June Reading

A little while ago, when recording a podcast epidsode, one of the regular contributors said that they had started reading The Mirror and the Light. I admitted that I couldn't face it because I knew what was coming. 

As does anyone with the merest smattering, a thin Marmite spread if you will, of Tudor history knowledge. It's not spoiling the book to say that Cromwell dies at the end of it. I'm not sentimental about what sort of man he was - but having been drawn into being invested in him for 2 massive tomes, plus Mark Rylance's performance in the BBC adaptation, I was not keen to bear witness to his fall from grace. 

And what a fall from grace it was. Merely weeks after being made an earl, he was arrested on charges of treason, facing the worst form of execution, friends melting away like butter on a hot day and enemies churning the water relentlessly. It was a life bookended by ignominious circumstances and told in exacting detail.

 

Anyway, after being lulled into buying it by the wonderful tones of Anton Lesser reading it out (also BBC - radio this time), I took my sweet time about reading it. A couple of pages a day, a paragraph here, a sentence there. Nibbling my way to the end. Which I finally reached a week ago. 

It really is an incredible piece of work, regardless of how you feel about the Tudors, Cromwell or Mantel. The level of detail is extraordinary and I do wish I'd had it at the time of my A Levels - the machinations of Henry's court is so much more clearly explained here than I remember it being from set texts. 

Obviously, there has to be the disclaimer that this is a work of fiction and Mantel imbues him with a sensibility we will never know if he really had or not. But it probably would have been a better source than Blackadder Series II, which at least one friend used as a reference point. 

All that said, and due reverence paid to Mantel and her diligent research, would I read this again? Probably not. 

Unlike Take Courage, which I've read twice before. Don't know much about Anne Bronte? This is a good place to start. She's been underrated for too long and this is a step to redressing that balance. She is my favourite Bronte sister and the only one who tells life like it is, with a clarity and spareness that's a shock after the overblown Gothic drama of the others. She's the cool drink of water amongst the flaming brandy glasses. 

 

Braiding Sweetgrass was another I'd avoided for a while, having seen it toted once too often on Instagram as the book du jour by others. I am ever one for swimming against the crowd but this time I'd denied myself a treat and shame on my inverted snobbery. Lesson learned. 

 

I had an almost emotional reaction to parts of her book, for reasons I haven't yet deciphered. I'm still thinking about it, about the suggestion that there could be "a different relationship, in which people and land are good medicine for each other." This is the week where the sea was turned into a literal boiling hell thanks to people. 

A week in which I contracted the cirus that's laid waste to so many, and which makes the final sentences so very relevant: 

"Gifts of mind, hands, heart, voice, and vision all offrered up on behalf of the earth. Whatever our gift, we are called to give it and to dance for the renewal of the world. 

In return for the privilege of breath."

This is the Time

Now I've managed to get that feeling out of my system - and off my Instagram feed - I have been feeling much better (bar the potential case of Covid I've developed...waiting on proper test results for that one, not just the lateral flow versions). I've found it's very easy for me to become overwhelmed recently and things that I could have shrugged off or battled through, I can't. 

More importantly, I don't want to. And I don't see why I should have to. 

Yes! An epiphany regarding my own welfare! At the grand old age of 44 and 11 months and 2 weeks (yes, it's my birthday soon). But still, better a late epiphany rather than none at all. Needless to say, this epiphany has N quaking just a little bit as I fix him with a gimlet eye and say "Up. With. This. I. Will. Not. Put."

To be fair, the "this" usually refers to the empty, used cereal bowl sat on top of the empty, waiting-to-be-used dishwasher rather than some terrible thing he's said or done. 

But I cannot, for the life of me, work out why men and children behave this way. I suspect that's a question for psychologists. As the mother of a son, I've noticed he does the same thing but that's related to the deprived years sans dishwasher that he no doubt regales colleagues with. Truly, first world problems.

We spent last weekend with said son, who I haven't seen since Dad's funeral in March, and it was splendid to see him again. We also caught up with friends that we've been remotely quizzing with for over a year but had yet to meet in person. I managed not to cry. But I do miss my boy.

 The weather turned against us as we hit the M42 and by the time the North-East borders had been crossed, it was settled into persistant mizzle and winds that threatened to lift gazebos from their fastenings. A sea fret had arrived and refused to budge. Still, we managed to see a couple of beaches, pick up some interesting pebbles (apparently the Kid's boyfriend now refuses to walk along beaches with him because he keeps stopping to look at pebbles. I am very proud), eat at a couple of pubs and generally just enjoy ourselves away from the house. 

Chonky Thor (who we're now calling the Great Boo mainly so we can cry "Great Boo's Up!" in homage to Blackadder on a regular basis) and Wee Mabel went into a local cattery. Tucked in by a river, by a medieval bridge, surrounded by trees - it quite made me want to give up everything and open a rural cattery. They forgave us within an hour of getting home. In fact, the owner sent us pics of the Great Boo enjoying being petted. Traitor.

