Turning shapes

Nick duly arrived yesterday morning and set to with my sharpened tools. Work was slow to begin with as I had promised Patrick the turf which he wanted to cover some of his beds with, and so much earth came up with each slab that we had to hack it off first. Eventually we decided enough was enough, and Patrick came to collect his goodly pile. Once he'd gone the work went much quicker. Nick started stacking the turves along the edge of the summerhouse base where they will be covered witha weed suppressing material and happily rot away until next spring. He got as far as the pond when he downed tools for the day. He had spent almost six hours digging in the hot sunshine having eaten nothing all day but a slice of cake I gave him with his tea. Coffee and fags kept him going. Mad! So far the results are looking good, and he'll be back next week to continue the transformation on the other side of the garden.

Nick stacking turves

The big new bed

Overview

This morning dawned clear and sunny, so it was with mild regret that I left the garden behind and got the London train. But what a day I'd picked! England playing Wales at Twickenham, and a lot of football supporters wearing green Aviva shirts. The train was heaving but I found a seat and even discovered an old earplug in my handbag which I broke in half and popped in for instant relief from the din. Coming home was much worse, crammed into the small train from Ipswich where the town's football team had apparently played Bristol City and drawn. I've never seen so many cans of larger or heard so much foul language. Horrible it was, horrible. But the day was such a success. There was a surprise link up with younger daughter at the National Theatre where we had lunch, and then a visit to the Tate Modern to see the Agnes Martin exhibition. We were quite simply blown away. It was luminous, inspiring, moving, extraordinary, sensitive, thoughtful, imaginative, and superbly accomplished. No, none of that will do. Words fail me. I'm so glad I made the effort. All those carefully drawn grids on beautiful paper, delicately painted with earthy colours, or later soft pastel shades that reflected the New Mexico landscape. We both loved it.

Back home the sun was setting but I couldn't resist getting into old clothes and briefly continuing Nick's curvy line around the pond and towards the fence. I managed a couple of feet before I gave in to the gloaming and came indoors. But why did I go into Marks and Spencers at Liverpool Station to buy a bottle of water when I could have bought a microwave dinner? Am I quite all there?

Trivia

I spent an hour yesterday sharpening my spade and edge cutter with a stone sharpener which is a wedge of graphite or cobolt carefully created in a factory. Anyway, the men in the hardware store told me not to drop it on a hard floor whatever I did as it would shatter, and I was very careful with it. I was getting the tools ready for Nick who is coming to perform surgery on my lawn on Friday and because he cycles up from Peasenhall he won't have any of his own tools with him. What a difference it made! I tried them both out on a patch of lawn when I'd finished and the edger especially sliced through the tough fibres of the grass like a blade through low-fat Benecol. Just as I was finishing Caroline turned up with her Kenwood mixer. She had told me on Sunday that her blender jug had broken and she was blowed if she was going to buy another. I remembered from a few days earlier that I had inexplicably found no fewer than three in my cupboard when I made the first soup of the winter (courgette and potato), and that she was welcome to one of them. We tried to fit them onto her mixer with no success, but she wondered what would happen if she just held it in place and Bingo! So she left happy.

I've ordered two rugs from John Lewis with the proviso that I will return whichever one is least suitable. You can do that with John Lewis, bless them, and they even give you 90 days to decide. The rug is to sit between the sofas in my sitting room, in front of the fire, to replace the temporary one which really belongs in the kitchen, especially in the winter. I've been searching rather half-heartedly for a while, but last week I had a more serious look and to my amazement I found these two which are the right size and, I think, the right colour. I think the lighter one will be best, but you don't know until they are placed in situ. Here they are, the smaller one the Kabir Goby and the larger one the Osta Kabir. Hopefully they'll arrive when I'm in. It's a busy week this week though I'll be here all day Friday with Nick. On Saturday I'm off to London for the day to see the Agnes Martin exhibition at the Tate Modern before it closes. It comes highly recommended, with a capital H and R.

And so the day ended with the first Italian evening class of the new academic year. It was fun to see everyone, and to meet the new influx of joiners which has brought us up to 20. Predictably I know a few of these already. It really is a small world. I came home with my head reeling and fell onto the sofa to watch a recorded University Challenge, followed by The Catch, an everyday story of trawlermen on the high seas. Both are so relaxing I was like a marshmallow when I finally went to bed at 11pm.

