side of the plot.

Patching the felt roof of the shed this afternoon. Back at the house it was mowing the lawn then scarifying and spiking it. Great fun.

Now for a pint.

furniture, clowns, kennington, invisible, pinter, poem

2011-10-14T19:07:00.001+01:00

Well, today was the day we visited the warehouse where the family furniture was stored (see post of 6th September 2011).

We went through over a dozen containers and selected the few pieces that were in my childhood bedroom and one or two more that my dear grandmother had left me.

This was the strangest of days because I had not seen these things since January 1978. Another life away.

I have to say that the experience was made bearable because of the kindness of the three people who were there to help, including the owner of the warehouse--who, God knows, has been hurt enough by this business.

I cannot describe what it was like to see all those things--in containers stretching as far as the eye could see, almost--that I grew up with and that I had been told were in store for just six months.

However, as I wrote a month or so ago, I am now starting the rest of my life. In the short term, I am looking forward to the Kennington Literary Festival tomorrow and reading from Invisible.

I would now like to add a poem. This week, when I was thinking about what was going to happen today, I thought back to what I was doing around the time that the furniture went into storage in 1978. I remembered a poem I'd written in my last year at Stowe that got published in the school magazine. I tried finding the poem in the online database of the school magazine but the site was down for maintenance. Oddly, though, a copy of the magazine with the poem in was on the top of a teachest when we were looking through the containers today. It was only thing I was allowed to take away today and I've scanned it for this post. I remember, in 1977, being chuffed, not because of the poem itself, but because it was the first time that the word 'shit' had been published in the school magazine. The word appeared in a quote from Harold Pinter's diaries--how could the school authorities refuse? (Kids, eh?) I should also say the poem was a love poem. (I didn't get the girl--eh Babs!)

Here's the poem. (The photo above btw was taken on my bike ride this morning.)

Le Monde et La Fille

Undulating waves of emerald green
Flow beneath me, Tiber bound.
From an amber dolphin fountain-made
Glistening pearls ascend the purple sky.
As dusk envelopes beauty
A crouching temple I approach.
Up wide mosaic steps I glide
Through oak portals to the heart.
Central stands an incense pyre
Whose every golden tongue is echoed
By shadows dancing on white marble.
From the labours of Hercules
Sculpted parapet on high
My eye descends a rainbow of design.
In a corner a heap of books,
Knowledge and experience:

"Expende Hannibalem: quot libras in duce summo invenies?"

Dear Diary: in the city,
Filth and degeneration,
Grey paper-strewn streets,
Dried-up fountains of concrete
"rubbish shit scratch dung poison".

Le monde, Le monde,
My paragon unchanged by time
Je t'aime beaucoup.

Carpe diem.

[23.01.12 In the light of recent sad events I have decided to rewrite parts of the above post. I have kept a copy of the original.]

building, kennington literary festival

2011-10-09T10:45:00.001+01:00

As I walk between the Bodleian Latin American Centre Library and the Taylor Institution Library, I pass three University building sites--St Antony's, St Anne's and the one glimpsed in the photo (where the old Radcliffe Infirmary is being redeveloped--see post of 24th June--and work on the so-called Radcliffe Observatory Quarter is beginning--observatory is on the right). The city-centre end of the Woodstock Road is alive with lorries coming and going, cranes and piling rigs, not to mention mud and dust.

Alarm went off early this morning as there is a mountain of marking to do. Cycling woke me up, although the morning is distinctly grey. Warm, though. A surprise after yesterday, when we had our first log fire since, I think, May.

Looking forward to reading from Invisible at the Kennington Literary Festival next Saturday, which is previewed in this week's Oxford Times.

harvest festival, that paris year

2011-10-01T10:20:00.003+01:00

Busy at the library, what with the start of the Oxford term coming up--0th Week from Sunday.

Thank goodness for those days away in Somerset.

Headed for the allotment at 7.30 am before the temperature rose--and this is the first day of October!

Did an hour's digging and some picking. Everything is slowing now, despite the weather. I'll probably take down the runner bean wigwams tomorrow (you can just glimpse their tops in the second-from-bottom photo and the base of one is shown in the photo above that--some lush self-set Swiss chard is growing amongst the runners). Then, next week, I'll grub up the courgette and squash plants before digging the area over, and that will be more or less that for the winter, apart from the occasional harvest of the few remaining crops--chard, carrots and beetroot. Though in store are potatoes, onions and shallots.

It's been difficult to find enough time to do the allotment justice but great fun when I have got up there.

Meanwhile, a publisher friend in the States has a new Kindle ebook out: That Paris Year by Joanna Biggar: UK, US, DE.

crystal lemon, three horseshoes, batcombe, wildcru

2011-09-25T12:32:00.000+01:00

Instead of cycling this morning, I went up to the allotment to do some digging and tidying. Taking advantage of the dry weather. Came back with lots of spinach, much of it self-set, some courgettes, a patty-pan squash, a round yellow cucumber (Crystal Lemon), some runner beans and carrots. Well, that should probably read 'the' carrot. Not a good year for carrots on our allotment...

Got back yesterday from a short break in Somerset. We stayed at the Three Horseshoes in Batcombe, just south-west of Frome. A very relaxing place to be, with good food, four delicious farm ciders and beautiful surrounding countryside to walk in (photos above).

Meanwhile, I was sad to read in the Times about a report from Oxford University's Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCru), which suggests that red squirrels could be extinct within twenty years and that hedgehog and Scottish wildcat populations are falling rapidly (only 400 wildcats are left and hedgehog numbers have fallen from 30m plus in the 1950s to 'well under 1m now').

The decline of the hedgehogs is blamed on 'pesticides and the destruction of the hedgerows and rough land on which they depend. Dormice and harvest mice have also been hit.'

The Times also reports that the 'destruction of habitat is affecting not just animals but the rural economy too, because it creates a monotonous countryside devoid of wildlife that discourages the walkers, birdwatchers and other recreational users whose spending is key to rural prosperity.'

To underline the importance of recreational users to the rural economy, the Times article points to the profits from farming amounting to £4.4 billion, whereas rural tourism 'generates sums estimated at between £70 billion and £80 billion a year across Britain.'

The report should be available on WildCru's website but when I tried to access it the link was broken.

spuds, snow patrol, kasabian

2011-09-18T21:53:00.000+01:00

Lifted spuds this morning (planted 9th April). Weather was better than forecast and sacks were dry, although the moment I'd dug the last root there was a light shower that soon turned heavy and was quickly followed by another and another.

Still, this afternoon the wind had dried the spuds and I was able to bag them up. A better yield than expected. The four varieties should keep us going until the late spring--as long as the mice don't get them.

Potatoes are quite cheap and there isn't much of a saving in growing one's own, if any, but the pleasure of heading to the garden shed in the depths of winter and bringing back stored spuds is great.

The four varieties--shown above--are Charlotte, Cara, Kestrel and Estima.

Meanwhile, didn't really go for One Direction but loved Snow Patrol's Called Out in the Dark and Kasabian's Days Are Forgotten.

bleak, toadflax, wales, yorkshire, stories

2011-09-17T10:31:00.000+01:00

The landscape looked harsh and bleak when I set off cycling this morning, especially to the east, thick cloud dulling the rising sun.

A few miles in, though, the light picked up and I saw a patch of toadflax by Kencot. Toadflax has been plentiful this year. Cheerful flowers.

I'd intended to lift spuds on the allotment this morning but the potato sacks aren't dry yet after I washed them on Thursday. Not that I'll need that many sacks. I dug some Cara last weekend and while the potatoes themselves were great--firm textured and delicious--the yield was poor. The dry start to the summer didn't help. Still, the spuds should be OK in the ground for a couple weeks before the keel slugs start munching them.

When I got home from cycling I was sad to read about the deaths of the four miners in south Wales.

It's a hundred years since my ancestors left Tredegar in the Rhonda for a new life but my mum passed down the old stories about my grandfather when he was a boy and what it was like in the mining villages when she visited Great-Granny Thomas during the thirties. Those stories are part of me somehow, just like the ones my dad told me about growing up in Yorkshire.

I'm grateful for those stories. They are a part of the family culture that withstands life's upsets. A part of me will always be Welsh, will always be Yorkshire, however imaginary that might seem.

the lock on kindle

2011-09-14T19:04:00.000+01:00

Today sees the republication of my first novel The Lock as a Kindle ebook from StreetBooks.

The ebook is available from amazon.co.uk, amazon.com and amazon.de.

That the novel should come out on Kindle seems appropriate given that it first appeared as an ebook back in 2001, two years before it was published in paperback. It went on to be shortlisted for the Independent e-Book Awards in Santa Barbara in 2002.

Regular readers of this blog might recognise the photo on which the Kindle cover is based, which appeared here in June.

The cover shows the last lock on the Oxford Canal before it comes to an abrupt halt at the city centre. The lock and bridge appear in the closing chapters of the novel when Gerald, an unfaithful Oxford don, is on his way to try and make things up with his younger daughter Alison, who lives on a narrowboat called Civil Liberty.

'He marched up, round, over and down the S of the beautiful wrought-iron bridge crossing the last lock. From the top he could see the green roof and purple side of Civil Liberty. As before there was a column of smoke rising from its stack. The smoke went straight up then spread out horizontally as if it had reached an invisible ceiling.

'The mist was clearer around the canal – just a low bed of it above the channel – but the landscape, the glimpses of dead water, the frosted grass, the bare trees, looked bleaker and colder than by the grebe pool. But Gerald could feel nothing of the cold anymore.'

