It's that time of year again.

Hello Loyal Readers. In case you hadn’t noticed it’s getting precariously near Christmas. But of course you had…for goodness sake it’s been impossible to avoid it since August. However, here in the final musing of the year I’ll do my best to remind you of the heady days of summer rather than the melancholy hiatus of winter. To start things off here’s grand-daughter Bay showing you why she’s decided to become a florist when she’s older:

And if Bay's not enough to banish the winter blues perhaps a small selection of flowers that grew in the garden this year might cheer you up, to remind you that the days begin to lengthen soon and then the whole cycle will begin gloriously again.

Not only in the garden of course. If you have eyes to see, flowers are everywhere. Sometimes lurking almost hidden amongst the undergrowth, often thrusting through the grass, always enhancing the countryside and just as beautiful as any hybrid.

And I think that’s almost enough. You’ve mince pies to make and presents to wrap. I was going to add to the mini-history lesson I gave you in my last musing (about the ancient village of Exceat and the sad tale of the lad who found it, in case you’d forgotten) but I’ll leave my thoughtful thoughts and fascinating insights about all the places of local archaeological interest till next time and merely wish you a very happy Christmas and all the best for 2025. And in case we were remiss enough to miss you off our Christmas card list, here’s what we didn’t send you. Apologies, but it did save us a stamp.


Apologies for absence.

Hello Everyone. Hope you’ve not been missing me and my musings. Probably quite glad if truth be known. But today the meadow’s mown, the bonfire burnt, the grass cut and anyway it’s chucking it down outside so there’s little excuse for not sitting down at the keyboard and getting cracking. One of my loyal readers will doubtless ask: what’s with the delay? Well, to be perfectly honest, it’s mainly been the fault of Strava, the app that tracks your runs/walks/routes/steps and allows you to describe said runs/walks/routes/steps and even post photographs of them. It becomes a bit of an addiction if you’re not careful and my daily postings of walks with Dog have, I confess, exhausted my creative juices all year. It’s a pathetic reason, I admit, but there you are.

So now, after nine months absence, I’m not sure where this musing will take me. When I sort of started one in April I had the Exceat Stone in mind and the history of the long-lost village but then I looked out of the window, saw the sun was shining and the weeds growing and somehow the impetus left me. Till now, and I’m not sure that, after all these months of silence, it’s the best way to begin. Perhaps later.

Maybe the weather is a good place to start. After all, it’s always everyone’s the first topic of conversation so why change the habit of a lifetime. It’s odd that since Boris’s lockdown summer when the sun shone unceasingly we’ve not seen a lot of it. No reason to bring him back but we could certainly do without what seems to have been a bit of Denis Howell’s magic. Since then the rain has hardly stopped, culminating this last winter with the road into Westdean being flooded and impassable. To make matters worse we were unable to use the usual escape route through the forest as ForestEngland, god bless their little cotton socks, decided to forbid us to use it. So we were marooned, unable to get in or out until the floodwaters subsided. Which finally they did of course but not before we’d had a beef on BBC’s South East News. Not that it helped negotiations with ForestEngland..they are still ongoing, but that’s a quango for you.

The rain and lack of proper winter cold resulted, as every gardener will confirm, in considerable vexation: an epidemic of snails and slugs, an exuberance of Convolvulus Sepium - bloody bindweed - and in our case, an invasion of voles. Not only that, but seeds wouldn’t germinate and anything that did was eaten alive or smothered. Except the weeds, they are rather fond of moist and warm conditions. Thankfully, not opening to the public this year (or ever again!) meant we were able to relax and not worry too much about our slipping standards. Altogether though, not a lot of fun gardening this year.

