farouche, feet, machine

I have always like the word farouche in French, but not in English. In French, it evokes a particular sort of shyness, a feature of wildness, of the savage and untamed. I imagine as farouche, the young, both animal and human, beautiful and reluctant to engage with those who come too near. I see lowered eyes, a turning body, which bounds into the undergrowth. But this sense of farouche does not fit the English word which is spelled the same. "Sullen, shy and repellent in manner", says the Oxford Dictionary (first sighting 1765), which acknowledges its French origin; but the wild element has been lost, and this is confirmed by the way the adopted English word has since been used. Chambers English Dictionary confirms the distinction. It defines the English word as: shy or ill at ease; sullen and unsociable; socially inexperienced and lacking in polish. But it nicely acknowledges that the French word, from which it is taken, means: wild, shy savage.

Passing the window of house I see a pair of bare feet pointing into the air.

There is something pleasing about the sound of some machines. In Salisbury's this morning a lift truck loaded with pallets of fruit and vegetables, goes "ooer ... ooer... ooer", a gentle, high pitched hum.

stress, bag, quinces

Nearly everything in the vegetable garden. including lettuces, has been slow to fill out and mature this summer. Today, in the Financial Times Magazine I find an explanation. Apparently, according to a research centre in Flanders, a pair of enzymes called kinases act when conditions deteriorate, to turn on a network of genes to create a kind of "unforced hibernation conserving energy at the expense of growth." Unhelpful, but otherwise reassuring..

In the park called Calverley Grounds, there is a disused bowling green. It has been kept mowed, but is otherwise uncared for. Today, it is deserted but for a Tesco plastic bag resting in the middle. As I draw level, the bag swells with the wind and rolls from side to side. It seems to be alive, the handles stand out like ears. It stirs and rolls like someone waking up. Suddenly, it fills with wind and flies up in the air like a kite. It rises and rises like a kite, as though an invisible person is tugging, against the wind, at an invisible string attached to it. Then, as kites do, it sinks to the ground, admitting defeat. There is still a little wind and the bag gapes open as though breathless after its exercise. A little more wind, and it tumble slowly over and over until it reaches a more sheltered part of the green, where it seems to expire. I wait and watch hoping for more action, but, for a time at least, it has played its part upon its improvised set.

Quinces I love. At this time of year we begin to run out of the quince jelly I try to make every Autumn. A reminder came in book on plants and trees introduced over the years into the British Isles. No precise source for the following is given except that it comes from a poem of the Arabic world of the 10th Century"
".. it is yellow in colour as if it wore a daffodil tunic, and it smells like musk. It has the perfume of a loved woman and the same hardness of heart."

Explorers

The latest set of Lucy Kempton's photographs illustrating the Handbook for Explorers series of poems has been posted on http://www.lucyandjoe-compasses.blogspot.com/

cat bits, drift, squirrels

A van with the words Cat Components has a logo of running cats in profile. Intriguing until you look more closely and read the word: Cat Components for the distribution of car components.

On a still afternoon like this, music drifting out of a bar is seductive. The words "Strangers in the night...." float over passers by.

In the Grove three very small, very young squirrels tumble over one another, bite and square up and clamber up the thick trunk of a tree with difficulty. On an overhanging branch, they play follow my leader.

gone, creator, two pennies

Cherry laurels are not, in my opinion, the loveliest of trees. They are nowhere near as attractive as the bay tree, Laurus nobilis, with its delicate, aromatic leaves and more modest habit. So I am pleased that they have cut down the cherry laurel on the corner of Mount Sion and Berkeley Road. It is still a pleasant surprise when you walk past, to see the sky and sense the light.

I feed the name of a neighbour into the memory of my mobile phone. The task complete, the screen reads simply and flatteringly: "Smith created".

"If you have two pennies, spend one on a loaf and one on a flower. The bread will give you life; the flower, a reason for living." Chinese proverb.

potting, wild, twisted nose

"I learned it in England, where indeed they are most potent in potting. Your Dane, your German and your swag-bellied Hollander - drink, ho! - are nothing to your English." Iago to Casio in Othello, referring to a drinking song. Nothing new there. The remark would have gone down well with Shakepeare's audience, as it would with a contemporary English audience.

The lingering taste, and the thought, of wild ginger after a Thai meal in Sevenoaks this lunch time.

