A very favourite place

Win Green hill in Wiltshire. Somewhere that Mum and I used to go to walk, listen to the larks twittering as they rose into never-ending summer skies and sit within the cool green shade of the hill's crowning trees.

I haven't been able to get back to Mum's grave since the day we said goodbye to her, the flowers and earth fresh, the plot waiting for its new little silver birch tree. Covid prevented the visit and only now have I been able to get away from home and make the trip back to Dorset.

So, I stood and talked to her for a while and reflected on some of the places we might have visited, back in time, seated in her elderly burgundy Nissan Micra. The sea, a walk at a favourite avenue of lofty oaks followed by tea and cake in the nearby café, an ancient hill fort with views across the undulating green countryside. Or, Win Green, a long curve of a hill topped with a wedge of stubborn beech trees, shaped over the years by the scudding Northern winds, a place that has featured many times in my books.

I chose the latter, and it being fairly . . . no, impossible, to access by public transport my lovely friend and fellow tree/hill/wilderness enthusiast drove us there. It was probably the first time I had experienced the hill without its gentle breezes, larks and nodding wild flowers. This day had been wind-wild, smatterings of horizontal rain, the beeches almost leafless and the usual views curtained by misty cloud, but it was just as atmospheric and memorable. We sketched, changed a few shouted words of appreciation against the blasts of wind then squelched back to her car to recover and plan where we could raise a cup of tea to Mum's memory.

Places in the mind

The brain, as I have written many times on this blog, is the most extraordinary thing. As I sit here writing, I have a track by Unknown Mortal Orchestra playing in my head complete with the detailed bass line, his distinctive voice, crispy drum rolls and various guitar riffs that make up that song. It's not even one of my favourites but it turned up on my Spotify play list while driving yesterday and it's now well embedded, pushing out slightly the Detectorists theme tune which had taken up residence for several days. Actually the latter can stay; it's a beautiful song and I don't seem to tire of it, unlike Money Money Money which became a seriously unwanted lodger some years back due to Ezra having to learn it in his crap music lessons. 

Anyway, all that to underline how amazing the brain is, and my blog post was to talk/ramble on about the more visual aspects of memory, with regard to places on this maligned planet. I was on a dog walk yesterday with new friend, author Adrian Mathews and we were discussing our respective nostalgias for London, realising that we both held the fondest memories from the 70s version of London with all the stuff that went along with it - Routemaster buses, formica cafés, few chain shops, and many wonderful old landmarks now sadly crushed under a new sedimentary layer of London's history. Mind, if the current novel I'm writing has any truth in its wayward madness, London is still there both in our collective minds, in time, and in all its phases.

During this morning's walk, I considered the places that have meant much to me, or not even much but have just stayed prominent in colour, shape, sound and smell within my memories over the years. An assortment: 

Too many in London to state, but perhaps the ponds of Hampstead Heath, the small parks of Bloomsbury and the roads around St Leonard's church in Hackney where I have done so much wandering during Londonia research.

                                       Gower St at 5:am on one of my 'deep topography' wanderings

A particular rounded hill in Dorest called Wingreen. It has featured in many of my books, and it was just visible from the end of our road when we lived in Wimborne, its wedge of beech trees strangely comforting to me; a memory of many happy walks with Mum listening to the larks and scanning the distant landscape for a glimpse of our road back home.

Win Green - Dorset pictures.com

An elegant alley of oak trees also near Wimborne in an area called Pamphill, a short walk through which brings one to a perfect little brick pub named the Vine inn/ Probably my favourite pub ever, despite its restricted menu of cheese or ham sandwiches - or that's what was on offer last time. But actually, what could be better than a hearty cheese and pickle sandwich on white spongy bread and half a pint of something with a name like Rector's Leg, or similar. 

Canford Cliffs near Bournemouth: ah, the views of Old Harry rocks and the rolling grasslands of the Purbeck area; the sand, the sea and all the memories of arriving there late on a summer day when everyone else was going to their guest houses or homes; wading into a placid sea, lying back and staring up the the clouds.

