Getting back to normal (slowly).

As everyone knows Boris had hoped to ease the lockdown on June 21st. In the end caution prevailed and the country was urged to carry on with the existing arrangements. Which was a pity as we’d publicised the opening of the garden to the public on June 24th. What a dilemma…what should we  do? But after a lot of thought Rosie and I decided to follow the example of Boris himself, Mr Cummings and Matt Hancock and Totally Ignore the Rules. After all, the proceeds were all going to charity. And so it was that, yesterday, 206 cheerful and ultimately delighted people spent the day ambling around The Long House garden enjoying the sunshine that almost miraculously appeared amidst the rain and gloom of this summer.

And after they all went home we totted up the takings and found it was on a par with 2019 despite the attendance being 20% lower. The British public, it seems, have a natural reluctance to break the rules. Unlike our Lords and Masters. Will they never learn?



Spot the difference.

Perhaps to the relief of all I’m back to things horticultural this time, prompted not so much by comments unfavourable from my Loyal Readers (‘hopelessly at sea, stick to subjects you know about’) but more because of the effect this miserable weather has been having on the Long House garden. Here are just a couple of examples taken a year apart on the same day, the first showing how the walnut tree has struggled against the April frosts compared with last year’s warmth, the second proving we’re about four weeks behind where we should be. 

It would be comforting to think the slow start will prolong the season but, who knows, we might yet get a knot of frogs or a plague of locusts to further torment us, so better not to think too far ahead. Anyway, on the subject of differences I have been trying to teach grand-daughter Bay one flower from another. When it came to anything yellow she knew a primrose from a dandelion but when it came to distinguishing a celandine from a buttercup or a cowslip from a polyanthus she, quite reasonably, was also hopelessly at sea. So for the benefit of all, from left to right, are celandines (ficaria verna), buttercups (ranunculus acris), cowslips (primula veris), primrose (primula vulgaris), oxlip (primula elatior) and a dandelion clock (you really don’t need to see what a taraxacum officinale looks like).

But do you know the difference between an English and a Spanish bluebell? English on the left and Spanish on the right in case you don’t. English take about 7 years from seed to flower whereas Spanish breed like rabbits…get them in your garden and you’ll never be shot of them, and what’s more they’ll cross-fertilise with the English and wipe them out (don’t tell Boris that or it’ll end up on a bus).

And can you tell the difference between a blackthorn and a hawthorn? It’s not easy from the blossom but the clue is in the leaves: if it’s flowering on bare stems it’s blackthorn and if it’s surrounded by green it’s hawthorn. The thorns of both are spiky but the bark of the blackthorn gives it its name, hawthorn’s being lighter and rougher. If you’d like to know more I’ve just found a remarkably erudite article on google: https://www.thelonghousegarden.co.uk/news/2017/4/13/the-blackthorn-winter 

I spent ages telling Bay about how there are 219 different varieties of primula, how you can kill a bluebell if you tread on it, how a fig tree saved Romulus and Remus from drowning in the Tiber, how the dandelion got its name and how to make sloe gin from blackthorn berries. This is what she thought of it all. But, lest she hurt my feelings, she gave me her recipe for marmite and cheese scones.







Surpasses.moisture.winds

I’m probably going to tell you something you’ve known about for ages, but as I’ve only recently discovered it, and because it’s quite interesting and really quite useful I thought you ought to be made aware.

Surpasses.moisture.winds is the address of my bonfire site. Where I’m sitting typing this blog my address is bubble.nuptials.ramp and where Rosie is making supper at this very moment her address is powder.spent.windpipe. 

It all sounds rather far-fetched but I assure you it’s not. This method of pin-pointing an address has been adapted world-wide and is called ‘What3words’. It was devised by a very visionary fellow called Chris Sheldrick who took it upon himself to divide the world into three metre squares. And then he counted them, all 57 trillion of them. And here’s the clever part, he gave each and every one of the 57 trillion squares an individual address. Comprising just three words. And in the process used only 40,000 words to create those 57 trillion addresses (40,000 x 40,000 x 40,000 = quite a lot, more than enough to put address labels on 57 trillion squares).

