Self-Winding · A Sort of Progression

Saturday, February 26, 2005

Thursday snow.



It came in the night and lasted barely through the day.
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Speak memory

There aren't many of the old telephone boxes left and this, though smart, is broken and redundant. Why is it here, miles from the nearest settlement, squatting on a green verge beside a modern farm sporting a satellite dish? There is nothing left of the Norfolk village that existed here a hundred years ago, just rolling fields and the dead sleeping in the cemetery of the tiny church above. Among them, several French Benedictine nuns who built a community behind the old stone wall in 1792, driven out by Revolution. Their gravestones say sadly that they died from nursing the sick poor.

Last month a group of travellers parked for several days on the verges, but only their children played in the box. Gypsies have mobile phones. A mile up the road, the perimeter of the Battle Area begins where an army camp lies quiet, waiting for the next big exercise. Around it, its own telephone wires hum above sugarbeet fields. Over beyond the carpets of pale spring wheat hover the ghosts of airmen and boys killed on wartime missions from a lost airfield. It is a quaint notion of mine that these boys come to the box in the misty evenings, pockets full of large copper pennies, and try to phone home or say goodbye to their girls.

I pause here often on the way to the market town, this week to admire banks of snowdrops on the church mound. Each time I am astonished that the dear red box still stands. No doubt one day someone from the phone company will remember and I'll find it gone.
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Friday, February 25, 2005

Rose and reminiscence

We took birthday presents over to a friend and stayed for late lunch. Sitting on the sofa when we arrived was the wonderful S. whom I have mentioned here before. She's a funny woman whose salty language is delivered in a broad Norfolk accent. Her present was slippers bought from her catalogue. At the same time she had ordered herself some special novelty plant that she referred to as a 'Rose of Sharon', though I can find nothing of this name similar to the one she described with such gusto:

"I always hed a fancy for one on 'em. That owd plant look like a dry bundle a shredded wheat, you stick it in a bowl of water and they say that come alive with bootiful blooms. Bloody thing cost me £7.50. I submarged it yesterday mornin' and so far that bugger hen't done narthin. John, he say, thass another of yar stoopid ideas what cost money. But I seen him watchin' it all the time. Fact is, that lazy bugger sits gawping at it, I reckon he thinks thass going to shoot up like Jack and the friggin' beanstalk. Gazes at the bluddy thing he do, anything so as not ter do no wark."

Later our friend waxed nostalgic about the old days in the films. She danced, did crowd work, riding and 'hand doubling' for a lot of the female stars. Her stories are of the fifties and sixties - playing table tennis between takes with William Holden, sticking up at some cost for a horse badly handled by a major actor.

One tale featured her hands in a rather different way. In 1959 she was a groom on 'The Devil's Disciple' caring for the horses. One night after a pub visit with some of the actors, she shut her finger in a car door and was in pain. She had to be at the stables by 5 a.m. to have Burt Lancaster's horse ready on set for an early call. Her finger was hell, bound up in a huge bandage, but she managed to turn out.
At the stall she found Burt Lancaster working on the horse. He had risen very early to get there before costume and make-up. "I heard what happened," he said, "you can't manage girths and buckles with that hand, sit over there and have a cigarette while I get him ready, then you can get off to the doctor."

"Yes," said G. "I always thought he seemed like a nice sort of bloke." "Oh, he was absolutely lovely and, of course, Olivier was on that film. Now I remember when he...."
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Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Mass exodus

It will be no consolation to the redundant workers of Norwich Union - our own local employment disaster - to know that the Vatican has joined in the outsourcing bonanza. To be honest, I only shared this because I thought of an irresistible title for the post.
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Material girl


It's an odd thing to do, but someone in the village has kept squares of material cut from discarded clothes, curtains and other bits of her life. Amateur dramatics' black velvet, sixties kitchen American cloth, Laura Ashley sprigs, babies' smocking, wedding white brocade, there's a small suitcase full of them. She always meant to make them into a quilt, but says she will never get round to it. We were talking about other ways to make them into a composite and I had a sudden recall of pages of material samples in a book on France by Sara Midda. The layout/notes idea clicked and a ring binder, card and Copydex are now waiting for the first design. I'm quite envious, I'd love to have a go.
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Saturday, February 19, 2005

Get me outta here, Zorthron....

Turn on sound and enjoy Virtual Stan. According to a deaf correspondent of mine, he would make a perfect lip-reading model - when he's not in his box.
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Friday, February 18, 2005

Age gap

I have always made friendships with people older than myself, not exclusively, but often: it started early, at about seven when I got together with an elderly bag-lady in Portobello Road. She would meet me after school pushing her wheelie basket and we'd sit talking on the doorstep of a redundant shop. I'd pocket my school hat, pass her a warm sweetie and we would hunt through her bundles of newspapers for cartoon strips, she had a good repertoire of stories and so we spieled away happily for many months until one day she came no more.


Thirty five years ago a client brought me flowers to thank me for some bookish favour and she has flowered in my life ever since. Mabe was fifty-five then and I was in my late twenties; she was a handsome, articulate woman, amusing, a bit fiery, a voracious reader. In the years since, I have seen her through the death of her husband, she helped me pack up and divide a home ("Oh, look, this is chipped, let's put it in that box"). We have sorted out the vagaries of children, survived serious illness, walked many miles through London parks, burned up the telephone.

Recently she asked me to dig out some photos I had taken, for her grandson who is asking for memories. It was only as I scanned and printed them that I truly took on board that Mabe is now very old - in her nineties, stooped and changed. As I begin to creak, she begins to fail. That thirty year gap that once was negligible is now significant.

