View from the Chilterns - contemporary issues from a Chiltern Garden
The Seasons - (click above the photograph for direct access to a Season or the Gallery)
INTRO : takes you through ALL the Seasons
SPRING 2010: The Chiltern Hundreds; Expenses; and a very clever little Bush
Summer 2010: Feathered Friends and Climate Change
Autumn 2010: The Year of the RAT (and the Mole)
Winter 2010: Learning to live in the Countryside; Wychert.
Spring 2011: Learning from Nature
Gallery: A picture Gallery from the Chilterns
© Terry Gasking 2010
‘Hello, nice of you to join us.
Over the next few months we will be documenting and perhaps filming a series of Views from the Chilterns that we hope you will find to be interesting, informative, amusing, and maybe a little controversial now and again.
One thing about sitting here looking out over the Chilterns is that it is remarkable the clarity you get on so many subjects – be they the garden, the climate, the economy, the banks, or a whole raft of subjects in between.
From here we have the enormous advantage of not being weighed down with a multitude of ‘Experts’ all competing to get their views into the headlines and accepted as fact.
We don’t have to dream up Sound-Bites by which politicians can fool the public and themselves that they have a grasp of what the real problem is.
We have the time to see things as they are and think things through. We draw our own conclusions and it is some of these that I hope to share with you.
If you have any comments you would like to make on the issues then please go to the Forum by clicking FORUM
We share 'View from the Chilterns' Forum with our publisher.
Sincerely
Terry Gasking
INTRO : takes you through ALL the Seasons
SPRING 2010: The Chiltern Hundreds; Expenses; and a very clever little Bush
Summer 2010: Feathered Friends and Climate Change
Autumn 2010: The Year of the RAT (and the Mole)
Winter 2010: Learning to live in the Countryside; Wychert.
Spring 2011: Learning from Nature
Gallery: A picture Gallery from the Chilterns
© Terry Gasking 2010
‘Hello, nice of you to join us.
Over the next few months we will be documenting and perhaps filming a series of Views from the Chilterns that we hope you will find to be interesting, informative, amusing, and maybe a little controversial now and again.
One thing about sitting here looking out over the Chilterns is that it is remarkable the clarity you get on so many subjects – be they the garden, the climate, the economy, the banks, or a whole raft of subjects in between.
From here we have the enormous advantage of not being weighed down with a multitude of ‘Experts’ all competing to get their views into the headlines and accepted as fact.
We don’t have to dream up Sound-Bites by which politicians can fool the public and themselves that they have a grasp of what the real problem is.
We have the time to see things as they are and think things through. We draw our own conclusions and it is some of these that I hope to share with you.
If you have any comments you would like to make on the issues then please go to the Forum by clicking FORUM
We share 'View from the Chilterns' Forum with our publisher.
Sincerely
Terry Gasking
SPRING 2010
The Chiltern Hundreds
© Terry Gasking 2010
I guess the clarity of thought comes about because we can look out on the Chiltern Hills in this part of Buckinghamshire. The Chiltern Hills have been here for millions of years.
The Hills truly do not get excited by all the day to day headlines drawn up by the media, or the sound-bites of Politicians.
They just continue to give a base to the flora and fauna that come up year on year – and will for many millenniums to come – as long as human beings don’t start to try to ‘improve’ them with the fertilisers and growth hormones that are so damaging our farmlands.
I don’t know if you are aware that looking out onto a range of hills and walking in them is a good way to feel better. Realising the longevity of the hills and their beauty is somehow invigorating to the spirit. Problems seem to drop away
There is majesty about the hills, an excitement, a history.
As I sit gently rocking on the porch of my small cabin the hills immediately in front of us are the Three Hundreds of Chiltern, more commonly known as the Chiltern Hundreds.
We have some interesting and antiquated customs and rules in The UK Parliament – most of which were made to keep Members of Parliament honest and true to their calling.
Many still exist and sit uneasily alongside those of today that are severely abused by modern day politicians for their personal enrichment.
2 March 1624 Under a Resolution of the House of Parliament it was defined that Members of Parliament cannot directly resign their seat.
Death, disqualification and expulsion are the only means by which a Member's seat may be vacated during the lifetime of a Parliament (Please don’t be tempted!!!!).
A Member wishing to resign has to go through the process of applying for a paid office of the Crown which automatically disqualifies the Member from holding a seat in the House of Commons.
The resolution passed by the House on 2 March 1624 prohibits MPs from resigning their seats. It states simply “…that a man, after he is duly chosen, cannot relinquish.” He has the job for the life of that parliament!
Once elected he cannot resign or quit. However a person cannot be a servant of the Crown and an MP due to the conflict of interest that could arise between his loyalty to the Crown and his loyalty to the parliament if they were in conflict. There are therefore two offices that could exclude the MP from holding a seat in Parliament: They are -
Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds; or of the Manor of Northstead
In the 1600s the Manor of Northstead consisted of a number of fields and farms in the parish of Scalby in the North Riding of Yorkshire. The main property of this manor was described as "an old chamber ... a low house under it, unfit for habitation. Sir Richard Cholmley's shepherd dwelt there until it fell down". The Chiltern Hundreds are the farms and acres we are looking out on at this very moment.
In the 1600s days serving in Parliament was often regarded as an obligation to be accepted only reluctantly rather than an honour to be eagerly sought.
I can’t say that it is like that today... Today it seems that days serving in Parliament are an opportunity to falsify claims for expenses at considerable personal enrichment.
In the 1600s voluntary relinquishment of a seat was not, therefore, something to be encouraged. It was also the case that, before the sixteenth century, it was very rare for a parliament to sit for longer than a few weeks so that a procedure for resignation was hardly necessary.
In today’s world if we went back to that length of a parliamentary year (a few weeks!) I can’t help but feel we would live in a far happier state. Do we really need hundreds of new laws and directives every year emanating from a parliament where an awful lot of members never had an honest job outside politics.
Perhaps we should make it easier for whole batches of politicians to resign.
Amongst recent Stewards of the Chiltern Hundreds are Betty Boothroyd (2000) and Tony Blair (2007) whereas Peter Mandelson (2004) and Boris Johnson (2008) chose the route through the Manor of Northstead to escape their obligations as MPs.
When I was young I genuinely believed that good people got themselves elected into Parliament to serve their electors and to do what they could to improve the lot of their fellow man.
What a naive fool I was!
Are you as appalled as I am at the way the bunch of MPs we have today have raped the expenses system for personal enrichment?
I don’t care that some poor lackey in the MPs expense office was too weak to question these appalling expense claims – the MPs themselves know that what they were claiming for was not true, and certainly not incurred solely in the service of their constituents.
There is a genuine fear of lawlessness in the U.K. We have more people in prison that ever and there is continual talk of hiring ‘Prison Ships’ to jail the ever increasing numbers.
Management starts at the Top!
The example set by those at the top in any organisation filters down through every strata of the social and working population. MPs are fiddling their expenses on an outrageous scale. Is it any wonder that our prisons are full? Look at the example they are being set by their rulers!
MPs are there to manage and rule the country. How can they possibly manage a country when they cannot honestly manage themselves? They are swindling the taxpayer left right and centre?
We all know that our main residence is the one we stay in for most of the time. It cannot be switched to some other address just so that you can dramatically increase your claim for expenses. None of us would object to MPs being compensated for expenses incurred solely as a reason for representing their constituents but their abuse of the system is truly appalling!
Duck Ponds, new chimneys, dodgy films, mortgages on houses they seldom stay in, claims for mortgages that they no longer pay, claims for all kinds of purchases that have little or nothing to do with their ability to act as MPs, the list goes on and on. Those submitting these claims know they were not incurred solely to fulfill their tasks as MPs. Besides my wonder at some lackey in the ‘Expense Office’ letting them get away with it – how on earth did the Inland Revenue accept it?
In the past few years the taxman has been allowed to make assessments on self-employed and small businesses based on profiles of the type of business they ran. The Assessments may have not a grain of evidence to support them but the businessman is then left in the terribly difficult – and often impossible – position of having to prove that the assessment is wrong. He has effectively been found guilty until he can prove he is innocent. The very opposite of the base of law that operates in the UK.
Many a small businessman has been ruined or by the assessments made by the Taxman. The law that allows the Inland Revenue to act in this totally unfair way often without a grain of evidence was passed by none other than those who have fiddled their expenses and personally enriched themselves.
Why have the Inland Revenue allowed them to get away with it. Why have they not raised an Assessment for unpaid Tax on every MP in Parliament? Is there one law for the rich and privileged and another for the rest of us?
The worse thing about all this is that if the newspaper had not been given a memory stick with all the details on it and decided to publish then our Lords and Masters at Westminster would still be fiddling the taxpayers as hard as they could - taking them for every penny they could get away with.
Until this scandal broke TV continually ran adverts sponsored by the government encouraging the viewer to report anyone they knew who was not declaring any work they might do whilst they were drawing benefits. We were promised that Benefit Cheats would be imprisoned.
The biggest Benefit Cheats in the UK are the Members of Parliament and now they have been found out I cannot for the life of me think why they are not all en-masse in prison.
Another tragedy about all this is that MPs seem to think that everything is o.k. once they have paid back some of their ill gotten gains – the ones they have been caught with. It’s like the burglar telling the Policemen and the courts that everything is o.k. – they will just pay the money back as they had now been caught and then letting them walk away scott free like we have MPs.
Perhaps it is time for us to return to the way of the parliaments of the sixteenth century, when it was very rare for a parliament to sit for longer than a few weeks. That would severely restrict the shenanigans of the MPs and probably give us just as good legislature.
On the other hand it is perhaps time for the UK electors to elect a ‘Peoples Party’ where MPs follow the requirements of their constituents instead of the Party Whips.
I like this idea and we might spend a little time thinking more on this in future programmes.
But onto much happier themes than the swindlers who inhabit the houses of parliament - Isn’t Spring a wonderful time of the year?
The whole countryside in the U.K. wakes up from its winter slumbers and no matter what weather is thrown at it during the darker months nature still produces a magical array of buds and flowers.
Nature not only produces this magic but it is far more intelligent than most of us realise and will tell give us all lots of advice - if only we learned to listen.
For example - in the autumn of 2009 our VIBURNUM tree produced a phenomenal array of berries – cascades of red berries lasting well into the winter. It produced a magnificent display with far more berries than we have seen in any year since we planted it 10 years ago.
If you listen to country lore then this bush was telling us that it was going to be a harsh winter with freezing weather and lack of food that might devastate bird populations.
Unfortunately the weather forecasters thought they knew better and at that time they were assuring us of a mild winter to follow the ‘barbeque’ summer that they had also got hopelessly wrong.
This little bush knew better!
The Viburnam is an ancient Latin name for the British native wayfaring tree. It has a most magnificent fragrance when in bloom in the early summer and a multitude of berries in the Autumn and Winter dependent upon its own internal long-range weather forecast.
Without all the vast array of ‘Experts’ and millions of pounds worth of computers the weather forecasters have at their disposal with which they got the barbeque summer completely wrong and the mild winter even more wrong - we have just suffered the harshest winter in 30 years or more - this little bush got everything completely right.
It went on producing a vast amount of berries throughout the Autumn and Winter and it – along with the bird feeders my wife maintains all year around – kept bird casualties down to a minimum in our part of the Chilterns.
Now isn’t this a clever little Bush.
How does it do it? How does it know that it is going to be a harsh winter when millions of pounds worth of computers and experts miss all the signs. Surely it doesn’t produce all those berries because it has some kind of compassion for its little feathered friends?
I can only think that the bushes’ principle way of propagating young bushes is to have its seeds
The Chiltern Hundreds
© Terry Gasking 2010
I guess the clarity of thought comes about because we can look out on the Chiltern Hills in this part of Buckinghamshire. The Chiltern Hills have been here for millions of years.
The Hills truly do not get excited by all the day to day headlines drawn up by the media, or the sound-bites of Politicians.
They just continue to give a base to the flora and fauna that come up year on year – and will for many millenniums to come – as long as human beings don’t start to try to ‘improve’ them with the fertilisers and growth hormones that are so damaging our farmlands.
I don’t know if you are aware that looking out onto a range of hills and walking in them is a good way to feel better. Realising the longevity of the hills and their beauty is somehow invigorating to the spirit. Problems seem to drop away
There is majesty about the hills, an excitement, a history.
As I sit gently rocking on the porch of my small cabin the hills immediately in front of us are the Three Hundreds of Chiltern, more commonly known as the Chiltern Hundreds.
We have some interesting and antiquated customs and rules in The UK Parliament – most of which were made to keep Members of Parliament honest and true to their calling.
Many still exist and sit uneasily alongside those of today that are severely abused by modern day politicians for their personal enrichment.