Think how useful it is: if I were to break a leg in the middle of Friston Forest I could call 999 for help on my phone and pinpoint my position precisely. And that’s also why the local fire brigade know about surpasses.moisture.winds because it’ll save them fruitless call-outs in future.

That’s enough of that. Anyone would think I’ve an axe to grind (giggles.herb.bombshell is where I chop my logs). What about Sussex in the spring? This time last year it was spring with a vengeance…warmth, birdsong, blossom, green leaves. This year’s chilly winds and early morning frosts have put paid to all that and we’re at least a fortnight behind schedule. Here at refrained.downs.providing you can see the difference: both photos taken on April 21.

Here’s a few more pictures of our delayed but still glorious spring. From left to right: muffin.crispier.maple, passwords.dries.painted, annotated.flamed.horseshoe, boards.wriggle.rungs. Thought you ought to know.






Litter, offal and Samantha.

Every so often I feel like a bit of a moan: why is it that all these people who’ve suddenly discovered the countryside during lockdown think that someone else is going to pick up the rubbish they chuck all over the place? Crisp packets, fizzy drink cans, paper hankies (man size), bumper bags of assorted mini chocolate bars (empty of course), I even found a discarded pair of brown lady’s knickers (sorry, I mean a brown pair of lady’s knickers) on the way to the sea a week ago and yesterday, while walking through the forest a pair of man’s black designer underpants. And it’ll only get worse over the Easter weekend if the weather’s good. I daren’t be a good citizen and pick the stuff up in case it’s infected with Covid. What’s a chap to do? We tried, many years ago (60 to be precise), me, my junior siblings and the kids next door, and organised a ban march and toured the town carrying banners banning school uniforms, smoking, two tone horns, cruelty to animals, work, ban marches, LITTER and anything else we disapproved of. Things have only got worse since then because no-one listened.

Kids in those days ate what they were given or they went hungry. Today’s children seem to be given a choice and even then often refuse to eat what’s put in front of them. The only time we were given a choice of lunch was once a holiday: our favourite was kidney cooked in its fat (baked in the oven to make it crispy and edible), spuds mashed with beetroot (because it made your pee pink, which was fun) and for afters, toffee pudding (condensed milk boiled in the tin for two hours, very filling, very sweet, very sickly). But try to give that lot to kids today, especially the offal, and they’d run a mile. Such a pity as offal is cheap and delicious. Mind you, it can be too much of a good thing. Once, in Crete (on business of course) we were taken to a special taverna halfway up a mountain whose menu specialised in parts of the animal that weren’t normally eaten: Kokoretsi (heart, lung, sweetbreads, kidneys and other innards wrapped in lamb or goat intestine and spit-grilled over charcoal), Ameletita (literally, ‘unspeakables’, fried sheep’s testicles), and Gardhoumia (stomach and offal wrapped in entrails) with a meze of liver, pig’s ears and brains to start.

Talking of offal reminds me of the sad demise of Iain Pattinson who, as I’m sure all my Loyal Readers will know, was the genius behind I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. For 27 years he wrote the gags, the funny links, the letters from Mrs Trellis from North Wales (Dear Mr Titchmarsh, never let them tell you that size isn't important. My aunt told me that, but then all my new wallpaper fell off) and the delicately crafted but wicked double entendres for Humphrey Lyttelton’s ‘ever-lovely Samantha’, the show’s much alluded to yet silent scorer, who happened to be a raving nymphomaniac. Here are some of his best:

Samantha has to nip off to the National Opera where she’s been giving private tuition to the singers. Having seen what she did to the baritone, the director is keen to see what she might do for a tenor.

Samantha has an Italian gentleman friend who has promised to take her out for an ice cream and she likes nothing better than to spend the evening licking the nuts off a large Neapolitan.

Samantha has to slip out now. She’s agreed to go out on a trawler to learn all about fishing and has already made many friends amongst the crew. She’s particularly looking forward to helping to toss the buoys over the side of the boat.