That’s more than enough on the weather. Living here on the South Downs ought to lift the soul, and it does. So here’s a few views of our wonderful countryside in the hope it does the same for you:

Which brings me back to the Exceat Stone. Here it is:

As you can glean from the inscription, there was once a church on this site and a small habitation. It was discovered in the hot summer of 1913 by Maurice Theodore Lawrence, the 15 year old son of the rector of Westdean Church. He was wandering in the hills above the Cuckmere River when he spotted some indentations in the field which, to his 15 year old eyes, appeared to indicate a building of some sort. Obviously a smart lad, he told his father who asked an amateur historian pal of his living in Exceat Farmhouse, a Mr RH Verrall, and together they dug around and discovered stone foundations. It was enough for them to refer it to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and permission was granted for the Sussex Archaeological Society to excavate the site. Which they did and discovered the remains of a tiny church with a small porch and a horse-shoe shaped chancel. And because its foundation stones were Caen stone and Eastbourne greensand, similar to those of Seaford church built in 1090, they deduced it roughly dated Exceat church.

Around and about were oyster shells and sherds of medieval pottery which suggested there was probably a small settlement around the church. Rectors for the church can be traced back to 1255 when a pipe-roll mentions ‘Richard the Parson at Excete’. But within a 100 years the village had been sacked and destroyed by the dastardly French. After Richard there were 21 further rectors, the last being John Salter in 1469. Poor old Salter was rector in name only as he had no church and no parishioners as many died during the black death. The last two survivors, Richard Raye and John Algar petitioned the Bishop of Chichester that the church should come under the jurisdiction of Westdean and it was granted provided the Parish of Exceat remained in name. But in 1528 it was formally merged with Westdean, Exceat described as being ‘destroyed and razed to the ground and the site of the church profaned’. The foundations lay undisturbed till the excavations of 1913.

Sadly the young man who discovered the site was killed only three years later. In September 1916, Maurice Theodore Lawrence died in action aged just 18. He’d been one of the first lads in the area to have joined the Royal Sussex Regiment as a Private. He has no known grave but is commemorated in two stained glass windows featuring Saints Maurice and Theodore in All Saints church, Westdean.

Taz the Dog and I regularly take the path to the Exceat Stone as it has wonderful views of the Cuckmere Valley and its famous meanders. Most tourists don’t, preferring to take the easy route to the sea, so miss the pleasure of stumbling across this small piece of local history. If truth be told, most would probably rather a paddle and an ice cream anyway. More fool them.

A complete change of subject and back to the present day: a newsletter plopped through the letter box today from Swans and Friends Bird Rescue, a small charity dedicated to saving distressed feathered friends. It reminded me of the times they used to come to our our previous house in Crawley Down, where we had a small lake and, over the years, a series of incidents with swans that would make your hair curl. But as that’s perhaps a tale for another day I’ll end this musing with a few bucolic shots that paint a completely different picture. Happy days!

Tempus fugit carpe diem.

Oh dear, another year has flashed by, just like my pal Virgil said it would, and another 365 days of our allotted 29000 have been used up. Have we seized the day as my old friend Horace (not Batchelor of course) recommended we should? If so, doing what, I wonder, or are we just older and none the wiser?

It’s a thought to ponder upon during Christmas, as is, as you munch your mince pies, should it be ponder over, ponder on or ponder about? One or two of my Loyal Readers may care to answer such philosophical and pedantic questions while others might prefer some pretty pictures. So, doing my best to please all parties, here’s a few of our lovely county of Sussex taken during the past twelve months:

Not that I read Virgil or Horace. No time. I was just dropping names to impress. Our time - Rosie’s and mine - is of course much better spent raising plants, pulling up weeds and generally maintaining the garden in order to have it looking wonderful by the time we fling it open to the general public. But for no longer, as from 2024 onwards we’ll only allow the select few to come and see it. It’ll be serious horticultural groups only, garden lovers who know their plants and, who knows, will probably have to pass a test before they’re even allowed in. No more riff-raff who only come to gobble up Rosie’s cakes. That’ll be left to me. But as a tribute to past visitors, and as it’s Christmas and a time of good cheer to all, here’s a glimpse of some of the lucky 388 who attended our final opening this year:

Completely changing the subject: Sophie’s daughter Bay, now eight, is at school learning about the Romans.  Their roads, plumbing, currency, towns, architecture, how July and August are named after Julius Caesar and Emperor Augustus, how they invented central heating, the wall Hadrian built, the baths they lounged in and the aqueducts that brought them water. Bay, adding to the sum of human knowledge, has found interesting facts about Roman sanitation though it has to be said that Virgil might have struggled with her literacy and Horace with her truth:

Finally - for 2023 - our Christmas greeting to all my Loyal Readers. And for those not on our Christmas card list, apologies for the oversight, but here it is, complete with very best wishes for an enjoyable, indigestion-free Christmas and a reminder that 2024 is election year. Vorfreude!