Speaking of giving everything up, I recently had to step back from a work contract. In most part due to the aforementioned epiphany. I hate stepping away from things like that but sometimes you've got to acknowledge when you need to rest. 

And relax. 

I'm not much of a one for poetry (just say what you mean!) but this one, pinned to the wall by my desk, is really calling to me at the moment, especially the first 3 lines. I think I need to take its advice. 

this is the time to be slow

lie low to the wall

until the bitter weather passes .

 

Try, as best you can, not to let

the wire brush of doubt

scrape from your heart

all sense of yourself

and your hesitant light. 

 

If you remain generous,

time will come good;

and you will find your feet

again on fresh pastures of promise,

where the air will be kind

and blushed with beginning.  

 

The Green-eyed Plot Monster

I didn't really feel like doing a "May at the Allotment" post this month. It had been so wet and dreary, plus I was beset by a feeling, which was quite annoying. 

Honestly, I don't spend much time on social media, so I've never had fear of missing out (FOMO for any readers under 30), or comparison envy. I don't post selfies because I don't need validation of how I look from strangers, and I certainly don't need criticism from the same either. 

 

Twitter is where I post work stuff, Instagram gets random pictures of bugs, pebbles and trees, Facebook is where I get updates from the allotment group about any spare plants or pallets going free. Mostly I try not to let the endless noise get to me. 

Nevertheless this feeling persisted. 

It took me some time to work out what was triggering it. 

 

And when it did, I was annoyed with myself. I had fallen for the oldest trick in the book. I WAS comparing myself.

Not to ridiculous eye brows, body shapes that will never be mine, or fancy-schmancy goods that I would simply break or lose or give away. Oh no, I was comparing my allotment, finding it wanting and then stomping around in a black mood when I reached my own plot and it didn't match what was coming through the screen. Plot holder envy had taken hold of me.

I was following people who had been plotting for a lot longer, or who had more spare time than I had, or who had decided to make a career out of their allotmenting escapades, chasing compost (peat-free) sponsorship deals and adding the hashtag #blessed to their posts. 

 Seriously, no # makes me want to boke quite as much as #blessed. 

That aside, good for them. More power to their green fingers, their greenhouses and their green Hunter wellies. I sincerely wish them well but I'm not following them any more. 

My plot, as much as it is my happy place, is my hobby. Being there should be an exercise in pleasure and enjoyment, not dissatisfaction and malaise. There is no point comparing it with others because I don't have the time, resources or skills that they do. Everyone works to their own abilities, paces and times.

 

It is still, despite progress this year, half covered in scrubby grass, with a tangled mess of fallen elder and knotweed the council are steadfastedly trying to pretend doesn't exist at the end of it. I am still learning, learning all the time, making my own slow progress without greenhouse or polytunnel. 

And things, other than grass, grow. Tomatoes, Japanese wineberries, courgettes, spinach, beans, peas, pumpkin, potatoes, beetroot, raspberries. At home we have sweetcorn, strawberries and runner beans. Waiting patiently for me to build the brassica cage are purple sprouting broccoli, sprouts, kale. 

Today I brought home with me a tiny first bouquet of sweet peas, nigella, cosmos, lavender and daisies. The smell is amazing. While I was up there, I paused in the act of strimming and watched the bees in the wild oregeno, the crickets bounce away from me. 

It's still good here. 

Begone feeling. I'm not giving you brain space any more.

I Do Like Green Spam

I refuse to apologise for a second post basically spamming you all with images of beautiful places, green and growing things. It's that time of year. Come back to me in winter if bleak and grey views are more your thing. 

There is merit in both, of course. 

But June birthdays basically insist on lush greeness and sunshine. We'll just have to cope with it.

 

Yes, I did say birthday. It was N's last Tuesday (it was also the Kid's but he is hundreds of miles away in Sunderland so had to make do with a northern beach and 24 hours access to my credit card for his birthday. There was a spend limit, don't worry - I'm not going to be presented with a bill for thousands). 

Anyway, back to the green spam. It being N's birthday, I took him to one of my favourite places, obviously. In my defense, when asked what he'd like to do on his birthday, he seemed astonished that there was another option other than "working" and then shrugged. So. 

Behold! Hidcote Manor Gardens...

 

 Green everywhere! Wisteria on entry! Of course I brought a guidebook. I would have done on my first visit, years and another lifetime ago. Back when I was married and the Kid was small. Really another lifetime. 

Anyway, the original guidebook has long been lost in a house move or during one of my ruthless clear outs.

