shadows, spam, reverse

The shadow of railings.

Google Mail's automatic trawl for words to be linked to advertisements, as I have noted here before, extends even to its own mechanisms.  In the case of spam which it for the most part successfully separates from bona fide emails, it manages to allow the manufacturers of Spam luncheon meat to come up with the following  pop-up recipe headline: "Spam Swiss Pie: Bake 45 -55 minutes until eggs are set." It is in a separate window but that's what I call spam.

From the train I see from the window the network of playing fields where two weeks ago I watched my two grandsons play rugby and saw the occasional train pass against the skyline. I have always suffered from an irrational desire to be on a passing train when I see it from a field, and in the field when  I pass  it in a train. Today both wishes, though not simultaneously granted, at least edge closer together.

suntrap, lunch, defeat

Taking the sun facing the sea in St Leonards.

At Sainsbury's deli counter, a young man, his back to a growing queue, with the help of a machine and a large piece of cooked meat of uncertain provenance, produces a skyscraper composed of thin slices of flesh. "Big order?" asks a customer with good humour. "Staff lunch," says the young man.

By the front door, the smell of wisteria, opening in the sun, is dispersed by a light breeze. Bluebells, meanwhile, clustered on the slope beside the steps, are in triumphant bloom. Triumphant, because ever since I have lived in this house, I have tried to eradicate them, as the garden has always seemed to me to be too small and neat for their vigorous habit. But in the last two years I have given up the fight, as they have taken hold in odd, shady corners. Today I concede that they have been right and I have been wrong.

beware, crab, trolley

Warning in pond on the edge of Tunbridge Wells Common makes me think of Beowulf and Grendel's mother whom he pursued to the bottom of a lake.

 "Is that crab? I am just going to have a discrete look" says George outside the pub., as a plate of food is delivered to a neighbouring table. He is a man who cares about gastronomy. "Not crab, Yorkshire pudding!" he says despondently after a brief recce. How can a crab look like Yorkshire Pudding? Well, there's crab and there's Yorkshire pudding. And never the twain shall (or should) meet.

Between two trolleys in the supermarket there is a narrow gap just, but only just, wide enough for a third trolley. It reminds of the days when I used to drive to work - I was the worst and most vicious of road hogs, I, as an ex-driver, now admit. With great skill I negotiate Scylla and Charybdis, and neither of the trolley drivers so much as notices the centimetres between each of the trolleys and mine. The feeling of achievement, small an unnoticed as it was, still hasn't worn off.

sea, bankers, parrots

Watching the sea and doubtless thinking about the fish in it.

People dislike bankers, I think to myself, because they know how to breed money and  how to make it breed more. Bankers are money farmers.  And blow bubbles out of money.  But the world needs to borrow money. And to blow bubbles. And so it need bankers, and bankers need to breed money and  to blow bubbles in order to remain bankers.

The tulip bulbs which I planted back in the autumn have turned out to be parrot tulips, multi-coloured  (the petals are bright red inside, but a grayish  green, brightening to yellow outside, fierce looking and tattered) and just now opening as though for battle. Florists tend to call them parrots for short. They sit in a pot on a table in the garden, clearly demonstrating, what when I planted them, I thought, despite what my head told me,  an unlikely outcome.



















 

benchmark 6, hernia, fox

  Variations on a theme. Passing.

The surgeon sends me a copy of his letter to my GP which arrives today.  I like the precision  and spareness of his language even though many of the technical terms are new to me. "...I operated on your patient today attending to his right inguinal hernia under intravenous sedation and local anaesthetic. I found a moderate sized direct sac. There was no indirect sac. I have repaired the transversalis fascia with proline and carried out  a Lichtenstein tension free hernioplasty with light weight, open weave, Ultapro mesh between the conjoint tendon and inguinal ligament. There were no problems with the procedure..."

"There's a fox walking along the wall," calls Heidi from the upstairs window. I am too late to see it, as I was a few days ago in response to a similar alert.

Spitfire, nest-building, oak

Above Groombridge Place, the other day I point the camera at a lone, vintage Spitfire. Other newer one must have flown in the same patch of sky a long time ago. This one seems  slow compared to those which I remember when I was  a nipper of seven or eight.

A pigeon busies itself in the wisteria on the wall of the house opposite. If last year is anything to go by, it is building a nest and will doubtless in due course do the same in the wisteria over our front door. The nest remains. Its outline can just be detected through the opening flowers. Last year pigeons commuted between the two wisterias.