A charming book about the names of flowers tells me among other things that nasturtium comes from the latin nasus, nose, and tortus, twisted, because the pungent smell makes the nose wrinkle or twist. I prefer the French word for nasturtium, capucine, which refers to the shape of the flower, similar to a monk's hood.

word trail, false autumn, crows

Much as I love reading French, I am not a good or natural linguist. I get into tangles and follow strange dictionary trails. This morning I encounter the French word mousson. I confuse it with moisson, harvest. So what does mousson mean? Monsoon. This leads me somehow to recall the word mousse, moss , froth, foam, and so the familiar (in English,) mousse as in chocolate mousse. I end up reassuring myself about moite, meaning sticky, damp; and finally, just to make sure, moitié, meaning half - the end of a curious trail.

People are complaining again that the weather - we're not yet half way through August - is autumnal. Today the autumnal effect is enhanced by what looks like drifts of dead leaves in the Pantiles, but they are not leaves, rather the dry and sear, winged seeds of the lime trees, which form a walk at one end. At one point a street cleaner has swept them into a small heap for removal.

Four crows waddle on the grass in the Grove, in today's rain, almost without people; they peck at the sodden earth.

relief, going off, blown

Learning that the bank card which I thought I may have lost has been found and is being kept safely for me by the supermarket where I left it.

One elderly lady to another in Chapel Place: "She always goes off ...wherever you are ... in the middle of the night."

Lots of things are blowing about in the wind: leaves, paper, feathers, thistledown. And there's a butterfly. Is it blown or is it flying?

quiet, sunflower, shower

People are on holiday. It is Sunday, but the Grove looks foresaken. Even the play ground is quiet. It is a pleasing quietness, only slightly on the malancholy side.

In damp and chilly July, the sunflowers which I had planted in May had a hard time. They grew, but they were weak and thin. They are normally sturdy plants with thick stems. But I had to prop some up with stakes to stop them collapsing. Today, with the warm weather, they look altogether happier. And one, has flowered. It is the reddish brown variety, with golden pollen on its black face, amid a halo of yellow-streaked petals.

A proper old fashioned shower. Outside the Compasses, one moment the sun is shining, the next big drops are falling on the table ...
"... and Noah said to his wife, as they sat down to dine/ Never mind where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine"...
Big drops fall. We walk home not hurrying, not minding the rain, which isn't going to last for long.

expression, bookish, dancing light

A black plastic refuse-bag awaits removal at the edge of a garden. Some dead weeds pushing through a rent in the bag suggest a chin and untidy grey beard. Stretch marks in the plastic lead towards the tear. Here is an expression, you feel, but one without a face. Where the bag has been tied at the top there is the appearance of ears. But there is nothing to suggest eyes or a mouth - features, which we are supposed to look for in abstractions, to find a human element.

"No," says a father to a small boy in a stationers shop, which also sells books, "you've got lots of books at home."

Patches of light, reflected by the CDs suspended from string to deter pigeons, dance across the ground, over the vegetables, up the climbing beans.

vicarious walk, fritata, think before speaking

There is an elderly gentleman ( he must be older than I, or I would not think of him as elderly) whom I see sometimes in Tunbridge Wells. He has white hair, a bushy, white moustache, and rings under his eyes. He is always well dressed and has a military bearing. He has just acquired a walking stick and carries a satchel over his shoulder. On my way out this afternoon, I pass him going in a different direction. Later, on my return, I see him resting on a bench in Calverley Park, I sense that he is going in the same direction as I. I find myself wondering whether he, too, is bound for the cafe, and worry about how he will negotiate the very steep steps down to the path that leads to the cafe. I find that, in a way, I am walking with him and wonder what is going on his head. While I sip my tea, I notice that he has taken the easier path that does not lead to the cafe. I watch him as he follows the path at the top of the slope opposite the cafe, note that he sits on a bench there for a second rest. It has been a long walk. When I next look, he has walked on. I try to picture him getting home and making himself a cup of tea slowly and precisely. Because I always see him by himself, I imagine that he lives on his own. I follow him into a sitting room where he picks up a book on military history, and sinks into an easy chair ...

A fritata, made with chard, the liquid squeezed out of the boiled leaves, the stems chopped and cooked separately and for a longer time. The slow-cooked cake-like omelet, with its marbled surface, looks as good as it tastes.

