The DBM episode, another updated yarn

Well, I have to say this is not for the faint hearted, you have been warned!

You'll recall that Raisin, known for catching, but NOT eating, small furry creatures, brought us a gift which proceeded to hide under the bookcase in the sitting room. It then moved on to investigate the walls of the house, in particular my bedroom walls, which resulted in the great reorganisation, in panic mode in the middle of the night, of the contents of the "underbed" for want of a better word. 

Further explorations were made, in which our creature found that the fruit we stored on the kitchen counter was very tasty. Little scrabblings late at night, as I was reading quietly in the sitting room, alerted me to his presence, but still no sighting bar that first glimpse of grey fur under the kitchen cabinet. Aha, thought I, we'll soon sort this; the fruit was moved to the top of the fridge. This was, of course, no bar to our athletic rodent, who simply used the cooling fins on the rear of the fridge as a ladder. Bananas and pears developed neat little hollows. The fruit being made yet more secure,  great thought was given to how to capture this silly creature. Not being an advocate of poisoning, a humane mousetrap was purchased, baited with chocolate and peanut butter, and placed beside the fridge. A week or so passed. Nothing happened, but scrabblings were still heard in the middle of the night. You'll gather that by now my sense of humour was taking a bit of a battering, due to lack of sleep and general frustration. Then, one evening, hearing minute noises from the kitchen, I crept on soft feet to a point where I could see the fridge. I found Rum looking very intently at his bowl from the other side of the kitchen. And, yes, there, there (not on the chair) was that twitching whiskered thief of fruit and cat biscuits. Not a mouse, oh no, it was a rat! At this point, my sense of compassion for the natural world took a little bit of a battering. A rat in the house was just not cricket.

The following day the good man went down to our hardware store and yes, poison was purchased, along with a bigger trap in which the poison could be safely placed where cats couldn't go. The box of pretty blue blocks, carefully closed, was put to one side where, the following evening, after more scratchings in the kitchen, I realised that Mr Rat was helping himself; it was easier than going into that silly trap thing. I felt guilty, but I felt that this would soon bring an end to the whole sorry saga, which had been going on for about three weeks by now. But, no, this rat was a mighty rat. These tasty blocks of poison wouldn't defeat him. So, back to the hardware store, where the proprietor told us cheerfully that they had been selling lots of rat poison, the warm summer having been a very good one for rats! A more poisonous poison was recommended - you want the red blocks madam, not the blue ones. 

So home I toiled, still feeling guilty, and placed the red blocks where no cat could come across them, but where we knew Mr Rat was scurrying. We waited, and waited, blocks disappeared and were replaced; several more weeks passed - was he feeding an army for heaven' sakes?! Eventually, the absence of scrabblings from the kitchen and night time scurrryings in my bedroom walls suggested a victory. We assumed he had fled to the great outdoors in search of water, and had presumably breathed his last. I felt dreadfully guilty, but even more relieved, and began to sleep at night again.

Roll on a year, or was it perhaps two? Our dishwasher died, and an engineer was called. As he knelt on the floor by the sink, prising the kickboard away from beneath the unit, I jokingly said that I hoped he didn't find a corpse, and briefly summarised the tale of the DBM - or rather DBR. "That won't bother me" he said cheerfully, "I grew up on a farm .... oh yes, there it is!!!" And there it was, a desiccated little scrap of "stuff". "Have you got something I can pick it up with" the engineer queried, looking slightly less insouciant. So, yes, you've guessed, out came my rubber gloves and a goodly wodge of newspaper, and I sunk to my knees on the floor and retrieved said corpse from beneath our sink, where he had quietly and, somehow odourlessly died and decomposed. I bundled him up and popped him in the bin to go out with the rubbish the very next day. So that is the tale of the DMB, who became a DBR, or perhaps simply a D%mn Bl@@dy Nuisance. 

I'll spare you the tale of his cousin, brought in recently, very dead but entirely uneaten, by Rum. Fortunately confined to the conservatory by a securely closed cat flap. We have learned our lesson well!

A Lull

I'm in the real doldrums at the moment with my stitching and textiles in general. I've nearly finished the first of my stitch pieces for the Guild, but just can't settle to finishing it.