The giant oak in the north west corner of The Grove is in leaf - a pale, yellowy green; and with the leaves, little catkins have appeared. Catkins strike me as inappropriate adornments for such  an oak. Too small and delicate.

catkins, enjoyment, teaching

I was once met a girl called Catkin. That was more than 50 years ago. So I may be forgiven for forgetting what she looked like, but not  for remembering her name, which was Catkin  Hazel. Or do I imagine it? Perhaps it was Hazel Catkin? Or perhaps I invented all or part of  it. These are not hazel catkins I know, but they prompt the memory nevertheless.

"Did you enjoy it," says the surgeon of the operation which he has just performed on an inguinal hernia. It took place under local anaesthetic, and I didn't feel any discomfort let alone pain. My frame of mind was  however modified by a powerful tranquiliser, which may have disposed me to a certain lightness of heart. But enjoyment? Not quite. "It was interesting," I say. And indeed it was.

During the few hours I spend in hospital I read a memoir by the late Tony Judt,  the English born historian, professor of European studies at New York University. A passage, which  I now refer back to and note, touch on a familiar confrontation of youth, in which he acknowledges his debt as a student, to a tutor, John Dunn. "It was John who -  in the course of one extended conversation on the political thought of John Lock - broke through my well armoured adolescent Marxism and first introduced  me to the challenge of intellectual history.  He managed this by the the simple device of listening very intently to everything I said, taking it with extraordinary seriousness on its own terms, and then picking it gently and firmly apart in a way that I could both accept and respect. That is teaching" Judt  concludes, and I silently applaud.

benchmark 5, ashes, guys

Bench occupied.

Dinner with some neighbours, who announce that they  have just buried the ashes of their respective mothers in a cemetery in Ashord.  The urns containing the ashes had remained on top of a wardrobe "gathering dust" for 10 and 12 years and they thought that it was time to say goodbye.

In the sun, a pint of Harvey's and a scotch egg at The Black Pig.  The egg is garnished with deep fried shredded onion. While we are eating, the pretty young waitress inquires: "How are you going, guys? Can we get you guys anything else?" Before we leave, she urges: "Have a nice day, guys". This form of address to men and woman alike, has apparently migrated from the USA. Our waitress has  no hint of an American accent.

benchmarks 4, weekend, wee

The population changes in matters of minutes on the benches under scrutiny. The sea remain much the same.

He has taken my cash before. I know him by his greeting: "Had a good weekend, so far," he says. What appeals is the ambiguity. Does he attend to spoil it? Are good weekends so rare that it is too much to expect a weekend entirely good in itself?  So far so good.

In the Italian deli at the foot of Mount Sion, a woman orders a cappuccino at the counter. Is it possible to have a wee?" she asks the young woman who serves her. This is a deli, not a restaurant.  Such requests are apparently frequent and are actively discouraged. There are no facilities of the kind required available to the public.  It is not to even to be discussed. There is a moment's silence. "Then I cant' t have  the cappuccino," the woman says. The owner stands  by. He  superintends the silence., which grows leaden.

benchmarks 3,socks, mesh

 The third bench. The photo might be worth clicking.

On a doorstep by the street sits a man in shorts and white socks enjoying the afternoon sun.

In a farmyard by  a bus stop there is a long low barn. A small window is enclosed by a torn wire mesh. Sticking to the mesh are chicken feathers. From inside the barn comes a gentle sound like clucking but a little more contented.

On Compasses Lucy Kempton replies with wit, rhyme and rhythm to my question: What promises have you to keep? Or give up on?

bench 2, wacky, tall

Same bench, different occupants.

A woman visitor speaks about mystic experiences. I want to take notes. She believes she is a healer. She talks  of detoxing and retreats."No alcohol long walks in the hills; yoga, and a glass of wine in the evenings are at the heart of her recollections. As we talk, a cat wriggles through the hedge to be healed.

In front of a house in South Grove, is a giant dandelion, the biggest I have ever seen, about the size of a dahlia. It sprouts from between two paving stones. There must be something about the soil beneath the stones because I remember a similar monster in the same place last year. The position is north facing and I reason that the flower, deprived of full sunshine, must be stretching up towards the light.

bench, prey, twigs

Same bench, different people, different year. I find myself taking the the same photograph year after year, more and and more often. And the more I do it the more I like the idea of monitoring the way things and scenes, wear and modify, fade and evolve. The restaurant where we sit in St Leonards-on-Sea, looks across at several benches, which provide such benchmarks. More bench photographs will follow. Watch this space.