2 March 1624 Under a Resolution of the House of Parliament it was defined that Members of Parliament cannot directly resign their seat.
Death, disqualification and expulsion are the only means by which a Member's seat may be vacated during the lifetime of a Parliament (Please don’t be tempted!!!!).
A Member wishing to resign has to go through the process of applying for a paid office of the Crown which automatically disqualifies the Member from holding a seat in the House of Commons.
The resolution passed by the House on 2 March 1624 prohibits MPs from resigning their seats. It states simply “…that a man, after he is duly chosen, cannot relinquish.” He has the job for the life of that parliament!
Once elected he cannot resign or quit. However a person cannot be a servant of the Crown and an MP due to the conflict of interest that could arise between his loyalty to the Crown and his loyalty to the parliament if they were in conflict. There are therefore two offices that could exclude the MP from holding a seat in Parliament: They are -
Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds; or of the Manor of Northstead
In the 1600s the Manor of Northstead consisted of a number of fields and farms in the parish of Scalby in the North Riding of Yorkshire. The main property of this manor was described as "an old chamber ... a low house under it, unfit for habitation. Sir Richard Cholmley's shepherd dwelt there until it fell down". The Chiltern Hundreds are the farms and acres we are looking out on at this very moment.
In the 1600s days serving in Parliament was often regarded as an obligation to be accepted only reluctantly rather than an honour to be eagerly sought.
I can’t say that it is like that today... Today it seems that days serving in Parliament are an opportunity to falsify claims for expenses at considerable personal enrichment.
In the 1600s voluntary relinquishment of a seat was not, therefore, something to be encouraged. It was also the case that, before the sixteenth century, it was very rare for a parliament to sit for longer than a few weeks so that a procedure for resignation was hardly necessary.
In today’s world if we went back to that length of a parliamentary year (a few weeks!) I can’t help but feel we would live in a far happier state. Do we really need hundreds of new laws and directives every year emanating from a parliament where an awful lot of members never had an honest job outside politics.
Perhaps we should make it easier for whole batches of politicians to resign.
Amongst recent Stewards of the Chiltern Hundreds are Betty Boothroyd (2000) and Tony Blair (2007) whereas Peter Mandelson (2004) and Boris Johnson (2008) chose the route through the Manor of Northstead to escape their obligations as MPs.
When I was young I genuinely believed that good people got themselves elected into Parliament to serve their electors and to do what they could to improve the lot of their fellow man.
What a naive fool I was!
Are you as appalled as I am at the way the bunch of MPs we have today have raped the expenses system for personal enrichment?
I don’t care that some poor lackey in the MPs expense office was too weak to question these appalling expense claims – the MPs themselves know that what they were claiming for was not true, and certainly not incurred solely in the service of their constituents.
There is a genuine fear of lawlessness in the U.K. We have more people in prison that ever and there is continual talk of hiring ‘Prison Ships’ to jail the ever increasing numbers.
Management starts at the Top!
The example set by those at the top in any organisation filters down through every strata of the social and working population. MPs are fiddling their expenses on an outrageous scale. Is it any wonder that our prisons are full? Look at the example they are being set by their rulers!
MPs are there to manage and rule the country. How can they possibly manage a country when they cannot honestly manage themselves? They are swindling the taxpayer left right and centre?
We all know that our main residence is the one we stay in for most of the time. It cannot be switched to some other address just so that you can dramatically increase your claim for expenses. None of us would object to MPs being compensated for expenses incurred solely as a reason for representing their constituents but their abuse of the system is truly appalling!
Duck Ponds, new chimneys, dodgy films, mortgages on houses they seldom stay in, claims for mortgages that they no longer pay, claims for all kinds of purchases that have little or nothing to do with their ability to act as MPs, the list goes on and on. Those submitting these claims know they were not incurred solely to fulfill their tasks as MPs. Besides my wonder at some lackey in the ‘Expense Office’ letting them get away with it – how on earth did the Inland Revenue accept it?
In the past few years the taxman has been allowed to make assessments on self-employed and small businesses based on profiles of the type of business they ran. The Assessments may have not a grain of evidence to support them but the businessman is then left in the terribly difficult – and often impossible – position of having to prove that the assessment is wrong. He has effectively been found guilty until he can prove he is innocent. The very opposite of the base of law that operates in the UK.
Many a small businessman has been ruined or by the assessments made by the Taxman. The law that allows the Inland Revenue to act in this totally unfair way often without a grain of evidence was passed by none other than those who have fiddled their expenses and personally enriched themselves.
Why have the Inland Revenue allowed them to get away with it. Why have they not raised an Assessment for unpaid Tax on every MP in Parliament? Is there one law for the rich and privileged and another for the rest of us?
The worse thing about all this is that if the newspaper had not been given a memory stick with all the details on it and decided to publish then our Lords and Masters at Westminster would still be fiddling the taxpayers as hard as they could - taking them for every penny they could get away with.
Until this scandal broke TV continually ran adverts sponsored by the government encouraging the viewer to report anyone they knew who was not declaring any work they might do whilst they were drawing benefits. We were promised that Benefit Cheats would be imprisoned.
The biggest Benefit Cheats in the UK are the Members of Parliament and now they have been found out I cannot for the life of me think why they are not all en-masse in prison.
Another tragedy about all this is that MPs seem to think that everything is o.k. once they have paid back some of their ill gotten gains – the ones they have been caught with. It’s like the burglar telling the Policemen and the courts that everything is o.k. – they will just pay the money back as they had now been caught and then letting them walk away scott free like we have MPs.
Perhaps it is time for us to return to the way of the parliaments of the sixteenth century, when it was very rare for a parliament to sit for longer than a few weeks. That would severely restrict the shenanigans of the MPs and probably give us just as good legislature.
On the other hand it is perhaps time for the UK electors to elect a ‘Peoples Party’ where MPs follow the requirements of their constituents instead of the Party Whips.
I like this idea and we might spend a little time thinking more on this in future programmes.
But onto much happier themes than the swindlers who inhabit the houses of parliament - Isn’t Spring a wonderful time of the year?
The whole countryside in the U.K. wakes up from its winter slumbers and no matter what weather is thrown at it during the darker months nature still produces a magical array of buds and flowers.
Nature not only produces this magic but it is far more intelligent than most of us realise and will tell give us all lots of advice - if only we learned to listen.
For example - in the autumn of 2009 our VIBURNUM tree produced a phenomenal array of berries – cascades of red berries lasting well into the winter. It produced a magnificent display with far more berries than we have seen in any year since we planted it 10 years ago.
If you listen to country lore then this bush was telling us that it was going to be a harsh winter with freezing weather and lack of food that might devastate bird populations.
Unfortunately the weather forecasters thought they knew better and at that time they were assuring us of a mild winter to follow the ‘barbeque’ summer that they had also got hopelessly wrong.
This little bush knew better!
The Viburnam is an ancient Latin name for the British native wayfaring tree. It has a most magnificent fragrance when in bloom in the early summer and a multitude of berries in the Autumn and Winter dependent upon its own internal long-range weather forecast.
Without all the vast array of ‘Experts’ and millions of pounds worth of computers the weather forecasters have at their disposal with which they got the barbeque summer completely wrong and the mild winter even more wrong - we have just suffered the harshest winter in 30 years or more - this little bush got everything completely right.
It went on producing a vast amount of berries throughout the Autumn and Winter and it – along with the bird feeders my wife maintains all year around – kept bird casualties down to a minimum in our part of the Chilterns.
Now isn’t this a clever little Bush.
How does it do it? How does it know that it is going to be a harsh winter when millions of pounds worth of computers and experts miss all the signs. Surely it doesn’t produce all those berries because it has some kind of compassion for its little feathered friends?
I can only think that the bushes’ principle way of propagating young bushes is to have its seeds
SUMMER 2010
Our Feathered Friends and the Climate
© Terry Gasking 2010
The crows are building their nests at the top of the trees. A good sign for the weather to come? The old country saying is ‘Crows Nest High it will be dry, Nest Low it will surely snow’. My Viburnum tree got the winter weather correct! Have the Crows predicted the summer correctly? Well – we had a lovely spell of weather in the early part of summer but then a really cold and frosty spell hit us and set the garden back quite considerably.
Country lore warns us not to plant out our Runner Beans until the 21st April each year but for many years we have defied this date and got our plants from the greenhouse into the ground early in April and covering them with fleece on the few nights when frost is forecast. Usually this has given us our first crop of beans by mid-July and we have enjoyed an abundance of this fine crop throughout the year into the Autumn. Nothing beats freshly picked vegetables and fruit straight off the plant or out of the ground but of all the vegetables our garden produces our Runner beans seem to freeze excellently and keep tasting excellently throughout the winter. This year we have had to rescue the crop by planting fresh beans directly into the ground to make up for those we lost in the frost. It has shortened our growing season but hopefully we will still grow enough to stock our freezers for most of the winter.
Jill keeps 12 birdfeeders stocked all year round and we are rewarded by a multitude of birds visiting the garden. A pal suggested I logged them all so out came all the bird-recognition books and to-date we have identified 50 different species with another 3 we have not yet been able to name. We have about three-quarters of an acre and the 50 species that have visited us and we are certain about are –
House Sparrows Dunnocks Blackbirds Starlings
Swifts Crows Magpies Pied Wagtails
House Martins Kestrel Songthrush Hawfinch
Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers (consistently feeding their family on the branch of our Apple Tree)
Greater Spotted Woodpeckers Green Woodpeckers Wrens
Marsh Tits Coal Tits GoldCrests Great Tits
Blue Tits Goldfinch (by the dozen) Bullfinch Robins
Swallows Heron Doves Pigeons
Greenfinches Chaffinch Corn Bunting Skylark
Long Tailed Tit Pheasant Bats Owl
Canada Geese Mute Swan Red Kite Whinchat
Wood Warbler Linnet Garden Warbler Grey Wagtail
Sparrowhawk Wheatear Spotted Flycatcher Nuthatch
Meadow Pipit Rock Sparrow Tern.
We started with a lack of knowledge of the actual names of the birds we were seeing so have tried to get 3 or 4 people seeing each species and checking the id books with us so we are confident of all of these sightings. How lucky we are to live with a view from the Chilterns.
We seem to get the best of the weather in our garden. The prevailing West winds take the weather across the Vale (of Aylesbury) that lies between us and the Chiltern Hills and then lifts as the winds meet the Chilterns. There is a small village on the far side of the hills that looks idyllic but when you travel the route all through the year you find that if there is any bad weather it falls on this village. The surrounding area can be bathed in sunshine but it is often pouring with rain or even snowing in this unfortunate village.
Fortunately our cottage is built L-shaped so our garden is protected from the West and North winds and weather. The result is we are often quite a few degrees warmer than our neighbours. We bought the field that comprises most of our garden about 8 years ago and decided to plant 20 fruit trees that would bear the fruit that would have been produced on trees at the time our cottage was built – circa 1725. It took a fair bit of research but we have Apples, Pears, Plums and Nuts of a kind you cannot buy now. They have a very short shelf life but magnificent flavours. A couple of years ago – encouraged by our warm garden we decided to grow a few trees from warmer climes and this year we have been rewarded with fresh grown peaches and a multitude of Apricots. We are hoping that our Mulberry and Almond trees produce over the next year or so. I am looking for an edible Date to grow so if you have any suggestions please log them on our Blog or Forum.
There seems to be little doubt that the weather generally is getting warmer and not just in our garden – but I have immense problems believing any of the hype on Climate Change, Carbon Footprints and the like!
A few years ago the area I live in declared a hosepipe ban throughout Central and Eastern England. The media showed us pictures of dried up reservoirs and river beds and tried to convince us that this is what the future held. Bags were issued to go into water systems in toilets to ensure they did not use so much water as disaster was just around the corner. I found it difficult to believe then and even more so now as a year or two later they are showing us pictures of vast areas of flooding and bridges swept away by rain of an intensity ‘they have never seen before’.
When I was a kid I did a paper round to earn some money and my route took me alongside the River Lea. The River Lea had never flooded in the years I lived close by yet a couple of cottages alongside the river had markings on the wall of the flood of 1880s and another from the 1700s and a lower one from the early 1900s. These marks were way up the walls nearly to the start of their roofs. For the river to have risen to those levels then vast swathes of the area must have been under water. I realised that the weather patterns in the UK really do fluctuate on a local basis and always have. It has nothing to do with global warming but is a fact of the weather in the U.K.
Furthermore if you look up the annual weather pattern for the U.K. as a whole for the past 100 years you will see that we receive almost exactly the same amount of rain, the same amount of Sunshine, the same amount of snow and frost etc. The records also show that each weather pattern changes on a local basis so that whilst the South-East of the country has no water and is spelling out doom warnings for the future, Scotland, Wales and the West Country had far more rainfall that normal and more than made up for the shortfall in the SouthEast. I cannot believe that it is beyond the wit of man in 2010 to lay a simple pipeline between all parts of the country so that areas with surplus rain can pump the water to areas of drought.