I've still got my ordered squares of linen I took to Birmingham to work on, but have done very little since except stitch them all down to the background. I have a Studio11 session tomorrow, and am feeling all squirbled because I have done no preparation and have no idea what I'm going to do at all, except take pleasure in the space to just be and perhaps ponder. I will at least put some threads together for the linen squares and take my Guild piece to finish!

In part I think it's probably down to some health issues. For several years I've had an intermittent nagging pain in my midriff. Having had some keyhole surgery go disastrously wrong a while ago now, I'd always put it down to aftereffects from this - you don't want to see the scars, I look quilted!! Then, in the week before we went off to the Lakes it got considerably worse for a number of days; so much so that we wondered if we'd go at all, but it settled down to bearable. Since we got back I've been for an ultrasound scan, always a fascinating process, such magical technology. It turns out, I have gallstones! A veritable constellation of them in fact, so my good doctor and I decided today that it's time to sort it out. Expect an announcement of surgery sometime in the future. Hopefully this keyhole will go right ....

Meanwhile I've been reading some treasures. A friend recommended both authors, first Kathleen Dean Moore

Then Kathleen Jamie.

 

Both write wonderfully about being in nature, in very differing ways and in very different places. I've been struck as much by the contrasts as I have by the pleasure of reading. The first, who is American, writes from a philosopher's point of view, and the landscapes she describes could only be those of her homeland. There is a particular quality in what she describes and perhaps also in the way she writes that belongs there; a sense of largeness, openness. I found myself wondering whether growing up in a huge continent with such immense scale somehow evokes a similar expansion of thought and aspiration.

Kathleen Jamie is a Scots poet, and my near contemporary. She has a poet's feeling for language and for the landscape and at times touches on her own past in such a way that I can almost feel myself in the same place and time, so familiar it is. She however, had the courage to follow her ideals; I was never so brave. I have nearly finished the second book, Sightlines; Findings came first, both borrowed from work, and will feel a sense of missing an almost friend when I take them back. Her writing is intimate, her focus often close and with a sense of the deeply personal about it, you feel you have been offered precious bits of her life to share.

I'd recommend them both

Roads

I've been driving about today, some training to deliver in Rye, then a meeting to attend in Lewes. I was thinking about roads because there is a sort of bypass planned locally - which doesn't seem to bypass much and consequently seems rather pointless. However, I'd had a conversation about it with a friend who was bewailing the march of concrete across the countryside and condemning roads full stop. I wonder if he's taken the time to really look when he's driving round our lovely county. I watch and watch as I drive from A to B, part of a mindful approach to life. Not in an irresponsible way, you understand, just feasting my eyes on little glimpses, in between paying "due care and attention". What did I see today?
Well, the backdrop was the Downs, which I have known all my life, rolling placidly along the south coast, gently turning their shoulders against the sky and appearing in my Grandmother's novel "...Glory Down crouched above us, a lion couchant ... wrapped in its own strength". Today they were particularly wonderful, the sky was low and low cloud - or perhaps rising fog, was spilling over their tops from the direction of the sea, just held at their peaks, but tumbling over where the folds in the hills allowed it to flow. Our Long Man was shrouded in mist and mystery. As I drove, as well as watching this marvel, I noticed in the verges and hedgerows; pink and white arching sprays of and clusters of dog rose, flat topped yarrow, native source of achillea which we so love in our gardens, spreading sheets of ox eye daisies, rosy mallow and shining  buttercups, tall stands of cow parsley, ragwort, corn poppy, a long spill of vipers bugloss, shining blue blue blue and telling a tale of seed scattered in the slipstream, and woven all in between, the rippling gold of grass waving as I passed by. All of these thrive at our roadsides because the land is of no use. We forget as we drive past our green fields that, lovely as they are, they are there because humans use them to grow - plants, animals, something to eat. They are a Man made landscape. In the verges, the interstices of modern travel, there is no space for growing and so nature can thrive, undisturbed apart from the occasional mowing to maintain safe visibility. With more recent policies on roadside planting, native trees and shrubs are installed, outgrow their protective plastic collars and reach up to the sky beside the rushing traffic. All year round I watch this wonderful parade of colour, delighting in it and remembering my much younger self, leafing wistfully through the Flower Fairies, believing that all these lovelies were things of a bygone age.
Yes, I rather like roads - they give nature a slender strip of unfettered space.