Keeping On Top

Forget watering in dry spells and deadheading. The number one rule in all gardening books should be: Keep your mouth closed when you're working with very well-rotted compost. Or perhaps everyone else already knows this? I fiddled around in the bin area for a while but the recent heavy rain has left the piles sodden so I'm leaving them to dry out a bit. Instead I turned to that perennial mountain of weeds, the bottom of the garden. How many times have I laboured down here only to find it's covered again when I turn my back? Too many to count. But you have to have a sense of humour when you're gardening, and a heap of optimism, and I try to cultivate both.

 My spirits were duly exalted when I looked out of my bedroom window at the front garden which I often complain about but which is actually lovely. It's the overview that impresses here. Needless to say there are many weeds but I try to ignore them until I have time to deal with them.

Anyway, I collected so many weeds and branches from the pond area that I decided to store them in the garage until I can take them to the tip. I can't risk leaving them out in whatever rain is to come because they are horrible to transport when they're wet, and any additional soil that comes off them can be swept up and recycled. I'm not just a pretty face. But why oh why didn't I make a gate in the fence between me and the field? There's a whole strip of my land out there where I could have just left the weeds to rot, out of sight. But trekking all the way around with a laden wheelbarrow several times is just too strenuous. Silly old me.

And while I was taking a photo of the weeds I saw a silouette of myself on the ground and photographed that too. I think it's rather flattering, but by then I had washed my hair and changed because I was going out to lunch. What long legs I have. Is it a selfie?

When I came home I toyed with the idea of cutting the grass, but the evening was too lovely to waste and I had already spent most of the weekend labouring in my field. So off I trotted down the lane, and I made a big sweep of it, through Joan and John's garden, round the back of Patrick's, over towards the hall's lodge, up to the top and back along The Street. It took me an hour and a half and it was lovely. The sun set before I was halfway round, but the evening was completely windless and warm, so I had to peel off my over-protective layers. When I came in I looked across my kitchen, and to my astonishment I spotted a snaking path of stones on the windowsill. I know they must have been there at least a couple of weeks, the work of a previous visitor, but I honestly hadn't registered them before. They're not exactly invisible.

Horse Sense

I was working in the garden yesterday when I spotted a steaming pile of what a horse does best just along the lane, so I downed tools, grabbed my wheelbarrow and spade, and nabbed it for my new improved compost heaps. I told a friend and she was appalled. But I'm so serious about these compost bins that I'm thinking of stowing a small shovel and bucket in the car, for I often pass similar freshly-produced piles and it's such a shame to leave them to be ground down by passing vehicles.

Still in an equine vein I watched a brilliant Icelandic film called Of Horses and Men. I don't know why but something told me to record it, and I'm so glad I did. It was extraordinarily powerful and beautiful, filmed in an isolated community where the horse is both the currrency and the object of everyone's lives. Locals played the parts, but the wild horses were the stars. It was a series of short stories, and the opener began with a very tall, fastidious, tweed-clad man getting his dainty little pony ready for a ride. The camera panned to various houses dotted around the wild landscape where neighbours with binoculars were waiting for his approach. He mounted, and he was off, but the pony was not trotting or cantering but pacing, high stepping, very fast. It was amazing to watch the speed with which this little pony ran, her rider sitting very upright and proud, his legs hanging well below her girth. Anyway, our uptight man gets more than he bargained for. A black stallion very evidently on heat takes a shine to the small white pony, and having broken through a fence ravishes the pony with her rider in situ. It was so shocking, so unbelievable, that I sat stunned, unable to move. He took it personally of course, his dignity pricked (no pun intended) and when he got home he shot his beloved pony. Each story was as dramatic in its different way. An alcoholic man rides his pony way out into the ocean to buy high octane vodka from a passing Russian ship, the freezing waves crashing around them, him immune in his alcoholic state, the land a dot on the horizon. And there was much, much more. I've kept the recording. One day I might want to watch it again.