Making up for lost time.

In March, when I posted my last musing, I was contemplating how I would mark my next, my 100th. Because anniversaries are the thing, particularly the hundredth. Perhaps a look back at some of them: ‘A mucky business’, ‘Friend or Foe’, ‘And so to bed’, ‘Colds, whistles, buttons and plywood’, ‘How we met Bob and Bob’, ‘Lynda Snell has got a point’, ‘Beethoven keeps your ears warm’, ‘Cummings and goings’, ‘…hee iv feree fis dog’, ‘Litter, offal and Samantha’, ‘Shuffling along’, ‘You can never tell with bees’, ‘A right royal cracker’ and the 86 others should give me something to write about. Then I counted them all up and found that the last, ‘The excitement of February’, actually was my 100th, so that was that.

But it did make me think I should make up for lost time because nine months have gone by since I last penned anything. Just as I was scratching my nose and wondering where to start daughter Sophie rang and began talking about bucket lists and how about taking a trip on the Orient Express before we popped our clogs. And then, being even more helpful, suggested she be given Rosie’s antique rings now because her fingers are too swollen with arthritis to wear them and anyway it would help with the de-cluttering.

But she has a point. De-cluttering. Someone’s got to do it, sooner or later. Pre or post Grim Reaper. But getting rid of stuff is a physical and emotional nightmare. There’s so much of it. Where to begin? Old wood off-cuts, kept because they’ll come in useful one day, that’s easy. Bonfire. Old leather bound books, some in German, rescued from my mother’s house when she died, less easy. Auction. Legal documents, c1820’s, hand-written on vellum, difficult. Law Society?

And what about the 86,706 photos stored on my computer? Who’s going to be interested in them? Maybe some of them, but who’ll sort those out? Maybe it’s easier to change the subject and instead select a few I’d like to show you.

So, to begin with, the most topical: we’re marooned in Westdean as the Cuckmere Valley and surrounding roads are flooded. Beautiful but a bit inconvenient.

As a complete contrast here’s a few taken in and around Radda in Chianti where we spent a week in September. Not that you need or want to hear about our holiday but, ever thinking of my Loyal Readers’ mental health, it might cheer you up in miserable November.

Talking of holidays, our visit to Crete last year inspired Rosie to take up her brushes again. A photo I’d taken of an elderly Cretan gent having a leisurely frappé was deemed to be worth painting but, composition-wise (if there is such a clunky compound), it was lacking something. An extra chair perhaps, and maybe a dog lying patiently at his master’s feet. A quick thumb through the 86,706 photos and I found just the very thing. What do you think?

Whether or not you approve of that, the praise showered on Rosie by the owners of Dourakis Winery for her untampered painting of their garden was effervescent: “OMG, How wonderful it looks!! May I also say how honored to see amazing pictures like the one your wife created! Rosie you are SO TALENTED!!”

What else has happened since March? Well, the subject of Meet Molly, January’s musing, has, sadly, departed. Not from this life I’m glad to say, but to another home. Lovely as Molly was, her saluki genes meant she was very strong-willed and her recall non-existent if her attention was elsewhere. Fruitless hours were spent searching and calling for her when she absconded to the far corners of the forest chasing rabbits or investigating badger setts. So, after four months and with great reluctance, she had to go.

As also did our public garden openings. After 34 years our last was this year and we marketed it as such on our posters, getting 388 visitors through the gate as a result. It’s sad to call it a day but after baking well over 300 cakes over the years (Rosie of course, not me) and spending countless hours tending the garden we decided we’d make up for lost time and do other things. Probably tending the garden if truth be known.

And finally: this arrived through the post the other day. Not many of you - if any - will know what it is (apart from, obviously, it’s a tie). So I’ll tell you: LX=60. And that’s how long I’ve been an MCC member. Not only do I get a tie, which I’ll never wear of course, but my membership is free from now on. So after paying subs for sixty years totalling a sum that I dare not admit to Rosie I can from today go up to Lords and watch cricket completely free. Now I can truly make up for lost time.

