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We were in Crete recently

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We were in Crete recently.

I do realise that bragging about your many, varied and frequent holidays is not attractive but otherwise you, dear reader, get more on books, so here we go.

I have bored half the village about the lovely place in which we stayed so I will refrain from that – but then again I can’t really believe you wouldn’t want to hear about the swimming pool in the olive trees, the terrace overlooking the whole valley, the great food… no? Ok, then if you insist, I will desist.

But if you are willing to read on, I will mention a few bits and pieces.

Crete has a population of 500,000 and thank god not many of them are on the road at any one time.

They are not mad drivers but they do have a lot of roads which are very winding and mostly attached, rather precariously, to a mountainside.

Being an extremely wimpish passenger, I prefer to be the driver and anyway my husband is a very good map-reader (most of the time.)

Well, he wanted to go to the south (leaving our lovely place with its terrace, did I mention that?) to go to see where he was last in Crete – 40 or so years ago at the end of his finals with two mates (or as he says, ‘chums’ and he is probably the last person in the world to say that and not ironically.)

So we set off to Paleochora which had indeed changed in the last 40 years – who would have thought it? It was OK, not helped by a howling gale, but OK.

From there we were supposed to get a ferry to Soughia but I am less keen on being on a ferry in a howling gale than I am driving a ‘country mountain’ road up over the mountains and down the other side and then up over the mountains and…..

It was hot and we had the windows down. I felt my one arm getting a lot more sun than the other.

It reminded me of when I was young and worked for a union in London which was having its annual conference in Brighton and I was asked to drive down with some publicity materials or something.

It was hot and I arrived with one burnt red arm and one pale, pasty arm. ‘Never mind,’ I said breezily, ‘ I can get the other one brown on the way back.’ It took me a long time to live that one down.

Soughia was a place which had also changed in the last 40 years – from one tavern to about 10 and some rooms to rent.

But there were still people camping under the trees by the beach and it had a rather hippy feel.

Usually, when we need to find somewhere to stay, I leave Nick drinking coffee and go and sort it out myself.

But this time, I went and re-parked the car and by the time I got back (all of five minutes, it was that sort of place,) he had earmarked somewhere.

The room was fine and had a full sized fridge which was fine if you were there for a week and needed to store food, and did just as well for the bottle of wine and water we had.

But it was not ‘our place’ with the terrace and the lovely bed and the delightful food – did I mention how nice the place we were staying was?

Well, I need to end this otherwise it really is, what I did on my holidays which I know, I know, is really boring but suffice it to say, we had a lovely meal in a restaurant with a roaring log fire and very welcome it was – not often you get to say that about a holiday in Crete in May.

Interesting People

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I used to be paid to meet interesting people as part of my job – someone who ran a prison, someone in charge of the re-development of the South Bank in London, someone who was employed as a thinker for IBM, a professor of bee studies, a Taliban defector…..

Now I don’t get paid, and I have to find my interesting people more locally.

And I do, and here are a few.

First person:

I was buying a lottery ticket – which I do from time to time in order to enjoy an hour of fantasizing about what I will do with the money – and the nice, cheery man who sold it to me said, ‘Do you want a winning ticket or just any old ticket? A winning one it is then. There you go’ he said,’ If it wins that’ll keep you out of mischief for the weekend – or maybe in it!’

We chatted a bit and I was talking about what I would do with the winnings and he said, ‘ And you will have friends you didn’t even know you had.’

It turned out that he had won the lottery and the last remark was heartfelt. He and his wife had put money towards charities they had some connection with.

‘And why,’ I wanted to ask, ‘are you here in a small supermarket selling me a ticket?’ But a few people had joined the queue so I left.

Second person:

I was at the dentist and sitting in the waiting room reading some (very) old magazine as you do, when two women walked in.

They were not together but sat down and started to chat.

There was a young woman who was heavily and interestingly tattooed the other was older and what used to be described as ‘motherly looking.’ I am loathe to use that phrase, but have no other to hand.