 

If you've never been, and know nothing of Hidcote, it's a garden set in rolling Cotswold hills (are there any other sort? I mean, come on Cotswolds, enough with the rolling). Owned back in the distant mists of the early 20th Century, by one Lawrence Johnston and his formidable mother, Gertrude Winthrop - frankly, a name that instantly makes you think of back boards, no children at the table and a disdain for untidy emotions. 

It's held up as an example of an Arts and Crafts garden. I'm not really sure what that means outside of Art and Architecture, beyond knowing that William Morris was your main man for that sort of thing (he's also one of my heroes) but I'm hoping things like that will become clear when I start my horticultural training later this year.

 

 

Whatever it might mean to gardens, what it really means to the visitor, is a garden that is so beautiful, your eyes ache with looking, your neck from the constant turning and your legs from adopting what I call the Heritage Walk. 

If you've ever been in a museum, you know exactly what that is. That specific sloooww way of walking and bending and looking that we all adopt when we're on National Trust territory. It's tough on the old muscles. Culture is the hard core workout no one ever talks about.

 

 

N had never been to Hidcote before, so this was a treat for both of us. As I reminded him on several occasions.

There were newts and potting sheds and meandering paths that sometimes echoed the stream but mostly didn't. The sun was glorious, shining down on our rapidly burning shoulders all day. The queue for the socially distanced cafe was long and the woman your standard NT level passive-aggressive.

We both got serious succulent envy, decided we need more orange flowers in our life and wondered how the neighbours would react to bare breasted statuary suddenly turning up in our garden. Possibly a little too well, so it won't. 

Besides, I can still remember similar such things that took pride of place in my grandparent's garden, along with a (un)helathy collection of gnomes, concrete animals, mottos and the occasional plastic bird. When they moved, I was suddenly presented with a great number of them. It took 2 house moves to finally "lose" the last and I'm not introducing more.

 As I type this, I'm looking down over our own, small, garden. Very much not Arts and Crafts but the honeysuckle is trailing over the makeshift arch, the wisteria is about to burst forth and the whisper of the sweetcorn leaves in their pots is very satisfying. Mabel is lying in the centre of the handkerchief-sized lawn, waving at flies with her eyes half closed. 

There are no cats at Hidcote. They really are missing a trick.

In which there was walking

So. Much. Green. 

A couple of friends and I went for a long brunch and a decent meander across Bringsty common on the very last day of May. 

There was a feeling, at least with me, that we were chasing away the sogginess of the past few weeks. Beating the rain back. 

Buttercups and bluebells and cow parsley and red clover and all sorts behaved themselves, put on their best clothes and danced genteelly in the sunshine. Rather like the participants of an Austen ball. 

Somewhere, in the rolling woods and grasslands, a peacock’s eerie cries were rather startling. 

At the very top of the common, distant hills, usually dark and full of boding up close, became blue and vague around the edges, like your granny trying to recollect where she left her wool. 

There were little dells, streams, an oddly placed Methodist chapel. 

There were conversations that meandered on behind me as I focused on moving forward. The urge to move is quite strong at the moment. 

And then there were pauses as views insisted on being regarded with due reverence. I sat on the grass to better appreciate them and quite wanted to take my boots off and plant my feet in the ground. 

I didn’t though. Company. There are limits to what you should subject your friends to. 

May Reading

Calloo calay, oh ball-free day! It was a happy moment when I realised that all but the Europa Football league had drawn to a close and the telly need no longer be slave to FIFA timetables. Or whoever the hell it is has the job of setting the timetable. We have enjoyed nearly a week free of "YESSS!" or "what were you thinking?" or "call that offside?" and, my favourite, "bloody bloody VAR, goddamn it, I don't, but, arrgh, hmp *insert sound of stamping*"

Given that N's team had been knocked out of the aforementioned Europa, he has no interest in watching it, so we have had blissful evenings where we knock off work, grab a drink together and then sit, in silence, reading. I've been feeling over-noised just recently, so it's been nice to have no screen, no external noise just the sound of pages turning and, on a series of evenings, me snorting with laughter. 

David Sedaris is the cause of the laughter. Have you read his books? I cannot recommend another author so highly adept at making you snort, draw in breath, tear up a little and then snort again, all in the space of a page. I tore through the 3 I have and added his back catalogue to my birthday list. 

I finally tackled Hamnet after putting it off for a couple of months. I was too raw to deal with more grief until last Monday when I screwed my courage to the sticking place and opened the cover. 

Well, it is entirely worth the plaudits it gained and the only surprise is that it didn't win more awards. This is Maggie O'Farrell's masterpiece, a work that brings a hidden woman to light, gives her autonomy and balance in a misunderstood relationship, gives grief and love centre stage, all the while weaving a world so removed from ours, it could be another place entirely. And yet those themes are so universal and endless, so familiar to every one of us, that the 16th Century past blurs with our own world. Nothing jars. Every word, every comma is perfectly placed and it is breathtaking. 