The excitement of February.

Poor old February. About the only kind thing to say about the month is the wonderment she brings at the beginning and the end of the day (that’s why I think of February as feminine). In between she’s back to being dreary, boring and miserable (maybe not). So, on balance, that’s why every year we’re all glad to see the back of her (gosh, aren’t pronouns a minefield). However, Loyal Readers, let’s not be too ungracious and show a couple of her plus points:

February only gets a little more interesting every fourth year when it (perhaps safer to revert to it) manages an extra day, Leap Year Day. According to folklore, that’s the day women are allowed to propose marriage to their partner, though in Scotland only if they are visibly wearing a red petticoat. Woe betide any man refusing her…if he dared he’d be issued with a fine, anything from a silk gown to 12 pairs of gloves to enough fabric to make a skirt. Cheap at the price you’d think, because, according to the Greeks, if they tied the knot in a leap year it would surely end in tears. The pessimistic Scots think anyone born on Leap Day will live a life of untold suffering, while their farmers believe that Leap Year is never a good year for sheep. Astrologers - a more optimistic bunch - reckon if you’re unlucky enough to be born on Leap Day and have one birthday every four years the compensation is you’ll have unusual talents, a unique personality and perhaps even special powers. So there you are: trying to get merriment out of February is like getting blood out of a turnip.

Better to tell you what’s been going on here. We’ve discovered Instagram. Posting little nuggets most days is quite fun…our usernames are ‘longhousegarden’ and ‘westdeanwalker’ if you’re interested. Here are some of our highlights of the month - photos only here - for the full stories you’ll jolly well have to follow us:

Meet Molly.

My Loyal Readers will no doubt have been on tenterhooks to know if there’s any news on the search for an Inky replacement. Well, you can rest easy because JR Whippet Rescue produced Molly four weeks ago. Not that she knows her name…completely clueless though to be fair she was only given it the day before we got her. She’s a saluki lurcher…very gentle but with a puppy’s boisterousness and a very strong will, demanding to be fed first and to occupy the most comfortable sofa. Poor Taz has yet to be totally convinced that she’s his ideal companion but, as they say, it’s early days.  But with her looks, she’s difficult to resist.

All we know about Molly is that she was rescued from the streets of Nottingham along with three or four other strays. She’s obviously not feral because somewhere along the line has had some sort of domestic life. But not enough. She has yet to learn to come when she’s called and because she runs at the speed of light we dare not let her free-range so she walks at the end of a long lead, frustrating for her and dead boring for us.

Since we’ve had her the weather’s been all over the place: rain, mud, frost, ice, more rain, floods and latterly, just to encourage us, a touch of sun. And we could do with a bit of cheering up as Forest England have been churning up the forest with their heavy machines, felling the stricken Ash dieback trees and in the process obliterating the paths and tracks through the woods and quite dramatically altering the familiar landscape. No sign yet of them picking up the logs which are strewn everywhere, though when they do it will add even more to the look of desolation.

I’ll finish with a landscape of a more floriferous hue: this is the plateau of Omalos in Crete, taken in Spring 2018.

Sheep, goats and bees abound there as well and for reasons that escape me we have, over the years, picked up the skulls of several of them (not the bees of course, too small). We went there last again last September with son Sebastian and wife Gemma…the flowers were over but animal remains were visible here and there. Gem’s latest linocut creation may or may not owe something to dem dry bones.

A right royal cracker.

My last blog promised you tales of our occasional encounters with the now King. Even if you’ve had enough insights into the House of Windsor this week I’m still going to let you into a few secrets of my own. More interesting than those of H&M but much more truthful…well, my truth anyway.

The first time: my ad agency had done a successful marketing campaign for 1982’s Royal Tournament and because the Prince of Wales was Patron of the Royal Tournament Rosie and I were invited to attend a Garden Party at the Palace the following year. And, presumably because of the show’s record audiences, I was selected to stand in line and shake a Royal Hand. The two Royals on duty were the Prince and Princess of Wales…I drew the short straw and met instead the future king. Can’t recall if words were exchanged though I do remember looking a prat and the size of the Moss Bros bill.