Anyway, I am not sure how, but a conversation got going between us and it was about tattoos. The ‘motherly’ woman commented on the tattoos and soon all three of us were talking and looking at tattoos.

The young woman explained how many hours it took to do each tattoo and how she now worked in a local tattoo parlour and what people were interested in getting, what fashions in tattoos were evolving.

And then she turned to the ‘motherly’ woman and said, ‘ I know I work with needles and the work on me has taken hours and hours, but I am so scared I will have to have an injection with the dentist will you just keep talking to me until I have to go in.’

Third person:

I was in the Oxfam shop the other day and talking to my two colleagues about what display to put on the table and in the window, when a man came in.

He was browsing, so we carried on talking.

Then he turned to me and said, ‘ You have a lovely voice. I could wander round this shop and listen to your voice all day. Were you a university lecturer on philosophy? No? Were you a spy? No? Were you an animal trainer? No? Well, my dear you just carry on talking and I will look at your lovely, lovely books and listen to you and that will make my day.’

It made my day too.

Fourth person:

We have a lovely butchers in our town.

I don’t buy that much meat but what I do comes from them, and I always ask them about cooking it.

The older man who runs the shop always has the advice just at his finger-tips.

So, between people coming in for their rack of lamb (we don’t buy lamb at the moment because our back field is full of them and I can’t bring myself to ….) or their belly pork, I squeeze myself and buy something and ask for advice.

I was buying liver because the best beloved likes a bit of liver and onion gravy and so I was asking whether what my grandmother said was true, you should soak liver in milk.

The older man told me that the milk would break down the enzymes so I would have to cut my cooking time in half and that was just silly as it needed only a few minutes anyway.

But what I needed to really know was that this liver was best with fennel mash and he proceeded to give me the recipe.

This is not the first recipe he has given me and this is a man who knows his meat. ( Remind me to tell you one day about the Irish butcher in Brussels who got caught selling fois bra under the counter when he set up shop opposite Harrods.)

Anyway it was, and I did, and I will be back there for his next recipe.

The fifth person:

I was walking to the pub on Friday across the fields with my two friends who also walk their dogs to the pub – the men come in cars and prop up the bar until we get there – when we came across a man looking like he was preparing to fly a model aircraft.

The others walked on and I stopped to talk to him because it looked like a helicopter with four blades – one at each square corner.

It was a drone.

I had never seen a drone before and was rather surprised to see one in a Sussex field.

Was he working for Google Maps, looking (rather in vain) for an Afghan wedding party to bomb?

No, it turns out he was going ‘On holiday with a bit of travelling. In Canada and North America and I thought it might be nice to have aerial photos of where we have been.’

Blimey – this kit was packed in a case about 500 cm x 500cm and not what you would describe as pocket-sized.

I imagined his wife sorting out her packing and trying to rationalize what she was taking, and him coming back and saying he was taking one pair of trousers , three shorts, 20 pairs of knickers and a drone….

The Pop-Up Festivities Bookstore

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I may have mentioned before that I was volunteered by my best beloved to run the bookstall for the village festivities. Here I want to say that a) the ‘bookstall’ is a function room at the Legion hall, b) I spend, as you know, a lot of time sorting books at Oxfam so to come home and do it again for the village…..c) my best beloved who avowed his unstinting support, has been very busy on rehearsing for the (bloody) Pirates of Penzance.

So, having got the whinges out of the way, I am actually rather excited about tomorrow.

Thanks to very nice friends with a large dry barn, we had somewhere to put the books to get sorted. ( I am not sure anyone would have wanted to buy the 2002 edition of Who’s Who so along with quite a few others, it got sent to the recycling.)

My bee palace new friend was a star and spent many a (happy?) hour putting books into categories, and his wife was a font of all wisdom – having done it before.

I bribed and tarted around various local supermarket staff to get the requisite number of banana boxes in which to display the books and all was well.

