Walking with Grace

Ilchester…formerly known as Lindinis…reminds me of Cornwall: nothing’s happening but there’s a lot of pubs. And it’s cold. However, the dental surgery wears a large poster on its façade claiming to house the dentist of the year for Wales and the south west which is reasonably impressive. Suspiciously, however, the shop at the petrol station claims to be retailer of the year which is miraculous given that only 2000 people live here. Mind you, perhaps they don’t get out much; except to vote.


We want the Sunday papers. There are quite a few spare copies of the Western Gazette to be had. Not quite what we had in mind as we repair to an Italian restaurant for lunch – cue Billy Joel. The proprietor claims to originate in Sorrento and looks as if he does. He speaks with a Yeovil accent. It doesn’t matter; we’re merely passing pasta-time before we head a few miles west for the main event of the day.

There’s a problem…isn’t there always? There are four pages of information and instructions but no address. There’s a postcode to put into your sat nav. We haven’t got a sat nav so we try the traditional method: ask the locals who are hiding inside one of the pubs. The ensuing directions seem complicated but, in following them closely, we do, in fact, arrive at our destination: Grace’s house. We’re going for a walk with Grace.

Grace is three years old. She’s the Harris Hawk I met last summer at Glastonbury Abbey and it’s taken me all this time to catch up with her again.

Off we tramp across the muddiest fields that Somerset has on offer. Potentially deterred by the threat of snow, we are now told that they’ve never experienced mud like it. Due to the mild winter, the ground has been churned excessively by cattle but we have proper wellies. None of that plastic rubbish for us: I learnt a welly lesson very quickly in Cornwall and possess the best of the green rubber variety; likewise, the man-child who was despatched to B & Q yesterday to purchase said footwear.

As for Grace, she can float above it all and merely laughs at us in that hawkish way of hers as we sink further into the mire. She’s a canny one. She sits in bare, photogenic trees for us and perches amongst the winter brambles pretending to spy upon sparrows, but all the time she’s watching for the legs of baby chicks that are sporadically thrust into our gauntlets.

Then down she swoops to take the pickings. If we’re lucky, she’ll rest awhile and we can proudly walk a few yards with her before boredom sets in and she’s off again. We tramp through field after soggy field in this manner but, strangely, we’ve stopped worrying about the mud and the cold wind and the after effects of our Italian lunch. We’re too busy watching Grace. When our hostess proudly shows us a huge badger set and points out the paw prints, this treat is almost ignored. We want the thrill of Grace back on our arm.

That country walk, which, in any other circumstance, would have been tiresome, is over far too quickly. Grace knows her duty has been done and joins her compatriots. We drive back to Dorset having experienced the best of Sunday afternoons.

Who’s afeard?

So, on this bitterly cold January night, we head back to the heights of Durlston Castle where the jet black sky is packed with enough stars to put the Cornish firmament to shame. Light and traffic pollution is non-existent up on this cliff-top. The only sound comes from the waves beating on the shore far below where bottle-nosed dolphins swim silently in the freezing winter sea. Time and tide wait for no man although, inside the castle, they wait for us; the late arrivals to a hidden performance by the folk group of the same name. In the middle of nowhere, I spy the welcome and unexpected surprise of missing friends from the past, also gathered to listen to the songs and tales of long-gone Dorset sea-dogs and smugglers. The yellow standard with the red-edged, white cross is draped to the fore.

Here am I, bold Jack, just lately come from cruising now the wars are o’er.

No, it’s not the man-child returned from distant climes but another Jack who took the King’s shilling to escape a cruel, apprenticeship. With his buttons shining, he preferred the battlegrounds of the Napoleonic wars to rural hardship. Jack’s mother had to be propped against the stone walls of the cottage, her jelly-legs having given way on first sight of her son after twelve despairing years. His boots were, at last, back on beloved Dorset clay despite his infirm and speechless father having mourned his son’s presumed death.

While the battle rages loud and long, the stormy winds do blow

Sailors, enlisted and pressed, fought the elements along our otherwise tranquil Dorset coastline. In 1786, two hundred and forty men and women fell from the East Indiaman, the Halsewell, into treacherous waters off Worth Matravers. Alongside most of the crew, the women drowned, weighed down by their skirts and petticoats. Above, the quarrymen, alerted to the wreck, hauled seventy-four souls up the cliff to safety.

We’re raking the moon, sirs, for the girt smiling cheeses lie there in the pool

And only tonight did I learn what a Moonraker was. The line from the song refers to the answer that smugglers gave to excise men on being asked what they were doing with their poles in the water. Simple Dorset folk, who thought the moon’s reflection on the sea was a round yellow cheese, were playing the simpleton’s role. In truth, they were searching for fine cognac and other contraband purposely disposed of near the coast.