Not long afterwards Rosie and I began Pots and Pithoi, importing terracotta from Crete, and in 1990 Rosie found herself featured on the cover of Country Living. This time luck was definitely on our side as Princess Diana saw the magazine and showed it to her husband. He fancied a few pots for Highgrove, later bought several more and before we knew it we’d been awarded a Royal Warrant.

But by 1995 there was trouble at t’mill and we opened the newspaper to discover the Prince of Wales’s Christmas card. No Diana but to our delight the two children standing in our pots. We couldn’t resist: if you were lucky you’d have got one of our cards that year…if not here it is.

In the late 90’s we exhibited at the Chelsea Flower Show and in 1998, because we were one of his Warrant Holders, Prince Charles visited our stand. This time we did speak. Standing beside a four foot high pot, he asked how they were made. Quick as a flash I said by genetically-engineered long-armed Cretans. He chuckled (politely) while Rosie, sensibly, gave him the correct answer.

Later that year the Prince had his 50th birthday. The Cardiff Business Club, of which he was Patron and knowing he liked our pots, decided to present him with one. They asked it shouldn’t be like any he’d already got at Highgrove and so we suggested, to make it extra unique, it should be inscribed around the rim, just like the Cretans traditionally do for special occasions. It took ages for the wording to be agreed, leaving time short for the making, firing and transportation, so three were made to guard against breakages en route. All arrived intact, the best is in Highgrove’s garden and my lips are sealed on the whereabouts of the other two.

One of the perks of being a Warrant Holder is to be invited to Highgrove, meet the Prince and to tour the garden. To prove we were there in 2000 the official photographer managed to snap Rosie’s handshake and my nose.

Our final arm’s length encounter was in 2005, the year Charles and Camilla got married. As Warrant Holders we were sent a piece of his wedding cake…still looking edible to this day and no doubt worth a bob or two now.

So there you are. Reminiscences to rival Netflix’s. But hey, it’s Christmas, time to be cheerful. In case the striking postmen have failed to deliver our card to you, here it is:

And as Christmas is the season for silly puzzles, here’s mine. Spot the Dog. He’s in every picture, somewhere. If you fail to find him, you’d best get a prize at Specsavers.

Happy Christmas!

Here we go again.

A couple of days ago I was finally getting down to the latest musing (sorry about the delay, Loyal Readers) and it would have been a follow-up to the Queen’s death, telling tales of our encounters with the King, a royal slice of cake worth thousands and how my nose made it into a Highgrove photo-opportunity. But you’ll just have to suppress your excitement because it’s been raining quite a lot, the waters have risen and I’ve a different tale to tell.

Apparently we’ve had more rain in Sussex so far this November than we usually get in the entire month. And when it rains in Sussex most of the water drains downhill to the sea, a large proportion of it coming from the Weald via the Cuckmere River. And the Cuckmere - normally a peaceful little fellow ambling through the Cuckmere Valley - gets excited and overflows, flooding the entire area. We think he’s getting his own back for not being looked after properly by the Environment Agency, whose responsibility it is despite the local farmers offering to take it on…a long saga, too long to tell here but a classic example of bureaucratic stubbornness.

Anyway, here’s a birds-eye view of the flooded Valley, taken in 2019 though looking much the same today: https://sw-ke.facebook.com/SussexAirImaging/videos/devastating-effects-of-flooding-on-cuckmere-valley-at-exceat/2532928383699262/  And to bring you up to date here are a few photos taken in the last day or so:

When the Valley floods so too do all the low lying roads and that in turn besieges our small hamlet of Westdean. Our only escape route is via what used to be, in earlier times, the road through the Downs, but now is just a track through the forest: potholed, muddy, narrow but at least not flooded. But because the track runs through the forest the leaseholders, Forest England, call a very pedantic tune: they decide when we can use it and only then are we are given a code to unlock the rusty padlocks on two dilapidated barriers. Difficult enough in daylight particularly for us old codgers with arthritis but virtually impossible after dark. Still, as it’s our only route to freedom we have to be grateful for their small mercies.