Then we took them all – with helping hands – to a village hall to await their move to the Legion. (I am tempted to go on a riff about how surprised the French Foreign Legion in deepest Algeria, or somewhere, would be if they got the two boxes of old cricket books and the complete set of Penny Vincenzi hard back novels, but I won’t.)

At this point I had thought there would be a phalanx of young men to move them onwards. But it looked otherwise. And worried that a few middle-aged people would have to carry endless boxes of books around the corner and up the lane, I got worried.

So, in the pub on Friday, I asked any likely person ( as in under the age of 75) if they were free the following morning and could they? Would they? Etc etc.

And do you know what, we had those books moved in an hour. Hannah, who I had never met before, turned up with her dad’s wheel truck and, with Harry, the son of someone we know from the pub, moved a mountain of books. …..

I was expecting to be there all day so imagine my surprise when we were all done by noon.

And, I would like to say at this point, there were 91 banana boxes of books.

Then I made Sarah, the font of all wisdom, stay behind and help me count the boxes (for the record) and, and this is where I have to confess, to make a display of red-covered fiction books along the front of the stage.

In my defence, it makes it all look rather good.

Tomorrow we shall see whether all this adds up to a good sale.

Things into perspective

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I thought it might be nice to have the (very) few neighbours we have who don’t vote Tory around for supper and to watch the exit polls which were going to say that it was a hung parliament, and we would go to bed, and find out that it was indeed a hung parliament.

So, we did, and it wasn’t like that.

Staying up until 2.30 and then getting up at 7 to get to Oxfam and sell books wasn’t the best plan, but the only one available.

The (few) people who came into the shop this morning were usually tactfully vague about the result – including those with a Telegraph under their arm – but one man came in and said, ‘ Well, they have won, but the next fight, to stay in Europe is much more important.’

If I had the energy, I would have hugged him.

Prioritie a droite

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This is a bonkers rule which allows traffic in France and Belgium to come from your right, from a tiny little road and onto a main road without stopping or even looking left!

It can make driving a tense business to say the least.

In Brussels, there is a relatively steep hill near where we lived and I used to take the 71 bus up and down it quite a lot.

There are also numerous side roads off to the right and it made for a sometimes entertaining trip as the bus careered down the hill, only to skid to a halt sending passengers falling backwards like dominoes whilst a little car sailed breezily out of the right with nary a backward glance.

There was a theory expounded by one Belgian we knew, who said, in all seriousness, that the prioritie a droite meant all Belgians were very careful drivers and there were fewer accidents…..

At least in Brussels the rule is religiously followed and so you know the deal.

In France, there are a plethora of masonic-like road signs which tell you whether there is prioritie a droite or not. You have to be inculcated into French culture to even see them, leave alone know what they mean.

A yellow diamond means there is no prioritie a droite whilst even more confusingly, a yellow diamond with a cross through it means there is prioritie a droite.

Oh yes, my friend, it is true.

Whilst on the topic of driving, I got done for speeding the other day. I was doing 35 mph as I entered a 30 mph zone on the outskirts of Swansea – caught on camera.

I thought briefly of naming my best beloved as the driver but it was a short-lived Chris and Vicky moment which I dismissed.

But I was a bit miffed as I am a very boring driver who is usually safe, stodgy and smug.

Anyway, I mentioned this is upholstery class the other day and was amazed to find that every other woman there – apart from one – had been done for speeding and taken the speed awareness course option.

Who would have thought those middle aged women patiently tacking their hessian to the seat of grandma’s old nursing chair were secret speed freaks……

Vote Tory

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You may have heard me mention that I live in an area that is heavily Tory – and indeed alarmingly UKIP.

Anyway, as the election draws near, there are posters being put up hither and thither in the countryside.

On the way into Petersfield, there is a farmer who had put up a series of posts with an attached picture of the local (of course, Tory) MP on the verge of his land.

Imagine my delight when a few days later, they had all been torn down. I worried for a moment that this might be the work of extremist UKIP supporters, but I hoped fervently, that instead it had been night-time action by – dare I say it – Labour supporters.

