Parallels

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There are some surprising parallels between our village life and world politics.

A friend of mine is involved in a village society where the leadership is not in its first flush of youth – but then most of us aren’t.

Anyway, they are looking for the next generation of leadership and my friend, who may be in the running for a (small) leadership role, said it was like being groomed by ISIS.

You are contacted, flattered, people keep in touch with you, you are told that the rewards are great and that you will be doing this for a great cause – and of course you are vetted.

As far as I know you don’t have to travel to Syria or take up arms and very little is done via any form of social media – and the people involved do not wear masks – at least not yet.

I hesitate to say you have to bring cakes – preferably baked by yourself – but for all I know, ISIS has the same rules.

And then there is the coup.

In our case, the leadership of a village institution was said to be rather undemocratic.

(Please bear with me on this rather vague stuff about who is who and what is what, but rather to my surprise some people in the village are reading this blog so I have to be careful or there will be people on my back step with angry faces – remind me to tell you sometime of my best- beloved angering Israel and then Mosad arriving on the back step – though I am not drawing parallels of course.)

Anyway, the village institution was said to be rather undemocratic and ‘things needed to be done!’

The leader was told that ‘things’ were afoot and he graciously stood aside.

On the night, a member of the institution was briefed to nominate a person as second in command, the vice-chair or president or whatever it was.

Unfortunately that person had a senior moment and instead of nominating the person waiting the in the wings to take over, she nominated someone with a vaguely similar name who was shocked and surprised to find himself carried aloft to his new role.

Now he is rather harassed by the previous incumbent’s emails on what he should and shouldn’t do.

I will bet there is many a vice-president of a small African nation who finds himself in a not too dissimilar position.

Finally, a rant, though this is pure village stuff and has no parallels.

As, dear reader, you will recall, we ran the village Festivities bookshop with a few great people and a round up of locals from the pub.

(I’m not sure I mentioned it, but I will now. By the weekend of the Festivities we had got 91 banana boxes to one place in the village but they had to be moved to the final destination. I was not sure we would have enough muscle so on our usual Friday evening visit to the pub, I went round everyone who looked ‘likely’ and asked if they would come the next morning to shift a load of books. One great person got her Dad’s large trolley and other people carried boxes and all were shifted in just over an hour – thank you!)

Well, in a recent parish magazine, there was a severe complaint from a person who is quite practiced at severe complaints, about the fact there were not enough people stepping up to the plate on village committees.

Now, though I don’t get involved, I hear that this really means, “ We people of certain standing want some of you lot to come and get on with the drudge stuff (and bake cakes) whilst we, people of a certain standing, make the decisions. And one day, one day mind you, you can take over as long as you are groomed and listen attentively to how it should be done.’

I’m minded to put a bit in the parish magazine reminding the severe woman that not only did the bookstall – with no committee – raise £1,000 but that the vibrant, fun and very successful Choir Called Dave runs without any vice-anythings or a committee of any sort.

Strange Fruit

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I was listening to a great Radio 4 programme the other day called Soul Music.

The series takes a piece of music and finds people (god only knows how they do the research) who can talk about why it means something significant to them.

Anyway, this was about Strange Fruit sung by Billie Holliday.

I was sitting at my kitchen table but it took me straight back to driving up the A1 on a sunny evening, watching hot air balloons fly over the crops.

There is something about some music that just takes you back to where, and it has to be where, you heard it last or it made an impression on you.

If you don’t know it, Strange Fruit is about lynching in America.

Yes, it’s shocking.

You should listen to it, great programme. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03jb1w1

It got me fiddling around on Google and Wikipedia as you do when the risotto does not need your immediate attention…..

In 1916 in Waco – a city then thought to be progressive but since well known for anything but progressiveness – a young black man called Jessie Washington pleaded guilty to the rape of a white woman.

He was quickly sentenced to death in a courtroom full of furious locals.

He was straight away dragged from the courtroom and lynched in front of the town hall.

10,000 people watched including local officials, police, children and people on their lunch-break.

A professional photographer was there and it was his images which helped change views on lynching.

See the images https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_of_Jesse_Washington

Some five years later in 1921 Leonadis C Dyer from St Louis sponsored an anti-lynching bill which was passed by the House of Representatives, but a Senate filibuster by white Democrats blocked it and defeated it.

As they did for several years to come.

Meanwhile there were many lynchings of young black men.

In 1964, three Mississippi civil rights workers were abducted and lynched.

But the murder, including hanging from a tree, by two Klu Klux Klan members, of Michael Donald is though to be the last recorded lynching.

It was in 1981.

God knows we Brits have a lot to answer for but at least we don’t claim we are the Land of the Free.

This all got me thinking about one of the best books I have ever read.

It is called Praying for Sheetrock by Melissa Fay Greene.

It is about a civil rights ‘campaign’ (and I put that in quotation marks because it was a local action rather than a big campaign.)

Here is the blurb from the back of the book,

‘Set in the Deep South of the 1970s, this superb book tells the true story of the political awakening of a tiny black community. Here the people of McIntosh County, Georgia tell of their own experiences – stories that are outrageous, funny, eloquent and touching – in a historic struggle for civil equality.’

I remember reading it for the first time, years ago, and having to remind myself that this was in the 70s.

Not in the 20s or 30s or even 40s – but in the 70s when I was listening to Rod Stewart.

( Of course, I had leant my copy – and several later-bought copies – and couldn’t find one so I had to buy it again…)

I think it is now out of print but you can get it via www.bookfinder.com and I urge you to read it.

It is brilliant and moving.

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.)