But the boats are coming through the night

It doesn’t end in the distant past, boys. There are enough stories of the bravery of lifeboat men to make you want to give them all your money. I’m amazed the RNLI fundraisers don’t cotton on to their emotive history more proficiently. And, of course, there’s June, 1944. If you think sea-dogs and shanties were lost in the seas of the very distant past, think again. The little boats of Dorset sailed bravely to the shores of Dunkirk whilst, later, the bigger ones left Poole to land on the beaches of Normandy. Our songs tonight told tales of those who were aboard on their first voyage. Who’s afeard?

Singing the New Year blues

I hate this time of year. You go to work when the stars are out and come home when they’re back again. Before that, you have to decide whether or not to go for a swim before work which means getting up whilst the owls are still hooting and taking a random guess at what to wear because global warming has resulted in no clue as to what the day might hold weather-wise. Then you have to plan the timing in order that you leave the leisure club…leisure?... at a point early enough to miss the school run but late enough to pick up a coffee on the way. And should it be a coffee or could it be a hot chocolate which is more filling. Too many decisions for that time of day.


Then there’s the compulsory post-Christmas diet. An early rise precludes breakfast so a healthy banana, tucked in the work-bag, is good for the conscience but comprises an insufficient, and generally subsequently bruised meal. Which necessitates the purchase of a healthy/unhealthy flapjack: healthy because it’s full of roughage and unhealthy because it sits in your stomach like a large, sodden brick for several hours afterwards.

The winter evenings might as well be written off. They start at 4pm and finish about seventeen hours later. You get home, full of good intentions to clean the place up a bit, put the heating on, draw the curtains and fall asleep. Around five o clock, aged parents phone with the aim of having an enthusiastic conversation about something or other. Bleary-eyed and incapable of making any decisions other than picking up the receiver…and this is a BAD decision…the conversation has to be resumed a couple of hours later. By this time, the sun has theoretically passed over the yard-arm of aged parents’ planet and they can’t talk coherently, having imbibed the aperitif, eaten their complicated dinner and joined those in the land of the ‘asleep in front of the television’ set.

Meanwhile, you have your own dinner to consider. The plan to cook something healthy whilst drinking a glass of red deteriorates into drinking three glasses of red and speaking to younger members of the family who are also recovering from the working day.

What are you having for dinner asks daughter number two?
I found two courgettes in the fridge I say
There are always two courgettes in your fridge
Yes. Possibly, they’re the same two courgettes. Anyway, I’ve cooked them with some onions, covered them with cheese and shoved them in the oven.
Are they still there?
What?
The two courgettes

Oh. I’d forgotten about them

Last night I went straight from work to meet a friend at the cinema. She was hungry and so was I. We went for dinner. Then we went home at twenty past seven without seeing the film because we were too tired to stay out any longer.

It’s life Jim, but not as we know it.

Not quite what you'd expect

To be fair, you wouldn’t anticipate there being anything or anyone left in Kilmainham Prison. Last man out was Eamon de Valera in 1924. Eighty eight years down the line and it’s bound to be a bit quiet. So what’s that tap, tap, tapping then?

Leonie and I are at the very end of a tour party numbering around fifty folk; and a very cosmopolitan bunch they are. We can’t see our knowledgeable guide, Michael, but we can still hear him. We can still hear that tapping business too. I peer through the spy-hole of the cell door from where the noise issues. It stops.

Did you hear that?
Yes. Listen it’s started again
Tap, tap, tap

I turn back to the spy-hole and take a furtive photograph.

The tapping stops again.

Oh my God mum, I can’t believe you just did that.
Tap, tap, tap.













And to be fair, you would expect to see something in the Dublin City Gallery. Pictures, for example. And have equally knowledgeable men who sit in the corners of rooms waiting to tell you all about the contents. Oh look. There’s one.
Excuse me. Where are the impressionist paintings please?

Brendan sighs, puts down the newspaper he was reading and stands up wearily

I’ll show you the room
Thank-you
There aren’t any fecking pictures though.
Oh?

We follow him into a large gallery. He’s right. On the walls are all the name plates but no paintings.

Do yooz want to know what happened here?
Yes please we say, thinking there must have been some sort of catastrophe.
The gob-sh***s took them down. There’s no fecking money to pay to maintain the temperature. Monet’s, Manet’s…you name them, we had them. Now the place is full of fecking cr**. I’ll show you.

