saturday

On allotment early this morning, cleaning ground for courgettes and late sowings of carrots, turnips and swede. THE best time to be out and about today. A cool breeze to begin with that had dropped by 8 am when I headed back.

Worked this morning and early afternoon before driving to Plough at Kelmscott. Love that pub and village--an exquisite middle-of-nowhere Thames valley place (with Wm Morris, Burden, Rossetti associations--wild).

Then home for late lunch in garden. (Pics above may not have displayed in order--the perils of posting from phone.)

Coolest place here is the shed. Amongst other things, the potato store. This year we've had home-grown spuds for 365 days. I collected the last of the 2009 harvest this morning from their hessian sack and tomorrow we'll lift the first of the 2010.

Steak supper later. Will maybe listen to Florence + the Machine after. Facebook friend posted about seeing F + t M and Stranglers at Glastonbury today. Envy!

syd, flag n things

18th June

Every so often--once a year, say--I have this urge to listen to Pink Floyd's Piper at the Gates of Dawn. This morning was one of those times.

Outside the bus windows the morning was bright enough to make you feel light and the west Oxfordshire countryside was on the cusp of wild beauty and rampant out of control wilderness.

The HTC was set to shuffle and I hit Astronomy, which was fine--good guitar vibes--as was the next. But then Syd Barrett's Matilda Mother kicked off and, yikes, the weirdness started.

There's a moment in Invisible when Sarah says something like she feels that someone's scratching their fingernails across her mind. Well, Syd's lyrics and the throbbing headache music felt like that.

I remember seeing a photo of Syd taken just before he died. A mild-looking late middle-aged man on a bicycle. The bike had a wicker basket, if memory serves. He had a woolly scarf and gloves. Long gone were the brainstorms and acid-induced ideas. But their legacy sure lives on.

Why do I return to those tracks? Well, sometimes--every three years, perhaps--you can find yourself in a relaxed-enough oh-that's-just-Syd-being-Syd mood to really enjoy a run of them. That's the craic. That's the high the mind craves (Steady!). As screwed a yearning as Syd's for the stuff that blighted his life. But safer, thankfully.

Continued, 19th June

Phew! Oxford term's almost over and it's left me drained but reasonably content. The reasonably refers to my self-doubts and wish that I could've done better. The students I've worked with have been great, putting in admirable amounts of effort.

Not that summer is going to be a breeze but I'm hoping to have a bit more time to tackle the weeds on the allotment, plant some cucumber seedlings and so on. If I can remember where the allotment is.

I've also got to do some more work on the StreetBooks edition of Invisible, which is due out on Thursday 2nd September. Btw the Anchor Book Club discussion of Invisible has been rearranged, by mutual consent, for Monday 13th September.

Meanwhile, on a Latin American theme, I was really pleased that the editor of Outline, the Bodleian newsletter, decided to publish both my pieces--one on the visit to the Bod of Marcelo Ebrard, Mayor of Mexico City (front page), the other about the donation of 19th century Colombian newspapers to the Bodleian by Dr Alvaro Holguin, grandson of President Carlos Holguin (the papers formed part of his private collection).

Btw went to the Latin American Centre summer party last night. Fantastic live music from the students! Thanks to Elvira and David for organising the evening!

Which is about it for the mo. Apart from saying that I took the pic of the yellow flag yesterday opposite where Lucy's iron foundry used to be in Jericho.

end of weekend

Well, I saw the steam engines going to wherever and I saw them head home.

It's been a long working weekend and next week's going to be as busy as this one. No respite until Oxford's Trinity term ends in a fortnight's time. Having said that, the Oxford term is always an exhilarating collective endeavour, which I wouldn't have any other way.

And it wasn't all work. Managed a trip to Shilton for a pint at the estimable Rose and Crown.

Btw duck family had grown even more last Friday.

steamier still

Got a bit of a rally going on here.

Room filled with smell of engine's coal. Different from house coal--quite dry and nutty.

steamengine

I was at my desk, where I'll be spending most of this weekend, when there was a toot-toot from the road.