A great place to visit is the Elan Valley in mid-Wales. It is scenically beautiful – a beauty that has been enhanced by the huge reservoirs created by the Victorians when they built massive dams at the end of the 1800s. The driving force for the reservoirs was the dysentery and disease that was being suffered by people living in Birmingham due to a shortage of clean water. Birmingham is the best part of 100 miles from the Elan Valley but the engineers on the project built a pipeline fed by gravity alone to take the water falling onto the Welsh Hills all the way into Birmingham. I cannot remember the exact details of the project and really do recommend a visit to the Elan Valley to see it for yourself but I believe it to be a fall of three-quarters of an inch in every mile. As water always falls to its lowest point it eventually (5 days later) arrived at Birmingham.
All this was achieved in the 1800s with primitive tools and equipment. I cannot for the life of me see why we cannot link up all parts of the country by pipeline in the 2000s. Pricing issues should not be allowed to stand in the way of such a project and common sense should prevail in the supply of fresh water to every part of the U.K. After all enough of it falls out of the sky somewhere in the U.K. every year.
A final thought on ‘Climate Change’. Edgar Cayce was a ‘sleeping Prophet’ who lived in the first half of the 20th Century. He gave more than 14,000 readings in his lifetime and is credited with an accuracy rate of 98%. When asked about the best locations for the future he warned that the transfer of the poles would start to affect the world’s weather at the turn the century. Because of the angle of rotation of the Earth around the sun the North Pole is moving South at a miniscule rate as the South Pole moves North.
This fact has been acknowledges by the scientists for centuries but Cayce is the first to draw attention to the effects this movement has on the global weather. He warned of dramatic flooding up the Mississippi and though the Gulf of Mexico area and in various parts of Europe. He also forecast the temperature gradually increasing in the North and decreasing in the South.
It seems to me that he was spot on.
If Cayce was correct then all the fuss about Carbon footprints etc is just something to sell newspapers and make a few so called experts famous and possibly rich.
When I think of the photos that exist of the black smoke pouring out of the Potteries Chimneys in the Black Country 200 years ago and even the great fog of London in my childhood when Dad and I struggled home from Manor House Station to Stamford Hill in a fog so thick that I couldn’t see the ground below me to see when the kerbs were being reached or when we had got to the far side of the road because of the thick choking coal smog that covered the whole of London I cannot understand why they had no effect on Climate Change and Carbon Footprints whereas a Cow passing Wind represents a threat in today’s world.
It’s a funny old world.
Our Feathered Friends and the Climate
© Terry Gasking 2010
The crows are building their nests at the top of the trees. A good sign for the weather to come? The old country saying is ‘Crows Nest High it will be dry, Nest Low it will surely snow’. My Viburnum tree got the winter weather correct! Have the Crows predicted the summer correctly? Well – we had a lovely spell of weather in the early part of summer but then a really cold and frosty spell hit us and set the garden back quite considerably.
Country lore warns us not to plant out our Runner Beans until the 21st April each year but for many years we have defied this date and got our plants from the greenhouse into the ground early in April and covering them with fleece on the few nights when frost is forecast. Usually this has given us our first crop of beans by mid-July and we have enjoyed an abundance of this fine crop throughout the year into the Autumn. Nothing beats freshly picked vegetables and fruit straight off the plant or out of the ground but of all the vegetables our garden produces our Runner beans seem to freeze excellently and keep tasting excellently throughout the winter. This year we have had to rescue the crop by planting fresh beans directly into the ground to make up for those we lost in the frost. It has shortened our growing season but hopefully we will still grow enough to stock our freezers for most of the winter.
Jill keeps 12 birdfeeders stocked all year round and we are rewarded by a multitude of birds visiting the garden. A pal suggested I logged them all so out came all the bird-recognition books and to-date we have identified 50 different species with another 3 we have not yet been able to name. We have about three-quarters of an acre and the 50 species that have visited us and we are certain about are –
House Sparrows Dunnocks Blackbirds Starlings
Swifts Crows Magpies Pied Wagtails
House Martins Kestrel Songthrush Hawfinch
Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers (consistently feeding their family on the branch of our Apple Tree)
Greater Spotted Woodpeckers Green Woodpeckers Wrens
Marsh Tits Coal Tits GoldCrests Great Tits
Blue Tits Goldfinch (by the dozen) Bullfinch Robins
Swallows Heron Doves Pigeons
Greenfinches Chaffinch Corn Bunting Skylark
Long Tailed Tit Pheasant Bats Owl
Canada Geese Mute Swan Red Kite Whinchat
Wood Warbler Linnet Garden Warbler Grey Wagtail
Sparrowhawk Wheatear Spotted Flycatcher Nuthatch
Meadow Pipit Rock Sparrow Tern.
We started with a lack of knowledge of the actual names of the birds we were seeing so have tried to get 3 or 4 people seeing each species and checking the id books with us so we are confident of all of these sightings. How lucky we are to live with a view from the Chilterns.
We seem to get the best of the weather in our garden. The prevailing West winds take the weather across the Vale (of Aylesbury) that lies between us and the Chiltern Hills and then lifts as the winds meet the Chilterns. There is a small village on the far side of the hills that looks idyllic but when you travel the route all through the year you find that if there is any bad weather it falls on this village. The surrounding area can be bathed in sunshine but it is often pouring with rain or even snowing in this unfortunate village.
Fortunately our cottage is built L-shaped so our garden is protected from the West and North winds and weather. The result is we are often quite a few degrees warmer than our neighbours. We bought the field that comprises most of our garden about 8 years ago and decided to plant 20 fruit trees that would bear the fruit that would have been produced on trees at the time our cottage was built – circa 1725. It took a fair bit of research but we have Apples, Pears, Plums and Nuts of a kind you cannot buy now. They have a very short shelf life but magnificent flavours. A couple of years ago – encouraged by our warm garden we decided to grow a few trees from warmer climes and this year we have been rewarded with fresh grown peaches and a multitude of Apricots. We are hoping that our Mulberry and Almond trees produce over the next year or so. I am looking for an edible Date to grow so if you have any suggestions please log them on our Blog or Forum.
There seems to be little doubt that the weather generally is getting warmer and not just in our garden – but I have immense problems believing any of the hype on Climate Change, Carbon Footprints and the like!
A few years ago the area I live in declared a hosepipe ban throughout Central and Eastern England. The media showed us pictures of dried up reservoirs and river beds and tried to convince us that this is what the future held. Bags were issued to go into water systems in toilets to ensure they did not use so much water as disaster was just around the corner. I found it difficult to believe then and even more so now as a year or two later they are showing us pictures of vast areas of flooding and bridges swept away by rain of an intensity ‘they have never seen before’.
When I was a kid I did a paper round to earn some money and my route took me alongside the River Lea. The River Lea had never flooded in the years I lived close by yet a couple of cottages alongside the river had markings on the wall of the flood of 1880s and another from the 1700s and a lower one from the early 1900s. These marks were way up the walls nearly to the start of their roofs. For the river to have risen to those levels then vast swathes of the area must have been under water. I realised that the weather patterns in the UK really do fluctuate on a local basis and always have. It has nothing to do with global warming but is a fact of the weather in the U.K.
Furthermore if you look up the annual weather pattern for the U.K. as a whole for the past 100 years you will see that we receive almost exactly the same amount of rain, the same amount of Sunshine, the same amount of snow and frost etc. The records also show that each weather pattern changes on a local basis so that whilst the South-East of the country has no water and is spelling out doom warnings for the future, Scotland, Wales and the West Country had far more rainfall that normal and more than made up for the shortfall in the SouthEast. I cannot believe that it is beyond the wit of man in 2010 to lay a simple pipeline between all parts of the country so that areas with surplus rain can pump the water to areas of drought.
A great place to visit is the Elan Valley in mid-Wales. It is scenically beautiful – a beauty that has been enhanced by the huge reservoirs created by the Victorians when they built massive dams at the end of the 1800s. The driving force for the reservoirs was the dysentery and disease that was being suffered by people living in Birmingham due to a shortage of clean water. Birmingham is the best part of 100 miles from the Elan Valley but the engineers on the project built a pipeline fed by gravity alone to take the water falling onto the Welsh Hills all the way into Birmingham. I cannot remember the exact details of the project and really do recommend a visit to the Elan Valley to see it for yourself but I believe it to be a fall of three-quarters of an inch in every mile. As water always falls to its lowest point it eventually (5 days later) arrived at Birmingham.
All this was achieved in the 1800s with primitive tools and equipment. I cannot for the life of me see why we cannot link up all parts of the country by pipeline in the 2000s. Pricing issues should not be allowed to stand in the way of such a project and common sense should prevail in the supply of fresh water to every part of the U.K. After all enough of it falls out of the sky somewhere in the U.K. every year.
A final thought on ‘Climate Change’. Edgar Cayce was a ‘sleeping Prophet’ who lived in the first half of the 20th Century. He gave more than 14,000 readings in his lifetime and is credited with an accuracy rate of 98%. When asked about the best locations for the future he warned that the transfer of the poles would start to affect the world’s weather at the turn the century. Because of the angle of rotation of the Earth around the sun the North Pole is moving South at a miniscule rate as the South Pole moves North.
This fact has been acknowledges by the scientists for centuries but Cayce is the first to draw attention to the effects this movement has on the global weather. He warned of dramatic flooding up the Mississippi and though the Gulf of Mexico area and in various parts of Europe. He also forecast the temperature gradually increasing in the North and decreasing in the South.
It seems to me that he was spot on.
If Cayce was correct then all the fuss about Carbon footprints etc is just something to sell newspapers and make a few so called experts famous and possibly rich.
When I think of the photos that exist of the black smoke pouring out of the Potteries Chimneys in the Black Country 200 years ago and even the great fog of London in my childhood when Dad and I struggled home from Manor House Station to Stamford Hill in a fog so thick that I couldn’t see the ground below me to see when the kerbs were being reached or when we had got to the far side of the road because of the thick choking coal smog that covered the whole of London I cannot understand why they had no effect on Climate Change and Carbon Footprints whereas a Cow passing Wind represents a threat in today’s world.
It’s a funny old world.
AUTUMN 2010
The Year of the RAT (and the Mole)
© Terry Gasking 2010
My wife and I are lovers of virtually all animals, wild or domesticated, and most humans. Unless they do anything to blot their copybook most are welcome into our lives.
We have a number our friends who are lovely people and lead very tidy lives and are of very tidy habits. However I sometimes feel that they look upon our house and particularly our garden as being out of control. In our house we tend to hoard things and are thankful to be able to afford Maxine - our delightful cleaner once a week to keep us tidy and neat. It is our garden that drives the neatest of our friends to distraction. They have immaculate flowerbeds, straight borders, tidy lines of vegetables, and immaculately cut lawns.
We always have very tidy lawns for cutting grass is one of the exercises I enjoy and find very therapeutic. In fact I find all my gardening therapeutic – the real difference is that I have awful problems planting in straight lines.
I do not believe that nature grows in straight lines or rows so my garden tends to mimic nature. It is a semi-natural area for us to enjoy and for any wandering wild animal that crosses it or makes their home here. I sometimes get a little frustrated at the way the wild animals use my best lawn as their piddling spots and thus mark and inhibit the grass from growing but our garden is there for them as well as us.
We have a whole host of regulars – squirrels, hedgehogs (they have built themselves a lovely den that looks most comfortable), rabbits, snakes that sun themselves on hot days, moles and a fox that visits us some evenings. Muntjacs do occasionally nibble the bark of our trees and crop some of the plants but some chicken wire around the tree trunks stops them doing too much damage. We had a stoat in the garden for a short time but he/she went as quickly as it came.
The moles cause me a problem because they cause furrows to run just under the surface of the grass that anyone can turn an ankle or trip up on. We hate killing any animal so rather than hire the mole-catcher that operates throughout our area we tried all the methods we heard or read about for getting rid of moles. None of them worked!
The first idea that sounded quite logical was to put mothballs into their runs – apparently they hate the smell of mothballs. It is not so easy to buy mothballs in this day and age but we eventually found some and put them down in all their runs. In all truth the next day every run had a fresh molehill and there sitting on the peak of the molehill was a mothball.
Next we tried coffee grouts. We were assured these would rid us of the moles but again next day the coffee grouts were rejected onto the molehills. Then we were assured that they hated the fumes of petrol so we poured some petrol down their runs – still fresh molehills appeared. Then firelighters – still not effective – next light the firelighters and put them into the runs – spectacular! The firelighters ignited all the petrol that had spread down their runs and flames licked up through the grass of our lawn in passages all across it. We had never realised just how widespread their runs were.