It's been a day of baking, casseroles and soup. The kitchen is filled with beguiling smells, and soon the freezer will be stocked as well. I had planned to wash the mud off every pair of boots I possess, all caked after being stored away like that all winter, but the rain came too soon. I have a new resolution: to clean my boots when I come in each time, however tired I am, and leave them in a state of readiness for the next time. And pigs might fly.

Hou can one person have so many booots, all of them muddy?

Small World

Truly it is a small world. OK, it is literally a small world, the patch of my everyday life which extends about 15 miles inland from the coast, and around seven miles from top to bottom. Even so I'm always surprised when I encounter people I've met somewhere else, and we have to engage in that dance where we try to identify the thing we have in common. Today at CAB I was immediately recognised by Catherine who is a fellow Snape usher and opera lover. She told me that the feted Glyndebourne production of Handel's Saul is coming to Norwich in November, and so I rushed home after my training and booked a ticket. Other advisers are familiar from a singing group I belonged to briefly, or sometimes just from encountering in Waitrose. When I first moved to Suffolk I was told to never fall out with anyone (not that I would!) because everyone is connected and word gets around. I can well believe it. Two of my friends are very close to the person who is training me, and I know the boss from several concerts we've both been to, separately. So I was hugely embarrassed when my water bottle exploded like a rocket just before the film 45 Years started on Sunday, and I realised she was sitting just behind me. At CAB I'm now officially known as The Philistine.

Unravelled

I moved a few hundred logs from where I'd tossed them last week to clear space for the compost bin, to their new semi-permanent site in a walled alcove. They are a year old now, the result of felled and reduced trees in the garden and along the tall hedge. They can join the main collection in the woodshed in a year or two when they've weathered and dried out. I'm quite pleased to have such a nice collection of free fuel, though I paid to have them cut down in the first place.

While Val worked in the front garden removing two horrible big succulent plants which she loves and I loathe, the sun came out and I decided to quickly mow the lawn. I had an hour or so to go before I had to dash off to meet Sammy for a live screening of Aida from Sidney Harbour, so I threw myself at it and got around with time to spare. My plan was to have supper at Waitrose, do a bit of shopping and then zip off to the cinema. But it all went terribly wrong. I ordered a lasagne - "won't be more than a few minutes" promised the assistant, and so I sat looking at the crossword instead of doing my shopping while I waited. Twenty five minutes later, by which time I was a nervous wreck, a nasty, shrivelled, burnt offering appeared at my table under the guise of lasagne, next to a nice fresh salad. They offered to get me another one but I was too hungry and too late by then, so I ate what I could of it anyway and they refunded the price. I had to buy a packet of crisps to stave off the stomach pangs. By now the queues for check-out were long, so I grabbed what I could carry and staggered to the basket-only counter. And outside the rain hammered down, bounced off the ground, like a monsoon. Crawling along over lanes turned to lakes on an empty stomach stuffing crisps, shaking sodden hair out of my eyes and trying not to skid, I could have wept. But there was Sammy at the cinema, glasses of wine in hand, having booked the luxury seats with tables between them, masses of leg room and 100% clear view of the screen.

It was wonderful, the soprano Latonia Moore and the mezzo Milijana Nikolic beyond glorious. I counted at least six genres in this extremely flambuoyant production - but it IS Aida - including Star Wars, Colonel Gadaffi uniform fettishism, Follies Bergeres, Hair, Nazi supremacism and revivalist Pharaoh chic. But it all made for an interesting spectacle and the music was perfect. In bed later I decided to count Verdi operas, but couldn't get beyond 10 though I couldn't stop trying. And so my ravell'd sleeve of care was not knitted, and I woke this morning feeling like a sleepy elephant. I still do. Just call me Nellie.

So, Nellie and Helen went off to the White Horse at Badingham for the fabulous pensioner's lunch (she didn't quite qualify but they didn't ask) and when I came back home in the rain and cold there was only one thing to do. Here it is:

Making a Stink

Last night I went out for a stroll, past the church and then around to the hilly lane. A pipistrelle bat followed me, its chaotic flight looping backwards and forwards above my head. It was still and quiet, and as I returned and glanced across the field to the side of my house a barn owl glided low above the ploughed earth, rose over the trees opposite and disappeared into one of Alyss's barns, currently full of barley. So Hector was right, there is an owlish inhabitant there. Sorry Olivia, better luck next time.