A few days after that Damian Hinds, for he is that MP, was back but this time the posts had been put inside the farmer’s field.

Now Damian peeps a little nervously over the hedge at you as you drive past.

Going on Holiday

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I’m sure that a ‘what I did on my holidays’ is one of the lowest forms of blogging but that seems to be pretty much all I have done for the last few weeks – and yes, I do know that boasting about your holidays is also pretty low too.

Anyway, should you want to skip a few blogs on the basis that this is not for you, feel free, but here goes with some holiday notes.

Packing used to be one of my skills. When I was young, oh so many years ago, I had a job which demanded a lot of travelling and so could pack a neat bag with all the necessary requirements for any situation in about 10 seconds flat.

Now, oh so many years later, I am hopeless. I over-pack and come home with a lot of unused but badly creased stuff, or I pack the wrong things and shiver or sweat, or I take all the wrong earrings.

As a woman who likes her jewellery (let me tell you about the Accessorize necklace which was smuggled out of Russia during the revolution, sometime,) I do like to have the right bits with the right clothes.

Anyway, as the holiday before last, we were glamping, the choices were fairly easy and indeed you do need things you can pull on the tramp across wet grass for the first pee of the morning. And stuff which you can get off easily and hang up to avoid getting it wet on the shower floor.

This last holiday (a few days in Normandy) was a bit trickier not least as we have a rough and ready attitude to planning.

We get a guide book or (some) off the shelf, book a crossing or a flight, get a car or take ours and that is it as far as planning goes.

The flight or channel-crossing are the times to look in the books and decide what to do.

(This has worked well for us on the whole, but it has meant some rather dodgy accommodation – as well as amazing places to stay – remind me to tell you about dinner with the Mafia in Sicily sometime.)

We decided to drive down past Rouen and stay in a place called Conches, recommended in our old Rough Guide to France.

All was fine. (French motorways are a delight compared to ours. Their surfaces are nice, they are quiet and people generally use lane discipline – what more can I say.)

We found a Logis and although the room was basic and there were a lot of dried flowers about the place, the food was lovely.

Though I have to say that in Normandy it is a choice of whether to have cream with your cheese or cheese with your cream – not exactly on-plan when you are supposed to be losing weight, but hey ho.

Over dinner, we got out an Alistair Sawday guide to France dating from 2010 which had appeared from somewhere on our shelves back home.

There was an entry for a B&B run by a woman who used to be an antiques dealer – that was enough for me. I like a woman who has spent her life around Brocantes and would watch Antiques Roadshow religiously if they had it in France.

It turned out to be in a very nice but isolated village ( see all of inland Normandy) and there was a collection of houses in a large garden.

Our large room had a (very large) en suite bathroom with walls covered (very interestingly) in striped, bright orange silk.

We had our own dinning room where we were served a very nice three course meal on both nights, with very nice bottle of wine and Calvados to take to bed – all of six steps away….. and it came in at the princely sum of 200 euros all in for both of us, and the dog, for two nights. Not bad at all.

Now, I must say that I am a fan of the Rough Guide but I do take issue with them on one point.

There was mention of a Monday market at a town called Vimoutiers. There was also mention of a Richard the Lionheart castle the other side of the region.

One morning over breakfast we had a sotto voce tiff over whether to walk up to the castle and get some exercise or to go to a French market – I do like a market.

In the end we agreed to do both though it involved several hours of driving.

Castle, fine, as described and indeed lovely views. (There is some historical debate about whether those who finally took it came in through the toilet or an open chapel window and it takes no time at all to think about which would be preferable in a Medieval castle.)

Market, not so fine. I should have realised that a market on a Monday was unlikely but the French will have a market at the drop of a hat, so it should have been OK. Infact it was a market but of the tattiest bling market clothes you ever did see. Not a fresh fruit or veg in sight. Thank God, I agreed to do the castle or I would never have heard the last of it.

And it was the market that lowered that bit of Normandy from a promising B to a C+ and in fairness, a lot of the blame for that lies at the door of the Rough Guide.