Outside a pub a man with a thin ferret face fixes his eyes in  his laptop screen as though it frames a living prey upon which he will shortly pounce.

In The Grove  a pair of magpies  hop about under the trees collecting in their beaks twigs for their nest.

dandelion, slowness, chat

Early dandelion. I know  that they are a trouble on lawns. But when they pop up in odd corners, the complex structure of their flowers, star shaped buds and toothed leaves (dents de lion) are always welcome. Never more so than in a much longed-for spring.

Until today, which promises to be warm, leaf buds and flowers open slowly whereas in previous years the sudden appearance of the sun has produced an explosion of green leaves and  the white and yellow flowers of spring. Slow is good in an age of speed and urgency.

In the doctor's waiting room, a lady of my own generation and frame of mind comments on how waiting rooms often  present the only opportunity to read the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph. She must  guess by my appearance that I am not a regular reader of cconservatively inclined newspapers. I am little flattered and a little surprised. I realize that she likes to talk and comes from a background where good talk is natural. In the space of about 10 minutes I learn a lot about her. She is a school teacher, married, until she was widowed a few years ago - to another teacher. She says that she wants to move from the country to London, where she can visit the theatre and art galleries, but which means "down sizing". She says that she has too many possessions. She doesn't want to sell them, rather to give them  away to  people who will appreciate them  - a principle which I agree with.   It is a shame to abandon her mid-conversation in exchange for routine medical discussions with a doctor.

blossom, raving, cheerful

A pigeon in blossom.

Yesterday's rugby is still fresh in my mind. Apart from watching my gifted  grand children children, I enjoyed seeing hundreds of people - children as well as grown ups - involved  in a tough character-building sport in this age of nannies and milk-sops. Adults and children all looked remarkably fit and lean. Plump beer swillers, crisp-eaters and computer game addicts were not in evidence. Some parents, it is true, do get over excited, but they are kept in order by a poster with the headline Don't be an RTP. What is an RTP? A raving touchline parent.

On my way down Mount Sion, I meet the postman coming up. He greets me cheerfully as I greet him on his cheerful mission. A postman's job is surely a happy one. Even in the rain.

watch, watching, chivalry

On watch for worms and foes alike.

Temporarily incapacitated for heavy work, I can enjoy watching my son, Toby, digging trenches  and planting row upon row of potatoes.

Chivalry has it seems not entirely disappeared from sport. But don't whisper it abroad.  At  the Kent Mini/Midi Rugby Festival in Tonbridge this morning, where I  am watching my two grandsons, in the under eight  and under 11 categories respectively,  playing a game at which they are both very good, I note a couple of hefty girls among the forwards in the under elevens. Girls didn't play rugby in  my time. Boys and girls aren't allowed to play together beyond 11, I am told. Even under 11, they don't like tackling girls, my daughter tells me: "I've heard Josh in the scrum say, 'oops I'm sorry."

ocean, surprise, pie

Ocean is the word which  first comes to mind.

Because they are so small and modest,violets when you spot them, as I do today, are always a surprise. Never more so you encounter them, as I do today, growing next to or near primroses.

The smell of shepherd pie drifts through the house. In its preparation, I make a brunoise of carrot, celery and onion. The smell is of the frying vegetables  and now gently braising minced lamb.  I use the word, brunoise but do I really  know what it means? I look up brunoise in an English dictionary to see if the French word has taken root.  No luck. Even Petit Larouse can't help. But Larousse Gastronomique,  confirms that it  consists of diced root vegetables. Juliennes, a term associated with it, are  long thin strips of meat fish or vegetables. I like these words which always seem to connect to the purposeful  atmosphere of the  professional kitchen.

chimney, exclamation, fake

Doves on a chimney stack at Groombridge Place.