Sort of changing the subject: no luck yet in replacing poor Inky. We’ve tried five dog rescue centres so far, all according to the press chockablock with lockdown returnees but each imposing ever-stricter conditions on who can take them. Worse still, they are mysteriously able to tell whether a dog will suit their prospective owner without ever meeting them. Baffling and frustrating. It doesn’t seem to matter if it’s large corporations or small charities, they all have power in their hands…and they sure like to use it.

But to end on a less cynical note, and since everyone likes doggie photos, here’s a few of Inky in her prime:

Things happen.

Sad, inevitable of course and understandable to us adults. But to granddaughter Bay, just seven a month ago, perplexing and worrying. Sophie found her in floods of tears. ‘Mummy’, she sobbed, ‘does that mean we’re all going to die now?’

But as we get over the shock life can return to some sort of normality and Bay can go back to school reassured that her days are less numbered than she first thought. And I can return to the blog I was going to write ten days ago. But before I do, here’s how Alfriston gently marked the Queen’s death, from muffled bell to simple window displays:

We’ve had our own sadness here too: dear Inky, our black dog, had to be put down at the end of July after suffering a severe injury to her spine. Goodness knows how she did it but we suspect she careered into a tree at high speed during one of her many nocturnal outings and a day or so later something happened to turn it fatal. It’s left Taz (the ginger one) bereft (and us too) so a replacement (if that’s ever possible) is on the cards. Meantime one of many memories: Inky muscling in on a garden visitor’s photo-op of Taz:

At the beginning of summer we celebrated the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. That seems an age away now but since then, here in Westdean and beyond, we’ve seen sun, heat, sun, rain, sun, heat, even more heat, drought…you get the picture. Maybe pictures tell the story best.

White horses and dark horses.

One of our favourite walks - the dogs and me - is alongside the River Cuckmere, under the watchful eye of the chalk horse some 200 metres above us.

The other day, when I was ambling along the bank and the dogs were sploshing in the river getting coated with mud, I noticed activity within the body of the horse. It was, as you can see below, a much needed scouring - weeding and replenishing the chalk - being carried on by National Trust volunteers.

But it set me wondering how many other chalk horses there are in the UK. Good old google gave the answer: sixteen white horse chalk figures (or 17 if you include the painted one at Cleadon Hills, but then Tynesiders are an odd lot). The best horse, our horse of course, was first cut in the chalk on High-and-Over hill above the Cuckmere Valley, supposedly by a couple of local lads in 1860 as a memorial to a local girl whose horse bolted and threw her to her death there. But in 1924, because the original got overgrown, it was re-cut and improved during a single night.

Of the other fifteen, 8 are in Wiltshire and the rest scattered around the place. Here they are, in age order and left to right: Uffington (bronze age), Westbury (1778), Cherhill (1780), Marmond (1790’s), Marlborough (1804, cut by naughty schoolboys), Osmington (1808), Alton Barnes (1812), Hackpen (1838), Woolbury (1846), Kilburn (1857), Broad Town (1864), Cleadon (1887), Pewsey (1937), Devizes (1999), Heeley (2000), Folkestone (2003) and Lutterworth (2012). If you’re on the ball you’ll realise I’ve listed 17 but shown only 16…three are ringers, aren’t chalk and shouldn’t count but are white horses so make the list by default.

More famous perhaps, and certainly more interesting, are the three other hillside figures: the Cerne Abbas giant (Roman by legend but probably a mere 400 years old but a symbol of fertility for some mysterious reason but enough so that local ladies, wanting to get pregnant, are wont to rub themselves along a certain part of his body), The Long Man of Wilmington (wishfully thought to be Iron Age but more likely 16/17th century…over the years has been blessed with a phallus and even given a sex change but now is discretely unclothed) and The Bulford Kiwi. This was cut by New Zealand soldiers waiting for their demob in 1919, impatient and overcrowded at Bulford camp but put to work by their commanding officer to prevent further unrest.

Which brings me to the wonderful work of Eric Ravilious. What needs to be said?

As for dark horses: haven’t they said enough?

All photographs © Robin Lloyd