A is a place you would move to at the drop of a hat. B is a place which you wouldn’t be sorry to be sent to. C is a place which would cause a deep intake of breath, but you know you could make the best of despite a few things which are not at all right, and D is the equivalent of being sent to Walsall or indeed Warsaw.

I am sure everyone has those kinds of ratings and you probably didn’t need to know mine, but I give them in a spirit of generosity to anyone who has made it to the end of this bit of tales of my holidays. Thank you

Going

Edith

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Amongst a donation last week was a book which is called ‘The Place Names of Warwickshire’. The spine has that printed on it and ‘English Place Names Society XIII’ and the crest for Cambridge Press.

I put it to one side as it seemed arcane enough to be worth checking out and – as my frequent reader will know – arcane often equals value one way or another.

A couple of days later it was in a small pile of books I needed to check out and so I opened it to get the publications date etc etc.

Imagine my surprise when I found there was no printed book but the hand-written life story of Edith Chadwick Holmes. At least I think that is what her name is, as the handwriting is hard to decipher.

The first entry is January 6th 1941 and she says she is writing it ‘Just because I have nine grandchildren who like most children just xxx for true stories and are ever curious to hear past histories & habits of their grown up relatives. I am daring enough to write about myself on this, my seventieth birthday, it seems a big age written down & quite startling (?) Now then, the big question is, shall I think backwards into the past or start right from the beginning. I suppose it is right and proper to start once upon a time a baby girl was born on the Epiphany 1871.’

And the last entry is January 30th 1956 which starts, ‘Here I am now age 85 & am wondering if it is worthwhile adding to this account of my simple life, but I hate to leave anything unfinished. It is too wet and cold for gardening so xxx where I left off.’

The final words in the book are ‘and then on to my dear Chad’s death in 1921.’

In the back of the book there is a sort of fixed envelope which would I think, should, if the book had been really printed, have had a map for the place names of Warwickshire.

In it I found some small pages of a notebook written by Edith and starting to tell of her sailing to Durban.

There are also some notes in a different hand, titled Mother’s Story and starting ‘Dad died 27th March 1921’ and I presume is more of the story, retold to Edith’s son or daughter.

If I had the time, I would work my way through the book and notes and transcribe them but I think that is a job for someone researching the family history.

So, I have been looking to find some trace of Edith Chadwick Holmes and I started with the Mormon site – free and very good in the past.

But nothing.

Her parents were Frank and Jane Sophia Fagg of Canterbury, but I cannot find them either.

I presume her beloved Chad was a nickname based on Chadwick Holmes, but I am not sure.

I am not sure either,from glancing though the book,  that Edith’s life was extraordinary but I love the sound of her voice and would like very much to have someone cherish it.

But who, and where, and how? Again, I am not sure I will do the work and it maybe that Edith sits on a shelf in Oxfam until someone picks her up and has the interest and determination to tell her story.

I will have another go at looking for her in the records – not just now though because I have to make supper.

(Just in case you are interested, I am told that sometimes publishers would print and bind a book with blank pages and send to the prospective author and ask him (usually) to fill in the pages. It was an inducement to get the book done. And the book was written and it was published.)

Whipplesnaith and French cooking

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Two curious books have arrived in Oxfam this week – neither is worth a fortune, or indeed much at all, but both provided a diversion from the endless filling of re-cycling sacks with books unwanted by their owners, or I am afraid, us.

That was my daily lot this week – and very dispiriting it is at times. Even with the satisfaction of getting to the end of a mound of black sacks and boxes and seeing the floor and walls again, there is that slight sense of resentment of spending my morning saving some others from the trip to the dump they should have taken with all those dog-eared misery memoirs and 365 ways to dry flowers in a microwave.

Our Antiquarian Book Expert (later to be referred to as ABE) came in this week and the shop was shut. I let him in and at the same time saw the boot opening of a car hovering outside and glimpsed the boxes and books.