We enter another gallery, this with some paintings. Brendan points to an unattractive image of a woman.
Do you know who that ugly bitch is? Mary fecking Robinson. Our first female president. Female! Jayzus. She was so fecking ugly, even the tide wouldn’t take her out. You’d want to be fecking pis*** to take her home. Mind you, that painting’s not as bad as the real thing. You can’t see her fecking beard. Do you want to see some more?

Well, actually we do because this is the best art tour we’ve ever been on. Here’s a room full of inexplicable pictures. Brendan stops in front of one that looks like a blue bucket.

Do yooz know what that is?
No.
No. You’d have to be on fecking acid to work that out. What fecking gob-sh*** did that? What the feck is it? It’s a fecking disgrace. And look at that! More fecking cr**.

We look round politely, but Brendan’s had enough.
Where are yooz from?
The south coast of England.
Oh really? I was there once for seven years.
Oh..how interesting.
Yes and I wish I was fecking back there instead of this gob-sh*** of a country. And he strides off.

The next room is full of large paintings: a red one, a green one and so on. There is another man sat on another chair in another corner.

Good morning we say. Your colleague doesn’t seem very happy today.
He tells it like it is. Would you like to sit here all day looking at this cr**? Eight fecking hours a day staring at a blue fecking wall.
Yes, it must be tricky we sympathise.
Have yooz been upstairs yet?
No
Well if yooz think this is cr** you’d want to see the fecking boll***s upstairs. Fecking Margaret Thatcher over a fecking bed. Tony fecking Blair in a fecking cowboy’s outfit. Fecking cr**. Get up there and see it. It’s a fecking disgrace.

We can’t wait and bid him a happy new year

One thing leads to…a moment in time

I’m always writing. It’s more than a hobby; it’s a necessity. When I took my sabbatical year in Provence in 2007, I wrote a whole book. Eighty thousand words. And yet I failed to mention a small incident which I suddenly recalled this evening. Perhaps it seemed inconsequential at the time. Possibly I failed to recognise that the other person involved would still be my good friend five years down the line and in another country.

Post Christmas, feeling a bit down, I took myself to the sales. Well, just one sale actually, but, nonetheless, very satisfactory. The dress and top I’d yearned for two months ago were available for half the price as was a pair of shiny, flat black patent shoes (not those I mentioned in a previous blog, but as good as). And a pair of baggy black trousers with white stars…a stellar purchase if ever there was one. Of course, as the shoes had no heels, the trousers were too long.

It’s always tricky taking up a pair of trousers on your own. You really need someone else to pin up the bottoms in order to achieve an even hem. And whilst I was mulling this over, I was unexpectedly transported back to the tiny village of Graveson in the south of France where I was standing on the dining table of someone I barely knew. Beverley was doing her best with my new, fresh from Avignon, Armand Thiery trousers.

I’d arrived alone in an unknown place where I knew no-one so I advertised my presence at a shop whose main customers were ex-pats – Best of British.
English woman seeks friends.
Well, no good beating about the bush. And Beverley answered my call. Beverley had led a peaceful existence up until then. Later, her daughter would tell me:

My mother just used to sit in the sun and read before you arrived.

Sorry Bev. She should’ve told me sooner. I misjudged that one.

Bev took me to St Remy for a quiet coffee. I took Bev to Avignon for shopping and lunch and people-watching. I made Bev and Martin come and eat in my tiny bed-sit. I instigated walks where we got lost in the heat of the day. Together, we organised a bilingual wake. I helped them move house and virtually moved in. I was a NOISY interruption.

When I was ill, she didn’t believe me and made me walk around St Paul de Mausole before leaving me in the car-park outside Intermarche whilst she went in to buy meat that no-one would eat.

They didn’t eat it because she’d rushed me to the hospital where she waited for hours. She got my daughter over, housed and fed her, visited me for a week and took me back to her house on the eighth day for recuperation.




For want of a nail maybe. For want of a few pins I found a lovely friend.

English woman seeks friends.

Another one bites the dust

And off they went. Half a league, half a league. Some to the north; some to the west. Some so far away I have no idea of direction. Cannon to the right of them. Cannon to the left of them. Cannon in front of them. And a shed load of cannon behind them. And none with a mobile phone between them that works. Or if it does, you’re not allowed to use it. The man-child sends a text which reads

It costs me £1.27 to send a text. There’s another £1.27 gone then son.

Here’s a couple of puzzled looking folk. Perhaps they’re wondering how long it will take to clean the joint up. Not long. Three loads of washing, some dusting and vacuuming. A sensible decision to ignore the carnage in the fridge. A replacement of garden chairs. Bob’s your uncle. Fanny’s your aunt. Job done. Man-child sends a message. Having made the effort to post some photos so he can see Christmas in Poole from a distance, he writes to say he’s noticed his slippers seem to be on his brother-in-law’s feet. Was there a man dismayed?