Samantha tells me she has to slip across to Regents Park Zoo to help look for a missing snake and she’s promised not to return until she finds the keeper’s adder behind the reptile house.

Well, I'm afraid it doesn't look as if Samantha's going to be able to make it for this half of the evening at least. She's had to stop off to see a grumpy, old gentleman friend in Stockport, who doesn't like spending his money. He's been phoning her constantly, angrily demanding a visit. Samantha says she doesn't really mind handling his testy calls, and she says if she butters him up properly, she can occasionally get him to splash out.

Samantha is off to see a chef gentleman friend who is renowned for his fine-quality offal dishes. While she's very keen on his kidneys in red wine and his oxtail in beer, Samantha says it's difficult to beat his famous tongue in cider.





A plague of snowdrops.

You have to admire the plucky little things. Up they pop soon after twelfth night almost regardless of the weather, to encourage us to think that spring might not be too far away. It often is, of course, but it doesn’t stop them bursting through frozen earth when all other self-respecting plants are very much keeping their heads down. 

I’m sure all my Loyal Readers know the legend of snowdrops: that after the Good Lord banished Adam and Eve from the paradise of the Garden of Eden into a barren wilderness where no flowers blossomed nor birds sang, poor Eve got very depressed and almost suicidal. Just in time an angel looked down and saw Eve shivering in the snow, weeping, and consoled her, saying the snowflakes will turn into flowers as soon as they touch the earth. And sure enough they did, becoming snowdrops and a symbol of the end of winter with the promise that summer and sunshine will come again. 

You probably know, too, that snowdrops attract their own afficionados, galanthophiles. But they baffle me. Apparently there are 20 known species and over 500 cultivars but really one snowdrop looks very much like another, so unless you’re an ant or you get down on your hands and knees, turn them upside down and peer into their eyes I think you might as well stick with good old galanthus nivalis. Particularly when you can spend £120 for a single bulb of, for example, Galanthus Treasure. 

The problem we’ve got with snowdrops here is they breed like rabbits and become a bit of a pest. Ours are all the common snowdrop, the galanthus nivalis, which simultaneously drops its seeds and multiplies its bulbs in an effort, it seems, to colonise the whole garden. Much as we love them we’re having to dig them out to provide space for other plants. I live in hope that a tiny clump of doubles - galanthus nivalis flora pleno - that I spotted lurking in the hedge might cohabit with the remainder and produce offspring of such rarity that our fortunes might be made. Non sit delicatus! 

Other interesting things about snowdrops (you don’t have to continue reading here…you can skip to the next bit): they hang their heads because they are shy…the ‘drop’ in their name doesn’t refer to a drop of snow but the shape of an ‘eardrop’…their bulbs contain Galanthamine, said to treat Alzheimers…they came from southern Europe in the 16th century and it took them 200 years to become a wild plant…the Victorians associated snowdrops with death and considered it bad luck to bring them indoors… some countryfolk carry snowdrops into their houses to cleanse them…in Sussex, picking the flowers apparently results in thin milk and colourless butter. Quod satis est!

Finally, from last time, the answer to Queen Victoria’s many relatives:







A different sort of lockdown challenge.

As my Loyal Readers will realise, my mission in each of the lockdowns has been to suggest ways of alleviating the boredom we’re all suffering from and to stop it turning into a severe case of the screaming abdabs. So here’s my latest attempt to create fun for all: 

I’d like you to identify each and every one of Queen Victoria’s children, cousins, uncles, aunts, friends and distant relatives in the photo above. I’ve helpfully done a key line drawing (below) numbering each person so you can easily list them once you’ve worked out who’s who. One point per person correctly identified. And points, as you know, mean prizes. (And please don’t bother to thank me…it’s my pleasure trying to stop isolation breeding madness.)

Feel like painting?

There’s been a lot of putting brush to canvas on the box recently. Bob Ross, the Joy of Painting fellow, has hardly been off BBC4, keeping viewers comfortably happy with his skilful but stereotyped landscapes, while Sky Arts has been running a series of Portrait and Landscape Painter of the Year programmes with amateur and professional artists battling it out to keep the judges happy. So perhaps, my Loyal Readers, you may already have been inspired to pick up your palettes. But if not, here’s a suggestion for banishing those lockdown blues: get painting and unlock your inner Ravilious. Or Constable, Turner or Hockney, come to that.