Behind me I hear a young woman exclaim  into a mobile phone, "ohmygod". It is usually young women who invoke a deity in this way.  And they do it all the time. usually accompanied by shrieks or part of a shriek.  It seems to be something new to language and custom. A few years ago, I think to myself, it would have signified a disaster of some kind, a cataclysm. Now it is a reaction a little stronger than "oh dear", which is I suppose, or was a long time ago,  a euphemism for "ohmygod", when it was regarded as blasphemous to take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

A friend uses the word "faux" in an email, this afternoon. Google's instant electronic sieve is quick off the mark. An instant advert appears next to the email window. "Fake Grass 4 Gardeners", it says, "lay back and enjoy".

reflection, tomatoes, revolution

Head over heels.

I open small packets of Italian tomato seeds and optimistically sow them in small pots scarcely believing that such insubstantial flakes will germinate and eventually produce the colourful fruit depicted on the packet. Because basil is so good a culinary companion for them, the seedsman has included a packet of basil seed with the tomatoes. I  sow this a well, with a like sense of optimism.

This afternoon, with a gentle rain outside the window, I read about the youthful impulse to revolution in the Sixties. It is the history of a time I can remember. Though revolutionary myself only by inclination,  I was and still am conservative by nature. I  remember, almost with nostalgia, the excitement of the time, students uprooting lamp posts in Paris and the black-clad riot police advancing with shields and batons on the cheerful crowd. In an epigraph to the chapter, The Spectre of Revolution, Tony Judt (it is his book Postwar that I am reading) quotes Daniel Cohn-Bendit: "The Revolution - we loved it so much."   In explaining the search to expand the principles of Marxism, he later quotes an early essay by Marx himself: The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point however is to change it." Therein lies the spark that ignites youth, the urge to change the world and above all to act rather than faff about. Even now it touches a fuse, which, even when "to be young was very bliss", in my case was to fizzle out.

grazing, territory, chain

Goose grazing in Groombridge.

When you walk though The Grove every day as I do you tend to notice certain birds occupying particular territories. In the corner near the entrance to Sutherland Road there is nearly always a male of female blackbird looking for interesting things in  the grass. Sometimes both are there.

As a child I never saw the point of daisy chains. Girls made them anyway. So they were not for me. But this afternoon I do enjoy the sight of a particularly well made daisy chain, the flowers still fresh, hung along the railing in front of  a neighbouring house. That the house is occupied by a family with a number of little girls is neither here nor there. It is simply a question of responding to a creative act and the pleasure it gives. A black board by the front door has chalked on it the words "Hello sunshine"!

restored

Here are the missing photograph. Pins and a passing duck. Something didn't work when I tried to save the post I don't know if it will work this time. I have difficulty in getting rid of the cross icon which makes me cross.

reflected, adjectives, clever

Passing duck.


 Pairs of epithets used to describe products in Sainsbury's caught my attention the other day. Here is an update. It occurs to me that many of them are interchangeable. Some might usefully be applied to completely different objects. Or to people.
Sweet and aromatic - mangoes
Tropically sweet - pineapple
Tangy and crisp - Braeburn apples
Sweet and juicy - tomatoes
Juicy and refreshing - Kiwi fruit
Crisp and juicy - white seedless grapes
Fresh and crunchy - celery
Sweet and crunchy - peppers
Mild and nutty - closed cup chestnut mushrooms
Smooth and creamy - courgettes
Succulent and tender - trimmed fine beans
Succulent and crisp - dwarf beans
Crisp and tender - trimmed mangetout

I note the variation on smart phone reported by Danny outside the pub yesterday. "She asked for a clever phone," he says. And adds by way of explanation "she's a blond".

two, bumpers, doll

Pins. Artifacts  for holding thing together which go a long way back in human history and  which have changed little over the millennia.

To relieve monotony I sometimes speculate about breaking loose from conventional behaviour, doing something outrageous. In Sainsbury's this morning I think that it might be amusing to treat my trolley as a bumper car and crash into other trolleys in the sort of carefree spirit which prevails with bumper cars in funfairs. After a few minutes my trolley left on it own for a minute, on a slight slope and perhaps prompted by an inadvertent push takes off on its own and gently slides towards an oncoming trolley pushed by a portly gentleman. Bang. I apologise and he smiles in a good natured way. No trolley rage, fortunately.But then he didn't know what had been going on in my mind a few minutes earlier.

In the children's playground a father with a doll in one hand and a mobile phone in the other practices multi-tasking.

corked, ice cream, shirtless

After the party.

Three little girls sit side by side on a bench licking identical ice creams.

Daffodils are in bloom, leaves are in bud and in the streets young men appear shirtless to reveal their tattoos.