To the left of the bridge on the cover, you can see the last section of the canal which follows the western boundary of Worcester College. It was on this part of the canal that a friend called Lizzie used to moor her barge and it was she who told me all about what it was like to live on a narrowboat when I was researching the novel.

swindon viewpoint

2011-09-06T20:19:00.001+01:00

On a lighter note, I was excited to read a comment made recently on my post mentioning Swindon Viewpoint community TV. It turns out that there is a Swindon Viewpoint website, www.swindonviewpoint.com.

I was fascinated by the project's long history and was really pleased to learn that the project continued after the cable TV funding ran out in 1980.

Terrific!

furniture, the past, forgiveness, new start

2011-09-06T19:27:00.000+01:00

Later this month I shall travel to a warehouse in which the furniture and personal possessions I grew up with are stored. I was away in Shropshire when these things were put there. I was working on a farm, doing my year’s practical before agricultural college. I have not seen the furniture and possessions since I left for Shropshire. That was nearly thirty-four years ago.

At the warehouse I will identify the few items that were in my childhood bedroom. These will be saved, the rest will be sold.

During my recent holiday I have thought about the past and about what the trip to the warehouse will be like. I cannot imagine what it will be like.

A family’s whole culture obliterated--by what? By a strange obsession that became increasingly disturbing and which robbed time of its meaning and caused incredible mental distress.

I have thought of the hundred page essay I wrote for my cousin in 1998, in which I tried to outline my concerns about what was happening and what it had been like to live with the pain for so many years. The essay resulted from insights I gained into what was happening after I wrote a simple letter to a lawyer on another subject. The past suddenly started to fall into place. I felt like a cult member emerging from years of isolation. I saw the past very differently. The essay was therapy, a cry for help and, it has to be stressed, an act of love. As I have said during talks about the origins of my second novel, which is partly about writing therapy, you do not spend so much time trying to get at the truth of a situation if you do not care about the people involved. I still love the people at the centre of this tragedy. They should have been protected against themselves.

I have thought over the past weeks of those who were there to protect my interests--amiable but hapless men, who I am sure never meant things to turn out this way.

I have thought about forgiveness. I approach this from the standpoint of a religious humanist, not as I was once, a Christian. Forgiveness is, I believe, something that will come with the passing of the seasons, as death is followed by rebirth, the cycle that defines the world in which we live. Forgiveness is not something that can be forced.

I am aware that there are others, like me, who have decided not to make a claim in respect of what has happened, even though they have suffered financial loss and unhappiness. I also know that others who have claimed have suffered a great deal--materially and emotionally. I sympathise with both groups of people.

I have to say I do not understand how a bank (HSBC) could allow a debt to escalate so much that it destroyed their client--destroyed not just them but, as I have said, a whole family culture--as well as damaging many others. (Not good for the bank's shareholders either.) I suppose things in the banking world have changed in the last couple of years. I hope very much that is the case and that other families will be spared this kind of distress in future.

I think of my great-grandfathers who I never met but who entrusted so much to future generations. I am pleased that I managed to save a small part of their legacies and, I hope, do some good with it.

I am grateful for the support I have received over this last year from members of my family, from Jess’ family and from colleagues at the University. Above all I am grateful for Jess’ love and support.

Later this month I shall travel to a warehouse in which the furniture and personal possessions I grew up with are stored. After that I shall start the rest of my life.

[23.01.12 In the light of recent sad events I have decided to rewrite parts of the above post. I have kept a copy of the original post.]

kennington literary festival

2011-09-03T23:15:00.000+01:00

Kennington Literary Festival programme just out. I'll be reading from Invisible on Saturday 15th October, 1.40 pm.

bell, oaks, alvescot, black bourton church, doll

2011-09-03T13:32:00.000+01:00

We walked from Bampton to Langford yesterday for a delicious lunch at the Bell. Amazing weather and scenery.

A lot of oaks to the east of Broadwell, though some seemed to be dead or dying. Signs of acute oak decline disease or some other problem?

I'd never realised how beautiful the lower part of Alvescot village was--it's almost like a separate Cotswold hamlet. Also visited Black Bourton church for the first time. Charming medieval building with great thirteenth century wall paintings, described in the guidebook as visual aids to the Bible stories, which I rather liked.

Saw the slightly disturbing clown doll by the old mill steam below the church.

himalayan balsam

2011-09-02T10:26:00.000+01:00

I was amazed by how much Himalayan Balsam there was along the banks of the Thames between Tadpole Bridge and Shifford Lock earlier in the week.

Some stands were over six foot tall and in places the plants were several yards deep.

On the plus side, the flowers are beautiful and bees love them. At this time of year the air is filled with the plant's heavy scent--dry and herby--and occasionally you can hear the click-click of the seed pods firing across the bank and river.

But what used grow here? I can't help think these aggressive plants are drowning out older species.

chimney, shifford, duxford, tenfoot bridge

2011-08-30T21:05:00.001+01:00

Had a lovely walk today along the Thames from Tadpole Bridge, via Chimney Meadows, to Shifford Lock. The first part was familiar but instead of turning back at the lock we crossed the river and continued on and round to the beautiful hamlet of Duxford and back along the other bank to Tenfoot Bridge (above) and the last mile or so of the usual walk.

Duxford was a surprise--an idyllic Berkshire stone farmhouse with red brick surrounds to the windows (the hamlet would have been in Berkshire before the boundary changes in the 1970s) and a handful of cottages, three of them the tall narrow Thames Valley thatched kind that are similar to those that appear in a junk-shop watercolour we have of cottages in North Hinksey by J Allen Shuffrey. (Shuffrey was part of a Witney blanket-making family named in one of the Witney Museum exhibits we saw last week. He specialised in Oxfordshire landscapes and architectural paintings.)

The walk was an antidote to the impending visit to claim my one or two childhood pieces from the mass of furniture that has to be sold. More on this, I dare say, over the coming week or so.

change, time off, kite, witney etc

2011-08-27T18:38:00.000+01:00

Two photos of scenes that first appeared in this blog earlier in the year. The top photo shows a recently cultivated field--the picture of the ripening corn that stood here was posted just a few weeks ago. The oak in the lower picture was originally photographed back in March--its bare branches looking like a representation of a brain against the white sky.

The oak stands about two-thirds the way along the gated road towards Broadwell. Oaks are said to indicate good soils. They are noticeably absent from Bampton and the surrounding countryside--only one or two in Hayway Lane about half a mile from Rushey Lock.

The photos above show the changing landscape. Up to now, this summer, I've felt somewhat bewildered by the rate at which things have been changing. I've been so busy with the libraries and teaching that I've lost touch with the allotment and garden, beyond picking veg and mowing the lawn. I've not walked my favourite walks for months. Cycling has kept me sane.

Now, though, I'm taking almost a fortnight off. It's great to stop for a bit. Particularly at this time of year--a time when the countryside seems to slow for a while and take stock. But perhaps I'm projecting the rhythm of my life onto the year!

Be that as it may, it's great to be on holiday. Today when cycling, a red kite flew across the road near Kencot, just after I'd taken the photo above. It was pursued by a crow and was so close it was amazing to be able to see all its plumage and how big a bird it is--its body, as well as its wingspan. The kites that were released in the Chilterns many years ago only appeared as far west as here the year before last but have become an increasingly common sight.

Jess' mum came to stay on Thursday. Visit to Witney Museum yesterday afternoon--a great social history museum--then a late lunch at the Hollybush (excellent that you can eat there all day), and a delicious supper at the Bell at Langford (thanks Jess' mum).

bindweed, lewis, keith douglas

2011-08-21T16:18:00.002+01:00

Bindweed flowers always seem to me to be really pretty. It's a shame that the plant is so pernicious and impossible to eradicate. It thrives on our allotment and tries to twine its way round every plant. No matter how much I pull it up or dig it out, it's always back with a vengeance within a week or two. Digging it out is, of course, a joke--its roots go down for miles.

I saw these flowers along the gated road when cycling this morning. At least they are several miles from the allotment.

Enjoyed the end of Summer School dinner in Exeter College hall on Friday night. Great food and company. When I got to Exeter an episode of Lewis was being filmed in the quad. Judging from the number of forensics people whatever happened inside staircase four looked grim. A surreal moment occurred as the Summer School tutors and students headed to the fellows' garden for the reception. We had to make our way through a whole load of actors pretending to be tutors and students. Who was who?

During the speeches Professor Jon Stallworthy read a wonderful poem entitled Oxford by Keith Douglas. I'd never heard it before but will certainly be seeking it out.

waterman's arms, osney, now the punter

2011-08-14T15:43:00.001+01:00

Had great fun at our friend's 60th birthday party last night. It was held at The Punter on Osney Island.

When we lived on the Island this Thames-side pub was called The Waterman's Arms, which had been its name for over a hundred years. I still can't get used to the new name. Where are the punts? I did see someone attempting to punt on this stretch years ago but the water is too deep.

I'd not been into the pub since it was taken over. I have to say that the name apart the pub is excellent. The interior is upmarket now but the changes have been sympathetically done, so that you still get a sense of the rooms as they once were. The food was delicious.

A fictional incarnation of the pub featured in John Wain's wonderful Where the Rivers Meet trilogy which follows the fortunes of the landlord's two sons before the Second World War. One son gets a job at the newly-opened Cowley car factory and the other wins a place to study at the University before becoming a don.