This morning I cycled into Fram to get my paper and well, say what you will, but a quiet country lane, the sun appearing from behind the clouds to gently warm the air, and the smell of manure all around me and I was away. Sheer heaven. When I came to the steep hill I was amazed to find that I was up for letting go of the brakes and just going for it. I did slow slightly where the lane plunged precipitously, but mostly I sped down and it was wonderful. I felt no fear at all. I did some more dragging of compost into the newly-sited bin when I got back, but that's hard work, and despite there being no animal matter in there at all, the stink was ripe. I was saved by the rain, and so to Aldeburgh again for 45 Years, the relationship drama with Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay. Bittersweet it was, sad and funny and lovely, but her expression at the end left you in no doubt that all was not going to be well any more. 45 years they may have clocked up together, but was it worth it? I scanned the screen for Sammy who was an extra in the Norwich street scenes but couldn't see her. A good advertisement for Norfolk though: Norwich and the Broads looked gorgeous.

Recycling

What a hectic few days. On Thursday I went to see Lampedusa, a play about immigrants trying to get to this tiny Greek island in flimsy boats, as part of the High Tide Festival. Two friends and I perched on circular benches in the round tent on Aldeburgh beach with 77 other people, while the wind howled outside and sucked at the canvas walls. I sat next to a scruffy man who moved slightly to make room for me and then with his hand dried the wet mark his water bottle had made where I was to sit. I smiled at him and sat down, and we waited for the play to begin. And he was the star! Inches away from me, still seated, he played out the part of Stefano, the fisherman who daily pulls bodies out of the sea. Much of the time he stared at me as he spoke, and I stared back, utterly transfixed. After half an hour or so it was the turn of Denise (no relation) to sit there, and again I became part of the play as she directed her comments right into my face. It was a powerful play made more dramatic by the small venue and the proximity of the actors. But catastrophe struck half an hour before the end as a woman got up to leave and then collapsed in the doorway. Denise had to stop her stream of words as people rushed to help the woman, and I felt sorry for her and put my hand on her arm and said "What a shame. You are awesome." And she smiled without looking at me, trying, I realised, not to lose her place. When all was well again she resumed her role, and at the end the audience, all 80 of us, stamped and cheered. It was a brilliant play, acted with extraordinary pathos.

On Friday Sammy came over to help me empty the compost, a sturdy assembly of wooden pallets containing all the grass cuttings, fallen leaves and dead flowers amassed over a year. But as we forked and raked it all out it became apparent that this was going to be a massive job, and by 1pm we were both mildly shattered. We adjourned to the summerhouse with courgette quiche made earlier that morning by me, salad and new potatoes, and a lovely bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. As far as the work was concerned that was it. Neither of us could summon the energy to resume after lunch, and so we nattered until Sammy left mid afternoon and I promptly fell asleep. Anyway, under her direction I've now clered the space out completely and moved the pallets right to the back of the allotted area. I need two lots apparently, and today I had a spot of luck. In Woodbridge to look at trees, I stopped off in the town centre and spotted a pile of pallets beside a huge skip outside the furniture shop. They said I could have them, but they weighed a ton, so I waited on the road until a young man came along. I asked if he would help me in return for some cash, and he said he'd be happy to do it and needed no ;payment. Carefully he loaded the four of them into my boot, and I had to force him to accept a fiver for his pains. What a lovely person.

Massive heap of compost out of its bin

Bin put back on cleared land, waiting for return of compost

They're still in the back of the car. Why didn't I ask him to come back with me? Anyway, Sammy's pleased with my progress. She thinks I'm going to empty both compost bins out twice a year and give the contents a fork over before returning them. As I sit here with every muscle aching I can only think of one thing: dream on Sammy.

Small World

Helen invited me to lunch today prior to playing bridge - a 'light' lunch as usual, the table positively heaving with food -  and she'd invited another friend to join us. As we were introduced and shook hands we both looked at each other and said "I know you!". But could we work out where we'd met before? We went through everything we could have in common, but nada. And so we set upon the food, the two of them telling me about scams that had emptied their bank accounts of thousands that same week. The friend, Barbara, had had one of those phone calls supposedly from the bank's fraud squad, telling her she had been hit by hackers and asking her to call them back on the number on her statement so she would know it was a genuine call. When she did, they identified themselves as the fraud squad, but in reality when she put the phone down they had stayed on the line and she had just got straight through to them again. She lost over £6000. Helen's was a different scam, with someone intercepting an online purchase and clearing out her account, again of over £6000 which was on the way to her savings account. They were both devastated, even though they would get their money back. They felt violated, idiotic. What horrible people there are out there.