More recently, many personal postcard views of Cerbère close to the Spanish border. Two in particular - on walking into the hinterland and looking back at the sea and the train lines while a mass of bees explored the almond blossom, and swimming late at night in the town's small harbour. 

And of Limoux, where we have just moved from. So many memories and mainly of places reached on favourite dog walks. Probably the one would be the point we always stopped on the 'runny fields' walk (where our greyhounds could run easily) and gazed over the vine-striped hillsides and steep hillsides above Alet les Bains.

                               The hills above our old house, an everyday and much loved, dog walk.

So, what poignant memories will be formed in this new-to-us area of France? Certainly the Loire itself - I must have stood for twenty minutes the other day just watching the water in the late afternoon sun. I can feel affection already for many sights and sounds here: the pale stone and slate buildings with their elegant details, the slightly fen-like distant views of tree-clumps and hedges, meadows and regimented striped fields, the late-summer swallows that still swoop and dip and the graceful herons traversing the skies as silent as gliders.

Dorset wanderings

Most of my wanderings tend to be London-based but on this trip back to see Mum in Wimborne I took the time to explore my teenage-years' town a little further.
Usually I stay with my lovely cousin up on the hill but as she was having work done in the house she had absurdly generously booked me a house by the river to stay in - despite my weedy protestings about finding a cheapo B and B somewhere.
A view on the river Stour - what a rare treat to wake every morning and see swans and reeds reflected in the slow-moving waters; I may have almost moved my desire of living with a sea view to a river view - either might be good.



When I was about thirteen, Mum and I used to take a rowing boat out from the Hanham's Boat Yard and disappear up the river for hours - those holiday days that seemed to always be sun-filled. I can't recall who did the rowing but I did find a photo of her in her university rowing team - so possibly, more her - it's easy to forget that one's parent of nearly ninety and mostly clamped to a wheelchair used to do such things - and we shouldn't forget . . .

A different boat-hire place operates now with rather more strict rules about time and how far you are allowed to row to, but they were affable folk and when my friend came to stay for a couple of nights we hired a vessel, and rediscovered certain arm muscles.
Messing about in boats. Everything observed and heard from a boat is very different: the scale of trees, bridges, the plop of small animals and the skid of ducks' feet as they regain their watery territory.



Even though I lived in Wimborne for about six years I never did actually explore the potential of its river-bank walking. I suppose my main walking was in the form of the daily traipses to and from school, (which were bordering on small hikes) at each end of the day, and favourite jaunts out to places like Badbury Rings, Chalbury Church and bits of the coast; the Stour wasn't really on my day-to-day walk radar.
So, in a house with view of river - where does it actually pass through and how far can you walk?
Boots on, I started near the boat place and paced a few miles discovering brand new swanky housing estates, water meadows full of early summer flowers and the most perfect little suspension bridge that leads over to Canford School - a prestigious place with a parking area full of Range Rovers and Mercedes.



The spots visible in my photograph below were actually a few of the billions of Mayflies that were enjoying their twenty-four hours (or, perhaps to them, long lifespan involving relationships, where to eat, and musings on the meaning of life).



Taking the other direction the following day took me through a fine area of 1920/30s suburbia with some surviving original houses and many renovated dwellings - or large edifices where bungalows of that era once stood. If I'd had a freer day I might have walked on to the next village signposted - Lytchett Matravers - said, I believe, to be the longest village in the UK. I'm sure I read that somewhere but can't find it now. Anyway, the word Lychett comes from the Saxon word, Litchet, meaning Grey Wood. Rather Poetic.

          
                   Mm, very . . . clean

        

                             sadly this one was up for 'renovation'


                     

A beautiful snicket/ginnel - don't know the Dorset word for a thin path between houses. Maybe there isn't one.

