st margaret's, binsey

On Saturday I worked in Oxford.

My walk took me to St Margaret's, Binsey, where we were married. I haven't revisited the country lane (that is both within the ring road and outside time) that leads from the hamlet to the church for quite a while.

What a beautiful place! Especially on a bright sunny frosty morning in October.

giant beetroots and carrots!

The carrots and beetroots on the allotment have come - more than - good, putting on astonishing growth in the late summer after going nowhere for months!

last alpine holiday snaps, happy memories, gentians, spruce needle anthills!

These are the last pics from our holiday in the French Alps.

Such happy memories of seeing our friends and of walking in the forests and on the hillsides above La Chapelle-d'Abondance.

Loved seeing wild mushrooms and flowers, including gentians.

The extraordinary ant hills made of spruce needles were amazing. I can find articles about forest ants in the Jura and Swizerland but clearly they are found in the French Alps too!

propelled, summer memories, the future

It almost seems a lifetime since I last posted.

The Michaelmas 0th and 1st Week turbines have propelled me from the lingerings of late summer to the supercharged pace of the academic year.

Suddenly the town is teeming with new students and there are inductions to do. The old year's finals papers tumble through the letterbox for marking.

The patterns of working are refound, hopefully with new ideas that have suggested themselves unconsciously over the last twelve months.

This October everything is heightened by a summer that refuses to yield fully and the memories of unending sunny days. Evenings spent at the top of the garden: drinking wine at the old table above our pond (that table has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember); reading; watching the bats and listening to the owls as the light faded. Of holidays in the Alps and Somerset. Of eating apples picked from our trees.

This weekend there is a brief moment or two at dawn, as I write, to savour the future - brim full of concealed potential - and the past, as the trees sough in the gales outside.

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The last of the Alpine photos and some from the Somerset trip to follow.

anna beer's patriot or traitor: the life and death of sir walter ralegh, osney memories

Outstanding in-depth Times review today of my friend and colleague Anna Beer's Patriot or Traitor: The Life and Death of Sir Walter Ralegh.

Today's post first appeared on the jtns Instagram account earlier (above photo: Osney allotments from across the Thames).

It's a long time ago that we left Osney Island, where we were members of the local allotment association. In those days I was a citizen of west Oxford, in between leaving the University and being reclaimed by it to work as a librarian and to teach. The Island was a different world to ts expensive exclusive present incarnation. There were two pubs and a bakery-cum-village shop. Memories of collecting the bread early in the morning and the smell of the baking in the frosty air. And the floury-browed baker in his cap and apron. There were residents who had been born on the Island. The author John Wain used to walk to the Waterman's Arms from Wolvercote for a pint - his Where the Rivers Meet trilogy was about the two sons of a fictional Waterman's lanlord, one a don the other working at the car plant at Cowley pre WWII. Parts of my first novel were also set in a fictional Waterman's. Coincidentally it was to be published by an imprint founded by John Wain's son. The allotments flooded every second or third spring and the Thames seemed to bring fertility. We were members of the committee and each September I would help take the rents, recording the payments in a ledger. Our allotment neighbour was a former trades unionist and City Mayor. We learnt much from him about local politics and local history. I think he hoped I might go into local politics and I attended some meetings. But I'm not a political person. I'm a floating voter - a much derided sort of voter. Yet democracy assumes floating voters and what would it be without them?

happy memories, cow bells, catching up, rewriting and editing, tls life-writing special issue, coxes, 30th reunion gaudy...

Such happy memories of our holiday near La Chapelle d'Abondance.

The pictures above show the Eglise St Maurice and the post office. The bottom photo is of the wonderful mountain restaurant on the Col de Bassachaux a few miles away. See the website of the Office de Tourisme de la Chapelle d'Abondance.

If you'd like to hear the cow bell recording I mentioned last time, you can do so at my SoundCloud account.

I'd expected that I would make this post earlier but there is so much to catch up on workwise after a holiday. Also, I've been doing some furious rewriting and editing of Trust: A family story in the early morning and in the evening, inspired by the response to my talk about it at the summer school. Well over half of it done now.