The pub also appeared in my first novel The Lock, which rather amazingly ended up being published by John Wain's son Will.

In this scene, two Oxford dons, Gerald and Jonathan meet at the Narrow Boat, as the pub is called in the book. Jonathan soon reveals that he saw Gerald at the pub on an earlier occasion with Alex, with whom he is having an affair.

Half an hour later Jonathan and Gerald were sitting out in the yard at the back of the pub.

When Gerald had found Jonathan, who had been sitting up at the bar chatting to the landlord, they had gone through the brief ritual of offering to buy the first round. On this occasion the ritual was briefer than usual, with Gerald capitulating rapidly, which surprised Jonathan, and then proclaiming that he would go outside into the yard and sort out a table. Jonathan found him sitting at the table nearest the street by the low wall that gave onto the Thames. When he arrived Gerald was sitting with his legs either side of the bench staring at the river and the islet in front of the house on the opposite bank, a fact which, under the circumstances made Jonathan feel irrationally guilty...

...Gerald inclined his head slightly. The expression he adopted was, perhaps, that of someone who is thinking, though his stare seemed curiously placid, even vacant.

‘Would you like to go for a walk?’ Jonathan asked.

He gave a snort of surprise and furrowed his brow.

‘No.’

‘It’s probably nothing, but some friends of mine have recently bought the house over the river there.’

‘So?’

‘I’ve been helping them out with their garden.’

Gerald smiled. ‘Sounds very unlikely.’

‘About a month ago I was there and I happened to look across at the pub.’

Gerald bent his head forward, took hold of the rim of his glass between his thumb and forefinger and gave it a little twist, twice. Then he tossed his head back and stared at Jonathan as if he was standing above him looking down.

Jonathan noticed how the skin over the purple smudge below his right eye had begun to pulse, though whether this was from a vein or from a nervous tick, he could not tell.

‘And you saw me here,’ said Gerald. His head came forward again a fraction.

‘Yes.’

‘And I was with Alexandra Thorpe.’

‘Yes. As I said it’s probably nothing.’

‘What did you have in mind?’

‘There are other things as well that made me think there might be something in it.’

He sensed that Gerald was trying to get out of something and this made him, suddenly, angry.

time, ripening, mushroom risotto

2011-08-13T09:59:00.000+01:00

The creative writing summer school seminar series I'm teaching at Exeter College, Oxford is about to enter its third and final week. Colleagues said the time would pass quickly and it has. It's whizzed by. Not least because the group is a great one to work with.

Talking of time passing fast, we're off to a 60th birthday party this weekend. Was it ten years ago that our friend was fifty? I suppose it must be. Help!

The weather was wet and overcast this morning when I went cycling, adding to the landscape's already autumnal look. Most fields are now cut and many have been cultivated. The hawthorn berries are full and the crab apple trees laden with fruit.

Another year is ripening.

Meanwhile, had lunch with two colleagues yesterday at Branca in Walton Street, Oxford. By chance we all wanted the mushroom risotto, which was simple and delicious. We also had great fun chatting.

oxford, northmoor sheep, sunday

2011-08-06T18:37:00.000+01:00

Working in Oxford today.

Earlier in the week, the bus pulled up in the middle of Northmoor as a flock of sheep were driven through the village. No contest.

Meanwhile, now sipping wine and contemplating a free Sunday. No, I can't believe that either.

Have a good weekend.

autumn comes early? lords and ladies et al, the future, ambit

2011-07-30T10:51:00.001+01:00

The talk in the garden at the Horse Shoe last night was the early arrival of autumn.

This week, the quality of sunlight changed. The strength is still there but the light is a mellower egg-yolk yellow. The days are noticeably shorter too. At 5 am on Friday the view of the garden from the kitchen was that of night-time.

Autumn reds are appearing--poppies, harvested with the corn, are giving way to lords and ladies and apples that people swear are weeks early. The first blackberries are ripe and intensely sharp.

Sometimes this week, the sky has been lead-lidded and the muffled world has been comforting. Whether dour or autumn-sunny, it has been a good week for healing. For catching one's breath, contemplating the past and then looking to the future.

Meanwhile, I was excited to learn that a former student, Paul Sweeten, has a short story entitled Prodigy in the latest issue of Ambit magazine (on sale, first floor, Blackwell, if you're in Oxford).

A morning of marking and final summer school preparations ahead.

richard webster

2011-07-23T21:00:00.002+01:00

I went to a memorial service for my friend Richard Webster this afternoon at St Barnabas church in the Jericho quarter of Oxford (above).

I will always be indebted to Richard for his advice about typesetting and publishing when I set up StreetBooks last year.

Richard was a long-standing member of Writers in Oxford (WiO) and my memory of how he welcomed me when I first joined some ten years ago seems similar to those of colleagues. He was such a staunch believer in the society and was fascinated by people, giving them so much of his time.

In his professional life as a writer he was also a champion of a number of people who were either falsely accused of crimes or imprisoned for crimes they did not commit. A man at his memorial said that he had told Richard that he valued going to prison because if he had not done so he would never have met a man like him. I've tried to paraphrase what the man said and perhaps in doing so I have made it trite. If so, I can only apologise. What he said was profoundly moving. Among others who spoke were a recently retired MP who had chaired a parliamentary committee to which Richard had given decisive evidence and a QC who had successfully defended Richard over a New Statesman article he had written.

One of the remarkable things about the memorial was how little of what Richard did many members of WiO knew. He was a wonderfully warm friend and colleague but not one to boast by any means.

As a former chair of WiO, I have to confess that I was aware of Richard's directness. His passionate belief in the society meant that he could on occasion ask difficult and penetrating questions. Yet he was never a person to put you down. He wanted to raise issues, yes, but was never happier than when you made your point back. What he wanted was honest, robust debate. People said today that he never made you feel diminished by his incisive comments. Rather you were left with the feeling of being enriched by the discussion he provoked. That was certainly my experience.

For the last couple of years, as readers of this blog will know, I've been getting off the 18 bus at St Edward's School, if I'm in good time on my way to work, and cutting down to the canal before walking to Jericho and on into town. At the back of Hayfield Road I have on occasion come across Richard standing at the end of his garden on the opposite bank or having breakfast and he has smiled his unforgettable smile--so surprised to see me there, the first time this happened--and we have chatted for a while. Every time I walk this way, even in winter, I have wondered whether he will be there. Whenever he has been it has been such fun to see him. Now I know he will never be there again.

Finally, I remember Richard quoting at a WiO committee meeting (as was fitting for the author of an excellent book on Freud): 'Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar.'

Richard Mortimer Webster, http://richardwebster.net.

soaked, bye bye wiltshire, work

2011-07-16T10:44:00.001+01:00

Got soaked cycling this morning. Heaviest rain I can remember for a long while. We were lucky to get all that sunshine in Wiltshire.

A weekend of work ahead.

Meanwhile, here are the last of the Wiltshire photos.

The two church exteriors are St Margaret of Antioch, Chilmark (top) and St Edward, King of the West Saxons, Teffont Magna.

The latter is a lovely little church. It has fragments of a Saxon cross set into the south wall and it is believed that there has been a place of worship in the village since Saxon times. The present building dates from the 13th century and consists of an all-in-one nave and chancel. The interior is distinguished by Victorian box pews, which according to the guidebook indicate that the church 'could be very cold and the sermons long'. The church's name sounds ancient but interestingly dates back to only 1965. Before that the church had no dedication.

Now, to work.

wiltshire contd

2011-07-15T21:22:00.001+01:00

Loved our walks through the green lanes, along the chalk tracks and through the beautiful villages near Lower Chicksgrove.

Yesterday we had lunch at Howard's House, a very charmingly discrete hotel in Teffont Evias. Discrete because although there is a sign for it on the street this almsot looks as if it belonged to a place that has long-since closed down before becoming a private house. And it feels exactly as if you have the run of someone's private house. An understatedly grand private house, with a beautiful terrace set around a pond--just the place for two ramblers in wellies plus lively fluffy dog.

At the Compasses, one of the times I like best is wandering up the hill to the fields beyond the village after supper. Yesterday this was made special by the full moon. The walk helped me forget the sadness of last week for a time.

wiltshire

2011-07-15T13:32:00.002+01:00

Great to be staying at the Compasses, Lower Chicksgrove, Wiltshire (just north of the River Nadder, above). It's only a short trip away from Oxfordshire but Wilts is such a different county--different stone, different landscape.

Woke this morning at 5 as usual but fell into a deep sleep sometime around 6.30. So nice to catch up on sleep and to get the last few months in some kind of perspective.

Delicious white Côtes du Roussillon with lunch--have only had red before.

(Also above, Teffont Evias--church and manor.)

[Posting these from Oxfordshire--internet connection in Lower Chicksgrove couldn't handle pics.]

weeding, minsters, golden courgette

2011-07-10T21:43:00.000+01:00

I had an enjoyable couple of hours weeding on the allotment.

Focused on the runner beans, which I'd let get horrifically overgrown due to pressures of work keeping me away from the plot.

It's amazing how late the runners are--as indeed are all the veg on the allotment. Compared to Jess' crops in the garden at the cottage, they look so behind. The plot is all Oxford clay, whereas the garden is over gravel and is much, much earlier ground.