A French phrase which appeals is tourner sept fois sa langue dans sa bouche, to rotate one's tongue seven times in one's mouth, to think before you speak.

gaudy, conflict, footsteps

Mediterranean culture is encroaching on England. When I was young, courgettes (or zucchini), green and red peppers, aubergines, basil and other food from Mediterranean countries were strangers to green grocers shops. Now they are as common as spuds. I thought this today as I admired the bright yellow trumpets of the courgette flowers in the garden, and remembered Robert Browning's slighting reference to this "gaudy melon flower" when homesick for England.

In the Grove, a small child walks along one path, his parents another. The child looks round to see if his parents are following. He begins to cry noisily when he sees that they are not following, though they are keeping an eye on him. The reason for the conflict? He wants to go to the playground. The parents do not. I walk on, and turn round to see what has happened. The child has won and the parents are following him into the playground.

The sound of footsteps on gravel is pleasing - restrained, yet firm and assured.

kind rain, contrast, thistledown

Congenial of the rain to fall last night. This morning the leaves are wet, the earth refreshed, and ready for sowing spinach in the sun.

In the park, the Royal Tunbridge Wells Croquet club is next door to a basket ball court. On the perfectly kept grass, old folk in straw hats, flannel trousers, long skirts are leaning over mallets and whacking coloured, wooden balls. On bare, grey tarmac, the young, in jeans and tee shirts dance in front of a pole where they try, not always successfully, to lob the ball into the net at the top of it.

Over a cup of tea I watch a piece of thistle down drift steadily across Calverley Grounds. It keeps a steady pace and the same height above the ground until it comes to the slope on the north side of the park, where it rises on a thermal or follows an upward movement of the breeze.

how, blue, thinking

How do I know that it is the same pigeon? (See yesterday's post and the question it raises). A good question, which I ask myself . There are a variety of possible answers.
1 It has a distinctive two-tone wing squeak, which another pigeon could not mistake.
11 It writes in its blog that it regularly meets the same old fool of a man in the same place (ie the corner of Mount Sion and Berkeley Road) Coincidence?
iii I always meet it (or another pigeon) flying at the same height, level with my head, in the same direction. If I look quickly enough, it winks at me in a familiar way.

Big white clouds today and in between deep patches of blue. Azure is not a word I would normally use, considering it the preserve of Romantic poets. But today the sky behind the clouds is azure.

When I wake up early in the morning I tend to think. If you can call it thinking. But in reality my mind just goes round in circles chewing up and regurgitating the same thoughts. I think: Real thinking is like climbing a rock face. You search for footholds and hand holds. You pull yourself up, with strength and confidence. You achieve a firm and steady rhythm. At the top you know where you are and where you have been. And even where you have yet to go.

blue beans, no panic, squeaking

The first of the blue, climbing beans called Blauhilde look spectacular next to the more usual yellow variety.

The tuneless singer is addressing passers by in Chapel Place. He wears a bowler hat pulled down over his head today. Last time I saw him it was a black, conical wizard's hat. He makes up the words as he goes along. Most people ignore him with a faint smile, but some schoolboys with skateboards, mock him. He hurries off, chanting : "there's no need to panic, no need to panic.

A pigeon passes me at eye level, as I walk along Berkeley Road in the direction of Mount Sion. It must be a regular flight path, because this is not by any means the first time we have met. Its wing squeak as though in need of lubrication.

Shostakovich, wasps and bees, beautiful words

Last night at the Proms, the National Youth Orchestra conducted by Mark Elder performs Shostakovitch's Seventh "Leningrad" Symphony. I watch it on TV and listen with fascination and enjoyment as the conductor and young musicians concentrate on something outside themselves, yet driven by skills and understanding, which come from within. The structure and intelligence of the music kept making me want to know what was going to happen next. At the start of every movement, the conductor seemed gently to caress and mould the air in front of him as though something tangible yet fragile and invisible, was there.

On the radio someone refers to a schoolboy joke: what bees are to honey, wasps are to Marmite.

According to Henry James the two most beautiful words in the English language are "summer" and "afternoon". That applies this afternoon in the Grove, where pools of shade lie in the grass, and groups picnic under the trees. Conversation is gently, lazy; cries are muted and laughter moderate like softly splashing water.