"Her husband takes her arm as they reach the gate; she turns to look at him and it is as if she has never seen him before, so odd and distorted and old do his features seem. Is it their long separation, is it grief, is it all the tears? she wonders, as she regards him. Who is this person next to her, claiming her arm, holding it to him? ...

She is hollowed out, her edges blurred and insubstantial. She might disintergrate, break apart like a raindrop hitting a leaf. She cannot leave this place, she cannot pass thorugh this gate. She cannot leave him here."

 I was glad I'd read Sedaris after her, and Gilead before. Gilead is always an exercise in slow reading. You simply cannot let your eyes race ahead, but allow them to linger over the page, slowing you down and settling into this exercise in a life lived quietly. It's wonderful. 

Susan Hill and I disagreed on a lot of her thoughts on books, but the name-dropping alone was worth it, even if her non-alphabetizing of books makes me tense. Osman's Thursday Murder Club was great, a lot of fun to read with characters that made me grin. MacCarthy's Bar an entertaining blunder around Irish bars in search of roots I think a lot of us wish we had. 

The Lost Garden's of Heligan...umm...not the best bit of writing I picked up in May but I did enjoy the development of this tourism megalith, now only overshadowed by the Eden Project. Say what you like about Smit (and I imagine many have), the guy has vision. And brass neck by the yard.

All in all, that was a greater number of books than I suspected. My concentration still wanders very easily and I'm more likely to put one aside after only a handful of pages. I read more magazines than I did as they have short articles that I can be done with in 2 minutes. As with all things, it's a case of the right book unlocking you, drawing you in and insisting you Pay Attention or you'll miss something extraordinary. 

So for that, Robinson, O'Farrell and Sedaris, I salute you.

Patience is not my virtue

Oh the rain, the rain. It raineth every bloody day. Or so it feels. And I do remember, insufferable wise woman of the woods that I am, saying back in March that it had been too dry all winter, we were overdue rain. 

Next time I feel moved to say such a thing, N has permission to throw a bucket of water on me, yelling "ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?" a la Crowe in Gladiator, but damper.  

I did manage to get up there once this week, for about an hour and a half. I finished edging one side of the top-long bed, carting the mass of grasses, roots, dandelions, sodding-bindweed, bramble roots and other assorted plants that have No Place there down to the compost heap (aka the place behind the pile of fallen elder that's holding back the Japanese knotweed - the knotweed that the council and the CRT are currently arguing over who's responsibility it is). 

But, I mean, just look. Yes the grasses are beautiful and dance merrily in whatever meagre shaft of sunlight we're granted but it's So Bloody Long. Seriously. Knee high in places and the strimmer can't get through while it's this wet. Trust me on this.  I have strimmed before in the rain, for a summer when I worked for my Dad and needed the cash: strimmers don't like doing it in the rain.  

However, all this wet has meant that the soil is easier to turn, shake loose from roots and rake to a beautiful fine tilth, almostly exactly the consistency of a properly crumbled cookie. There is a strange satisfaction to be had from getting your soil to this state. As I rehung the rake in the shed, it was with a feeling of a job well done. 

 The anenomes have proved themselves to be the gift that keeps on giving this year. Red ones at home are surviving the deluges, and even this delicate little purple one has thrown out yet another bloom. In fact, the sloping space at the top of the plot is being furiously productive. Aquileiga, antirrhinum, a magnificent fennel, poppies, marigolds and nasturtiums are all throwing out buds.

But the undoubted stars of the sloping space are the Japanese Wineberries. They were here and spreading triffid-like all over the place when I took on the plot. Not entirely sure they were safely edible, I left them the first year. Last year I cut them right back in an attempt to tame them. This year, well...

 

 There are 4 of these. Shall I make jam? Compote (runny jam)? Wine? Gin? Or just eat them, ripe from the branches, warm from the sun, watching the clouds scud overhead and listening to the birds. 

Very possibly just that. 

In other plot news, the beetroot have been planted out, the onions still aren't ripe (how long do these lazy things need??), the potatoes were showing leaves until I earthed them up again, the rhubarb has tiny adorable stalks and the raspberries are small but gamely producing leaves and little buds. 

At home, French climbing beans, borlotti beans, chard, tomatoes, courgettes, lollo rosso, spinach and rocket are all waiting for the sun to claim dominance over the skies again. They are strong and healthy, clamouring to be OUT, but as more than one person has told me how their tomatoes have been smashed to a green pulp by hail and torrential rain, the seedlings will just have to wait. 

Patience, I keep telling them. Patience, I tell myself as I stare at the rain, gripping a coffee mug too tightly for comfort. Patience, N tells me. Patience, rustles my plot neighbour's wisteria; a few years and everything here will be as magnificent as me.

 

Show off.