Long Time - No See

Blogging is a bit like life, sometimes time moves so fast that you think it is just a few weeks since the last attempt at something, only to discover that it's been one heck of a long absence.

I now sit taking a brief break from the bread and butter work of supporting big companies with software problems. I am dangling at the end of a wire from the small summerhouse in the rabbit / deer proof section of garden that we have created.

It has worked, the Marigolds are knee deep, new beds of roses starting to establish as blocks of colour (purchased for 10p a plant in the winter from a Spalding plant 'factory shop'). I do envision the early morning rabbits with noses pressed up against the slatted fence longing to have a good feed in the golden pasture.

Outside it sounds like a BBC sound effects record, so many species of bird gathered to shout about how good it is to be a sparrow etc Vs any other species, until the black shadow of a Red Banded Kite flies over. Then silence, but the Kite often as not is attacked by a crow or raven in a fighter against bomber type conflict. We have couple of Kites with missing flight feathers as a result, a bit like the D Day markings on wings when seen against the sky.

On that subject, the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight Lancaster did a wonderful fly by for our village fayre the other week, I was dressed as a WW2 Paratrooper (you wouldn't get such an unfit specimen as myself at any time admittedly) - 70 years since the local RAF station flew troops out in DC3 / C47 transports for D Day and Arnhen operations, I was doing a show and tell for kids who were learning about D Day at school.

Our next challenge is to get the garden ship shape for the village 'open gardens' day, an annual fund raiser that seems to have quite a high standard. So it looks like a. lots of weeding needed, b. a bit of rustic path making also required c. the realization that all our current flowers are blooming 6 weeks too soon and will we have anything to look moderately pretty ? Ahh the joy of self imposed angst, compared with a year ago when we were awaiting confirmation of house sale and actually coming here this is bliss.

Treeplanting in a January rural war zone......

It is extremely unsettling, war has broken out. Groups of hunters potting the pheasants in the local woodland, fusillades of hopefully inaccurate 12 bore rattling through the branches.

However that is the infantry, we expected it in season.

It is the heavy artillery that is disconcerting, to scare the birds off the winter crops. It varies from sounding like a car door slamming shut through to something falling over in the loft. All it takes is a car battery, a timer, a gas bottle and a tube, all sounds very terrorist related ! However the booming sounds are mini gas explosions and certainly do seem to exercise the crows for 5 minutes before they come back and tuck in.

So mister hunter, after the game that finds it hard to escape, leave the poor pheasants alone, bag a few crows for luck before they escape to Mordor.

So with a boom bang a gong in the background we have been planting fruit trees (although more like burying them at times before we got the hole depth right), Bramley. Laxon and Cox will be in our little orchard with guest appearances of Greengage, Apricot and Cherry for light relief. For the first time (since snow does not seem likely) the old Land Rover is seeing some 'real' work as a pickup truck. However since it has sign writing from previous owner saying 'CrowTrees" on the side of it, maybe I'll call off the hunters to stop me being potted for lunch as well.

Oh my there are a lot of stars out there.

We live in what could be termed a low technology impact area.

Yes our hamlet of 7 houses has a proud 1970's orange sodium streetlamp clinging to a wooden pole shared with telecommunications and a woodpecker that seems to like treated wood ! The lackadasical appearance is added to by the 10 degree list. But retreat to the rear garden and there is very little in the way of light pollution (a smudge on the horizon that is Bourne 6 miles away).

This means that to the ill trained eye of the ex townie the sky takes on a horrifyingly paranoid splendor on cloudless nights. Jupiter rises to the east and our little telescope enables two moons to just be discerned (those 2 dots of Europa and Io were enough to stir excitement out of all proportion to the achievement). Turn to the SSW in the early evening and Venus tries to burn out the retina. Look above, the milky way can just be seen with the naked eye. Using the scope however, big mistake, infinity beckons. No wonder Patrick Moore always seemed a little deranged, it could unhinge the best of us.

On a calm mid evening in December; between gales, as the dew point lowers gently and the frost begins to crisp the first blades of grass, this stargazing is accompanied by the foxes for miles around coughing their location (like escaped Beagles from a scientific station) owls performing triangulation with each other, the pewit versus twoo as different species spell it out for each other.

Yesterday evening however had the best sound at last light, never before heard outside of BBC Sound Effect record #6 side B track 15 - cry of eagle on moor. I'm truly home.

It's Dibley

I cannot be alone in this, since the BBC Vicar of Dibley was based on a pastiche of well founded character types that must crop up everywhere, but our village is a damn good fit.

We have those that grew up in the fields and woods, now they are 80 year old children, not moved too far from scuffed knees and scrumping (indeed I think some returning in that circle of life). Those that own local farms, others moved away and came back when they could, some crept from local town to village or those like ourselves, dropped in from urban climbs to the rural life because we both wanted to and were lucky enough to have the means to perform it.