The moles were definitely winning this battle as more and more molehills appeared. I had visions of our resident moles rushing out to all their friends and telling them ‘Come to this Chiltern Garden. The people put mothballs down to look after your coats, treat you to coffee, heat up all your runs and make you feel really welcome!’
In despair I wrote on a post-it note and placed it in one of their runs - ‘MOLES – please leave – you are ruining our lawns and we don’t wish to harm you but enough is enough!’ You guessed it! Next morning there was a fresh molehill with my post-it note on top. I even looked at the note in case the mole had written a rude reply.
Eventually and with great reluctance we resorted to buying Mole Traps. We have been using them for 4 years and (thankfully) never trapped a mole but the traps do seem to have convinced the moles that they should seek fresh pastures so we hope their move away is permanent.
The only animal I cannot like however hard I try is the crocodile. I visited a crocodile farm when I was in Africa but I still could not find them attractive. I was lucky enough to work in many parts of the world with Africa a particular joy. After an intensive session with the managers of my clients I liked nothing more than spending a day on a tree platform on one of their massive Game Parks accompanied by a picnic basket and a few beers. To be amongst wild animals in their own territory was magnificent. On different occasions I have had a cheetah purr at me and stroked a fully grown lion through a chain-link fence. And shared the territory of wild elephants, giraffes, rhinoceros, warthogs, lizards, and just about every kind of gazelle you could wish to see.
My Chiltern’s wild animal friendly garden cannot rival such an area but I am happy to live in harmony with the wild animals that surround us. That is until the appearance of the rat.
I have always been ambivalent towards rats. When we were first married my wife taught in a village school. Her class had a pet guinea-pig that got out of its cage one half-term and drowned in a large pot of glue. The local papers couldn’t resist the headline ‘Guinea-pig comes to a sticky end’. A local pet shop owner read the report and presented the class with two pet white rats.Once over their initial dislike of the rats the class came to like them - they were very friendly and playful rodents to such a degree that the children loved it when my wife taught with ‘Snowy’ perched on her shoulder.
So when a movement in my garden caught my eye and a rat had popped his head out the lemon balm I was taken by how handsome a rodent he was. It is only the second time in the 27 years we have lived in our village that we have seen rats. Then an equally attractive looking mate popped her head out alongside him and they both moved to the area under the Fat-Ball feeders that the Starlings enjoy. The rats proceeded to eat the bits the Starlings had dropped.
The feeder is at the top of a pencil thin metal post that has a small water bowl near the top on the other side of the post. To my amazement the rat climbed straight up the post, sat in the water bowl and fed from the fat-balls. I had never known that rats had such dexterity and agility or the ability to assess so quickly the most comfortable position in the garden to feed.
When they began to walk across our patio and started chewing the wooden cladding we have on part of the cottage my ambivalence was beginning to wane. Then I heard of two people in Aylesbury who almost lost their lives by contracting Weils disease from rats and one of our Olympic rowing champions died. So I am afraid the rats had to go.
We invited a friend with two dogs – Flynn (a wire haired pointer) and Muddle (a Jack Russell). They have a great reputation for ridding an area of rats and I am always much happier when nature culls animals rather than humans interfering with the natural way of doing things. They rapidly found the rat’s lairs but the rodents hid under one of our garden sheds and even though Flynn did his best to life up the shed so he and Muddle could get at them it proved impossible and we had to call in the human exterminator to bait and eradicate them.
Any sadness I might have had at having to take such a step evaporated the instant I tried to start my car the following morning. It didn’t want to go and when I opened the bonnet there on top of the engine was the cosiest looking nest you ever did see – made out of the soundproofing that the rats had stripped from the underside of the bonnet. That was bad enough but the rodents had chewed their way through every cable, every lead including the fuel supply, every bit of rubber they could find. The car had to be towed to the insurers garage, needed intensive work, and cost me the £250 excess I have on the Insurance policy. On top of that was the fee from the rat exterminator. The costs and the risk that the rats might carry Weils disease has well and truly ended any regard I might have had for the rodent!
If ever there was an action that lost the ambivalence I had for rats that was it and I am guessing that there will be an addition to our family of dogs in the New Year - a Jack Russell or similar kind of terrier!
In spite of the Rats and the Moles - Autumn is a great time in Buckinghamshire and Chilterns. The colours of the countryside can only be beaten by the Fall in New England in the USA.
Perhaps where the Chilterns exceed New England for beauty is the multitude of little villages dotted throughout the Chilterns, many of them still having Thatched roofed cottages dating from the 1700s or even earlier. Another advantage is the fact that every bend in the road in this part of the world – and there are very many bends - brings you to yet another scene different from the last.
The old statement was that ‘the rolling English road was built by the rolling English drunk’. They may have had drinking problems but the real reason for the bendy roads is the bendy countryside and the need to go around fields that had been there for thousands of years. The end result is an ever changing vista that is beautiful at most times of the year but really excels in Autumn.
In addition we have such a wonderful selection of birds and animals to see and hear, particularly in the Spring and before they migrate in the autumn. At the moment we are enjoying a multitude of bird songs with the song of two of our smallest birds – the Robin and the Wren – amongst the most outstanding.
As I stepped out of the house this morning to take the dogs for their morning walk a familiar sound came from close overhead and there was a glorious Red Kite mewing as it circled no more than 20 feet above the garden.
The reintroduction of this bird in our part of the world has been an outstanding success. Paul Getty released 40 breeding pairs from his estate on the far side of the Chilterns many years ago and we have watched as they have prospered and spread their territory ever wider. The first arrived over our village – surveying the territory for possible occupation about 8 years ago since when their offspring and many others looking for places anew have arrived and made their home in this part of the Chilterns. They have continued to spread North, South, East and West until they can be seen lazily circulating in the skies above most parts of the South West Midlands
I would love them to feed on the rats and the moles for their cull would seem to be part of nature’s cycle but I am led to believe that Red Kites only feed on carrion. Certainly we have never seen them swoop on anything that is living in all the years they have been here. Why on earth were they hunted to extinction in the U.K? The slaughter was apparently carried out by farmers believing that the Red Kites were taking their livestock. I have yet to see any evidence that this was so. Was this another case of man interfering with nature for their own ends?
I have trouble with hunting any wild animal.
When I was a kid a saw pictures of ‘brave’ hunters standing over the body of lions, tigers, elephants, gazelles and many other ‘wild ’animals. The hunter (often surrounded by a party of natives that were carrying all his – and it was invariable a male hunter – belongings) were always depicted as ‘brave’ who had felled this wild beast that was about to attack.
This image began to wane when a visit to Sandringham House took in the ‘trophy room’. All the walls were covered in the stuffed heads of just about every wild animal you could wish to see alive – all shot by various Royals. It beggared my belief that the Royals could have had quite so many wild animals about to attack and in need of ‘bringing down’.
Years later I was lucky enough to do quite a lot of work in Africa and spent many hours and days out in the bush where the animals were allowed to roam much in the fashion as the days when so many were shot for ‘sport’. In Botswana there is an unfenced area for the animals to wander in that is bigger in size than the whole of Wales. On one occasion I was fortunate to be amongst a herd of more than 150 wild elephants all at the riverside drinking and cavorting with the ‘Nanny’ elephants in the middle of the pack looking after the kids as they got out of their depth or stuck in the mud. On countless times we would see a pride of lions sitting nonchalantly alongside the track just watching us pass by. This is precisely how they must have been when the ‘brave’ hunters came across them and slaughtered them for ‘fun’.
Hunting cannot possibly be classified as a sport when the hunter has a rifle and lots of ammunition and the animal is offering no threat whatsoever to the human. I truly believe guns should be forbidden when hunting animals and that hunting animals should only be allowed when the ‘brave’ hunter has a single spear and no back up. In this way the animal has an equal chance of success. If the ‘brave’ hunter fails to kill with his/her single spear then the animal becomes the hunter and our ‘brave’ hunter becomes the hunted. That would really even up the score and then maybe, just maybe, hunting could be called a sport.
Thank goodness there is now a ban on hunting the Red Kite and we are enjoying the renaissance of this lovely bird. Watching this huge bird mewing and circulating so effortlessly just above our fruit trees looking for carrion is a glorious sight.
This year our fruit trees have been laden with fruit. It has been wonderfully productive for our Apple and Pear Trees not just for us but throughout the country. As I suggested on the TWiGBooks Forum. As I suggested on the TWiGBooks Forum (www.twigbooks.com) there must surely have been a great opportunity for gap-year students to make a few bob towards their fees by fruit and vegetable picking and planting to go alongside any other work they can pick up that year.
There was so much fruit on our trees that I was exceedingly grateful to a number of our neighbours who helped pick a Trailer load of fruit. I bought time on a commercial Apple press operated by a splendid chap called Chris and he has produced enough juice to make 300 litres of Apple Juice, Cider or Wine. Still there are enough Apples left on the trees to feed the birds and on the ground to feed the wild animals.
For a few years when we were first married I used to collect unsold fruit from the stalls in Ridley Road Market and fermented that into wine in 2 gallon demijohns. This year I am attempting to ferment 250 litres in 10 x 25 litre fermenting vessels and have the rest decanted into Apple Juice. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out and to taste the result. If it is good enough I can see us enjoying quite a few gatherings in our garden next Spring, Summer and Autumn.
Although our garden is designed to look as natural as possible it still takes quite a lot of upkeep and this year an Arthritic Hip has inhibited the amount of work I can do. Thankfully I had it replaced in September so hopefully the garden will come back to its usual attractive natural look that appeals to my wife and I so, - and it seems to many of the wild animals that visit it. A little while ago we did see a most beautiful fox emerge from the area we call a spinney (even though in reality it contains just 3 Apple Trees. 1 Pear, 1 Cherry and our vigorous Viburnum – all interleaved and giving cover beneath). It makes an excellent small spinney but in truth it is the result of us planting the trees when they were saplings in what looked like the correct distance apart then. 15 years later we realise we could and probably should have planted them further apart but in fact the end result of our error is an excellent patchwork of trees in one corner of our garden.
The cherry tree only fruits really well occasionally and a few years ago it had a magnificent crop. We managed to net a few branches in amongst the Spinney and watched each day for the fruit to ripen. The whole tree ripened at the same time and we arranged to pick it the following day. When we came out after breakfast there was not a single cherry left on the tree and the floor of the Spinney was covered in fresh cherry stones. Whilst we were watching the cherries ripen we hadn’t realised that every bird in the Chilterns was doing the same. We discovered that the early bird did not just get the worm, it also got every cherry we had on the tree.
Next year we will try to beat them to it and perhaps enjoy a few of the cherries the tree produces.
Our clever little Viburnum bush that so correctly forecast the harsh winter of last year (see Spring 2010) has its normal coverage of berries this year and thus is indicating a mild winter so the beautiful colours of Autumn should run into the end of year and Spring arrive a little earlier than last year.
Our Cider and Wine has started its fermenting process so we toast our best wishes with a glass of Apple Juice. Our very best wishes to you.
WINTER 2010
5 January 2011
Learning to Live in the Country; Wychert
© Terry Gasking 2011
I was born in London but almost immediately evacuated with my family for the duration of the Second Word War (plus a bit) to the Rhondda Valley in South Wales. We returned penniless to London in 1947 and managed to rent a house in Hackney in the East-End of London. There I was raised until National Service called me up in 1958 (the last age group to qualify). I didn’t want to go into the Forces but 3 years in the RAF so broadened my horizons that life was never going to be the same again.
Childhood in the East-End was extremely happy and far different from that depicted in ‘Eastenders’ on TV. In the all the years of my childhood and youth I do not remember a single row between neighbours and certainly no shouting matches that are the scourge of modern TV soap-operas.
It is said that before the Second World War no-one in the East-End ever locked their doors by day or night. There was mutual trust throughout neighbourhoods. In my time the trust was still there but it was accompanied with extra vigilance as mothers had begun to go out to work and housebreakers found easy pickings amongst houses left empty by day.
Virtually all the houses in my road had children living in them and mothers out at work in the local factories. Parents had the dilemma of letting children into their empty house as they came home from school and during holidays without risking them losing the keys during play. Almost all of them overcame this problem by tying the front door key to the back of the door on a very long piece of string that dangled alongside the back of the letter box. The child’s hand was small enough to reach through the letter box, haul up the string until the key arrived and then let themselves in. I guess in today’s age the modern housebreaker would take a child accomplice along with them but that never happened in my day.
When I returned from the Forces there was the same sense of community and trust between neighbours but thievery was such that doors were always securely locked – usually with the owner throwing their weight against it 3 or 4 times to make sure it was locked securely - and the East-End was acquiring a reputation for villainy – not least with the Kray Brothers being raised a mile or two away.