My creative urges are fulfilled much more simply - by pressing the button on my camera - and I’m lucky enough to have the South Downs to help me. Thanks to the recent weather here are a few pictures that might help get your creative juices working. Don’t be shy…get out your brushes and have a go! 

Bits and pieces.

The dog walk this morning was really fun. For while the south of England was promised a thick coating of snow all we got here was a deep frost, leaden cloud and heavy rain. By the time the two dogs and I ventured out, wrapped in our respective coats, the wind was whipping the rain into our faces, the mud was up to our ankles, the cold was making our noses drip and the only fun to be had was crunching the ice in yesterday’s puddles with the tip of my walking stick. Even the dogs, normally quite happy to dash through the forest in the hope of finding a deer to chase or a squirrel to terrify, were subdued and happy to get back home. Though as soon as we did Sod applied his Law, the sun came out and suddenly it was spring. I suppose that’s the great thing of being on the Sunshine Coast…while my Loyal Readers living elsewhere get what they’re given we quietly, secretively, sometimes frustratingly, seem to do our own thing. Don’t know whether to gloat or be disappointed. Anyway, over the south today at midday it looked like this:

Now to other things: the Tooth Fairy made an appearance here last night. Bay has for the past few days had been proudly waggling her very first loose tooth, but yesterday evening was doing her teeth and realised there was a gap where her tooth should have been. In a child’s mind, that spells treasure. But how much these days? Sixpence in my day, I recall. I think our kids got at most 10p. Maybe 20p. On a dog walk recently a small boy informed me his Tooth Mouse - yes mouse - had left him £2.50. That seems excessive. Sophie - sorry, the Tooth Fairy - settled on a glamorous silver and gold £1 coin. Bay was delighted.

Talking of gaps, Forestry England are hard at work in Friston Forest at the moment. Each year they decide on a section of the forest to manage and renovate: this consists of felling trees, clearing undergrowth of unwanted saplings and brambles as well as replanting and creating vast areas of mud. If you’ve never seen them at it, here’s a taste:

Not to be outdone I - aided and abetted by Sophie, Bay and Rosie, whose initiative this was both because our predecessor found Roman coins in the garden and because we’re cheek by jowl to the church’s graveyard - began hunting for spondulics of any sort with my Christmas present: a metal detector. Great excitement as the instrument pinged its way round the lawn and flowerbeds but sadly to no avail. Well, not much avail…just a few nails, bolts and a hinge until the bitter wind forced us indoors. But as Scarlet O’Hara so stoically said, tomorrow is another day.

And finally: an ear-worm from 1964. I’m afraid it floated into my head as I was tramping through the mud this morning and thinking of today’s blog title. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoRLIJJSG4o

My profuse apologies.

Ready for the long haul?

Ten days ago it all looked slightly more cheerful. The third vaccine had arrived, the schools were about to reopen, we’d got rid of 2020 and there was hope in the air. Then within minutes of the man who seemingly can’t be sacked telling us that under no circumstances were children going to be deprived of returning to their classrooms than the man at the top who seemingly can’t be removed was telling us that they won’t. And all this while the man in charge of trade who somehow manages to appear invincible was reassuring us that despite eight thousand lorries stuck in Kent Brexit wasn’t a problem. So in a flash everything went belly up.

But don’t let it get you down. The man at the top has assured us that everyone over 70 will be jabbed by the middle of February. While the man in charge of schools will give every child a new laptop and a fast fibre internet connection. And the man in charge of lorries & tariffs has said there’ll be no food shortages. Especially as the man in charge of money is printing tons more of it for everyone. So everything’s all right after all and we’re not to worry. But we must stay indoors just to make sure.