It was interesting to see a geological map at a meeting in the village hall a few years ago, that showed where the monasteries in this part of the Thames Valley had been founded during the late Anglo-Saxon period. Bampton church is one of the remaining minster churches. You can still see the Anglo-Saxon stonework in the base of the tower above the crossing. The geological map showed that the monasteries and their settlements were built on small free-draining gravel outcrops in the midst of the Oxford clay.

Harvested first round golden courgette.

wild flowers

2011-07-10T11:09:00.000+01:00

I enjoyed cycling this morning.

The rain is holding off, so I should get some weeding done on the allotment.

The wild flowers, above, were beautiful to see and therapeutic.

Not 100% sure what the yellow flowers are. Lady's bedstraw?

a week of sadness

2011-07-09T18:49:00.030+01:00

It has been a week of sadness.

Three friends died this week.

The catastrophic events that have overtaken my family during the last year came to a head this week.

Although I have great sympathy for the members of my family who are in trouble, I have had serious concerns about what they were doing for over two decades. Thirteen years ago, I wrote an essay explaining what I thought was going wrong. I have described that essay as an act of love. The essay was largely ignored.

As I said to somebody recently, the way that essay was received made me feel like the boy in the story of the emperor's new clothes.

[23.01.12 In the light of recent sad events I have decided to rewrite parts of the above post. I have kept a copy of the original post.]

meadowsweet, willowherb, snail, partidge

2011-07-02T09:32:00.000+01:00

First cycle for a couple of weeks. Missed out last weekend because I was working at the Taylor on Saturday and teaching on Sunday.

Calcroft Lane, aka the gated road, is alive with wild flowers again. Just after where the gates used to be, I came across frothy meadowsweet, water mint and almost-in-flower hemp agrimony, amongst other plants, growing in a shallow stream. A few minutes later, a stand of rosebay willowherb.

I wasn't alone this morning on the bike. The snail is quite well-travelled now.

Before seeing all the plants, a partridge flew up from the verge. I was so excited. In Oxford we never saw partridges and only came across them when we were away walking. I love the delicate flight and this morning noticed how vibrant the orange markings on the bird's fanned tail were.

Then I realised that what I was really thinking about, and could actually taste, was roast partridge. At the Trout at Tadpole, say, by the log-burner, accompanied by a glass of their delicious Fleurie.

I was appalled by my carnivorous nature.

When do they start shooting partridge?

cara spuds and mange tout peas

2011-06-26T21:57:00.000+01:00

Into Oxford early for MSt tutes. Very rewarding.

Then back home to do some gardening.

I had a coffee at Caffe Nero before the tutes--all my usual coffee places being shut at around 8 am on a Sunday. And very nice CN was too. Delicious coffee and a great ambience.

Oxford was so quiet at that time.

It was also quite cool. I was not prepared for the wall of heat that hit me when I left Rewley House after my second tute.

Back home, I mowed the lawn then watered the allotment, before lifting our first potatoes. Two roots of Cara. Smallish spuds but a better size, and more numerous, than I was expecting.

Jess harvested her first mange touts in the garden at the cottage too.

radcliffe infirmary

2011-06-24T18:04:00.000+01:00

This morning, as I walked from the Latin American Centre towards St Giles, it looked as if someone had done a Christo on the Radcliffe Infirmary--Christo himself, perhaps?

Prosaically, it seems the wrapping is merely the latest phase of Oxford University's project to restore the 1770 building before it becomes home to the Humanities Divisional Office, two Bodleian Libraries' collections and a Faculty in 2012 (see the project website and live webcam).

It will be interesting to see the building when the wrapping is taken off.

By the time I moved to Oxford the Infirmary had ceased to be the city's main hospital--the new JR having opened in 1979--though I do remember being brought to the Infirmary from Stowe after breaking my arm during a judo competition. For some reason I'd decided not to wait for the minibus to take me back to the school after the competition, having retired early, and walked the two or three miles home. The arm didn't hurt that much until the evening. I didn't sleep a wink in the sick-room that night.

rickety press, jericho

2011-06-22T19:31:00.001+01:00

This morning, I was pleased to see that what used to be the Radcliffe Arms in Jericho is reopening as an Arkells' pub called the Rickety Press (where did that name come from!).

The Radcliffe closed some time ago and I feared the premises would end up residential.

Not that I'd been in the Radcliffe for a while--the Harcourt Arms a couple of hundred yards away had become our Jericho pub--but I have happy memories of going there in the 80s, when working on the Moving Mystery Theatre project for Oxford Drama Programmes. In fact most of my salary for that project (which I business managed) got spent in the Radcliffe (on food as well!).

I also remember a really warm chat in the front bar with Jackie C the morning after Rob Russell's stag night.

bl, aclaiir, jack c, spitfire, sausage & mash

2011-06-20T23:25:00.001+01:00

London is wet and on the X90 it's sweltering.

Had a great day at the ACLAIIR AGM at the British Library, though. Everyone was so welcoming and the talks were really interesting. The only disappointment was getting to the BL after the library tour had started. Just how early do you have to get up to make King's Cross by 9:30 am? Earlier than 4.30, obviously.

Realised, as the coach reached the city, that I haven't been to London for a fair few years. Although it's not been quite as long a gap as Jack on the Island meant when he told me in the late 90s that he'd not been to London for a 'year or two, boy'. Turned out his last visit was in 1945 when he was demobbed.

Had a pint of Spitfire and a plate of sausage and mash for supper.

Now, a snooze.

wet morning in bampton, dmug, swindon viewpoint, john grierson, aclaiir

2011-06-18T10:05:00.000+01:00

Enjoyed cycling this morning, despite it being grey after overnight rain. It's been a long week, what with one thing and another.

The rain started in west Oxfordshire on Thursday and has kept going off and on ever since. Right on cue for the ripening barley. It said on Radio 4's Farming Today this morning that we might see the worst harvest for thirty years after the drought and now the untimely downpours. I have to say the crops do look sick, even when they're turning and should be at their best.

Had the bright idea of filming as I cycled back through the village--blame it on the Digital Media Users Group meeting I attended yesterday. This was the second meeting and both it and the first were excellent. The group is a low-key but really inspiring initiative. One of yesterday's speakers was a colleague who produced the terrific website for the Bodleian Libraries' Shelley's Ghost exhibition.

Years ago I did a Super 8 course at Swindon college of further education and some camera work for Swindon Viewpoint community TV, and I still love the idea of playing around with film. I wrote a script for Swindon Viewpoint based at four locations: the church in Cirencester, the market in the main street, the Crown pub and the bingo hall. It was about commerce and booze and how the church remained serene but empty. It was supposed to be a homage to the documentary film maker John Grierson, whose work I'd got into at a retrospective at the Nation Film Theatre. Sadly--or perhaps fortunately, for the channel's subscribers--the film was never made. When I turned up to discuss the shooting schedule, the guys were packing up. The channel had fallen victim to Mrs T's cuts. Axed overnight.

Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to attending my first ACLAIIR AGM next week at the BL (Advisory Council on Latin American and Iberian Information Resources). Early start, though. Help.

I was feeling refreshed and reasonably fit when I got home after cycling--until I listened to the soundtrack on the video. Talk about last gasp ;-)

oxford canal bridge, nag's head, yaffling

2011-06-14T19:24:00.000+01:00

Walked along the Oxford canal this morning from North Oxford (the excellently named Elizabeth Jennings Way) to the very end, opposite the pub that I always think of as the Nag's Head. A favourite pub when I first moved out of Keble to the flat on Osney Island.

The bridge in the photo is the last before the final arm of the canal. It curves over the narrow lock that leads into the system of Thames streams that flow on past Fisher Row, the old brewery and the castle, before rejoining the river.

The bridge featured in my first novel The Lock and is also opposite Worcester College cricket ground--the only one in Oxford inside a college boundary. Happy memories of playing in Simon Hiscock's team; of hearing a woodpecker yaffling in the late afternoon; of drinking beer into the evening on the pavilion verandah. (I have to say that I was more there for the yaffling and beer rather than being an asset to the team.)

hogweed and hemlock?

2011-06-11T10:26:00.003+01:00

Went cycling early because I've got a fair amount of work to get through today--until 4 pm, that is, when we'll head down the pub. Where else?

We've had some rain over the last couple of days, which is helping the garden and the allotment to pick up. I dare say the field crops will benefit, although I suspect they need far more rain than we are likely to get, if the yields are to be any good.

Many of the hedgerow plants have gone over and the countryside looks a uniform unhealthy-seeming green, increasingly pocked with burnt up patches. Only a few poppies add colour. Apart that is from hogweed and other members of the carrot family. These are doing quite well, as ever. I love the pinky-tinged top to some of the hogweed umbels and the way these flower heads unpack themselves--first two pics above. I think the photos really do show hogweed, although it is so difficult to tell with this family of plants. If someone knows better, let me know. And is the last pic hemlock? I thought so. Whatever the plant is, though, it's excelled itself. Nine foot tall, on a patch of waste ground just below Cowleaze Corner as you head towards the village from Clanfield.

a book for all and none

2011-06-08T21:19:00.001+01:00

Finished my online teaching in the Upper Reading Room of the Bodleian at 6.30 and headed for a pint at the Turf. Pub packed with joyous finalists.

Then on to Blackwell and the launch of my colleague (that should read boss) Clare Morgan's first novel, A Book for All and None.

I've not seen that many people at Blackwell for a launch for a long while. A great evening catching up with old friends and meeting new people, and listening to Clare's reading. That included that very long sentence that nevertheless hangs together and makes perfect sense. Nicely read.