That was how life was in 1968 when I met and married my second wife. She had also been an evacuee (to Basingstoke) but had lived most of her life in Winchmore Hill, London where there was a consciousness of the need to lock up the house when leaving it empty.
We could not afford a house in London so scoured the home-counties within commuting distance where prices might be cheaper. We found a minute 2-up 2-down semi-detached cottage in Berkshire that we were very happy in. My mother-in-law felt we had been rooked on price but I thought it was worth the £2,350 asking price. Father-in-Law offered us a grand wedding or £250 towards the deposit on the cottage. We took his alternative offer, married with only the parents present (we could not afford guests and a deposit on the cottage), paid the deposit and moved in.
My wife secured a job in a Primary School in a village some 20 miles away and I commuted to London. We kept ourselves to ourselves as was the way with town and city dwellers many of whom do not know what their neighbours look like let alone their names or way of life. Come the following Christmas we were invited to go for our first holiday – staying with my in-laws. This would give us a wonderful break but would mean our lovely little cottage would be empty over the whole of the Christmas period. Best not to let anyone know we are away and the cottage empty.
We had a lovely holiday and both hoped our little cottage would still be intact when we returned. Our cottage was opposite the local pub and we had to turn into their forecourt so that we could back up across the lane onto our parking space in our front garden. I was just backing up when a person from the village I knew only by sight was on his way to the pub.
‘How were things in Devon?’ he asked, ‘You had some good weather but I bet it was cold up on Dartmoor’.
By the time we had unloaded 5 other villagers all bid us welcome home and asked how we had liked Devon. How the news had spread was a mystery to us. We went across to the pub for a pint and when there somebody came in and said –
‘Terry – there are two women just gone up your front path, shall I tell them your over here enjoying a pint?
So we realised that our whole concept of living in a country village was wrong. Instead of keeping yourself to yourself, hardly knowing your neighbours – do the opposite. Share your life with your neighbours. Join in everything you can. Let everyone know when you are away and they will all keep an eye on things for you. If you need help it is there all around you – it is a wonderful way of life.
Like most of our neighbours we have burglar alarms to meet the insurer’s requirements. Ours has been known to go off at times when we are away and whatever time day or night one of my neighbours takes a trip around my cottage accompanied by their German Shepherd dog whilst another arrives with a shillelagh. We do the same for them when they are out and their alarm goes off. In a strange way it all helps to create the same sense of belonging, safety and security that my upbringing in the East-End provided for me.
When we moved into our present village in Buckinghamshire some 27 years ago we were very willing to volunteer where we could. In our second year I stood in as Chairman of the Village Fete as the then Chairwoman (the excellent Gill) had fallen ill. The role was to last 5 years or so and brought with it the task of announcer at the Fete – a task I have been given in all the years since. Chairman of the Fete is a role that seems to rotate every 5 years or so and in our village it has had many excellent volunteers – none more so than our present Chairwoman – Sylvia.
The Fete is held on August Bank Holiday Monday afternoon and attracts more than 5,000 visitors. We are a Parish of little more than 500 cottages and houses and almost 50% of parishioners turn out to help run the stalls, set up the marquees, run the sideshows and events and so on. As we also enjoy a fly-past by the Royal Air Force Battle of Britain Commemoration Flight you can see it is quite an event.
The Fete is held on our ‘Parish Field’ and virtually everyone who sits under or outside the splendid village marquee listening to the Band whilst they enjoy the scones and cakes freshly made by the villagers - (had whilst sipping tea or a stronger beverage from the Beer Stall) – has body language that is full of joy. Indeed the body language of virtually everyone who comes to the Fete reflects the same joy and enjoyment. Our village is lucky in the number of people who give their time freely and cheerfully.
Arranging such events takes a lot of work. My wife and I have set up a number of events for charity in our lifetime and always followed the old adage –
‘If you want something done, never go to those who have time on their hands – if you do it will at best only be partly completed. Instead find the busiest people in the village/organisation and ask if they would help. If they do then the task will be handled beautifully without the need for you to be constantly vigilant’.
In our village there are very few with time on their hands for the vast majority of villagers are helping someone, somewhere along the line. Many are beginning to appear in the Gallery Section of this website and I hope to be adding more over the coming months.
The Gallery on 'viewfromthechilterns' has a number of photographs taken over the past few weeks with the snow on the ground enhancing many views. As I write - the snow has just thawed but we are still in mid-winter. We enjoyed a really White Christmas and the New Year that has just dawned.
We had a great deal of snow this year, 11 inches fell in one afternoon and settled on the frozen ground. Thankfully the local council had dumped some heaps of Sand&Salt in strategic spots around the village and villagers spread them over the slippiest parts of the lanes. Vehicles where thus able to get in andout of the village but extreme care was needed on our many no-exit lanes. The countryside is a great place to enjoy the snow and I think all of us did so but our sympathies go out to all those whose lives were disrupted by the blizzards.
At this moment we might be facing a couple of months of cold and grey weather but then the sun will gradually warm the country and the spirit. The days are getting longer and we have passed the shortest day for another year. As the snow receded so our daffodils began to show. They might only be showing the tips of their leaves above the ground but those under our old Apple Tree are even showing 2 buds and the New Year has only just begun. Spring is indeed just around the corner
Billy delivered two trailer loads of logs just before Christmas and our wood burners keep our cottage as warm as toast. Our cottage – along with most of the cottages built within 15 miles of Haddenham some 200-300 years ago (we are the youngest cottage on the block even though we were built in 1725) has walls made of Wychert (or Witchert). Haddenham was small village in the Chilterns that was the centre of the cottage industry that bred the world famous Aylesbury Ducks Wychert dug from the local clay - keeps the cottages beautifully warm in winter and cool in summer.
Wychert walls are made from mixing the clay earth (white clay here in the chalk hills of the Chilterns) with the old straw from the stables and then cutting it into 3 feet blocks (90cms). These are laid out to form the base of the walls of the cottage and allowed to harden in the sun before another layer of 3 feet square Wychert blocks is laid along the top of them. This continues upwards until the walls are complete whereupon a thatched or slate roof is added and the cottage completed.
The 3 feet thick walls absorb the heat from the house in winter and act a little like a gentle fire brick – feeding the heat back into the cottage when the fires are not lit. In summer the heat of the sun is absorbed by the outside of the Wychert and the cottages are kept wonderfully cool.
Wychert is such a wonderful material that you would think all cottages should be built from it but in this day and age it is almost impossible to get the material passed by the planning and building inspectors. It does have a few quirks of its own. Knock a nail into a Wychert wall and it will either –
1. Go firmly in and hold up anything you attach it to without the need of rawlplugs or glue
2. Prove to be so solid that it bends every nail you try to get into the wall and you will need a powerful masonry drill to make a hole.
3. Suddenly crumble to dust and leave you with a hole big enough to get your fist into (or even bigger)
All of this can happen on the same wall just inches apart!
We heard of one DIY expert who decided to install central heating and needed to drill through a Wychert wall to run a half inch pipe. He unluckily hit a crumbly section of wall and the hole got bigger and bigger the more he drilled. He finished with a hole you could practically crawl through. The dusty wall they had hit then resisted all efforts to fill with concrete and plaster.
We have been lucky. When we moved into the village we were introduced to a father and son team of builders who operate in the Chilterns – Phil and Neil – who can handle any task around the home and who are experts in Wychert. They helped us out with a loose tile on our roof and that has led to a wonderful working relationship ever since. They built our extension for us (sadly not in Wychert – we couldn’t get it passed by the planners), rebuilt our ancient small barn where a century ago the local coalman stabled his horse, stored his coal and his cart, and they have undertaken the numerous small tasks the upkeep of a centuries old cottage takes, and have recently installed a brand new kitchen.
When building our extension two interesting events happened with the Wychert on our old cottage –
1. As they opened up an area to take the spar for our extension the distinct and strong smell of a stable emanated from the hole. It seemed that the builders 250 years ago had inadvertently (or perhaps purposely?) swept up some manure along with the used straw when mixing the Wychert cubes.
2. We found the husks – hundreds of years old - of a swarm of bees that must have also been in the clay as it hardened and trapped them in for another 250 years.
Back in the early 1990s I was running a series of Financial Management Workshops for the Senior Managers of the Abu Dhabi Oil Corporation. The Head of Training kindly took me for a trip across the desert on our free day. He was keen to show me a newly built fort on the border with Oman. It was not one that was bristling with arms and threatening war at the drop of a hat but was one based on the way they were built in medieval times. He told me that they had been forced to search all the archives in their research for building methods as there hadn’t been anyone alive for 100 years or more that had any experience of this kind of building.
The fort had just recently been topped out and as we walked toward it he told me that I would never guess at how it had been constructed. One look and there were the unmistakable mottled surfaces of unplastered Wychert walls but in a sandy colour as you would expect from the clay in a desert. So I told him exactly how it had been built and suggested I could have saved him all the research and costs of searching through the archives by giving him the phone number of Phil and Neil. Thankfully I was getting great results from my work with ADNOC. If I had not been doing so I am not sure how my enthusiastic description of Wychert Cottages all over our part of the Chilterns that exactly matched the ‘unique’ building techniques of their Fort would have gone down with my companion.
Back to our Wychert Cottage and January 2011 has just started. I’ve put another log on the fire, our cottage is cosy and warm, my wife has just completed the making of the next batch of her delicious home-made marmalade. Her equally delicious home-made Apple Chutney is in jars ready to be eaten, and the first of our 300 litres of Cider is ready next week but I will confess to sampling it as I settle down to watch the highlights of the Test Match on TV.
Life really is good here 'innit'?
From this part of the Chilterns it would seem that life is vibrant, buoyant with everything to be cheerful about - and we hope you share our joy in our View from the Chilterns in the Winter of 2010
May we wish you a very Healthy and Happy 2011
….. and ask that you click on the arrow below and join us to ring in -
A Happy New Year.
May you enjoy great health and happiness in 2011
The Year of the RAT (and the Mole)
© Terry Gasking 2010
My wife and I are lovers of virtually all animals, wild or domesticated, and most humans. Unless they do anything to blot their copybook most are welcome into our lives.
We have a number our friends who are lovely people and lead very tidy lives and are of very tidy habits. However I sometimes feel that they look upon our house and particularly our garden as being out of control. In our house we tend to hoard things and are thankful to be able to afford Maxine - our delightful cleaner once a week to keep us tidy and neat. It is our garden that drives the neatest of our friends to distraction. They have immaculate flowerbeds, straight borders, tidy lines of vegetables, and immaculately cut lawns.
We always have very tidy lawns for cutting grass is one of the exercises I enjoy and find very therapeutic. In fact I find all my gardening therapeutic – the real difference is that I have awful problems planting in straight lines.
I do not believe that nature grows in straight lines or rows so my garden tends to mimic nature. It is a semi-natural area for us to enjoy and for any wandering wild animal that crosses it or makes their home here. I sometimes get a little frustrated at the way the wild animals use my best lawn as their piddling spots and thus mark and inhibit the grass from growing but our garden is there for them as well as us.
We have a whole host of regulars – squirrels, hedgehogs (they have built themselves a lovely den that looks most comfortable), rabbits, snakes that sun themselves on hot days, moles and a fox that visits us some evenings. Muntjacs do occasionally nibble the bark of our trees and crop some of the plants but some chicken wire around the tree trunks stops them doing too much damage. We had a stoat in the garden for a short time but he/she went as quickly as it came.
The moles cause me a problem because they cause furrows to run just under the surface of the grass that anyone can turn an ankle or trip up on. We hate killing any animal so rather than hire the mole-catcher that operates throughout our area we tried all the methods we heard or read about for getting rid of moles. None of them worked!
The first idea that sounded quite logical was to put mothballs into their runs – apparently they hate the smell of mothballs. It is not so easy to buy mothballs in this day and age but we eventually found some and put them down in all their runs. In all truth the next day every run had a fresh molehill and there sitting on the peak of the molehill was a mothball.
Next we tried coffee grouts. We were assured these would rid us of the moles but again next day the coffee grouts were rejected onto the molehills. Then we were assured that they hated the fumes of petrol so we poured some petrol down their runs – still fresh molehills appeared. Then firelighters – still not effective – next light the firelighters and put them into the runs – spectacular! The firelighters ignited all the petrol that had spread down their runs and flames licked up through the grass of our lawn in passages all across it. We had never realised just how widespread their runs were.
The moles were definitely winning this battle as more and more molehills appeared. I had visions of our resident moles rushing out to all their friends and telling them ‘Come to this Chiltern Garden. The people put mothballs down to look after your coats, treat you to coffee, heat up all your runs and make you feel really welcome!’