I just managed to switch on the camera and catch this magnificent contraption as it trundled past.

whitsun weekend bampton

Had a great time at the Whitsun celebrations in Bampton. True, there was some travelling to be done, family to see--which turned out to be an enriching and poignant experience--but there was still plenty of time left over to enjoy the festivities.

Loved best of all going to the Morris Clown late on Sunday night and watching the musicians and singers. As usual the way it all worked was someone would play a note then talk the others through the tune (often a nod and a word was enough) before a few of got going on it. It might be just a couple of people who decided to play or nearly the whole group, at others it was just someone singing unaccompanied.

What I found amazing, though, was how the drinkers kept drinking and chatting, as if the music were in the background. Well, it was but it was so much more than that. Here was this extraordinary event taking place in a pub on a Whit Sunday, with talented singers playing fascinating instruments or singing narrative songs with their beautiful voices. This was unaccountably special.

Thanks to Jamie Long (http://www.myspace.com/jamielongmusic) and the others for a brilliant evening.

Thanks too to the Morris men and to friends C and S and E and A for the barbies.

shirt race

Whitsun weekend is special in Bampton.

Morris dancers, folk singers and musicians come to the village from Friday onwards for the Morris festival on the bank holiday. Bampton has an unbroken tradition of Morris dancing going back to the seventeenth century--or even earlier.

The pubs stay open late and I love listening to the singers and musicians who start up when the mood takes them and often sound like they have just stepped out of a Thomas Hardy novel. One of my favourite memories is of listening to a folk oboist in the Elephant and Castle with James and Nathalie. Sadly the Elephant closed some years ago, although the last landlords Pat and George are up this weekend from the Forest of Dean where they now live.

This evening was the Shirt Race, which has been held annually since the 1940s. There's a children's and an adult version. The competitors push or drag their pram or float from refreshment table to refreshment table round the village, grabbing a glass from each as they pass. Beer for the adults.

We went down to see the start by the Morris Clown. The picture shows the tail enders--at the beginning, that is. When they got back to the pub they looked remarkably relaxed.

updates

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

The Downton Abbey film crew returned this week, setting up a mini funfair in the square below the church.

I assumed they would be filming during the day but just after I'd got off the bus back from work yesterday, I bumped into my friend John. And he said they were doing night filming.

So off I went at ten-thirty or so to watch a few scenes. Couldn't get too close and didn't spot anyone famous, but the set was great. The helter-skelter is apparently an authentic early twentieth century one--the last of its kind (but maybe that's a village myth). Then there was this extraordinary inflatable glowing sausage roll jigging about in the sky just to the right of the church's east window. A prop? No, some sort of helium filled lighting rig--intended to suggest moonlight?

Anyway the crew seemed to be having to reshoot a few scenes and the buzz was that they might be back tonight. Yesterday was supposed to be their last day in Bampton.

How appropriate to have a funfair in the little square. Not that people probably think of it as a square because it's so tiny. And yet it is certainly four-sided and was, according to the prof from Queen's College, who knows about village history, the original market square in the days when the church served an Anglo-Saxon monastery. (You can still see some of the higgledy-piggledy Anglos-Saxon masonry inside the twelfth century tower.)

Meanwhile on the banks of the Oxford canal the duck family is growing up--and snoozing. Hard work, growing.

ridging up

It's been a week, shall we say.

Some good things, such as the amazing Holguin gift to the Bodleian Latin American Centre Library, and the Writers in Oxford AGM.

The latter was a positive, constructive event and I was thrilled to receive six bottles of wine as a leaving present. Thanks to the committee for these and for the good wishes. Thanks also to members who have emailed, tweeted and facebooked lovely messages.

Today I went up the allotment and ridged up our spuds (see above), put up the wigwams for the runners and raked the ground that I'd cleaned. After a late breakfast I went back and planted beans, chard, pumpkins, carrots, New Zealand spinach, beetroots and parsnips. Feels good to have got this done.

Working there was respite from the sad events of this week. I wish Mum a speedy recovery and hope we can sort out everything else quickly and peacefully. I am grateful to my family, colleagues, students and above all Jess for their support at this difficult time.