A why-didn't-I-think-of-that book, I have to say.

Now on the bus home. Bright, frosty-looking sky to the west. Frost in mid-June? That's what they say, come Friday morning.

whitsun bank holiday morris dancing, bampton

2011-06-04T09:42:00.000+01:00

Here's a short video of some Morris dancing in Bampton square last Monday.

It was edited in-camera (or should that be, in-phone) and the sound's a bit jumpy. Still, it gives you a glimpse of the day's festivities. The heavy rain had stopped at this point--about 5.30 in the afternoon.

folk, morris, fertility cake

2011-06-01T23:08:00.000+01:00

Didn't go out on Saturday for the late sessions--too tired.

Made it to see some music on Sunday night, though, and enjoyed the Morris dancing on Monday Bank Holiday.

Loved the way the Morris dancers kept going despite the rain, while spectators huddled under umbrellas and nibbled barbecue food. (And downed the odd glass, I dare say.)

It was great to catch up with old friends and have a couple of days off in the village.

Nibbled some crumbs of fertility cake at one gathering. The elderly baker of this cake suggested it was land that would benefit from the eating, not the eater of the cake. So, the allotment will be springing to life.

shirt race, not, courgettes and cucumbers, peonies and the garden

2011-05-29T21:22:00.001+01:00

The Bampton Morris dancing and folk weekend is in full swing. Sadly, though, I fell asleep and missed the Shirt Race, so no pics of the Downton Abbey rig that Keith on the allotments told me about. Ah well.

Hoping to stay awake for a bit of folk music down the pubs this evening.

Meanwhile, planted out cucumber and courgette seedlings on the allotment this afternoon. I forked through the places where I was going to plant them to a fork's depth and made dishes in the soil so the seedlings were below the surface and protected from the wind. The wind is relentless and has sucked nearly all the moisture out of the ground since the rains on Thursday.

I'm sad to say that usually I struggle to cultivate the plot because my times up there are limited to when I have gaps in my work schedule and usually when I'm free it's raining. As a result I'm usually still battling away by now. This year, getting up on the allotment has been no problem, what with all the dry weather. So, usually, it's chaos but productive chaos. This year it's a well-tended desert.

Here are some pics of Jess' garden instead.

rose fall, morris, folk and woodstock

2011-05-25T22:35:00.000+01:00

The winds have died down but not before a rose and catoneaster half-collapsed at the far end of the garden. Fighting your way under the rose when trying to get to the shed is entertaining--and painful if you misjudge things.

The coming weekend sees the annual Morris dancing and folk music festival in Bampton. As always I'm looking forward to hearing the musicians in the pubs on Saturday and Sunday nights. Oh, and there'll be the Great Original Shirt Race on Saturday evening.

Took the above photo in Woodstock yesterday.

strong winds, lime tree

2011-05-22T15:01:00.000+01:00

It was hard work cycling this morning. Strongest winds for a few years. I got blown back, though, which was nice. Record time between Clanfield and Bampton, pedalling furiously in 21st gear. Scary at times.

I've been watching the lime at the end of our garden as it gets blown about. Rather beautiful. Video shows it in some middlingly strong gusts.

brewery gate, st thomas'

2011-05-20T22:31:00.003+01:00

I was sad to see the old Brewery Gate pub boarded up when walking through St Thomas' in Oxford earlier in the week. From the for sale sign it looks as if it is being sold for development--residential, most likely.

The sale marks the end of the Morrell's Brewery story for me. When I first moved to Osney Island, a little further to the west of St Thomas', the brewery was still working and the smell of the malt wafting across Park End and Hythe Bridge Streets was always a delight when heading into town to the libraries on brewing days. The Brewery Gate was, as its name suggests, by the Morrell's gate, with its elaborate iron arch, and was the brewery pub.

For a time in the nineties we used to walk over there on Saturday nights for a pint or two quite often and it was always a place we visited every now and then during all the fourteen years we lived on the Island.

I can remember one afternoon years ago when I'd submitted a review for a paper and I went to the Gate for a drink to celebrate. I sat in a corner, enjoyed the bitter and read a few Llewellyn Powys stories from a first edition I'd bought.

The last time I visited was to attend a meeting about the Oxford fringe festival. The pub was different from what I remembered--dark and crowded with people speaking over a wining mike and stand-up going on in a corner. Fun, though.

It's strange to think that for much of the time we were on Osney, St Thomas' had virtually no residential property and yet the pub still seemed to do a good trade. Now all the old offices and businesses--even the brewery itself--have been redeveloped as flats. The area is teaming with people, yet the pub shuts down.

I remember doing some research into the plans for redeveloping St Thomas' at the county library yonks ago. Places like Fisher Row had been condemned and the families moved out to estates on the edge of town during the mid-1950s but then the scheme had ground to a halt for almost fifty years while the council, I suppose, resolved various issues. I'm not sure what the sticking point was but what surprised me was that the council drew up the original plans for condemning the houses and redeveloping the area during the Second World War. So odd to think of all those urban renewal debates and all that town planning going on while the bombs fell on less fortunate cities.

I remember talking to my friend Bill who used to deliver the papers on Osney about what it was like growing up on Fisher Row during the forties and fifties. He told me about how he and the other children had eagerly awaited the baker putting out the big jam tins after he'd filled cakes and doughnuts. The baker would always leave some jam for the kids as a treat. Bill loved it there, I think.

parched

2011-05-15T19:57:00.000+01:00

Ridged up spuds on allotment yesterday and put up runner bean wigwams today. No sign of seeds I sowed three weeks ago coming through. Ground warm but as dry anything. Still, tilled earth looks nice--apart from bindweed, which I pulled this afternoon. Fistfuls.

Enjoyed cycling this morning. The meadows along the Great Brook from the Isle of Wight bridge, though, are parched now. The water level in the Great Brook is low, as it is in the strange semi-circular 'moat' at the far end of the first field up from the bridge. Compare this view with that of a few weeks ago and at the start of the year.

rain, barley, allotment, carbon

2011-05-08T17:23:00.000+01:00

I didn't think the scud on Friday night that forced us into the Horse Shoe from the beer garden would come to anything. It seemed to have passed by the time the pint of IPA had been drunk and we were on our way home. It was a pleasant surprise to be woken by a downpour in the middle of the night that continued off and on well into Saturday. More rain last night too.

I can't remember when it last rained. Tufty certainly seemed bemused by it. He'd forgotten how much he enjoys splashing about in it and hid in the bedroom when Jess wanted to take him for a walk.

Rain is great for the garden and really helped the spuds grow beyond the vicious frost mid-week that burnt their leaves.

Beautiful cloudy skies, although the rain and the high winds that accompanied it have taken much of the blossom from the trees and the countryside is suddenly early-June green. Loved the barley, trees and big sky in the pic above, when I was cycling along the gated road this morning.

Had a good hour or so on the allotment after a late breakfast. Another hour and the ground will all have been prepared. The rain has cheered up not just spuds but last year's chard and this year's shallots and onions. Hopefully the seeds I planted ten days ago will be through soon too.

Downloaded what Nokia described as a recommended software upgrade yesterday. As promised new phone features duly appeared. What disappeared though was the pre-loaded carbon black background I like. Had to go to the Ovi store and pay £3 to get it back. Nice work Nokia.

honeysuckle, ed sheeran, candidate23, tracy chapman

2011-05-01T22:26:00.000+01:00

Wild honeysuckle out along Calcroft Lane (the gated road). This is too early! You'd expect to see it in June or July, surely.

Still, it is very beautiful.

Made our way to the Victoria at Eastleach Turville in deepest south Cotswolds earlier--excellent Arkell's Royal Wedding.

A couple of music recommendations: Ed Sheeran--album coming out in September--and the young band Candidate23.

Also, phenomenal that Tracy Chapman's in the charts again.

bluebells, wild chervil and may, benjamin and iris, beryl and georgie

2011-04-30T13:19:00.000+01:00

Only a short working week but I felt I really needed to get out on the bike this morning.

Saw this lovely patch of bluebells on the verge towards Black Bourton--framed by wild chervil (Cow Parsley) and may blossom. Is it my imagination or are the verges round Bampton richer in wild flowers than they used to be? I remember going to an Arvon writers retreat in deepest Devon at Totleigh Barton not long after we'd moved to Bampton. The Devon verges were stuffed with wild flowers and I thought, Why aren't ours like that?

There's a theory that long-dormant wild flower seeds will come back once the council and the farmers stop spraying insecticides and herbicides so much. Maybe it's true.

Read an interesting article in the Times today about depression by the psychotherapist Benjamin Fry. When he himself suffered depression after a financial crisis, Fry found that not only his own expertise but that of fellow professionals was of no help. I was struck by these lines, 'I tried another expensive psychiatrist, a leader in his field. He thought that I woke up early because in the Stone Age my weakness would have required me to get up before other predators to find easy kills. I began to realise that no one knew anything, yet everyone had an opinion.' [My italics.] That sentence in italics reminded me of the conclusion one reaches at the end of Iris Murdoch's A Fairly Honourable Defeat. When somebody we know goes through a crisis, so many of us--me included--have an opinion but often don't really work hard enough at thinking about what is really appropriate for the person. For Fry, real help was found at the Mellody House clinic in Arizona.