Further mooching after seeing Mum in her home revealed such delights as a 2009 time capsule placed into the concrete of the new Stour Footbridge - to be opened in 2059. If one of my novels turns out to be a premonition, this momentous moment will not be recorded and put onto Facebook/Instagram, etc as the internet will have collapsed around 2038 - and this blog will be a slight and fading memory in my own head. Another reason for finding the time to make it into a REAL book.

                                  

Other noted things: the pub I used to work in - and got fired from as I couldn't add up (no auto tills in those days), and a tree that I must have gawped at for about fifteen minutes. I've never even seen one of these in Kew Gardens. Sadly the tree's owner was out so I still don't know what it is.

                                            

                                 

On one of the evenings my friend stayed, we drove to Studland via the clanking vehicular ferry at Sandbanks - a riveted metal wonderment that has been crossing the narrow stretch of water since 1994 - the original vessel started crossing in 1923. It's a magical stretch of land out towards Old Harry Rocks: grass with human tracks cut into the chalk, windblown scrubby trees and sheep - at that point with playful, bouncing lambs.
As the Pig on the Beach was fully booked we ate at the Baker's Arms where a massive chuck of tree smouldered in the fireplace and happy walkers/sightseers and locals quaffed pints of beer from, possibly, the wonderfully named, Piddle Brewing Company.
Our walk to the cliffs culminated in the most life-affirming sunset after which we took the Ferry back and interrogated two of the crew, one of whom had been doing the crossing for thirty years.

   



  
                                                                                          Pic from Simplonpc.com

The days passed with Mum in the usual round of tea shops, (think I did get scone-poisoning on my last visit) church and river perambulations - the smaller, Bourne, river. We collected leaves, shells on the trip to the beach, flowers and seeds and exclaimed over Kingfishers, swans and many more surreal sightings. Mum often sees things that I can't - small dogs sitting in trees and the like, but who's to say if they aren't there? In fact, after a lengthy discussion with afore-mentioned friend about us all being particles and time not existing, maybe small dogs sitting in trees are as normal as anything else.



On the last evening, I left Mum in the Royal-Wedding festooned home's dining room and walked back to the river house for the last time. Two swans moved majestically down the Stour as I packed my suitcase and attempted to leave the gite as spotless as I had found it.

Total Crap

Those are the words I thought I saw in red type spanning the front of a magazine in a post office in Dorset. That's what your brain does - tries to make sense of words and images all the time, even when rushing to see if you have acquired a parking ticket after installing your car in a twenty minute space and then daydreaming in a WHSmiths for an hour.
Total Crap?
I stepped back and saw the image of a grinning man holding a fish the size of a small, bloated pig. Forgetting, again, the car, I perused the shelves and was amazed to find, not just Total Carp, but Advanced carp, Carp world, Carp Fishing, etc.
Before I got obsessed with what the female version of all these wasted trees might be, I left the shop, drove home and Googled more about Carp.
In France, I don't think the magazine world is quite so in depth about subjects - hunting perhaps, wine, certain sun-blessed regions of the country, but not fourteen or so, different weekly or monthly editions about one subject, in this case a species of fish . . .
Other titles included: Carpoholics Anonymous, Crafty Carper, Carp Talk and Carp Sex - obviously not, but the way that some of the successful trappers were holding their trophies did look dangerously like lust to me.



         Indeed . . . 

Most of the covers show pretty much the same image: man in woolly hat, large grin, huge slimy fish surrounded by copy such as: He Who Dares, Maggot-Caught Cracker, Mastering Maggots, Bait Secrets Revealed, Big Wacker (!?)
I will have to buy a copy of Total Carp to see what actually happens to the mega-fish when it has been ensnared - I presume, eaten? Stuffed?



       I tried . . . tried to save you . . . we could have been so happy together.