Groombridge, soap, bamboo

 Every year we visit Groombridge Place to see the daffodils. There have been times that we have taken them for granted and snorted at the their brazen blooms. Not this year after the long, cold winter. Never have they been more welcome. (Click for whole picture).

As I get older I feel less personally involved with what is happening in the world. Too much detachment is nothing to boast of.   And it occurs to me to day that I should feel more touched  by the news than I do. I follow it with interest and curiosity, but can't escape from the feeling that I am keeping up with a soap. Perhaps it is too much to bear. No man is island, I have to remind myself. For whom the bell tolls. etc. Who would be a politician?

The garden centre delivers bags of compost and manure. And 8ft bamboo canes for the beans. But there is a mistake first time round. Instead of the canes enormous clumps of bamboo in giant pots are hauled out of the van. I have grown fond of bamboo and would have liked to accommodate them, but at £50 a pot they are beyond my means even if I had room for them. For a moment I am taken with the fantasy though.

fish, pruning, gnomes

Bridge over the moat at Groombridge Place.

They have cut down the condemned trees in The Grove. Today they are pruning the survivors.  Crash- helmeted tree-surgeons climb into the high branches, suitably secured by ropes and straps. The cropped branches meanwhile are chewed into a sawdust  down below by a grinding machine. It is noisy but the noise has a pleasing rural quality. Business in progress.

According to the current issue of Prospect magazine, quoting the Daily Telegraph, garden gnomes were first brought to England from Germany in 1874, by Charles Isham, a spiritualist who hoped  that they would attract real gnomes to his Northamptonshire garden. True? Does it matter?

frieze, hawthorn, incense

Pigeons grazing in Calverley Ground. (Click for full picture).

From the train we see  a long hedge composed entirely of mature hawthorn trees stretching out beside a field in the sun.

Back after a long winter, we sit in the sun opposite the sea outside the restaurant called Pasta Pasta in St Leonards-on-Sea.|We telephone, Manina, the owner,  from the train as usual and ask her to reserve our favourite table for us. "Right on time," she says  when we arrive.  "How do you manage it?"Before we leave a smell drifts across from the house next door. It is vaguely familiar but neither of us can quite place it. "It's incense," Manina says. "They burn it sometimes."

partying, sniffing, logging

 Hyacinth champagne.

Outside the pub in Groombridge, a spaniel tethered to a table leg keeps an eye on things, while his humans drink and scoff. But it is his nose which is most active. As a  new person approaches or another dog passes, he raises his head and his nostrils twitch with trembling curiosity.

Pushing a wheelbarrow across The Grove is an 80-year old neighbour salvaging logs. He is a former surgeon.  Tree surgeons have been cutting down diseased trees and sawing them up. Not to miss the chance of a store of winter fuel, he asks if he can have them. "Take as many as you want," he is told. And here he is on his third or fourth trip, bent over the wheelbarrow. May his fires burn bright.

sad, rugby, pigeons

Sad but considerate. The Council has placed a notice on this silver birch to say that it is to be cut down owing to something called decay fungus.  A maple is also to go. The Council gives a lot of care to The Grove, and regularly plant more trees than come down. It was always, true to its name,  a place of trees, say local historians. It occupies a piece of land on a hill top, given to people who live nearby the Earl of Buckingham in 1703.

Son-in-law Dominic and grandsons Josh and Rowan run across The Grove throwing an undersized rugby ball to one another, while I walk  behind, sedately, but impressed by their agility and sense of timing.

I try to transcribe the noise made by wood pigeons, of which there are a lot round here. It starts early in the morning and, at this time of year, seldom lapses during the day.  It is something like "coo, coo, coo, coo, cu." There may be more initial "coos", but it invariably ends with a definitive almost staccato sound, shorter than a coo, as if their concentration has been broken.

lamp, chitting, question

 Robin on street lamp in Mount Sion.

Egg boxes kept for the purpose now support  the seed potatoes which arrived the other day.They will  remain  there to be chitted until the end of the month when I plan to plant them.

I have noticed that the people at Sainsbury's check out tills are encouraged to chat to customers. One young man invariably  used to ask me if I was going to "do any thing interesting today". This morning the girl at the till  enquired "Have you had a good week?" I was not singled out for this question. "Have you had a good week,? " I heard her ask the woman behind me in the queue as I hoisted my rucksack on my back.