Was pleased that Master Georgie won the Best of Beryl Booker. Voted for this title myself. Not just because some of my words used to appear on the back cover (maybe still do) but because it is such a fine novel. (I posted my Evening Standard review of the book to justthoughtsnstuff.com last year, when Dame Beryl Bainbridge died.)

I had to go to work yesterday, so missed the wedding. Did check out the balcony scene later online, though (the best bit?). I was surprised by how little interest there seemed to be in celebrating in Oxford, Witney and Bampton.

happy easter, downton, kelmscott picnic, invisible

2011-04-24T11:39:00.001+01:00

justthoughtsnstuff.com is the blog of novelist Frank Egerton. www.frankegerton.com

Happy Easter!

Bampton continues to enjoy amazingly sunny weather. The last couple of nights, after midnight, I've sat out on our tiny patio and read in the light from the kitchen window, every now and then sipping wine or gazing at the stars. I can't ever remember an April like this.

We had a great picnic on the banks of the Thames just below William Morris' manor at Kelmscott on Good Friday. Not far, in fact, from where the two main characters in Invisible picnic and argue. Fortunately, life didn't imitate fiction.

Meanwhile, the Downton Abbey sets have been packed up for a bit and the wonderful red charabanc--seen from the churchyard above--has been loaded onto its artic and driven home.

Enjoy today--and the bank holiday, if you're in the UK!

downton abbey, the wall, mr whicher

2011-04-20T16:13:00.000+01:00

justthoughtsnstuff.com is the blog of novelist Frank Egerton. www.frankegerton.com

Well, the Downton Abbey filming is over for the time being.

This time a beautiful red charabanc was unloaded from the back of an artic--the series being fascinating not just for its stars and plot but for its vehicles and set decoration.

One major event that got people in Bampton wondering recently was the collapse of a substantial section of stone wall. Sadly it fell on top of our friends' car and caused a lot of damage but I have to confess that my next thought after being concerned for our friends was what were the film-makers going to do now. What the film-makers did appears in one the photos above, though one wouldn't have known there had been any problems once the prop was put up.

Amazing to see streets clear of cars, which are usually bumper-to-bumper.

An old man told me once how he could remember when the first car started being parked in our street and how it had been the only one for several years.

Meanwhile, another film shot partly in Bampton, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, goes out on ITV at 9 pm, Easter Monday.

woodstock, blenheim rules, shifford insect lodge

2011-04-20T00:32:00.005+01:00

Stayed in Woodstock last night. Had supper at a pub that was an intriguing mix of traditional English and downtown midwest USA.

Tried to get into Blenheim grounds this morning to do walk we did years ago. But when Jess showed her RHS card she was told that 'Blenheim rules' mean that only the RHS member can enter the grounds for free. The second person has to pay over £11.

Decided to return to Bampton and have a drink in the garden at the Trout at Tadpole, then walk to Shifford lock. Not before, though, calling in at the Woodstock Bookshop (http://www.woodstockbookshop.co.uk) to ask if they would be interested in stocking Invisible. Rachel Phipps said yes, which is great!

On the way to the bookshop we passed Brotherton's, where I used to work as barman back in the 80s.

Along the Thames path to Shifford, we saw a swallow, some reed buntings and a cormorant, and heard some reed warblers. Loved the bulrushes above and the fascinating insect lodge at Shifford lock.

Extraordinarily hot today--certainly didn't feel like April.

A terrific day--though spoilt at various times by the never-ending family problems.

Some behind-the-scenes photos of Downton Abbey filming tomorrow.

cowslips

2011-04-17T13:40:00.001+01:00

I mentioned in a post last year that I have a memory of lying in a watermeadow on Tynings Farm when I was a boy and staring into the cowslips that grew so thickly across the whole field. (I also remember watching people skating on the same field after the floods froze over one winter.)

You so rarely see wild cowslips in any great number nowadays but today when I was cycling I came across a broad verge with a fair number of them growing on it. Lovely to see!

yellow, green, blue

2011-04-15T07:48:00.000+01:00

Not into work till 10.30 this morning, so went cycling.

Took these pics along Calcroft Lane, aka the gated road (only the gates fell to bits ages ago).

The Thames floodplain is so wide round Bampton. Reminds me of the landscapes in those Hungarian films with unpronouncable names I used to watch at the NFT back in the late 70s.

sunrise, keble, downton

2011-04-13T20:20:00.000+01:00

justthoughtsnstuff.com is the blog of novelist Frank Egerton. www.frankegerton.com

Brilliant sky over the end of the garden this morning as I was sipping my tea.

Not long to go now before I get some days off--yippee. Feeling like I need a break.

Had a lovely lunch at Keble during which I talked newsletters, which was fascinating. Loved being in the fellows dining-room for, I think, the first time since the finalists' supper back in '88.

Strange things have been happening south of the church in Bampton today. A postbox has replaced the dog-poo bin by the library. This can only mean one thing: filming of Downton Abbey Series Two is about to kick off.

st frideswide's square

2011-04-12T20:17:00.002+01:00

On the bus on the way home.

Went to colleague's leaving do at the Divinity School, which was fun. Good luck, Jayne! Lovely to see, amongst other old friends, Helen, who used to work at the Bod and who we knew when we lived on Osney.

Also went to a former diploma student's book launch in north Oxford. Look out for The Partridge and the Pelican by Rachel Crowther, Hookline Books, ISBN 9780956517791.

Hoped to hear Rachel read but had to leave before she had time to do so--too busy signing books. Can't be bad!

Beautiful sunset over St Frideswide's Square and the Said Business School when I started typing. Slightly melancholy in a chilly-tingly sort of way, it has to be said.

Now going through Eynsham listening to Zane Lowe's album of the week from Fleet Foxes. Gorgeous music.

oxford lit fest, a book for all and none, sheep

2011-04-10T17:20:00.001+01:00

Went to the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival yesterday to hear my MSt in Creative Writing boss, Clare Morgan, talk about her forthcoming novel, A Book for All and None (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, ISBN 978-0-297-86373-1).

She was appearing with Catherine Hall and Simon Lelic and the event was chaired by Rachel Hore.
An enjoyable hour of readings and discussions about writing, editing, writing about historical figures and the importance of a sense of place in fiction.

Getting to the event meant a lot of running in sweltering heat. The Park & Ride bus dropped me in a completely different place to where I'd been expecting, with only minutes to go before the event started. When did they change the route!

Bought a copy of Clare's book, which has its official launch in June.

First lie-in for a few weeks this morning. Cycle before late breakfast. Liked bucolic scene by moat-looking thing down by Tadpole Bridge, which I photographed last on what felt like the first day of spring at the start of the year.

dibber, spuds, eucalyptus and what the butler saw

2011-04-09T17:27:00.000+01:00

It's that time of year again.

Went up to allotment early, dug the last bit of spud ground and planted eleven rows.

Cara, Charlotte, Estima and Kestrel.

The sunny weather has been a gift as far as preparing the soil has been concerned. Plus not having to concentrate on Writers in Oxford literary festival things has meant I can get on with digging in late March/early April for the first time in, what, seven years?

Funnily enough we met up with our friends Carol and Steve last night--it was Carol who gave us the brilliant potato dibber in the photos. It belonged to her dad.

We shared a table with them at a rehearsed reading of Joe Orton's play What the Butler Saw at the village hall. Such a wacky play. And very nicely done--produced by neighbour Trevor Milne-Day.

Was intrigued by how strongly the shadow of the eucalyptus came out in the more general photo.

sedge

2011-04-06T08:52:00.000+01:00

Hottest day of the year coming up--so they say.

Lovely walk along the Oxford canal this morning, certainly.

Can't help thinking sedge is a much neglected plant.

Meanwhile sipping espresso (single) before work at the Woodstock Road Deli. Delicious.

embers, flames, mist, osr, tadpoles and julie

2011-04-03T09:27:00.001+01:00

I love it when you come downstairs on some mornings and the logs in the fireplace look dead but when you start sweeping the grate you realise there are still embers and once you've pushed the logs together you soon have a fire that takes the chill off the room.

Not that it felt particularly chilly in the house or garden this morning. It was only when I was cycling away from the village that it was cold. Out in the lanes it was near freezing and the air nipped at my thumbs. There was a mist too hovering above the fields, including the one above. Oilseed rape just coming into flower.

Tadpoles in our pond btw.

Meanwhile over breakfast I read a lovely review of When the Children Came Home in the Sunday Times, the new oral history book by my friend and predecessor as chair of Writers in Oxford, Julie Summers.

sunrise over bampton

2011-04-02T08:37:00.001+01:00

Up early. Still surprised by how dark it is when I set off cycling at 6 since the clocks went forward. Extra evening light is great, though.

Was returning to Bampton just as the sun rose behind the church--its spire a tiny needle in the pic above.

More assignments to go through today.

Earlier in the week I went to the leaving do for my boss at the Taylor. Sad she's leaving--I owe her a lot--but what a terrific party! So nice to catch up with old friends and drink wine in beautiful neo-classical surroundings.

dawn chorus, barn owl, 192, kingcups

2011-03-27T10:47:00.000+01:00

Up early this morning because there were assignments to go through.

Went out onto the lawn with a cup of tea to enjoy the twilight. Only to be deafened by the dawn chorus. Retreated to tranquillity of kitchen.

But not before being stunned into complete immobility by the sight of a barn owl perched on our neighbour's fence. Then a particularly loud-voiced sparrow struck up and the owl morphed into a fluffy body and a very feline profile with pointy ears scowling to the left. Can't win em all.