We got onto other stuff, as you do, and eventually as usual I had to tell Helen that we had to be out of the house in 10 minutes or we'd be late for bridge. She knows I'm never turning up late again and having all the other members glare at us as they have to rearrange the whole system. So we gathered ourselves up and prepared to go when Barbara suddenly said to me "Are you an usher at Snape?" That was it! We hadn't actually manned the same door but we'd been on duty together. What a relief. And so she said "Did you hear about the Romanians?" No, I told her. What about them? A troupe of Romanian musicians had been hired for the second year running to perform at the Snape Proms, despite having stripped the dressing rooms before they left last year! They took towels, soap, irons, kettles, mugs, dressing gowns, mirrors - you name it, they took it. And they did the same again this year! And to make matters worse, they had a row on stage in front of hundreds of concert-goers! It wouldn't happen at the Albert Hall.

Fruits of the Fields

Up again at 7am for the second time in two days, though not woken gently with a cup of tea this time. It was strange being out and about well before 9am, people rushing to work, schoolchildren "with shining morning face, creeping like a snail unwillingly to school". The towns I drove through seemed fresh, newly cleansed, and Waitrose where I briefly stopped was near empty, a complete joy. I got a free cup of latte with my few pieces of shopping, and as I was still early I sat in my car and drank it. Lovely. Ready now to face the day. It was my first CAB training session, and a complete eye-opener. It was a baptism of fire, but though it was tough, and not just by my reckoning, it made me more determined and sure that this is what I want to do. I've been so lucky in my life, so privileged, and have rarely been knocked flat to the ground. Other people's lives are not so agreeable, and they deserve respect and help if they ask for it. I'm daunted by the sheer amount of information that needs to be absorbed, not the answers themselves but the knowlledge of where to go to look for them. I'm sure I'll get there. Everyone else seems to have done.

I came home via Ruth's and we went for a walk through her local fields. As everywhere else, the blackberries are non-existent. It may be early days, but it's not looking good. At the weekend I got a good haul from the wild plum trees at the bottom of my garden, and they've been cooked and frozen ready to go on my breakfast oats when blueberries and nectarines have gone from the shelves. Amazingly I still have some blackberries left over from last year. But the next crop will be sloes, which are already looking fat, and I'm planning on making a good few litres of sloe gin to keep me and mine warm through the winter. I might get myself a little hip flask to make bridge go with a swing.

Pickin' a Chicken

What a kerfuffle! Olivia had not been here a few hours when we'd done catching up and decided to go for a walk. Just down the lane on the edge of a field lay a hen's egg, completely intact, and a pile of roughly pulled out feathers. We went over to investigate, and saw the rear end of a chicken sticking out from under the hedge. We looked at each other in bafflement, and then touched the hen which was alive but not moving. Had it been attacked, or run over? What to do? We went across to Joan and John who have chickens down the end of their long garden, but they were not in. So we decided to have our walk and then work out what to do when we got back. It was just glorious out in the fields, chilly, windy, dull, faintly drizzly but somehow invigorating as only the beginning of autumn can be. We were dismayed to see that Patrick's wheat has not been harvested and it's looking past its best, to say the least. What could have caused such a delay, and is it now ruined? I'll find out next week when they come to tea. We tramped and tramped up hill and down dale, into the woods and up through the still absent John and Joan's. The hen was there as before, and so we set about trying to find its owner. John, who has the beautiful German shepherd Lucy, came back with us and agreed that popping it in with other hens was probably the best temporary solution, and so saying he lifted the chicken up and plopped it into Olivia's arms. Olivia is hen phobic, and to make matters worse it evacuated its bowels all down her clothes. She blanched, she looked ill, but she stoically carried it down to the hen pen where the others promptly started pecking it while it just sat there blinking. We couldn't leave it, and so we removed it to the compost heap where it crept into the corner again and crouched down. Eventually we found the owners, Ben and Dorothy, who went to retrieve it. I hope they managed to save it and that it's OK now. I'll find out eventually. In the meantime I decided to keep the egg for my troubles. 