Strangely though, in my life there is a reversal - a couple of teenagers, regular mates, look fair to stick around. When my dowager's hump appears twenty years on, they may look back kindly on a mature woman who fed them tea and stories and didn't let on how especially charming to the childless is the attention of the young.
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Sunday, February 13, 2005

Cruelty and Collage

Back in the heady days of Fergie's toes and Diana's emotional turns I tried to catch the atmosphere in collage.

And still the circus goes on. Once we are past what the Sun calls 'the old gits' wedding' we will start the 'Camilla can't be queen' debate. It will grind on and on. Although I'm bored beyond belief with royal shenanigans, one aspect of the recent reportage riled me up.

The press is lathered and straining to find further cruelties to heap on Camilla along ageist lines of - "Why not HRT instead of HRH? I hate the mockery that they use to get at plainer and older women through their physical foibles - Camilla's wrinkles, Cherie's mouth, Fergie's fat, Widdecombe's features. They don't do it that way to men. Maybe a giggle at the Trump toupee, but nothing so vicious as the insults that women endure.


Best to be like the wonderful wife of Ken Clarke M.P. who wears sensible sandals, a grey wispy bun and tells them, in effect, to go to hell. Here she is:












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Saturday, February 12, 2005


'If I have any justification for having lived it's simply this, I'm nothing but faults, failures and so on, but I have tried to make a good pair of shoes. There's some value in that.'

Arthur Miller
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Friday, February 11, 2005

Music meme



Amy passed on the baton which I will hand to TC:

1. Total amount of music files on your computer: 40 'ish.

2. The last CD you bought was: Loreena McKennitt: The Mask and the Mirror: a right old mixture of goodies including St John of the Cross, Yeats and Shakespeare.

3. What is the song you last listened to before reading this message? Heinrich Schutz : Jauchzet dem Herren. From an ancient tape of a BBC concert. A spider's web of interwoven voices. I have some magnificent Schutz recordings on vinyl and now can't play the damned things.

4. Five Songs that you often listen to or that mean a lot to you (in no particular order):
- Richard Strauss Four Last Songs: Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. So exquisite that I cannot hear them without tears.
- REM: Losing my religion: no week goes by without listening to Mozart and to Stipe, which is really the greatest compliment I could pay.
- Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Kali Kali Zulfon (From Shahen Shah). A fabulous track from the great Qawwali singer.
- Bob Dylan: Like a Rolling Stone. That jangling, heaving musical ride.
-Scott Walker: We're all alone. A song and a singer loved since adolescence. His album of Jaques Brel translations is also a constant play.
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Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Graft

We are busy in the garden as the weather is so good - bright sharp days, perfect for hard labour. Tomorrow we are putting in a base for a new shed. T. is bringing his small mechanical digger to move earth mounds and lift heavy paving stones. There are shrubs and heathers to plant; I have left clearing the banks of the stream too long, now to chop back last year's reeds and hemp agrimony I will have to work round the snowdrops, aconites and primroses.

We wondered why Ivy the muntjac had suddenly become timid. This is her looking pretty pregnant some weeks ago. All is explained as she brought her new fawn this morning, a tubby little chap who got stuck into the apples and corn. She had been keeping him hidden till now. We might get some pictures if we are lucky, but she's very jumpy.









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Thursday, February 03, 2005

Doodling

Someone pocketed Tony Blair's doodles at the IEF in Davos and as an inveterate doodler at meetings I was pretty interested to see his style. I draw triangles too, all the time - intersected, on poles, linked or inverted - which according to the psychologist indicates 'a constructive, practical approach'. Hmmm, don't know about that.

In my going to meetings days, when bored I would usually draw and my notepads were filled with little portraits from around the table like the one on the left. They return to me quite vividly the personalities and the moment. These are good likenesses made at an area meeting; I recall that Diane's polo sweater was pink and matched her flush, Bridget really did have a little red nose, Grace was tired and rather cross and kept her eyes closed, and Dennis looked very 'elder statesman'. It is a truism, but the observation involved in drawing transfers the subject indelibly to the brain as nothing else will.

By the way, I see that Epilepsy Action is holding a National Doodle Day this month - lots of celeb's have obliged, I've just wasted half an hour looking at their efforts, Robbie Coltrane sure can draw, Lumley too, and Stephen Fry's bananas. Click on Supporters.
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Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Little tales

I really dislike the word hubby, a most annoying diminutive; but it was funny used in conversation at last Friday's Farmers' Market between women looking at a woodworker's stall.
"These bird-feeders are really nice, but my hubby could easily make one himself. Does your hubby have a hobby?"


P. watches over a true Norfolk eccentric who amuses her and exasperates her in turn, he is an elderly bachelor who lives alone in a cottage deep in the forest. Dressed all in black, tall, thin and opinionated, he needs checking over from time to time. His ear was paining him recently and after P. had done a basic clean-up she made him a doctor's appointment. The nurse syringed it and advised;

"When you have your next bath, lie back in the water and let it trickle into your ears, that will soften the wax."

"Well, I say to her 'thass no good, I hen't hed a barth since I left the army'."

"When was that?" asked P.

"Ah, now that must ha bin in 1948 I shud think."


Ricky and Robbie are spaniels with attitude. As soon as the driving seat is empty, Ricky moves into his favourite position. He has been known to draw small crowds around the car when doing this in public parking areas. His owner discourages him but he persists, hence the guilty expression. (Photo by G. yesterday)


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