Talking of double-takes, I was surprised to see in one entry on 192.com that the people who sold us the house ten years ago are still here, living with us. I wonder where they are.

After the owl-cat incident I cycled for an hour, coming back along the gated road, where these two pics were taken.

I was especially excited to see the kingcups, which cheered an otherwise fetid-looking ditch, whose surface was stirred by disturbing bubbly burps as I approached.

fog, thames and time off

2011-03-25T17:25:00.001Z

Love this weather. Such a surprise.

Had to be in Oxford for 8 am MSt meeting this morning, so drove rather than bussed it. Stopped to take a couple of pics from Tadpole Bridge looking east along the Thames into the fog and sun.

By the time I crossed the Thames again--on foot over Osney Bridge--the fog had lifted and the city was hotting up.

Great to have afternoon off yesterday and today. I say 'off' but there have been masses of catch-up things to do. Fun, though. Off to dig on allotment shortly.

kelmscott spring walk

2011-03-20T22:27:00.000Z

Did the Kelmscott circular walk this afternoon--the one that takes you by the Thames to Buscot Lock and back along the Lechlade road. The last time we did it was during the snows in between Christmas and New Year (see post, Tuesday 28th December 2010).

This time, the sun was shining and the land was fresh and new. The banks of the Thames between to boatyard, above, and the lock are lined with reeds.

Sat out in the garden at the Plough. Good pint of Lechlade Thames Tickler.

bampton moon

2011-03-18T22:36:00.000Z

By-the-by a beautiful nearly full moon this evening.

west hanney

2011-03-18T21:48:00.004Z

Long lie-in. Such a treat on a Friday.

Had a Times Eat Out for £5 lunch at the Plough, West Hanney--a great little pub in a beautiful village. Now in Oxfordshire but before the boundary changes in the 1970s in West Berkshire. Definitely has a West Berks feel--red brick, thatch, dark beamed bar. Delicious lightly malty Vale Brewery Best on handpump.

Lovely walk after lunch, which we first did in late summer last year. Much more stark this time, walking south of the village: a deep field of spring corn, a brake of skeletal trees and the Ridgeway beyond.

The return journey is by a green lane, fallen burdock along its route, fresh grass growing up, a clump of wild-ish daffodils.

bloomin spring

2011-03-15T08:34:00.001Z

It's a change not to be reading students' work on the bus to Oxford. I have time to look at the spring landscape.

At Standlake, the meadows by the river Windrush have a fine mist over them, which makes the grass seem even more green than in the sun.

Beyond Northmoor, looking towards the Thames, the mist has turned to fog and the escarpment below Appleton is hidden.

Although much of this year has been dry and not too cold the memory of the snows round Christmas lasts and it seems a relief to feel the days getting warmer. It feels like it's been a long winter. Not one that has left me feeling depleted, as some do, but as if I have been in a state of walking hibernation.

Yesterday lunchtime, I had to drop a letter off at Stanford and went via Queen's Lane. As I rounded one of the sharp bends I suddenly realised that the air above me was alive with buzzing. Masses of tiny bees hovered round the buds of one of the New College trees.

Returning along the High Street, I was excited to see the cherry outside St Mary's, the University Church in flower. I missed it last year. This time it seems earlier than usual.

Meanwhile, in Bampton the daffs that ring the bases of the line of limes in our street are out.

early bike ride, bampton church

2011-02-27T09:34:00.000Z

Went cycling at 6 this morning--needed to be out early because I've lots of work to do today. Up to 4 pm anyway, when I can relax.

Surprisingly sharp air frost, although it thawed quickly and there was no ice on the frog pond. There are several frogs in the pond btw, which is nice to see after many animals died during the bitter snows over Christmas. Some of the frogs survived in the pond, others are newcomers--frogs are on the move in the gardens at the back of our terrace.

Above is a picture of Bampton's 12th century church, which has been re-roofed over the last two years. The pitches above the choir (nearest end) were still being done when Downton Abbey was filmed and there was a very un-Edwardian-looking plastic canopy over them--see pic from last spring. I can't remember what the film makers did about blocking the canopy out in the film--maybe they slotted in a digital image of that half of the church. I'll have to check our DVD.

Now, at 9 am, it is surprisingly sunny and springlike outside. The weather forecasters seem to have got their predictions wrong.

Over breakfast I read Peter Kemp's review of Justin Cartwright's new novel Other People's Money in the Sunday Times. The novel charts the desperate struggles of crooked financiers and politicians to cover up a failing investment bank. Sounds a great read.

jtns a year on, spring walk

2011-02-25T09:09:00.002Z

Enjoyed strolling along the Oxford canal just now.

There was a warm south-west breeze and as I walked it was as if I slipped spring over my head like a sweater and wore it for a while.

justthoughtsnstuff.com is btw a year old now. Thanks for following!

Don't approve of picking snowdrops but liked the arrangement.

ora

2011-02-17T19:40:00.003Z

A copy of the uncut and unedited version of Invisible is now part of the Oxford University Research Archive (ORA).

If you want to view the file, follow the QR code above on your mobile phone or head for http://tinyurl.com/6ffu598.

The text in the archive is the self-same that I completed on the 24th April 2006. As I wrote the first draft during the preceding years, I edited what I had written each day when I got back home from working as a cataloguer at the Oxford Union Library. The original material would be typed into a Sharp organiser (most of the first draft) or an HTC Vario (the last couple of chapters) while I travelled on the 18 Bampton to Oxford bus.

During 2006/07 I rewrote the whole first draft and eventually decided to cut about 10,000 words--after having discussed the typescript with Keiren Phelan of Arts Council South East and Frank Cottrell Boyce. Although I think cutting was the right choice, it's nice to have the chance to make the uncut version available.

bampton library read-in

2011-02-11T09:51:00.006Z

I was honoured to be asked to take part in the read-in last Saturday at Bampton library, one of 20 that Oxfordshire County Council wants to close.

Supporters gathered in the Market Square before walking along Rosemary Lane to the seventeenth-century building that houses the library and meeting room. The building, along with the neighbouring houses and cottages, featured in the recent TV series Downton Abbey.

Kirsty Young started the event off by expressing wholehearted support for the read-in and saying how much libraries had meant to her when she was a child.

The read-in took place in the library meeting room and people dropped by throughout the morning to listen to the invited authors or to read a favourite poem or a passage from a cherished book. Meanwhile the library itself was open for business. Many books were borrowed and new members signed up.

Kirsty Young began the readings with a children's story and was great with the kids.

The guest writers included local authors Mary Hoffman (a veteran supporter of save-library campaigns), Linda Newbery, Candida Lycett Green, David Wiseman and Spooks writer Richard McBrian.

It was lovely to see Candida Lycett Green. In 2002 I reviewed her wonderful book Over the Hills and Far Away for the TLS. The book combines a celebration of the English countryside with memories of her father and mother, Sir John and Lady Betjeman. Candida wrote the book after making a journey through parts of England on horseback to raise money for a cancer charity--she had not long before been treated for breast cancer.

My readings were a short extract from Invisible about the rural landscape around Bampton and a poem by the Cuban writer and journalist Yndamiro Restano called Prison. Restano was imprisoned in the early 1990s for what he had written. The poem was taken from the anthology Another Sky, which is published in association with English PEN (http://www.englishpen.org), the organisation that campaigns for writers of conscience who are imprisoned or censored around the world.

I wanted to make the point that freedom of speech and an appreciation of how vital books are to our wellbeing, our education and to our culture are supposed to be prized in this country and how incomprehensible it is that libraries are being targeted for closure.

oxford times interview, our book reviews online, oxford writer

2011-01-28T08:58:00.000Z

One or two new pieces have been published about Invisible and StreetBooks over the last fortnight.

Yesterday, the interview I did with Gill Oliver of the Oxford Times came out (http://bit.ly/eSC4ZP) and earlier in the week an interesting review of Invisible appeared on the Our Book Reviews Online website (http://bit.ly/dKrXkc). The piece was entitled Dark Romance, which I liked.

There were also three articles in the January issue of the Oxford Writer (newsletter of Writers in Oxford: http://www.writersinoxford.org) that mentioned Invisible and StreetBooks.

The first, in the Book News and Reviews section, drew attention to the 'beautiful cover' (above), which was designed by my friend Andrew Chapman (also a member of WiO). The piece concluded: 'A story of love, the forging and loosening of relationships and a strong sense of place pervade Invisible and its inner nature has been beautifully caught in Andrew's cover.'

The other two articles--a report on my talk to WiO, Bespoke Publishing, the Way Forward?, and the front page story, Making Our Own Luck--were linked.

In the former, Dennis Hamley wrote:

'Frank looked back eight years, when he was planning his second novel Invisible, and an encounter with an established novelist who told him, "You are a writer. Publishers are publishers."

'Frank strongly disagreed, realising that he wanted to be a writer-publisher, and started the long process of setting up his own small press. So began a long apprenticeship in learning new technology, through visits to the London Book Fair, The Bookseller and papers on the Web...

'Retrenchment by the big publishers has long passed a reasonable level and the number of new ways to find publication, helped by the new technology, has burgeoned.'

As a novelist and a tutor of creative writing I am fascinated by the opportunities that new technologies, such as e-books and print on demand, offer writers.

The lead article in the Oxford Writer drew on my talk and those by other members, including Andrew Chapman and Mary Cavanagh, to start a debate among the membership on the possibility of collective publishing--for both new work and back-list titles.