Today we took a long walk across Westleton Common and the heath through the back of Minsmere to the sea. It was much nicer today with lots of sunshine and a sea breeze, and we followed the path past the flaming heather, in full bloom at this time of year, and the woods with their many fallen trees, left where they land nowadays to encourage wildlife. We stopped to eat our packed lunch and chat while the sun poured down on us, marvelling at the change in the weather. And we ended up in the coastguard cottages on top of the cliff with a cream tea in the National Trust tearooms. I bought a beautiful soft blue rug, the twin of a green one Kitty bought a few years ago. A wonderfully satisfying day. What a treat.

Pushing the Boundaries

I love reading about people in extremes of circumstances who manage to survive against the odds. Whether they are battling up freezing mountains while suffering from altitude sickness, or staggering across baking deserts with blinding headaches and stomach upsets - and every variation in between - my admiration for such people knows no bounds. Perhaps even more inspiring are those who have not chosen their particular discomfort but are trapped, imprisoned, cast adrift, but who hang on anyway enduring appalling conditions. I don't enjoy reading about them. Whatever the cause, whatever the nature of their trials, I am in utter awe of them. For I believe I don't have that particular gene, and would lie down and wait to die at the first serious obstacle. This may be why I never get into a hot scented bath, never hop into the car for a long or short journey, never climb into my heavenly white bed at night (electric blanket on? then just press a switch), never even turn on the washing machine or dishwasher without thanking my lucky stars for the luxuries at my fingertips, and the gift of choice. And so the Syrian refugees we see every night on TV who are so desperate to get a foothold somewhere they may eventually be able to call home after losing theirs touch me deeply. Can we even begin to imagine losing not only access to a comforting bath or safe place to sleep at night but everything we held dear, everything? It's a harrowing, terrible situation. There but for the grace of god.

For the first time since summer began I closed all of my kitchen blinds this evening. It was quite dark outside when I began cooking supper, and I suddenly craved the cosiness when the black night is shut away. By chance I also had the Rayburn on, unusual for the past few months as I've used my electric hob for cooking casual meals. But tonight I had my whole crop of beetroot to roast, and a gammon joint to bake in its coat of brown sugar and cloves. The warmth from the range filled the kitchen, and the cooking smells wafted deliciously around my head. Summer's great, but winter has its charms too. Who'd prefer to sit outside in the sunshine sipping a cold glass of wine when they could be curled up indoors like this? Um, well .....

The Serpent in Eden

Such a lovely morning for a change, and so I walked along the beach at Dunwich where the waves were ginormous as they crashed onto the shingly shore. Funny, because there was almost no wind and the sea itself was calm. The gradient is very steep down there, though, and the incoming tide must have been reacting to the fierce incline. Whatever the scientific explanation, it was exhilarating to dodge the water, and to witness its power. We stomped along for a mile or so a few feet up from the froth, and then settled on the pebbles to enjoy the drama. It was a marked improvement for me after two weeks of feeling unwell. I woke after a nap on Sunday before I left Cambridge and suddenly realised I felt great. And I still do.

The garden is now completely out of control, but luckily Val is available to give me a hand, and I have a man coming in two weeks to cut the beds out according to my plan. I've pretty well finalised it now, and I think the new shape will provide the template for a really good design. If you had told me 18 months ago that I'd still be at this stage of preparation I might have thought twice about buying a house with a donkey paddock for a garden. No I wouldn't. But I'm still a long way off where I want to be. A long way, and an awful lot of work.

After a few rainy intervals during the afternoon the evening ended as the day began - calm, warm, bright and lovely. I wandered around the jungly garden with my secateurs, clipping the dead heads of dahlias, geraniums, lupins and delphiniums, and trying not to look at the lush verdancy all around me. After a while I gave in and set to with my fork and trowel to clear some of the weeds on my little brick path. It was satisfying, but I quickly became engulfed in tiny midges that got into my hair and feasted on my scalp. It's been so long that I'd forgotten the need to wear a hat when the sun is going down. Fathead. That's who I am now. Big Fathead.