Tag Archives: memories

Day 150

Californian Poppies

Today, I am going to rush through my 250 words and then get on with something else. I only realised this morning, with a shock, that it is the last day of May and I have submissions to make before midnight. Having been caught up at work this evening, then slept in front of the TV I find myself a little short on time.

This afternoon was interesting. We left work at 4.00 and locked the shop. My workmate exchanged a few words with an elderly gent and walked away. The man then came to me. I smiled in a warm and friendly manner, expecting some comment on our opening hours. Instead he said, “I need help, please can you help me?”

It was the start of a series of events that lasted for over an hour. That’s not long in terms of a lifetime, but it’s quit a long time to be involved in the problems of a complete stranger.

Wren

His problem was that he had been dropped off by a taxi driver. He didn’t know where he was or where he was going (apart from the fact it was a hospital). He had no money, no phone and no ID. All this came out in the course of our conversation. He wasn’t quite sure how old he was – late 80s – but the age and DOB he gave didn’t match up, and there was nobody at home we could ring because his partner was in hospital and was expecting him to visit. He was a touch confused, though he seemed o know his name and address, and had not shaved recently or had the benefit of clean clothes. This was not a man for whom things were going well, and in some respects, it was like looking in a mirror.

It was also a nudge into a memory that I don’t really like. About 40 years ago I saw a confused elderly man hit by a car as he tried to cross the M11 motorway near Cambridge. He went flying through the air, and when I attended the inquest the events of that afternoon had clearly placed a great strain on both the car driver and the wife of the deceased. I wasn’t going to let him wander off, but there wasn’t a lot I could do to help him either.

Gannets

In the end I had to ring the police and wait until an officer turned up to attend to him. She was very friendly and efficient, and asked all the right questions and took him home, where she was going to check with the neighbours and see what was happening. I will probably hear no more about the story, and will always wonder how things turned out but, in the manner of these things, I suspect it is the start of a change in his life that will not be to his advantage. I hope he has a family and that they gather round to help.

And on that sombre note I will leave you and go to finish my submissions for the month. I am going to make the most of my brain while it is still working. Not sure what photographs I am going to post with this, I will try for something cheerful.

Yellow Flag Iris

Rebus and Marillion and the Passing of Time

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Where to start? As usual i have a lot to say and a feeling that much of it is boring. So I will cut out what I was going to say about the Inspector Rebus stories on TV and go straight to Marillion. Their song Kayleigh was played on the pop quiz earlier in the evening and, as ever, took me back to an earlier place in my life. That was probably what induced me to watch Rebus, despite my opinion that John Hannah as Rebus is one of the worst casting choices of all time. Great actor, great character, but put them together and it didn’t work. And then, the dodgy club owner came to the screen. I thought “He’s familiar.” and he was. It was the singer better known as Fish, who wrote and sang sang Kayleigh before leaving Marillion for a career of solo work and acting.

I’ve always, by the way, thought that singers with nicknames, are a touch pretentious. This probably seems a little unfair from a blogger known as Quercus, but it seems to happen on wordPress – we end up being known by others by nicknames relating to our blog titles. That never seems pretentious. However, in fairness, they are nicknames given by others, not ones we give ourselves. I am now going to quote Fish on the subject of his nickname. I do see his point, and probably forgive him.

“With a real name of Derek William Dick, it became very necessary to find a nickname as quickly as possible.”

Yes, I can see that, though it could have been worse. We had an Andrew Dick at school, or A Dick, as he used to appear on lists. It must have all been rather wearing for him after a while, because the humour displayed by children between the ages of 11 and 18 is neither subtle nor varied. To be fair, mine hasn’t really move on much since then.

Do you ever get those days when something takes you back in time?

Scone Chronicles – 34

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This time it’s a hot pork sandwich.

We didn’t want much for lunch, having had a scone for elevenses, so before setting off home after our day in Derbyshire (the one last week, not this week) we did some thinking.