This debate is timely and one that I shall watch with great interest.

snowdog

2011-01-18T22:27:00.001Z

Bright and beautiful day. Colder too, although it's now hard to remember what it was like when it snowed before Christmas.

As a reminder, here's the dog.

first day of spring

2011-01-12T07:59:00.000Z

First day of spring might be a bit of an exaggeration but last Sunday was the first time I'd felt that spring was in the air since the new year began with the Winter Solstice. (No, I'm not a Pagan but taking the solstice as the end of the old year and beginning of the new does seem good sense. Perhaps I am a Pagan.)

The sunlight on Sunday was just that bit richer than it has been and when you were out of the wind there was real warmth in the sun. Even when you were in the wind there was something not so defeating about the cold.

I went for a long cycle ride down towards the Thames, along the Great Brook (into which all the streams in the valley flow before it reaches the Thames at Shifford Lock) and round to Mount Owen (road, telegraph poles and valley, above).

The photo of the trees and water shows an unusual feature that always looks as if it's the remains of an old moat, although there is nothing to suggest it is on the OS map. I did read, though, in the Victoria County History that the Romans settled close to the Thames and not where the present village stands. Somehow moat and Roman settlements got all mixed together in my imagination and were then stirred into the little story about the Leper's Tower towards the end of Invisible. (The leper bit, incidentally came from a tale about Roche Rock in Cornwall, told to me by a family friend when I was a boy.)

The other photo shows a reed bed that the local thatcher grows. Nowadays relatively few houses in Bampton are thatched but many more used to be in previous centuries. Our little terrace replaced a row of thatched tenements, with earth floors and deep roofs that came down to a low stone wall. The rebuilding took place in the 1880s--late compared to many parts of the country. But then Bampton time does seem different to time in the rest of the world.

espresso, rain, end of first week

2011-01-07T09:08:00.000Z

Nearly the end of the first week back at work. Great to see everybody and talk about the holidays.

But what a morning! The heaviest rain I've seen for ages with these huge puddles along the kerbs, which buses and drivers just thump through. When I walked along St Giles' just now this black Golf screamed down the side lane and soaked three people. Don't get me started.

Meanwhile, in Greens now, sipping a single espresso (the doubles start when the year gets really hectic--next week probably). Jazz-funk in the background, warm atmosphere...

Yeah, this week's been OK.

happy new year!

2010-12-31T19:45:00.000Z

Well, according to our local MP, David Cameron, the road ahead is a tad uncertain. At least the bike's ready, even if I'm not!

Happy New Year!!!

bull

2010-12-28T21:14:00.000Z

Our new friends' house was darker than expected and there was no sound of guests enjoying themselves. But then the door was thick.

We rang the bell, which mercifully didn't work. A tiptoe round the side and a peep in the kitchen confirmed that no party was being held tonight.

Back home, after wandering through the village all dressed up, we looked at the invitation. Yep, tomorrow night. I blame all these bank holidays. No idea what day of the week it is.

Meanwhile, in response to a request, here is the bull.

Hoping for my first bike ride in ages tomorrow.

kelmscott

2010-12-28T19:03:00.000Z

An enjoyable late walk to the west of Kelmscott--starting and ending at the Plough; passing the manor; turning onto the Thames path; heading to Eaton weir (no sign of the old flash weir that used to be there up to the 1930s, nor of the inn that was destroyed by fire--'in tragic circumstances' according to the National Trail Guide--just some rather picturesque moorings and a warehouse); then to Buscot lock; up to the Lechlade road and back to Kelmscott for a pint of Marston spiced ale.

The light was fading, even at 3 pm, and there was a mist from the melting snow--this was yesterday. The snow, though, was still very much there, in contrast to today, when, in Bampton at least, all but the deeper traces have gone.

The roads to Kelmscott hadn't been salted and were treacherous despite winter tyres. These tyres are especially good when it's icy but the slush seems to clog them and they slip a bit. There was one abandoned car with its bonnet smashed in and at the pub people talked about other accidents over Christmas.

William Morris' manor was all shut up. I tried to take a photo over the wall but all I got were shrubs with one or two glimpses of the building behind. In the paddock before you got to the manor there was giant bull--red Devon, perhaps. It seemed placid enough.

It was when the Downton Abbey filming started that I last posted a photo of the Plough. That was over six months ago and it was spring. In a way it seems a lifetime away because it was then that I was phoned about family problems that I'd no inkling of before then. Over the summer and into autumn the news got worse and worse--unbelievably so. There was a flare-up over Christmas, as is always said to be the way at this time of year. Some people are their own worst enemies--and I suppose one will never change them, no matter how much one hopes they might change. So sad to think of someone so wilfully isolated and destructive.

Now off to drinks at a house we've always wanted to see inside. How nosy!

shifford walk

2010-12-27T00:42:00.000Z

Surprisingly chipper today after long, long Christmas day.

Went to Morris Clown at lunchtime yesterday, which was, as usual, great.

Today, the temperature didn't get above freezing, although we had a wonderful walk from Tadpole Bridge to the weir to the south of Shifford Lock.

Just after the bridge (above), half-way along, we met a friend and watched a barn owl working Chimney Meadows nature reserve.

A feature of the nature reserve--and other stretches of the Thames hereabouts (frozen over in parts, incidentally)--are the World War II pillboxes. These seem so out of place now--brutal concrete polygons with mean gun-slits--but there must have been a strategic reason for them years ago.

After the walk we had a pint at the Trout at Tadpole, a pub which was immortalised by the brilliant travel writer and illustrator, Robert Gibbings. I think he would still recognise the place, though some walls have been knocked out and the intimacy he describes has gone.

Later, at home, we watched more of Downton Abbey--so gripping! It's amazing but my blog got masses of hits during the broadcast of the series, because of one or two of my photos, but I've not seen the programme because we don't have a TV. Terrific to catch up. The village streets seem really spacious--no cars parked in them.

end of the cold war, humanism, friends, happy christmas

2010-12-24T22:12:00.000Z

We went on a lovely walk this afternoon in the snow.

There are a lot of green lanes near the village and it's easy to imagine you're catching glimpses of how the landscape looked in previous centuries.

There is also what remains of RAF Bampton Castle--shown in two of the above pics. Now the buildings have been turned into business units and only a couple of the installation's steel towers are left. But when we moved here ten years ago, the place was still a cold war listening station. There were armed sentries, giant pylons and porcupine fields bristling with rows of little masts. Then it was decommissioned, over night it seemed like, and diggers worked late into the evening, eerily clandestine, dismantling everything.

On the way home this afternoon, we called in at the Morris Clown and saw friends, which was lovely. Excellent Christmas Bonus on handpump too.

At home, listening to the radio, I heard a news item about the Pope's broadcast on the Today programme earlier, which I missed. David Starkey was on talking about the Rationalist Association.

I have to say that I have a lot of time for the RA and its magazine The New Humanist. I first came across it--and its fellow Humanist publication, The Freethinker--amongst the piles of magazines in the graduate common room at the Bodleian in the early nineties. Someone, I don't know who, used to put them out for people. Reading them was a life-changing event. Magazines that contained articles written from a point of view that I'd felt but not been able to express myself.

At the same time as I discovered these mags, my parents moved to a cottage not far away from my old junior school in Gloucestershire. I walked sometimes beyond the Roman Camp to the church above the school. Years before I'd played Joseph in the nativity play to Sally M's Mary. Sally's dad was Egyptian and she was dark and very pretty. She was kind too and I was in love with her, of course. I remember the evening light in the church one time in the nineties and how magical it seemed. It put me in touch with the poetry of religion and how I'd felt about it as a child.

For a time, in the nineties, there was a Humanist programme at Westminster College, Oxford, and I considered applying to do a masters in the subject. I explained that I saw myself as a Christian Humanist and the people running the programme seemed to be interested in what I wanted to research.

Despite thinking of myself as a Humanist, the Christian part mentioned above remains important to me, because, I suppose that was the tradition I was brought up with. During the difficult family times during the nineteen-nineties I prayed. And recently, when old sadnesses have resurfaced, I sometimes stop at St Barnabas on my walk into work and pray--often using a Catholic prayer book, which I bought years ago at Worth Abbey when I was visiting a friend who was part of the lay community.

Are, I wonder, my religious-humanist views confused, post-modern, dilettante or just muddled-normal?

Well, tonight, rather than midnight mass, it's off to the Horse Shoe for the bawdy christo-pagan mummers play. The Bampton mummers have been performing the same play--with topical additions--since the mid-nineteenth century. It's great!

Later, by the fire at home, I'll think of friends and wish them a very happy Christmas.

holiday

2010-12-22T17:31:00.000Z

Yesterday I finished pretty much all the work I had to do before the Christmas and New Year holiday. It took less time than I expected and it was great to start the break early.

This morning I had a lie-in till 6.30 before walking round the village once it got light (see pics above). It was so strange not having to think about work. Also, I haven't done the walk I did for so long--maybe a year? Awesome.

One of the things I want to do this holiday is read--read for fun. A book I picked out was The White Peacock by DH Lawrence, which I read in about 1980, then sometime in the 90s. It feels about the right time to look at it again. It was really strange but I did notice a lot of new bits when I tried the first chapter. It was as if I'd never read it before in my life. Uh-oh. Ageing process not going quite according to plan...

Meanwhile, headed for Oxford earlier to do Christmas shopping. Roads so much better. Oxford relatively quiet, I would say.