                                         

                                . . . it's just you and me, darling - so long have I waited for this moment
                                                                

                                           

                                                                   
So, what of the pink magazines: something for the ladies? Yes, I know, the sexes should merge in reading material, but sadly the shelves are still, and probably will be, while paper pulp continues to be fashioned into A4 leisure-time fodder, severely divided on the whole.
What might be the equivalent of Total Carp?
There are about a thousand titles covering fashion, beauty, house-decoration, food, and so on, but what about something as specific as hunting one type of fish?
Cross stitch, entered my mind - do people (women, I assume) still do this? I had a look.
Yes, they do: Cross Stitch Collection, Cross stitch Gold, Cross Stitch Formula, Cross Stitch Favourites, Cross Stitcher, Cross Stitch Mania - or crazy, I forget, Just Cross Stitch, Cross Stitch Sex.
Actually, none of the covers appeared to feature a woman clutching a cross stitched portrait of George Clooney to her breast, or a needle-worked phallus, or even just a woman displaying a finished piece of work with the same manic pride as any of the fishermen.
I will return, this time to a really big paper shop and look in more depth through the pages of other magazines. I haven't bought one since I had a brief flirtation with Interiors Magazine years ago and realised that after a quick peruse they became floppy, shiny wads of paper to be stored somewhere along with everything else. Perhaps it's different if you are gripped by a single obsession, fourteen titles or so, a joy to surreptitiously glance through in Smiths, or buy if you can afford them all . . .

                                        

Memories

Odd, is it not, how memories are formed and how they 'ignite' on/at the sight/smell or taste of something.
While putting the Christmas tree decorations away yesterday I found the little Father Christmas 'starfish' that has always been on any tree from my childhood onwards.
I thought back over the years: the flat in Muswell Hill, the house in Dorset, our various establishments where the decs have moved with us, Mum having stayed with us each year and happy to let her own tree-decorating end.
Before I wrapped Father C in paper I took a moment to really look at the materials he is made of, consider how many trees he might have been hung on, and actually, what age he must be.
My mother said she didn't really remember where the decoration had come from but was certain it had belonged in her grandmother's house, or possibly had come from some wealthy establishment where she had been 'in service'. Old then! for sure, and the most important part of the Christmas preparations.
The box of tinsel, lights, baubles etc is closed now, F.C carefully placed inside; back into the attic.
Goodbye till next year, then.

                                  

Farming fashions

Recently in the UK (Dorset) I was interested, and rather happy, to see the return of the oblong hay bale, as appose to the round ones usually covered in plastic. Maybe it's just in that county? Or maybe a countrywide 'tendance'. There was always something comforting about the sight of hay stacked in wobbly towers across a clipped field; something I haven't seen in France for some time. Maybe it's straw, not hay stashed in the round ones? Might have to check this . . .
Anyway, while walking at Badbury Rings, a favourite Dorset landmark, and ancient hill fort, I saw this majestic hay ship sailing across a newly smoothed beige expanse, rather like something one might have constructed on Minecraft - a giant pixilated vessel (or a dog/sheep/cow, depending on how your visual imagination works) intent on entering the next land (field) to add more oblong pieces to itself.

Favourite spaces and places

There are many for me: Hampstead Heath ponds, in fact, a lot of London in general; Cerbère, a particular stone bench in a tiny hamlet called Aspro in Crete, from which you can see the mountains and the sea, Pamphill in Dorset, the lanes of Wirksworth in Derbyshire; Canford Cliffs, the woolly hills across from where we live, our garden, and amongst many other places - Wingreen, in Dorset.
This small wedge of beech trees atop a rounded hill of grass and wild flowers kept cropped by sheep is an oddly magical place to me, and probably to others. Odd, as in there isn't a great deal there - rabbits, rabbit droppings, cowslips in the spring, and, nearly always, larks singing that odd twizzling little song as they rise into the sky (which always seems blue in my mind's eye - a remembered/possibly imagined, blue of my childhood days).
We, (Mum and I), would make a pilgrimage there fairly often to walk, picnic and just sit looking at the vastness of clouds and the smallness of the distant ridge where, somewhere, if you had super binoculars, you would be able to make out the stile at the end of her road.