A feather for Jude

This little feather is flying all across the sea to Jude in New York for her Magic Feather project. The feather is for my daughter Jen - Jen the hen, but not a hen's feather, rather a wren's. The rose is for Mum, Rosemary really, but always "Granny Rose" to Jen, both much loved women encircled by my love for them. You can see other feathers flying in to the project here. It is one of the things I've been stitching recently, along with Uffington who is gradually getting his space filled by many many little stitches. I'll post a picture of him later, when his landscape is more complete.

All that stitching though, is not good for the bit of me that needs much more exercise, so today my dear one and I went to the Seven Sisters Country Park for a wonderful perambulation along the meanders and down to the sea, where we saw

wide open spaces

layers of landscape

layers of time, flint and chalk slowly, slowly sifting down over millennia

marsh samphire, glowing red despite the hazy day

 greater burdock, all spikes and rough edges

carline thistle, like little captured suns

teasel rising sturdy above a soft bed of silverweed

stone and wood, weathered and feathered to soft shapes

sea lavender drawing lacy patterns against the while chalk cliffs

and a great many people, all having a pleasant time wandering along, photographing each other, listening to the wind, the sea, themselves, each other, mobile phones, dogs and children

We walked for a goodly while, the day hot and humid with much moisture in the air, other's conversations drifting in and out of focus as we passed fellow walkers. Then we stopped for lunch at the Exceat visitor centre where this fern caught my eye - such a soft glowing green against the weathered tiles

and drove back home over Beachy Head and down through Eastbourne to the Pevensey levels.

A good way to work off the stiffness and stagnation that comes from sitting too long - even if that sitting is productive !

joyous bluebells

I just love these bluebells, a pocket of them sitting quietly, waiting to catch the sun each time it appears.

Newts!

This week I have had the delight of my beloved daughter's company, as she gave us a week of her time. We went for a walk down to Gilham Woods as I wanted to show it to her - when she was little I and her father spent many hours in woodland with her, hunting giants and wood monsters.

While we were there we discovered, to my delight, newts! Yes, I know they are deeply familiar to any little boy who spent time in woodlands as a child, but i have managed to get the grand age of fifty without, to my knowledge, having this pleasure! So today, Jen having gone back to the frozen north - well York anyway, I took my dear one there as well, this time with camera to record the pleasure and share it with you!

First there was blossom and shadows,





















Then wood anemones and celandine - such a lovely name for a sunny little flower

Finally we found the tiny little pond - created by  Luftwaffe bombing according to the information board.


There amongst all the gloopy, bubbly, frothy water there were tadpoles, easy to see as they shimmer along the margins of everything.

The water is fragmented into lots of greens and browns, reflections and little movements at the corner of ones eye. Then suddenly you get your focus right, just below the level of the water and become aware that these little brown wrigglers are all over, soaking up the sunlight on the submerged wood, rising lazily to the surface to peck at invisible tasty morsels, and generally schmoozing about, rather like a pride of lions in the Savannah, but wetter and smaller, OK altogether different really, but you know what I mean!

I was sharing thoughts of what has disappeared from the landscape of our childhoods with a friend recently. We were mourning what, of nature, has been covered over since our youth by buildings and tarmac - he commented on the loss of "porcelain white butterfly orchids by the stream" in a woodland where he used to go, now threatened by urban development. I was reminded for some reason of this -  a wonderful work of lost childhood by Dylan Thomas, and thought it worth sharing. His rolling endlessly inventive way with words is always a delight, to be savoured on the tongue as well as in the mind.

Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

The night above the dingle starry,

Time let me hail and climb

Golden in the heydays of his eyes,

And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns

And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves

Trail with daisies and barley

Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns

About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,

In the sun that is young once only,

Time let me play and be

Golden in the mercy of his means,

And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves

Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,

And the sabbath rang slowly

In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay

Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air

And playing, lovely and watery

And fire green as grass.

And nightly under the simple stars

As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,

All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars

Flying with the ricks, and the horses

Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white

With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all

Shining, it was Adam and maiden,

The sky gathered again

And the sun grew round that very day.

So it must have been after the birth of the simple light

In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm

Out of the whinnying green stable

On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house

Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,

In the sun born over and over,

I ran my heedless ways,

My wishes raced through the house high hay

And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows

In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs

Before the children green and golden

Follow him out of grace.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me

Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,

In the moon that is always rising,

Nor that riding to sleep

I should hear him fly with the high fields

And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea. 

Dylan Thomas