There were several places to purchase chips, but that seemed a bit much. There were other choices nearby, but I was feeling lazy. So, something light, and something where we didn’t have to move far.

We happened to be standing just yards from the Bakewell Pudding Parlour. I’ve had the hot pork sandwich before. We’ve also had the macaroons and other things from there, which always helps – it’s good to buy from places you trust.

View from our table

Hot pork sandwicjh

The empty “plate”

And that is what happened.

We had the hot pork sandwich with stuffing and apple sauce and we ate it outside, where they provide chairs and tables. We weren’t only ones to sit out, so it must be a sign that spring is coming. It also gave me chance to watch dog owners talking to each other and to take a photograph of yet another padlock.

A small padlock

A large padlock

It’s a good-sized sandwich, and with hindsight was probably a bit bigger than I really needed. There was plenty of pork and reasonable amount of stuffing. The apple was a bit runny.

All in all, not quite as good as it could have been, and probably not one I’d repeat. However, I will still go there for other food, as I do like it, and I like eating whilst watching people walk past.

Before Derrick jumps in to tell you that you can’t beat the pork cobs in Newark market place, I am going to provide you with that information, as it is true.. Their pork is more succulent, and everything else is just a bit better. And they give you crackling.

With my teeth that’s a bit like Russian Roulette, but don’t you love a nice bit of pork crackling? Or is that just me?

So if you ever find yourself in Newark – Nottinghamshire, not New Jersey – give it a try.

Five Years on WordPress

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According to WordPress it is now five years since I first registered with them. This was a surprise as I always thought that I’d started in October. It seems that it took me nearly two weeks to get the first post written.

When you read the first post this is even more of a surprise, as it doesn’t seem to have the polish you’d expect from something that took two weeks to write. In fact it looks like I just threw a pile of words at the screen and took a very bad photograph. This has remained my technique throughout the five years.

A bad photograph of guinea fowl . The start of a proud tradition of average photography

The whole blog is, in fact, a log-jam of typos, false starts and broken promises.

This is a better photograph. It’s a salad of weeds and edible flowers

The post which featured this salad was the third and things were getting better. This plate of f floral delights was unequal to the weight of health and safety wielded by one of the visiting Guide officers. She was determined to make everything difficult and, as I remember, her first complaint was that people were shooting on the fields and I should have known better than to allow it when sweet delicate Rainbows were going to be on the farm.

They were 200 yards away and the way the farm shoot was run were unlikely to be achieving much in the way of slaughter.

Anyway, if you’ve ever had to host a visit from any scouting/guiding group you will know as well as I do that it’s the closest you can get to being a lion tamer, now that we are no longer allowed real lions in circuses.

And Rainbows, being the youngest and squeakiest of the lot, add sonic weaponry to the horror of the day.

A brief read will soon show you that I haven’t really developed over the years – five years ago I was idle, overweight and out of tune with modern life, and nothing has changed.

The featured image is another robin. I’m thinking of running a series of lookalike photos, under the title “Nugget or No-get?”

Those of you who are currently looking bemused and wondering what I’m talking about should probably have a look at this post by Derrick Knight. It’s a typically elegant Derrick post with wine, women and song (represented by wine, Mrs Knight and a film) and a robin called Nugget. You’ll have to scroll down a bit for Nugget as Derrick is more industrious than I am and tends to write more. (This entire post, in case you hadn’t noticed, is about reusing old posts and photographs. Laziness, I feel, never goes out of fashion.)

Thoughts about Water

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It’s been wet for several days and there has been standing water on the roads. It’s been drier today and things are getting back to normal. This is a relief as my joints have been a bit creaky and I’m wondering if this is caused by the damp.

In many ways it is more like November than June. I remember a summer like this before. I must have been about twelve at the time and the mental picture of me staring out of a window at rain for an entire summer holiday is still with me. It has haunted me for years. The sense of loss, and being cheated out of six weeks of holiday, must have been really strong for me still to remember it so clearly.