It set my wife and I to thinking, we're exploring local history by our walks, back to the Romans in places, a wonderful example being the 'Black Field' in another hamlet called Stainfield (Stone Field), it marks the site of a small Roman town on King Street a South Lincolnshire Roman route. In years gone by the Georgian market days in Bourne were supplemented by girls selling Roman coins and pot shards dug up in this field to provide income additional to produce. The implication is small hoards of coins, often associated with Temples and Shrines to local British and Roman gods.

It would have been a cosmopolitan place, site of Iron Age activity, gentrified by outsiders, made official by the Romans, retired soldiers from the 9th Legion in Lincoln perhaps. They would have had the same character types as today.

I like to think of Davidius Maximus from Londinium and spouse perhaps making a happy home here in 213AD. He would have been a scribe and administrator, happy with his lot and perhaps leaving something for us to find one day.

Remind me to bury some graffito from 2013.

Never try to return to the past.....

but sometimes it can do some good !

It is 4 months since we left the big smoke, it feels like years. The seasons move slower in this rural backwater, mainly because they are wholly observable. We have been learning so much, the country is a land of life and death in the raw, even down to finding dead flies pinned to the middle of a window pane as if there has been some sort of fly based execution by the maggot mafia.

Predictably it has become colder, a few interesting weather extremes have happened, the most recent has hit the coast to the east of us very hard, our initial research for somewhere to live took us above the flood plain, below the crest of a hill nestled lovingly in the arms of woodlands. But by gum, when the winter wind vectors to northwesterly we get it full in the face and boy we know it. The gales and floods were preceded by the most shockingly wonderful red morning sky, it lasted under a minute but looked like the end of the world was going to happen.

This past weekend I returned to London, air traffic control was suffering a computer error resulting in fewer overhead distractions. The streets were crowded, the tube which would once be relaxed was heaving and confused, I eventually emerged under the Shard at London Bridge Station in what my text autocorrect called Toilet Street (Tooley Street).

The trip up town was to meet two old friends from school days, we've not all been together for about 13/14 years, families, children and such like providing valid diversions. The great thing was the camaraderie remains over the years, we grow up but clearly not apart. One thing we all have in common, London is a nice place to dip into, but we could't eat a whole one.

Returning to the shires roe deer in the headlights, trees everywhere and eventually no traffic, ahhhh bliss.

The Slide Into Autumn

Well perhaps less of a slide, maybe a series of sharp steps, retrenchments and then a sharp blow to the back of the head with a kipper.

It's been quite a month away from here, the loss of a dear cat (Samantha the mouse addict hit by a car whilst chasing prey), the gaining of a 1968 Landrover to guarentee that there will be no snow or ice in this 'worst winter since King Athelstan says the Sun'.

** Incidentally this car being just 4 years younger than me has no choice but to be knackered and falling apart by design. It may be prominent in Blogs this winter - whether through startling success or misrerable failure remains to be seen **

 The addition to the family of 2 new kittens from Wood Green Animal Shelter @ Godmanchester, they tear around the place making Hilly the 'old girl' at age 8 look like she is stuffed and mounted.

Outside the winter wheat is beginning to show it's heads and the fields change from a corduroy brown to green once again. We have the remains of the village scattered around us and showing in the growth patterns, cleared by the Earl of Ancaster for his hunting in the 1700's, in return for rights for firewood.

Finally the social side of village life is beginning to shine through, you have to work at it, but the rewards are great, more of this anon methinks.

Of ants and mice

The past week we have been under attack day and night by flying ants, another learning process.

In London it always seems to be the ubiquitous black ant flying on the hottest day before a storm, dotting the pavements with bloated wingless queens scurrying to find a nesting place.

Here in the country disturbing paving slabs from a path for repairing the patio has become an eye opener, airfleets of different coloured and sized kings and queens cheek by jowel with each other, orange, red and black. Eggs brought to the surface to cool them down as well.  I always feel gulty to be the alien giant from outside sent to 'punish' them by removing their sky, they're so industrious.

A quick bit of reference to discover that the orange / reds don't like daylight much, we then learned a lesson of not having an open window with a light source, they fly at night and are pretty quick to get in. It looked like a flying ant convention in the entrance hall.

Now to mice. It's harvest time, our green sward between the wheat fields has become a haven for the refugees, but grossly overpopulated as a result. Samantha has been working overtime to ensure an even distribution of mice throughlout the house. We got back from shopping to find a mouse 'retreat from Moscow' being enacted in the hall by both cats, some mice hiding, others well and truely despatched. As a result of this activity we've decided the multipatterned hall carpet has to go sooner rather than later, there is a limit to the number of dead mice you can tread on and keep your sanity.

There is an upside, rescuing a survivor or two from the cats (I am still a townie as the country born would let the cat finish it) , the feel of a little warm frame breathing heavily in your hand and finding a place to release and give it a chance. This mornings ran straight into the lower pond with a little plop, swam masterfully to a lilly pad, gave me a stare saying, get on with it rescue me again and once scouped out proceeded to squeak a few times and run into the bushes, maybe it was thanks, I'd like to think so.