And boldly we will ride and well tomorrow as we make our way into the jaws of death. Well, Clarke’s Village at Street to be exact. Off to spend a tiny portion of our Christmas box. And afterwards, weather permitting, a brief jaunt up to the top of Glastonbury Tor or, perhaps, a quiet moment at the Chalice Well. This before we return to Dorset, shattered and sundered, to celebrate our newest festivity…the Feast of the Leftovers.

This entails some careful planning: four crackers between six people. Three ancient jacket spuds cut into segments for frying. Some bacon cooked in ginger (an additional ingredient which nobody noticed the first time round). Seven orange segments in brandy. An unopened Stollen. A recently discovered packet of pitta bread which, by tomorrow, may have turned blue. No loaves and no fishes but three bottles of wine and no reason to get up early the following day. Honour the charge they made.

And here's me wearing an appropriate Christmas outfit

Bah humbug

Three sleeps before Christmas and I’m in Sainsbury’s at 7pm. Actually, that needs qualifying: three sleeps if you can sleep. Something weird was going on last night. I went to sleep at 11.30pm and woke up at what I thought must be about 6am...wide awake, in fact…and discovered it was 1am. Damn and blast it. At 2.30am, the dawn chorus started. What? The birds shut up and went back to bed at 3.15am equally confused. The next door neighbour’s racoon was scrabbling frantically and noisily around in its Wendy House. The BBC World Service informed me that, in Mexico, the countdown for the end of the world, according to the Mayan calendar, had begun. I worried about my Christmas menu for another hour. The winter solstice…the longest night of the year. Get on with it. Things to do; people to see.

I only went to Sainsbury’s because I still believe it to be a bit more up-market than Tesco and I was
looking for some imitation caviar. I haven’t been there since I had an unpleasant accident in the car park a couple of years ago so I didn’t know they’d rebuilt it. I spoke to a jovial looking type on the door.

When did this happen then?
About two months ago
It looks very impressive
You can’t find a bloody thing in here any more says he.

To be fair, he was telling the truth
Yesterday, we had a family outing to Longleat and it was wonderful. It’s the first year they’ve ‘done Christmas’ at Lord Bath’s joint and I have a suspicion that it will go down in history as the best. The staff fell over themselves to be kind, pleasant and helpful; nothing could be remarked upon as being over the top and you could choose the timing of your events beforehand. It was almost understated. The best bit was the Santa Special. We thought it was just the Jungle Express with a bit of tinsel until we rounded a corner and found ourselves at the snow-covered North Pole. We disembarked and walked past the open log fire up to Santa’s shed. Each child had an especially chosen gift and the cheerful St Nick knew everyone’s names. (I forgot that, when I booked this in September, I’d submitted names and DOB). Back on the train, Santa came down the path and waved us off. Fabulous.

And in Sainsbury’s, I can’t find the so-called caviar. I’ve had three different people unsuccessfully search the aisles. Neither do they have any smoked salmon or anything else that might satisfactorily sit on my blinis. Blinis which, incidentally, are not available at Tesco according to their website and which Leonie purchased, perchance, at…Tesco. I tell the man from the butcher’s counter not to bother as I’ve lost the will to live and along comes a dear friend with her husband. No sleep and stuck in this ridiculous place with the only consolation being that I won’t have to do this next year as the world will have ended. Then I get introduced to the husband. Talk about a laugh a minute. She’s so nice. How did she end up with him? I can’t wait to get home and have some fun sticking pencils in my eyes.

In Wareham this afternoon, we go to Re-loved. You just know it’s going to be a nice shop with a name like that. Old stuff: some of it as it was and some recycled. My eye is caught by a beautiful 1930’s necklace which I silently admire before moving on. Ten minutes later, Leonie spots it

Look at this

And the kind shop-owner allows her to try it on. And, with thoughts of a wedding, Leonie buys it. And the shop-owner wraps the purchase with all the care and taste of a French sales-person. In each shop, regardless of whether we buy anything, there is conversation and shared delight of the unique goods on offer.

And in Sainsbury’s, I stand alone, minus the imitation caviar, in a state of depression. The man-child has called from Thailand and I was out. The woman on the checkout is sympathetic.

What were you looking for?











I can barely bring myself to mention the fish roe. They’ve already sent someone off on a mission to find the vanilla pods. Now, against my wishes, they send someone to locate the caviar. I know they won’t find it. Just as I’ve paid for my purchases, a woman returns brandishing a small jar of said roe.

Bugger. I wanted two of them but I haven’t the heart to say so.