Apart from that there is little I can think of to write about. Rain is not a terribly interesting subject, though if, due to the magic of WordPress, you are reading this in the middle of a drought, I can only apologise for my insensitivity.

I tend to stay off politics and other contentious subjects, as I don’t want to offend people, but I’ve only just thought of water in this context. It’s obvious really, when you think that the next series of World Wars, if we escape annihilation over religion, is likely to be over water. I have read that the Nile is likely to be a source of problems, and that the Portuguese are concerned with the way the Spanish are using all the water on the Iberian Peninsula.

When you have massive salad crops, as the Spanish do, you need water. Personally, I’d solve that one by banning lettuce, but you know how I feel about salad.

This is what happens when you mess with nature. Spain should stick to growing olives and grapes and we should stick to eating salads only in summer. In summer they are a necessary evil; in winter they are self-indulgent and wrecking the planet.

At last! I have found moral high ground concerning salad!

Normally I try to limit myself to one exclamation mark a day, but I think this discovery merits two.

Scone Chronicles XVIII – Bakewell Pudding

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The header picture is Julia sitting outside the Bakewell Pudding Parlour. Last time she was left to her own devices here she ended up buying macaroons. I’d forgotten all about that, and, once again, failed to supervise her in an appropriate manner. She emerged with teas, bakewell puddings and cheese pasties. She keeps feeding me despite my diet. When I say pasties, by the way, they were monstrous. They were big enough to use as hats. It seemed rude not to eat it, even though it contains a possibly lethal dose of fat and calories.

Bakewell – cheese pasty with cup for comparison

A large cheese pasty

Where to eat your pudding

However, I’m not going to talk about pasties, because this is a chronicle of scones. So I’m going to talk about Bakewell Puddings. There’s only so much you can say about scones, and I’m short of ideas for places to visit at the moment. My brain seems to be working rather slowly at the moment. I swear I’ve declined in intelligence over the last few months. Much more of this and I’ll have no option but to embark on a political career.

The Bakewell Pudding, as made in Bakewell, is not the same as the shop bought Bakewell Tart, which is generally an iced cake in a pastry case. I’ve not made a Bakewell of any type myself, though I have made frangipanes with Cape Gooseberries (physalis, inca berries, ground cherries – it has so many names).

Today’s puddings were great – flaky pastry cases full of sticky deliciousness. Julia didn’t care for them, preferring something less sticky. It’s an ill wind that blows no good, or, in other words, I ate hers too.

In truth, they will never replace scones, but they are a pleasant change and it seems silly to go all the way to Bakewell to eat scones.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I also bought a few books, so it was a good day.

Change is Easy…

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I’m giving the new editor another try. I don’t particularly want to, but I do want to access some of my older photos and I can’t do that in the normal editor. Anyway, it’s time I started embracing new technology.

Julia has had an adventurous day, first cutting herself whilst trying a spot of woodcarving, then melting a hole in her fleece when she transferred her attention to pyrography. Well, I say “attention”, but if she’d been paying attention she wouldn’t actually have melted the fleece.

I’m now going to put some photos in, if I can. The new editor doesn’t seem keen. I’m already remembering why I switched it off and went back to the old one.

This, hopefully, is a selection of my favourite photos from the last year.

I’m not finding it as easy as the old editor because I’m having to load one large photo at a time.

Change is easy, as they say, but improvement is hard.

As I stood in the shop one day

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Yesterday afternoon the sound of “Greensleeves” drifted through the open door of the shop. It wasn’t the instrumental version, with its memories of school music lessons and a youthful Henry VIII, but the tinny ice cream van version. According to the Wikipedia entry for Greensleeves, it’s probably not by Henry VIII, and it is a common earworm.

Where do I go from here?

I could discuss Henry VIII. I could talk about the psychology of ice cream van music. Or I could tell you that when I was working in Africa a letter arrived from my mother telling me my cousin had been killed on his motorcycle I had Linda Ronstadt’s Blue Bayou playing at the time.

