Christmas Day 1914

Drummer Lee Rigby; Son, Brother, Husband, Father, Soldier

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/drummer-lee-rigby-killed-in-woolwich-incident

 

"I can't call in sick on Mondays when the weekend's been too strong.
I just work straight through the holidays, sometimes all night long,
You can bet that I stand ready, when the wolf cries at the door,
And I'm solid,
And I'm steady,
And I'm true down to the core,
And I will always do my duty, no matter what the price.
I've counted up the cost,
I know the sacrifice.
And I don't want to die for YOU but if dying's asked of me
I'll bear that CROSS with honour, cos freedom don't come free."

 

Seemingly, the Help For Heroes website crashed Wednesday night, so many people were trying to buy tee-shirts and donate.

Get your plastic out, people.

Let's crash it again.

Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.

Quercus petraea: Sessile Oak

I woke myself up this morning with a nightmare.  It's one I've dreamt before; no doubt I'll dream it again.  I'm strangling someone but with insufficient conviction.  I hauled my sorry a***, racked with a filthy head cold, sore throat and aching ankles out of bed and made a cup of tea and a couple of maxi-flu paracetamols.  An hour or two later and I'm feeling perky and ready for a longish walk and some fresh air.

 

Driving down the A38 listening to Classic FM on the way to the National Arboretum and the weather is cold and blowy with occasional snow flurries.  Perfect Easter Bank Holiday Monday weather.  And then this came on the radio ---->

 

 

And we walked all through the trees and as always here, found new memorials and plaques of remembrance. One tree on the outer edge of the Merchant Navy Convoy Memorial was dedicated to a teenager, a little naval apprentice who spent his 18th birthday floating on a raft after his vessel was bombed, and where he died 10 days later. 

This memorial is densely planted with 2,535 Sessile Oaks representing every British flagged merchant vessel lost to enemy action during the Second World War.  The Sessile Oak, Quercus petraea, is native to Great Britain and mid-Europe. Significant botanical differences with English Oak include the stalked leaves, and the stalkless (sessile) acorns. It is found more frequently than English Oak in upland areas that have a higher rainfall, but also the lighter soils, which it prefers.  The Royal Navy was once said to be founded on “Hearts of Oak” – a reference to the stoic nature of British seaman.

New Year's Day 2013: Run Hide Fight

With thanks to Michael Yon for the heads up.

 

We are instinctive creatures.  If we think something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  If we think something just isn't right, it probably isn't.  So let's move forward into 2013 becoming more aware of our feelings and instincts.  Just be aware though, that if we have a gut feeling something isn't right, it could just be indigestion...

 

 

Don McCullin's Desert Island Discs

My love affair with Don McCullin continues...

The following is taken from the Guardian interview with Carole Cadwalladr outlining McCullin's return to Aleppo, and the documentaty McCullin due to be screened January 1.  Catch the full article here...

 

CC:  What do you think of photojournalism these days?

 

DM:  It's had it. Nobody wants to look at spreads of dying children. They want to see higher heels. It's all gone celebrity, hasn't it? Celebrity, looks, fashion. If I see another picture of Gwyneth Paltrow, I think I'll put my head down the lavatory. Fake tans, Beckhams, Jamie Oliver. I can't take any more of it. That's why I'm going to Syria.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/castaway/c3d7aaf1#p009mhn5

Remembrance Sunday 2012

 

They went with songs to the battle, they were young.

Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.

 

 

        They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,

They fell with their faces to the foe.

 

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

 

 

        Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember them.

Laurence Binyon: For The Fallen

 

On The Inevitabilty Of The Channel Tunnel

"I don't know why I was surprised.  You can't spend ever increasing amounts of time exploring the south coast and not at some point expect to hear the words, "Shall we nip across to France?"
 

35 minutes.  35 MINUTES!  And the carriage insides really do look like London Underground carriages, although mercifully without that oik that eats his breakfast cereal on the early London train.  And you just drive off, through acres of brilliantly lit apron and straight onto the A16 then the A26 for Lens.  How cool is that?

Why Lens?  It's where the rellies are commemorated, of course!"

And yes, rather like tomorrow's post, this post was partly composed at my desk until the phone rang, I answered, and the rest, as they say, is history.

 

I Vow To Thee My Country

On Lists Found Whilst Clearing Out

Everyone I know is in engaged in that Clearing Out transitional phase between spring and summer.  As a Virgo (are you listening, Fiona?) my Clearing Out phase never really begins or ends, it just goes a little comatose occasionally.  Merci Beaucoup Enfant Deux triggered renewed effort this week when she rang to check we still have the dinghies in the outhouse.  I've carted those damned things back from our house in France so many times I threatened last year to leave them over there.  "No, mum, you can't.  I got mine in a boite de cadeau! You can't possibly leave it over there.  I might need it."

Beggars belief, doesn't it?

In order to get to the paddles I'll have to move that IKEA racking that seemed such a brilliant solution for the outhouse crapstore. I fixed the racking into the outer screw hole (you know what I mean by this; you have that same IKEA racking system yourselves...) thinking I'd never need the extension shelves.  I need the extension shelves.  In my defence I hadn't imagined just how much crap my two would generate and then bring home from uni.  The text books, equipment, white coats, shot glasses, fancy dress costumes (at least I hope they're fancy dress costumes) I can understand.  But does any undergraduate really need 16" pizza plates? 