On the subject of life-writing, this week's Times Literary Supplement is a life-writing special issue.

Finishing up beans, courgettes and cucumbers, all of which are running out of steam on the allotment. Very early finish this year. In the garden, we have moved from the James Grieves to the Coxes - which are fantastic!

Keble 30th reunion gaudy tomorrow. Thirty years - unbelievable!

holiday, montreux, freddie mercury, abondance cheese, dippers, back to west ox, the black prince by iris murdoch

A brilliant trip to the French Alps, via Montreux, Évian-les-Bains and Lausanne.

Photos and post, part one.

In part two there will be a recording of cow bells from the high meadows.

Delicious Abondance cheese.

Amazing walks. Saw so many dippers - a dozen or more - on one particular walk beside an Alpine river just before thunder and storms, including the one getting ready to dive in the video.

Also a lovely visit to the Casino restaurant in Montreux - past the Freddy Mercury memorial statue on Lac Léman. (Generous, beloved hosts' uncle Jim soon to be seen played by Tom Hollander in Bohemian Rhapsody.)

Back to a still summery west Ox. Some of the fierceness has gone out of the days but they remain gorgeous.

Decided to take a break from Jane Eyre and read The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch. What a novel - dated to begin with but then the sense of past idioms falls away and one is immersed in the essential humanity of the writer. And what momentum. Unputdownable!

Some prime quotes - three rather bleak, if wry, a fourth rather sublime:

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The wicked prosper in front of our eyes and go on and on and on prospering. What a blessing it must have been once to be able to believe in hell.

--

The wicked regard time as discontinuous, the wicked dull their sense of natural causality. The good feel being as a total dense mesh of tiny interconnections. My lightest whim can affect the whole future.

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It stirred some memory of a childhood holiday. Once in an endless meadow, just able to peer through the tawny haze of the grass tops, the child who was myself had watched a young fox catching mice, an elegant newly minted fox, straight from the hand of God, brilliantly ruddy, with black stockings and a white-tipped brush. The fox heard and turned. I saw its intense vivid mask, its liquid amber eyes. Then it was gone. An image of such beauty and such mysterious sense. The child wept and knew himself an artist.

--

Some clever writer (probably a Frenchman) has said: it is not enough to succeed; others must fail.

oxford creative writing summer school, self-explanatory?, riverbank plants, produce, kentish treasures

Gosh, the Exeter College Creative Writing Summer School sped by. Two groups this year so quite a lot to do. But what groups - loved working with them.

Talked about and read from Trust: A family story at my plenary session, which was entitled Self-explanatory? The blurb read as follows:

This talk is about life, fiction and some of the varied forms of life-writing: memoir; real-time (blogging); and poetry. It is a personal story that explores broader writing questions, including relative truth – neither the self nor the past stand still, it seems – the value of life-writing and our ethical responsibilities to others... and to ourselves. The talk includes readings of prose and poetry.

There were a lot of questions at the end. I was touched by the positive comments.

Worked in Oxford yesterday. Lovely walk beforehand, including along the Thames to Port Meadow from Osney. Took the photos above on Fiddler's Island. The banks orgiastic with riverbank plants.

Have been enjoying the James Grieves. They are delicious this year - sharp but sweet. Today I harvested some 'quick' beetroots, spuds, French and runner beans, courgettes and cucumbers. Also did some digging - this was before the still-fierce sun came out and the plot felt quite autumnal. J is making cheese sauce for the beetroots to have with ham hock.

Meanwhile, J went to Kent last week and came back with three excellent Shepherd Neame beers, including the classic Master Brew, and a bottle of Westwell Naughty Hare Chardonnay. The last of these was outstanding! An extraordinary mineraliness that reminded me of the curious flint you get in some of the more intriguing Côtes du Rhônes.

first james grieve, roasting hot!, cucumbers, onions and shallots

Our first apple of the season - a James Grieve faller.

Softer flesh than last year but an intense sweet flavour.

Roasting hot out - and inside the house. Yet things on the plot are keeping going. Excellent cucumbers this year! Onions and shallots lifted yesterday in the end.