Despite my urging him to get inside quick and under cover of darkness in the shop, steal quietly upstairs and let the book owners find another end to the spring cleaning, he insisted we should let them in.

I know was right, you should never turn away a donation but he was going to look at old and interesting books for an hour and I was going to be left with those boxes and I knew that what was more, someone was arriving with 25 boxes the next day – part shipment of their threatened 50 boxes – so any more were not that welcome.

We did let them in and ABE leant over one or two books and said, ‘ Nothing much here then.’

Mmm, well I could have told him that.

To be fair, he did offer to come in the next day and help sort but I am a darn sight quicker than he is and had those boxes dispatched in very short order.

And, of course, right at the bottom of the last box, there was a little treasure. A French cookery book from the early 1800s which I think will be worth about £100.

Back to Whipplesnaith.

If you went to Cambridge and spent your nights climbing around building rooftops, then you will of course know all about Whipplesnaith who wrote The Night Climbers of Cambridge.

‘Whipplesnaith was the pseudonym for Noel H. Symington, a recent graduate of the University. He worked with as many as 15 other students to create this incredible record in the autumn of 1936. Many climbed, some were camera-men, all helped silently lug the apparatus around in the dead of night.’

I had never heard of it but it is apparently a classic in the world of building and urban climbers and also there is still a thriving tradition of Cambridge night climbing. There is a twitter account for those still at it @whipplesnaith.

Our copy is a first edition and has the name J H Parry Jones on the flyleaf with the Greek beta sign and then the letter N C which I guess might mean Night Climbers.

So, for no good reason except curiosity, I want to try and find out whether J H Parry Jones was one of Noel Symington’s colleagues. If anyone knows, do get in touch.

Beepalaces and book sorting

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As a diligent reader, you may have remembered that I have been volunteered to run the bookstall at the village festivities in May.

This coincided with the fact that we can no longer send our culled books onto another shop – it has closed.

I am going to forgo the brackets – because I over used them in the last blog – but I will explain.

In order to keep the shelves in an Oxfam bookshop looking fresh and interesting, we cull those that have been around for a while.

Should anyone want to understand this system in detail, let me know and I can provide you with the details…..

Anyway, because we currently have no other shop to send our books to, we have to put them in sacks for re-cycling.

And this came to my attention just as I was volunteered to run the aforementioned bookstall. It doesn’t take Sherlock to work out how this might work.

Yes, indeed, the culled books are currently stacked high in our garage, waiting to be sold to an unsuspecting public in Deepest Sussex and, hopefully, Oxfam and the village will get a 50/50 split on the proceeds.

Stalwarts who have been involved in the bookstall before me, have come to my aid and said they would help, and saying that I might need all the help I could get, and today, a newish friend turned up to sort out what was in the garage.

The sun shined on us and we hefted books and put them in various categories and chatted about this and that.

A successful London businessman, he has ‘retired’ down here and got involved in the most fascinating small business.

He helps a company which is making beepalaces.

Now, I put aside all thoughts of books and their interest when I first heard about beepalaces.

Did you know that most bees do not live in hives? Nor me.

Did you know that there are about 250 types of solitary bee in the UK who don’t make honey or have much of a sting? Nor me

Did you know that an acre of apple orchard needs only 250 solitary bees to pollinate it compared to up to 20,000 honey bees? Nor me.

As I sit here writing this, the sun is setting and very nice it looks too, and by chance, one of those very nice chances, a bee is gently wandering around outside the window looking for something useful to do. I now suspect it is not going home to a hive of thousands of others, but to a solitary bed.

Not least in thanks for the book hefting, and because it is so interesting, we will be buying a solitary beepalace for our garden.

I have to say that our purchases of bird boxes have gone completely unremarked by our bird, but we live in hope.

I also have to say, we have noticed that we don’t have that many bees in the garden but thought it was because bees are in crisis.

Looking at the beepalace website, I think we might have to grow a whole load of new things. Perhaps my newish friend will advise.

http://www.beepalace.com