Goldilocks, salad day, watering

Whenever we have porridge for breakfast, which is most days, I think of Goldilocks and the three bears. If there is one thing I don't like, it is cold porridge. So I ask myself what sort of condition the porridge, which Goldilocks found in the cottage in the woods, was in when she came upon it? What did the bears expect on their return from their walk, if it wasn't cold porridge? How, in the circumstances, could they have abandoned their cottage for long enough to allow Goldilocks, to enter, try the three bowls of porridge, consume one of them, test out three chairs, go up stairs and try three different beds before falling asleep in the smallest one?
It must be this question or a similar one, which leads to the so called Goldilocks Enigma. This is the subject of a book of that name by Paul Davis, which examines how conditions on earth could be so precariously and miraculously balanced, as to permit the existence of life - a phenomenon, according to physicists, hugely against the odds.

A salad of lightly grilled or sauteed vegetables - courgettes, aubergines, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions etc - dressed with a light lemony mayonnaise on which fresh mint leaves are scattered, is worth preparing again.

What joy to be watering flowers and herbs in pots in the late afternoon sun, after so many days of rain, have made the chore redundant!

chance read, gypsy music, please,

A book picked up by chance. I read the first page and have had difficulty in putting it down. Someone must have left it behind when visiting, because I don't remember acquiring it myself. It is Un barrage contre le Pacifique by Marguerite Duras. A serendipitous read.

In Calverley Road shopping precinct, a gypsy guitarist plays. Standing beside him a barefoot dark haired girl in as black dress performs a few rhythmic steps, not quite flamenco. Outside a coffee shop, a young woman cradles her baby and pats its back in time with the music.

A child says to her mother: "I want a drink".
" Say, may I have a drink please, Mummy", says the mother, holding the drink out of the child's reach. " She pronounces the word Mummy in a staccato way with emphasis equally on both syllables. "May I have a drink please, Mum-my," says the child mimicking perfectly her mother's way of saying Mum-my." There is a note of long-suffering and a quiver of resentment in her voice. It is the resentment which comes from an innate sense of superiority. She must be four or thereabouts. What will she be like at 14?

helicopter, policeman's helmet, no photocopier

For the sake of an accurate description, I have just weighed my new helicopter. It weighs 10 grams or 1/4 oz. The fuselage is made of expanded polystyrene, the rotors and tail propeller of plastic. It is powered by a tiny motor beneath the rotors, which gets its power from an external battery-powered charger. You plug the charger into the helicopter via a lead. You operate the helicopter by remote, wireless control from the charger. It requires some skill to fly it (it has to be indoors, unless it is very still outside). But I am getting better at it every day. So far it has proved remarkably robust having hit the ceiling on a number of occasions and plummeted to the ground, when I took my finger off the throttle.

We sit on the terrace outside the Spotted Dog at Speldhurst and feast on haddock and chips. The beer-batter, in which the fish is clothed is light, crisp and transparent. It deserves and gets a couple of pints of Larkins bitter, brewed at Chiddingstone, down the road, to accompany it. I've been going to this pub for 40 years or more. It was famous for its views over the weald. Then a malign neighbour who owned the field beneath the terrace, planted trees which soon obscured the view. Now a gap has been made in the trees, and the view is partially restored. Under the wall beside the terrace, policeman's helmet or Indian balsam, is flourishing. It grows profusely in these parts, especially on river banks. We watch the bees popping in and out of the purple flowers, in forward, and out backwards.

I read this morning in Coleridge's Biographia Literaria how, when at school, he copied out the sonnets of William Bowles in order to share his enthusiasm for them with his friends. "As my school finances did not permit me to purchase copies," he writes, "I made, within less than a year and half, more than 40 transcriptions, as the best present I could offer to those, who had in any way won my regard." I thought to myself: No telephone, no typewriter, no word-processor, no computer, no photocopier! I love Coleridge all the more for this.

courgettes, drinker, fines herbes

Late but welcome are the baby courgettes, which I am cutting, the fruit no longer than the flowers, both fruit and flowers sliced finely for a salad or quickly jumped about in the frying pan.


On the blue plastic cover of the swimming pool, which I pass on my way to the vegetable garden, stands a pigeon, its feet in a puddle left by the rain of a couple of days ago. As I watch, it bows its head and ups its tail to drink from the same puddle, repeatedly and with apparent enthusiasm.

Chervil and chives share a pot in the garden where we sit. Every couple of weeks, I cut both to make an omelette aux fines herbes. Had they been visiting, Sherlock Holmes might have observed today: "You will note, Watson, that they have not eaten an omelette aux fines herbes in this house in the past two weeks."