In despair I wrote on a post-it note and placed it in one of their runs - ‘MOLES – please leave – you are ruining our lawns and we don’t wish to harm you but enough is enough!’ You guessed it! Next morning there was a fresh molehill with my post-it note on top. I even looked at the note in case the mole had written a rude reply.
Eventually and with great reluctance we resorted to buying Mole Traps. We have been using them for 4 years and (thankfully) never trapped a mole but the traps do seem to have convinced the moles that they should seek fresh pastures so we hope their move away is permanent.
The only animal I cannot like however hard I try is the crocodile. I visited a crocodile farm when I was in Africa but I still could not find them attractive. I was lucky enough to work in many parts of the world with Africa a particular joy. After an intensive session with the managers of my clients I liked nothing more than spending a day on a tree platform on one of their massive Game Parks accompanied by a picnic basket and a few beers. To be amongst wild animals in their own territory was magnificent. On different occasions I have had a cheetah purr at me and stroked a fully grown lion through a chain-link fence. And shared the territory of wild elephants, giraffes, rhinoceros, warthogs, lizards, and just about every kind of gazelle you could wish to see.
My Chiltern’s wild animal friendly garden cannot rival such an area but I am happy to live in harmony with the wild animals that surround us. That is until the appearance of the rat.
I have always been ambivalent towards rats. When we were first married my wife taught in a village school. Her class had a pet guinea-pig that got out of its cage one half-term and drowned in a large pot of glue. The local papers couldn’t resist the headline ‘Guinea-pig comes to a sticky end’. A local pet shop owner read the report and presented the class with two pet white rats.Once over their initial dislike of the rats the class came to like them - they were very friendly and playful rodents to such a degree that the children loved it when my wife taught with ‘Snowy’ perched on her shoulder.
So when a movement in my garden caught my eye and a rat had popped his head out the lemon balm I was taken by how handsome a rodent he was. It is only the second time in the 27 years we have lived in our village that we have seen rats. Then an equally attractive looking mate popped her head out alongside him and they both moved to the area under the Fat-Ball feeders that the Starlings enjoy. The rats proceeded to eat the bits the Starlings had dropped.
The feeder is at the top of a pencil thin metal post that has a small water bowl near the top on the other side of the post. To my amazement the rat climbed straight up the post, sat in the water bowl and fed from the fat-balls. I had never known that rats had such dexterity and agility or the ability to assess so quickly the most comfortable position in the garden to feed.
When they began to walk across our patio and started chewing the wooden cladding we have on part of the cottage my ambivalence was beginning to wane. Then I heard of two people in Aylesbury who almost lost their lives by contracting Weils disease from rats and one of our Olympic rowing champions died. So I am afraid the rats had to go.
We invited a friend with two dogs – Flynn (a wire haired pointer) and Muddle (a Jack Russell). They have a great reputation for ridding an area of rats and I am always much happier when nature culls animals rather than humans interfering with the natural way of doing things. They rapidly found the rat’s lairs but the rodents hid under one of our garden sheds and even though Flynn did his best to life up the shed so he and Muddle could get at them it proved impossible and we had to call in the human exterminator to bait and eradicate them.
Any sadness I might have had at having to take such a step evaporated the instant I tried to start my car the following morning. It didn’t want to go and when I opened the bonnet there on top of the engine was the cosiest looking nest you ever did see – made out of the soundproofing that the rats had stripped from the underside of the bonnet. That was bad enough but the rodents had chewed their way through every cable, every lead including the fuel supply, every bit of rubber they could find. The car had to be towed to the insurers garage, needed intensive work, and cost me the £250 excess I have on the Insurance policy. On top of that was the fee from the rat exterminator. The costs and the risk that the rats might carry Weils disease has well and truly ended any regard I might have had for the rodent!
If ever there was an action that lost the ambivalence I had for rats that was it and I am guessing that there will be an addition to our family of dogs in the New Year - a Jack Russell or similar kind of terrier!
In spite of the Rats and the Moles - Autumn is a great time in Buckinghamshire and Chilterns. The colours of the countryside can only be beaten by the Fall in New England in the USA.
Perhaps where the Chilterns exceed New England for beauty is the multitude of little villages dotted throughout the Chilterns, many of them still having Thatched roofed cottages dating from the 1700s or even earlier. Another advantage is the fact that every bend in the road in this part of the world – and there are very many bends - brings you to yet another scene different from the last.
The old statement was that ‘the rolling English road was built by the rolling English drunk’. They may have had drinking problems but the real reason for the bendy roads is the bendy countryside and the need to go around fields that had been there for thousands of years. The end result is an ever changing vista that is beautiful at most times of the year but really excels in Autumn.
In addition we have such a wonderful selection of birds and animals to see and hear, particularly in the Spring and before they migrate in the autumn. At the moment we are enjoying a multitude of bird songs with the song of two of our smallest birds – the Robin and the Wren – amongst the most outstanding.
As I stepped out of the house this morning to take the dogs for their morning walk a familiar sound came from close overhead and there was a glorious Red Kite mewing as it circled no more than 20 feet above the garden.
The reintroduction of this bird in our part of the world has been an outstanding success. Paul Getty released 40 breeding pairs from his estate on the far side of the Chilterns many years ago and we have watched as they have prospered and spread their territory ever wider. The first arrived over our village – surveying the territory for possible occupation about 8 years ago since when their offspring and many others looking for places anew have arrived and made their home in this part of the Chilterns. They have continued to spread North, South, East and West until they can be seen lazily circulating in the skies above most parts of the South West Midlands
I would love them to feed on the rats and the moles for their cull would seem to be part of nature’s cycle but I am led to believe that Red Kites only feed on carrion. Certainly we have never seen them swoop on anything that is living in all the years they have been here. Why on earth were they hunted to extinction in the U.K? The slaughter was apparently carried out by farmers believing that the Red Kites were taking their livestock. I have yet to see any evidence that this was so. Was this another case of man interfering with nature for their own ends?
I have trouble with hunting any wild animal.
When I was a kid a saw pictures of ‘brave’ hunters standing over the body of lions, tigers, elephants, gazelles and many other ‘wild ’animals. The hunter (often surrounded by a party of natives that were carrying all his – and it was invariable a male hunter – belongings) were always depicted as ‘brave’ who had felled this wild beast that was about to attack.
This image began to wane when a visit to Sandringham House took in the ‘trophy room’. All the walls were covered in the stuffed heads of just about every wild animal you could wish to see alive – all shot by various Royals. It beggared my belief that the Royals could have had quite so many wild animals about to attack and in need of ‘bringing down’.
Years later I was lucky enough to do quite a lot of work in Africa and spent many hours and days out in the bush where the animals were allowed to roam much in the fashion as the days when so many were shot for ‘sport’. In Botswana there is an unfenced area for the animals to wander in that is bigger in size than the whole of Wales. On one occasion I was fortunate to be amongst a herd of more than 150 wild elephants all at the riverside drinking and cavorting with the ‘Nanny’ elephants in the middle of the pack looking after the kids as they got out of their depth or stuck in the mud. On countless times we would see a pride of lions sitting nonchalantly alongside the track just watching us pass by. This is precisely how they must have been when the ‘brave’ hunters came across them and slaughtered them for ‘fun’.
Hunting cannot possibly be classified as a sport when the hunter has a rifle and lots of ammunition and the animal is offering no threat whatsoever to the human. I truly believe guns should be forbidden when hunting animals and that hunting animals should only be allowed when the ‘brave’ hunter has a single spear and no back up. In this way the animal has an equal chance of success. If the ‘brave’ hunter fails to kill with his/her single spear then the animal becomes the hunter and our ‘brave’ hunter becomes the hunted. That would really even up the score and then maybe, just maybe, hunting could be called a sport.
Thank goodness there is now a ban on hunting the Red Kite and we are enjoying the renaissance of this lovely bird. Watching this huge bird mewing and circulating so effortlessly just above our fruit trees looking for carrion is a glorious sight.
This year our fruit trees have been laden with fruit. It has been wonderfully productive for our Apple and Pear Trees not just for us but throughout the country. As I suggested on the TWiGBooks Forum. As I suggested on the TWiGBooks Forum (www.twigbooks.com) there must surely have been a great opportunity for gap-year students to make a few bob towards their fees by fruit and vegetable picking and planting to go alongside any other work they can pick up that year.
There was so much fruit on our trees that I was exceedingly grateful to a number of our neighbours who helped pick a Trailer load of fruit. I bought time on a commercial Apple press operated by a splendid chap called Chris and he has produced enough juice to make 300 litres of Apple Juice, Cider or Wine. Still there are enough Apples left on the trees to feed the birds and on the ground to feed the wild animals.
For a few years when we were first married I used to collect unsold fruit from the stalls in Ridley Road Market and fermented that into wine in 2 gallon demijohns. This year I am attempting to ferment 250 litres in 10 x 25 litre fermenting vessels and have the rest decanted into Apple Juice. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out and to taste the result. If it is good enough I can see us enjoying quite a few gatherings in our garden next Spring, Summer and Autumn.
Although our garden is designed to look as natural as possible it still takes quite a lot of upkeep and this year an Arthritic Hip has inhibited the amount of work I can do. Thankfully I had it replaced in September so hopefully the garden will come back to its usual attractive natural look that appeals to my wife and I so, - and it seems to many of the wild animals that visit it. A little while ago we did see a most beautiful fox emerge from the area we call a spinney (even though in reality it contains just 3 Apple Trees. 1 Pear, 1 Cherry and our vigorous Viburnum – all interleaved and giving cover beneath). It makes an excellent small spinney but in truth it is the result of us planting the trees when they were saplings in what looked like the correct distance apart then. 15 years later we realise we could and probably should have planted them further apart but in fact the end result of our error is an excellent patchwork of trees in one corner of our garden.
The cherry tree only fruits really well occasionally and a few years ago it had a magnificent crop. We managed to net a few branches in amongst the Spinney and watched each day for the fruit to ripen. The whole tree ripened at the same time and we arranged to pick it the following day. When we came out after breakfast there was not a single cherry left on the tree and the floor of the Spinney was covered in fresh cherry stones. Whilst we were watching the cherries ripen we hadn’t realised that every bird in the Chilterns was doing the same. We discovered that the early bird did not just get the worm, it also got every cherry we had on the tree.
Next year we will try to beat them to it and perhaps enjoy a few of the cherries the tree produces.
Our clever little Viburnum bush that so correctly forecast the harsh winter of last year (see Spring 2010) has its normal coverage of berries this year and thus is indicating a mild winter so the beautiful colours of Autumn should run into the end of year and Spring arrive a little earlier than last year.
Our Cider and Wine has started its fermenting process so we toast our best wishes with a glass of Apple Juice. Our very best wishes to you.
WINTER 2010
5 January 2011
Learning to Live in the Country; Wychert
© Terry Gasking 2011
I was born in London but almost immediately evacuated with my family for the duration of the Second Word War (plus a bit) to the Rhondda Valley in South Wales. We returned penniless to London in 1947 and managed to rent a house in Hackney in the East-End of London. There I was raised until National Service called me up in 1958 (the last age group to qualify). I didn’t want to go into the Forces but 3 years in the RAF so broadened my horizons that life was never going to be the same again.
Childhood in the East-End was extremely happy and far different from that depicted in ‘Eastenders’ on TV. In the all the years of my childhood and youth I do not remember a single row between neighbours and certainly no shouting matches that are the scourge of modern TV soap-operas.
It is said that before the Second World War no-one in the East-End ever locked their doors by day or night. There was mutual trust throughout neighbourhoods. In my time the trust was still there but it was accompanied with extra vigilance as mothers had begun to go out to work and housebreakers found easy pickings amongst houses left empty by day.
Virtually all the houses in my road had children living in them and mothers out at work in the local factories. Parents had the dilemma of letting children into their empty house as they came home from school and during holidays without risking them losing the keys during play. Almost all of them overcame this problem by tying the front door key to the back of the door on a very long piece of string that dangled alongside the back of the letter box. The child’s hand was small enough to reach through the letter box, haul up the string until the key arrived and then let themselves in. I guess in today’s age the modern housebreaker would take a child accomplice along with them but that never happened in my day.
When I returned from the Forces there was the same sense of community and trust between neighbours but thievery was such that doors were always securely locked – usually with the owner throwing their weight against it 3 or 4 times to make sure it was locked securely - and the East-End was acquiring a reputation for villainy – not least with the Kray Brothers being raised a mile or two away.
That was how life was in 1968 when I met and married my second wife. She had also been an evacuee (to Basingstoke) but had lived most of her life in Winchmore Hill, London where there was a consciousness of the need to lock up the house when leaving it empty.