Every time I hear the song it takes me back to that letter. Everytime I think of that letter, the song starts in my head. And every time the subject of earworms crops up the whole thing starts going round in my head. It doesn’t happen often, but like now, when it crops up the whole thing starts again.

Forty years have passed since it happened and though the image is fresh in my mind, it’s simply there and no longer evokes any emotion. This might be natural, or it may be I’m just not very sensitive.

It’s the same with the car accident flashbacks. After a lifetime of driving I’ve been in a few accidents and near misses as driver or passenger. With one exception, which happened nearly 30 years ago, they’ve not really made much of a mental impression on me.

One of them caused flashbacks. I don’t know why, but for a while I was getting two or three a week. They gradually declined over the first year until it was one or two a year, then none for a couple of years. However, when they did come they were quite disturbing. The last one was about five years ago and it woke me up with a feeling of panic just as I was drifting off to sleep.

Since then I’ve rarely thought of it and it no longer bothers me when I do. It’s now just a memory.

I suppose this is how we are meant to be – you can’t worry about everything in life or you’d break down.

Well, that’s been quite a journey – from ice cream vans to road traffic accidents. All I meant to say was that after two fire engines and a police car it was nice to hear an ice cream van.

The Excitement Continues…

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Look what drew up outside our house tonight.

I’m going to get invited to the Fire Service Christmas party at this rate.

Fortunately they didn’t rush up to the door with axes. Instead they went to the house across the road and climbed in through an upstairs window as the owner had, it appears, locked himself out.

That took me back to the early ’60s when we were living in Blackburn. We went to the seaside and spent the day at Southport, which always seemed like a treat compared to a day in Blackpool. Even now I can’t tell you why I preferred Southport and Morecambe to the bustle of Blackpool. It may be something to do with the time we went up Blackpool Tower and I discovered I was scared of heights.

Whilst relaxing on the beach the shop keys fell out of my Dad’s pocket. We sifted a lot of sand but never did find them.

On arriving home we rang the fire brigade for help and, as today, they entered by an upstairs window.

The difference between the two events, apart from nearly 60 years and 150 miles, was that we had a dog, a Border Terrier called Pip. He had been left to guard the house and that’s what he did. Fortunately we were able to distract him while the firemen entered and opened the door.

Ah, memories…

As you may notice, we have lace curtains so I can twitch them whilst spying on neighbours. I didn’t need to do that today, I just sat in my chair and took the photo. It’s probably my laziest ever blog post.

Eleven Photos and the Benefits of Blogging

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Teasels in flower

The main picture shows some teasel in flower. They have gone over a bit but you can still see some of the bluish flowers. I thought I’d include the picture after showing the mature ones earlier on this week.

Fungus at Mencap gardens

Mooring ring

Common Blue at Screveton

I thought I’d ID’d this one…obviously not.

Straw Bale Bowie Bear

The fungus is growing out of one of the raised beds in the Mencap garden and the mooring ring is from the quay at Burleigh pottery in Stoke. I spotted the blue butterfly on a visit to Men in Sheds in the summer and the bear was in a field near Scarborough advertising a music event. The dragonfly was pictured on our trip to Rutland Water, but I don’t seem to have identified it on the photo and can’t find the reference. I think it’s a Common Darter if I remember correctly – I only see common things.

Nuthatce at Rufford Abbey

Detail of the mouse

Swan at National Arboretum

Mint Moth

Poppy and chamomile

The bird with the bandit mask is another Nuthatch and the Swan was cruising down the river at the back of the National Arboretum last year. The mouse is from a harvest loaf we cooked on the farm and the remaining two photos are also from the farm – a Mint Moth (there were dozens about in the herb garden) and a poppy with chamomile.

They all bring back memories, and without blogging I wouldn’t have restarted with the photography – another thing I like about blogging!

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Life after the Care Farm