But meanwhile, amid all that chaos, here in Westdean we sort of carry on as normal. We get up and go to bed as usual, the dogs continue to have no compunction about demanding their walk before I’ve finished my breakfast and good old Waitrose deliver once a week. The only change to our routine is that Sophie and Bay have escaped from London’s plague and are staying with us until Bay’s new school in Brighton restarts. And that’s all in the laps of those who can’t be sacked, removed or are invincible. Of course their arrival is delightful but disruptive, with toys, dolls, pencils, paints and papers adding considerably to the natural clutter of the house that I’m unfairly accused of making. And trying to keep a five year old concentrating on her online lessons when she’s got the attention span of a gnat and would prefer to be doing almost anything else is quite a challenge. Cake making with Play-Doh and, yesterday, The Joy of Painting came to the rescue and I found them both creating *Bob Ross masterpieces on stones from the beach. In my opinion, the best place for his stuff.

Talking of the beach nothing changes there either apart from the shifting of the pebbles according to the direction of the wind. The recent storms have played the usual havoc with the Cuckmere, blocking the river’s exit and flooding the valley as a result. Touch wood, not as severe as last winter…yet.

Another of winter’s joys is hoar frost. Yesterday’s was a corker and though the distant views were spoilt by the mist the filigree around the plants was just magical. These pictures should cheer up even the gloom merchants. 

*As a special treat for all Bob Ross fans, click on this link to know everything there is to know about him. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/12/arts/bob-ross-paintings-mystery.html . And watching all of his shows should give you something to do while waiting for your jabs.

Christmas card extras.

Strange times indeed. No sooner do we leave one lockdown than another beckons. Well, not so much beckoning as galloping towards us. But thankfully, whatever the rights and wrongs of the Christmas break (assuming it’s still allowed in a day or so) the arrival of Christmas cards through the letterbox gives everyone a welcome taste of normality. So for any of the select band of the Musing Group for whom we have no address, here’s the card you should have received: 

Please note though, there’s no hastily scribbled personal news, welcome though that often is. Nor a lengthy, interminable, boastful memoir of holidays spent, theatres visited, children’s achievements and troubles endured that sometimes accompany cards (though never ours I hasten to add). However, one round robin we received a couple of days ago was so amusing and apposite that I thought it was worth sharing. So, along with very best wishes from Rosie and me for a happy and safe Christmas, together with the hope that 2021 will turn out a wee bit better than the year we’ve all just been through, here it is:

“In the garden we have been remarkably busy since March 23rd. In spring there was digging, sowing and planting to do for the vegetables, which we have nearly finished eating now. We spent happy hours watching them grow, which was real fun. Summer mowing and autumn leaf collection added variety.

Edmund finds cooking the daily porridge for breakfast is worth getting up early for and it keeps him occupied for the first couple of hours every day. He is now a very proficient breakfast chef.

I find that cleaning the house is challenging and am still working on a plan to initiate stage one.

Most Mondays I have a lovely time changing the sheets and doing the washing. Always so satisfying. Getting into a clean bed is one of the greatest luxuries in life and it has been so nice to have time to indulge in it.

Tuesdays are splendid if the sun is shining but we are surprised how enjoyable it is when it rains, watching the raindrops running down the windows takes up hours of our time.

Wednesdays are so full of fun and writing lists of interesting things to do that I’m afraid it would take too long to tell you about it.

Edmund finds Thursdays are his best day of the week not just the breakfast cooking but it is also rubbish day. He gets very excited on Wednesday evenings gathering things together and sorting them into the right coloured bags. Sometimes he has so much recycling that he has to decide whether he has to force it into one clear bag or get another one to put the extra in.

Fridays is usually supermarket day. Such fun going to Lidl and Waitrose and deciding which mask to wear. Customers in Waitrose seem to have some very stylish face coverings and I worry that they might think mine a bit naff. Sometimes we put on blue plastic gloves just to cheer up our outfits.

It is lovely when the weekend comes as we deserve a bit of relaxation and it’s nice not to have to do a thing.

A handy tip is to run the dishwasher alternative days as this results in a different day for switching it on and emptying it every week.”

All photographs © Robin Lloyd