We could not afford a house in London so scoured the home-counties within commuting distance where prices might be cheaper. We found a minute 2-up 2-down semi-detached cottage in Berkshire that we were very happy in. My mother-in-law felt we had been rooked on price but I thought it was worth the £2,350 asking price. Father-in-Law offered us a grand wedding or £250 towards the deposit on the cottage. We took his alternative offer, married with only the parents present (we could not afford guests and a deposit on the cottage), paid the deposit and moved in.
My wife secured a job in a Primary School in a village some 20 miles away and I commuted to London. We kept ourselves to ourselves as was the way with town and city dwellers many of whom do not know what their neighbours look like let alone their names or way of life. Come the following Christmas we were invited to go for our first holiday – staying with my in-laws. This would give us a wonderful break but would mean our lovely little cottage would be empty over the whole of the Christmas period. Best not to let anyone know we are away and the cottage empty.
We had a lovely holiday and both hoped our little cottage would still be intact when we returned. Our cottage was opposite the local pub and we had to turn into their forecourt so that we could back up across the lane onto our parking space in our front garden. I was just backing up when a person from the village I knew only by sight was on his way to the pub.
‘How were things in Devon?’ he asked, ‘You had some good weather but I bet it was cold up on Dartmoor’.
By the time we had unloaded 5 other villagers all bid us welcome home and asked how we had liked Devon. How the news had spread was a mystery to us. We went across to the pub for a pint and when there somebody came in and said –
‘Terry – there are two women just gone up your front path, shall I tell them your over here enjoying a pint?
So we realised that our whole concept of living in a country village was wrong. Instead of keeping yourself to yourself, hardly knowing your neighbours – do the opposite. Share your life with your neighbours. Join in everything you can. Let everyone know when you are away and they will all keep an eye on things for you. If you need help it is there all around you – it is a wonderful way of life.
Like most of our neighbours we have burglar alarms to meet the insurer’s requirements. Ours has been known to go off at times when we are away and whatever time day or night one of my neighbours takes a trip around my cottage accompanied by their German Shepherd dog whilst another arrives with a shillelagh. We do the same for them when they are out and their alarm goes off. In a strange way it all helps to create the same sense of belonging, safety and security that my upbringing in the East-End provided for me.
When we moved into our present village in Buckinghamshire some 27 years ago we were very willing to volunteer where we could. In our second year I stood in as Chairman of the Village Fete as the then Chairwoman (the excellent Gill) had fallen ill. The role was to last 5 years or so and brought with it the task of announcer at the Fete – a task I have been given in all the years since. Chairman of the Fete is a role that seems to rotate every 5 years or so and in our village it has had many excellent volunteers – none more so than our present Chairwoman – Sylvia.
The Fete is held on August Bank Holiday Monday afternoon and attracts more than 5,000 visitors. We are a Parish of little more than 500 cottages and houses and almost 50% of parishioners turn out to help run the stalls, set up the marquees, run the sideshows and events and so on. As we also enjoy a fly-past by the Royal Air Force Battle of Britain Commemoration Flight you can see it is quite an event.
The Fete is held on our ‘Parish Field’ and virtually everyone who sits under or outside the splendid village marquee listening to the Band whilst they enjoy the scones and cakes freshly made by the villagers - (had whilst sipping tea or a stronger beverage from the Beer Stall) – has body language that is full of joy. Indeed the body language of virtually everyone who comes to the Fete reflects the same joy and enjoyment. Our village is lucky in the number of people who give their time freely and cheerfully.
Arranging such events takes a lot of work. My wife and I have set up a number of events for charity in our lifetime and always followed the old adage –
‘If you want something done, never go to those who have time on their hands – if you do it will at best only be partly completed. Instead find the busiest people in the village/organisation and ask if they would help. If they do then the task will be handled beautifully without the need for you to be constantly vigilant’.
In our village there are very few with time on their hands for the vast majority of villagers are helping someone, somewhere along the line. Many are beginning to appear in the Gallery Section of this website and I hope to be adding more over the coming months.
The Gallery on 'viewfromthechilterns' has a number of photographs taken over the past few weeks with the snow on the ground enhancing many views. As I write - the snow has just thawed but we are still in mid-winter. We enjoyed a really White Christmas and the New Year that has just dawned.
We had a great deal of snow this year, 11 inches fell in one afternoon and settled on the frozen ground. Thankfully the local council had dumped some heaps of Sand&Salt in strategic spots around the village and villagers spread them over the slippiest parts of the lanes. Vehicles where thus able to get in andout of the village but extreme care was needed on our many no-exit lanes. The countryside is a great place to enjoy the snow and I think all of us did so but our sympathies go out to all those whose lives were disrupted by the blizzards.
At this moment we might be facing a couple of months of cold and grey weather but then the sun will gradually warm the country and the spirit. The days are getting longer and we have passed the shortest day for another year. As the snow receded so our daffodils began to show. They might only be showing the tips of their leaves above the ground but those under our old Apple Tree are even showing 2 buds and the New Year has only just begun. Spring is indeed just around the corner
Billy delivered two trailer loads of logs just before Christmas and our wood burners keep our cottage as warm as toast. Our cottage – along with most of the cottages built within 15 miles of Haddenham some 200-300 years ago (we are the youngest cottage on the block even though we were built in 1725) has walls made of Wychert (or Witchert). Haddenham was small village in the Chilterns that was the centre of the cottage industry that bred the world famous Aylesbury Ducks Wychert dug from the local clay - keeps the cottages beautifully warm in winter and cool in summer.
Wychert walls are made from mixing the clay earth (white clay here in the chalk hills of the Chilterns) with the old straw from the stables and then cutting it into 3 feet blocks (90cms). These are laid out to form the base of the walls of the cottage and allowed to harden in the sun before another layer of 3 feet square Wychert blocks is laid along the top of them. This continues upwards until the walls are complete whereupon a thatched or slate roof is added and the cottage completed.
The 3 feet thick walls absorb the heat from the house in winter and act a little like a gentle fire brick – feeding the heat back into the cottage when the fires are not lit. In summer the heat of the sun is absorbed by the outside of the Wychert and the cottages are kept wonderfully cool.
Wychert is such a wonderful material that you would think all cottages should be built from it but in this day and age it is almost impossible to get the material passed by the planning and building inspectors. It does have a few quirks of its own. Knock a nail into a Wychert wall and it will either –
1. Go firmly in and hold up anything you attach it to without the need of rawlplugs or glue
2. Prove to be so solid that it bends every nail you try to get into the wall and you will need a powerful masonry drill to make a hole.
3. Suddenly crumble to dust and leave you with a hole big enough to get your fist into (or even bigger)
All of this can happen on the same wall just inches apart!
We heard of one DIY expert who decided to install central heating and needed to drill through a Wychert wall to run a half inch pipe. He unluckily hit a crumbly section of wall and the hole got bigger and bigger the more he drilled. He finished with a hole you could practically crawl through. The dusty wall they had hit then resisted all efforts to fill with concrete and plaster.
We have been lucky. When we moved into the village we were introduced to a father and son team of builders who operate in the Chilterns – Phil and Neil – who can handle any task around the home and who are experts in Wychert. They helped us out with a loose tile on our roof and that has led to a wonderful working relationship ever since. They built our extension for us (sadly not in Wychert – we couldn’t get it passed by the planners), rebuilt our ancient small barn where a century ago the local coalman stabled his horse, stored his coal and his cart, and they have undertaken the numerous small tasks the upkeep of a centuries old cottage takes, and have recently installed a brand new kitchen.
When building our extension two interesting events happened with the Wychert on our old cottage –
1. As they opened up an area to take the spar for our extension the distinct and strong smell of a stable emanated from the hole. It seemed that the builders 250 years ago had inadvertently (or perhaps purposely?) swept up some manure along with the used straw when mixing the Wychert cubes.
2. We found the husks – hundreds of years old - of a swarm of bees that must have also been in the clay as it hardened and trapped them in for another 250 years.
Back in the early 1990s I was running a series of Financial Management Workshops for the Senior Managers of the Abu Dhabi Oil Corporation. The Head of Training kindly took me for a trip across the desert on our free day. He was keen to show me a newly built fort on the border with Oman. It was not one that was bristling with arms and threatening war at the drop of a hat but was one based on the way they were built in medieval times. He told me that they had been forced to search all the archives in their research for building methods as there hadn’t been anyone alive for 100 years or more that had any experience of this kind of building.
The fort had just recently been topped out and as we walked toward it he told me that I would never guess at how it had been constructed. One look and there were the unmistakable mottled surfaces of unplastered Wychert walls but in a sandy colour as you would expect from the clay in a desert. So I told him exactly how it had been built and suggested I could have saved him all the research and costs of searching through the archives by giving him the phone number of Phil and Neil. Thankfully I was getting great results from my work with ADNOC. If I had not been doing so I am not sure how my enthusiastic description of Wychert Cottages all over our part of the Chilterns that exactly matched the ‘unique’ building techniques of their Fort would have gone down with my companion.
Back to our Wychert Cottage and January 2011 has just started. I’ve put another log on the fire, our cottage is cosy and warm, my wife has just completed the making of the next batch of her delicious home-made marmalade. Her equally delicious home-made Apple Chutney is in jars ready to be eaten, and the first of our 300 litres of Cider is ready next week but I will confess to sampling it as I settle down to watch the highlights of the Test Match on TV.
Life really is good here 'innit'?
From this part of the Chilterns it would seem that life is vibrant, buoyant with everything to be cheerful about - and we hope you share our joy in our View from the Chilterns in the Winter of 2010
May we wish you a very Healthy and Happy 2011
….. and ask that you click on the arrow below and join us to ring in -
A Happy New Year.
May you enjoy great health and happiness in 2011
Please join our FORUM
If you would like to make any comments on the above or present your own views on any of the subjects
we will be delighted to hear from you.
Please click FORUM now.
We share our FORUM with our publisher.
We would be delighted to hear from you
Sincerely
Terry Gasking
If you would like to make any comments on the above or present your own views on any of the subjects
we will be delighted to hear from you.
Please click FORUM now.
We share our FORUM with our publisher.
We would be delighted to hear from you
Sincerely
Terry Gasking
SPRING 2011
28 May 2011
Learning from Nature
© Terry Gasking 2011
Lots of Snow and Frost this winter but the crows delayed building their nests until the frosts had all but ended at the end of March. In our part of the Chilterns this year they built high into the trees. ‘Crows nests High – it will be dry! Crows nests Low – it will surely snow’.
Now how on earth did the Crows know that we were about to have the driest and warmest April since records began?
I love the name for a collection of Crows – a Parliament of Crows. When they all fly up together they sound just like our politicians squawking at each other during Prime Minister’s Question Time but somehow the crow’s differences are soon forgotten and they settle happily into a community on the same or adjoining trees.
Red Kites had been hunted to the point of extinction in the U.K. until Paul Getty introduced 40 breeding pairs on his estate further along the Chiltern Hills. Gradually they have spread out and now inhabit the adjoining Counties and are becoming profuse in our part of the Chilterns. We saw the first circulating over our village the best part of a decade ago.
The Land Owners of old justified their extermination of the Red Kite by blaming the bird for attacking their livestock but nobody in our part of the world has ever witnessed them doing anything of the sort. They seem to prefer carrion.
Watching these attractive birds slowly circle over a dead mouse or mole and then pluck it up to take back to their nests is majestic site. It might be that they raid the nests of other birds and I can envision the landowners of yore poisoning and shooting them if they were raiding the Game Bird’s nests.
The landowners would have been very protective of their game birds – wishing to raise as many as possible so that the beaters could scare them into flying straight at the guns the landowners were using to shoot them in droves. The boast at Sandringham is of more than 2,100 birds shot in a single day’s shoot. It seems much more like wholesale slaughter to me! I am not a vegetarian even though I admire those who are and have no problems with people who kill to eat but if you were to see the incredible number of game birds innocently walking on the estate in the early part of August you would realise that there is nothing glorious about the 12th It just marks the start of wholesale slaughter by those who should know better.
I find it difficult to think of shooting as a sport. It only becomes a sport when your opponent is equipped with the same weapons as you use and can shoot back! With shotguns that spray killing pellets over a wide area it is almost impossible to miss the massive flock of birds being driven towards you. It is a no-contest with only one loser. Definitely not a sport!
When the kites are performing slow circles in the air high above a Crows Nest 2 or 3 crows will be sent up to see the Kite off. What follows is often a wonderful aerobatic display at which the crows usually achieve their task.
The more I walk and watch in the countryside the more and more admiration I have for the wild animals, plants and birds. I wrote of our clever bush (Viburnum) in SPRING 2010 and it was just as accurate this year!
The trees, bushes, plants and wild animals seem to have a knowledge and can predict events in a way we cannot even begin to match let alone understand and it is not only wild animals. My wife and I have had dogs all our married life and bred numerous Guide Dogs for the Blind (Seeing Eye) that have gone to many parts of the world. When any of our dogs reached the end of their lives the other dogs instinctively knew. In their last few days the other dogs withdraw into themselves and leave the dying dog to end its life in peace, quiet and tranquillity.
For years now the 2 Labradors we are privileged to share our lives with have walked with a neighbour’s White German Shepherd once or twice a day and all 3 dogs are devoted to each other. I could not walk past our neighbour’s cottage without their dog telling them that we were passing by. We have noticed this many times with our own dogs. They know when a friend is on the footpath even though it is 50 yards away and the friend has not barked or made any noise. Dogs communicate with an instinct we humans just do not develop.
Sadly our neighbour’s dog - Sasha (the German Shepherd) came to the end of its life last week. She was an old dog that had a life full of love from her owners, neighbours and doggy friends. I was away when it happened and neighbour suggested we called by with our dogs so that they would realised that Sasha had passed away and wouldn’t go on looking for her on our daily walks.
Our dogs adore our neighbours who often walk them if we are out for the day but on this occasion they refused to enter neighbours cottage. They knew instinctively that Sasha had died peacefully and had no need to see her. I feel certain they used to keep in touch through some kind of doggy telepathy throughout their lifetime even though Sasha lived 60 yards away.
As I write the Chelsea Flower Show is in full flow. It is a magnificent spectacle both live and on TV. However I do wish the Judges would stop giving medals to the builders of concrete, steel and synthetic monstrosities. The show is supposed to be about FLOWERS and the awards should go to the skilled plants-men and women who produce such a magnificent spectacle particularly those who skilfully blend colours, plants, bushes and trees into their stands.
Sadly the trend in recent years has been to award gold to anyone who imports vast tons of steel, concrete, or felled and polished wood that completely intrude on Nature. This year featured a Gold Medal presented to a massive crane lifting a hideous metal structure painted a colour that was quite offensive to all its surroundings. The plants-man/women’s art should be to blend nature’s wondrous products into a breath-taking display – not to construct some man-made hideous structure out of their sponsors massive wallets and then choose plants that support it. Any construction should support the plants and flowers (it is the Chelsea FLOWER Show) – not the other way around.
Test cricket is back on our screens. Cricket used to be the U.K’s National Sport and it is still in the hands of the purists who believe that there is a reason to be playing 4-day cricket in the counties. Test cricket is a poor spectacle as it progresses (if that is the word) at less than 2 runs an over (England v Sri Lanka with best batsman - Cook 33 in 100 balls?) but 4-day county cricket is watched by about 4 men and a dog. Surely someone in the English Cricket Board has tuned into the IPL league in India. It is watched by many, many thousands at the ground and many,many millions around the world on TV. Surely this is the game that appeals to the nation and could be the definition of a National Game – not Test Cricket however thrilling it might end (with the last day showing a complete stand with just 1 spectator in it).
One of the great appeals of the IPL is that teams are made up from a mixture of the top players in the world. It avoids the overt patriotism of teams that represent individual countries. The Australians and the Brits have been notorious for their sledging (verbal abuse used to upset the opposition and usually downright offensive). If they are lucky enough to get a place in one of the teams in the IPL they suddenly find that the team mates they rely on to get them through the lucrative matches are the very individuals they have been insulting for most of their cricketing lives. They are suddenly finding that their former opposition players are excellent cricketers and downright good chaps after all.
We’ve planted our Runner Beans! In our part of the world May 17th is the traditional date for their planting. The frosts are thought to be over by then and the soil warm enough to let them mature a grow. For many years we have planted them earlier than the traditional date and been rewarded by copious beans from mid-July. However last year the frosts caught us out and we lost about half of them. By the time our replacement beans took root we were very late picking our favourite vegetable. It goes to show that I should have taken note of the nesting time of the birds and of the message given by our Viburnum Bush. This year we are more or less planted at the traditional date and though battered by high winds of last week they are bravely making their way up the beanpoles. Do you think my evening serenading them with songs from the shows helps them along or hinders? I have done so for many years (perhaps the beans are the only ones I dare sing to) and we have always been rewarded with a crop that has provided us with runner beans for most of the year either fresh or via the freezer. I wonder if they respond differently to different kinds of music and different voices?
It will be interesting to see how all our vegetables re-act this year now the crows are high in the trees and the weather has warmed up. All the many species of birds we get in our garden (see SUMMER 2010) are bringing all their young to feed on the nuts and seed my wife puts out for them. The family groups are a delight with the Goldfinch’s young the most advanced in feeding themselves. The noisiest young by far are the Starlings who demand or even bully their parents into feeding them every beak full their parents get from the feeders.
The woodpeckers have returned onto the nuts – so far we think only a father and son – operhaps mum is sitting on a further clutch of eggs?
The roses are now in full bloom and the vase on the breakfast table full of roses gives the most delightful fragrance and is a joy to the eye. Our fruit trees are in the early stage of fruit, and our vegetables are ready to go out. The hanging baskets went out yesterday so life is full of promise. Springtime brings much joy to the countryside and particularly to the view from the Chilterns.
Learning from Nature
© Terry Gasking 2011
Lots of Snow and Frost this winter but the crows delayed building their nests until the frosts had all but ended at the end of March. In our part of the Chilterns this year they built high into the trees. ‘Crows nests High – it will be dry! Crows nests Low – it will surely snow’.
Now how on earth did the Crows know that we were about to have the driest and warmest April since records began?
I love the name for a collection of Crows – a Parliament of Crows. When they all fly up together they sound just like our politicians squawking at each other during Prime Minister’s Question Time but somehow the crow’s differences are soon forgotten and they settle happily into a community on the same or adjoining trees.
Red Kites had been hunted to the point of extinction in the U.K. until Paul Getty introduced 40 breeding pairs on his estate further along the Chiltern Hills. Gradually they have spread out and now inhabit the adjoining Counties and are becoming profuse in our part of the Chilterns. We saw the first circulating over our village the best part of a decade ago.
The Land Owners of old justified their extermination of the Red Kite by blaming the bird for attacking their livestock but nobody in our part of the world has ever witnessed them doing anything of the sort. They seem to prefer carrion.
Watching these attractive birds slowly circle over a dead mouse or mole and then pluck it up to take back to their nests is majestic site. It might be that they raid the nests of other birds and I can envision the landowners of yore poisoning and shooting them if they were raiding the Game Bird’s nests.
The landowners would have been very protective of their game birds – wishing to raise as many as possible so that the beaters could scare them into flying straight at the guns the landowners were using to shoot them in droves. The boast at Sandringham is of more than 2,100 birds shot in a single day’s shoot. It seems much more like wholesale slaughter to me! I am not a vegetarian even though I admire those who are and have no problems with people who kill to eat but if you were to see the incredible number of game birds innocently walking on the estate in the early part of August you would realise that there is nothing glorious about the 12th It just marks the start of wholesale slaughter by those who should know better.
I find it difficult to think of shooting as a sport. It only becomes a sport when your opponent is equipped with the same weapons as you use and can shoot back! With shotguns that spray killing pellets over a wide area it is almost impossible to miss the massive flock of birds being driven towards you. It is a no-contest with only one loser. Definitely not a sport!
When the kites are performing slow circles in the air high above a Crows Nest 2 or 3 crows will be sent up to see the Kite off. What follows is often a wonderful aerobatic display at which the crows usually achieve their task.
The more I walk and watch in the countryside the more and more admiration I have for the wild animals, plants and birds. I wrote of our clever bush (Viburnum) in SPRING 2010 and it was just as accurate this year!
The trees, bushes, plants and wild animals seem to have a knowledge and can predict events in a way we cannot even begin to match let alone understand and it is not only wild animals. My wife and I have had dogs all our married life and bred numerous Guide Dogs for the Blind (Seeing Eye) that have gone to many parts of the world. When any of our dogs reached the end of their lives the other dogs instinctively knew. In their last few days the other dogs withdraw into themselves and leave the dying dog to end its life in peace, quiet and tranquillity.
For years now the 2 Labradors we are privileged to share our lives with have walked with a neighbour’s White German Shepherd once or twice a day and all 3 dogs are devoted to each other. I could not walk past our neighbour’s cottage without their dog telling them that we were passing by. We have noticed this many times with our own dogs. They know when a friend is on the footpath even though it is 50 yards away and the friend has not barked or made any noise. Dogs communicate with an instinct we humans just do not develop.
Sadly our neighbour’s dog - Sasha (the German Shepherd) came to the end of its life last week. She was an old dog that had a life full of love from her owners, neighbours and doggy friends. I was away when it happened and neighbour suggested we called by with our dogs so that they would realised that Sasha had passed away and wouldn’t go on looking for her on our daily walks.
Our dogs adore our neighbours who often walk them if we are out for the day but on this occasion they refused to enter neighbours cottage. They knew instinctively that Sasha had died peacefully and had no need to see her. I feel certain they used to keep in touch through some kind of doggy telepathy throughout their lifetime even though Sasha lived 60 yards away.
As I write the Chelsea Flower Show is in full flow. It is a magnificent spectacle both live and on TV. However I do wish the Judges would stop giving medals to the builders of concrete, steel and synthetic monstrosities. The show is supposed to be about FLOWERS and the awards should go to the skilled plants-men and women who produce such a magnificent spectacle particularly those who skilfully blend colours, plants, bushes and trees into their stands.
Sadly the trend in recent years has been to award gold to anyone who imports vast tons of steel, concrete, or felled and polished wood that completely intrude on Nature. This year featured a Gold Medal presented to a massive crane lifting a hideous metal structure painted a colour that was quite offensive to all its surroundings. The plants-man/women’s art should be to blend nature’s wondrous products into a breath-taking display – not to construct some man-made hideous structure out of their sponsors massive wallets and then choose plants that support it. Any construction should support the plants and flowers (it is the Chelsea FLOWER Show) – not the other way around.
Test cricket is back on our screens. Cricket used to be the U.K’s National Sport and it is still in the hands of the purists who believe that there is a reason to be playing 4-day cricket in the counties. Test cricket is a poor spectacle as it progresses (if that is the word) at less than 2 runs an over (England v Sri Lanka with best batsman - Cook 33 in 100 balls?) but 4-day county cricket is watched by about 4 men and a dog. Surely someone in the English Cricket Board has tuned into the IPL league in India. It is watched by many, many thousands at the ground and many,many millions around the world on TV. Surely this is the game that appeals to the nation and could be the definition of a National Game – not Test Cricket however thrilling it might end (with the last day showing a complete stand with just 1 spectator in it).
One of the great appeals of the IPL is that teams are made up from a mixture of the top players in the world. It avoids the overt patriotism of teams that represent individual countries. The Australians and the Brits have been notorious for their sledging (verbal abuse used to upset the opposition and usually downright offensive). If they are lucky enough to get a place in one of the teams in the IPL they suddenly find that the team mates they rely on to get them through the lucrative matches are the very individuals they have been insulting for most of their cricketing lives. They are suddenly finding that their former opposition players are excellent cricketers and downright good chaps after all.
We’ve planted our Runner Beans! In our part of the world May 17th is the traditional date for their planting. The frosts are thought to be over by then and the soil warm enough to let them mature a grow. For many years we have planted them earlier than the traditional date and been rewarded by copious beans from mid-July. However last year the frosts caught us out and we lost about half of them. By the time our replacement beans took root we were very late picking our favourite vegetable. It goes to show that I should have taken note of the nesting time of the birds and of the message given by our Viburnum Bush. This year we are more or less planted at the traditional date and though battered by high winds of last week they are bravely making their way up the beanpoles. Do you think my evening serenading them with songs from the shows helps them along or hinders? I have done so for many years (perhaps the beans are the only ones I dare sing to) and we have always been rewarded with a crop that has provided us with runner beans for most of the year either fresh or via the freezer. I wonder if they respond differently to different kinds of music and different voices?
It will be interesting to see how all our vegetables re-act this year now the crows are high in the trees and the weather has warmed up. All the many species of birds we get in our garden (see SUMMER 2010) are bringing all their young to feed on the nuts and seed my wife puts out for them. The family groups are a delight with the Goldfinch’s young the most advanced in feeding themselves. The noisiest young by far are the Starlings who demand or even bully their parents into feeding them every beak full their parents get from the feeders.
The woodpeckers have returned onto the nuts – so far we think only a father and son – operhaps mum is sitting on a further clutch of eggs?
The roses are now in full bloom and the vase on the breakfast table full of roses gives the most delightful fragrance and is a joy to the eye. Our fruit trees are in the early stage of fruit, and our vegetables are ready to go out. The hanging baskets went out yesterday so life is full of promise. Springtime brings much joy to the countryside and particularly to the view from the Chilterns.