Carefully tucked away in an old biscuit tin I found some sheets of photocopier paper splattered with tomato seeds.  My charming, witty and erudite readers will know this is my patented foolproof method of storing tomato seeds.  I'd clearly run out of paper at some stage as I'd splattered some seeds across a list of that year's crops.  Here's the laundry list;

Toms - Gartenperle 2 (number of 6-plug trays)

Harbinger 7

Santa 6

Piccolo 6

Costo F 6

Roma 6

Chili - Purple Tiger 6

Tepin 2

Celeriac - Alabaster 12 (we really had a thing for celeriac that year)

Marrow - Long Glen Bush 1

Courgette - Tristar 1

Mixed Squash - 12 of each
Butternut

Jack O Lantern

Rolet

Sweet Dumpling

Harlequin

Turk's Turban

Melon - Passport 2

Livingstone Daisies - 16 trays

Beans - Black beans 4

Borlotti 6

Canadian Wonder 3

Productive little soldier, wasn't I!

On A Cold And Snowy Weekend In Canterbury

I hate, loathe and detest driving in icy conditions.  After only a few miles I feel sick from all the adrenalin.  I hate walking on icy pavements, too.  This probably has its roots in a childhood skiing accident.  I do, however, love paddling about in the snow as I have a pair of military-depth-tread boots reserved for just such occasions.  Suitably booted, I can trot about in the snow all day, although admittedly I do get a little twitchy when the sun starts to drop and I'm out in the middle of fields, etc.  We all know vampires don't exist but those films are so realistic, aren't they?

When the snow and ice begin to melt, I revert back to my tan leather boots, especially when walking at the seaside, where I have never before seen snow piled up on the beach.  Miracles and wonders. 

Remembrance Sunday 2011

The National Memorial Arboretum Staffordshire

Friday Five: Ireland

"I was raised in an Irish-American home in Detroit where assimilation was the uppermost priority. The price of assimilation and respectability was amnesia. Although my great-grandparents were victims of the Great Hunger of the 1840's, even though I was named Thomas Emmet Hayden IV after the radical Irish nationalist exile Thomas Emmet, my inheritance was to be disinherited. My parents knew nothing of this past, or nothing worth passing on."
Tom Hayden

Moone Cross Co Kildare, picture credits unknown

"Could he not find in his heart the generosity to acknowledge that there is a small nation that stood alone not for one year or two, but for several hundred years against aggression; that endured spoliations, famines, massacres in endless succession; that was clubbed many times into insensibility, but that each time on returning [to] consciousness took up the fight anew; a small nation that could never be got to accept defeat and has never surrendered her soul?”

De Valera, on VE Day May 8, 1945, responding in a radio speech to criticism by Churchill of Ireland’s neutrality in WWII

"I tell you this - early this morning I signed my death warrant."
Michael Collins, after signing the treaty on December 6, 1921 with England creating the Irish Free State as a dominion within the British Commonwealth

"No person knows better than you do that the domination of England is the sole and blighting curse of this country. It is the incubus that sits on our energies, stops the pulsation of the nation’s heart and leaves to Ireland not gay vitality but horrid the convulsions of a troubled dream."

Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847), in an 1831 letter to Bishop Doyle

"Ireland, thou friend of my country in my country's most friendless days, much injured, much enduring land, accept this poor tribute from one who esteems thy worth, and mourns thy desolation."

George Washington, speaking of Ireland's support for America during the revolution

Sean O'Casey says it best: "Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity."

My Grandparents' Best Man

Happy birthday Míċeál.

...As she stepped away from me, and she moved through the fair.  And fondly I watched her move here and move there.  And then she turned homeward with one star awake, like the swan in the evening moves over the lake...

 

Vera Atkins Memorial Seat Dedication Saturday 24 September 2011

I always like to be home from France by mid-August, because I need to be in sunny Derbyshire for the start of the drupe harvest.  Buckets and buckets of Warwickshire Drooper plums together with six varieties of apple (ok, so I like apples) and a sack of onions from the Asian food stores in Hyson Green were transformed as if by magic into a year's worth of Delia's finest spiced plum chutney.  Recipe and pictures here.  My jollies in France this summer meant I missed the tayberries.  I'd netted them off at the end of May, of course, but as I just threw the damned netting over the canes in a rather hurried fashion, it really wasn't surprising that I returned to a smug resident blackbird population and ZERO fruit.  I didn't make the same mistake with my mulberries, and when they started ripening during September on went the netting and off kept the blackbirds.

And then August filled up with weddings; two each week until last week.  Beautiful churches, handsome grooms, delightful brides; chinking flutes and everywhere women guests in fabulous hats and too much gossip.  Pane, amore e chi chi chi.  This week I went to my first funeral of the year.  On and on the year turns.  Tomorrow I'm off to the National Arboretum in Staffordshire.  

http://www.thenma.org.uk/index.aspx

At 12.30pm the Allied Special Forces Association will dedicate the Vera Atkins memorial seat remembering the women of the Special Operations Executive who lost their lives during WWII.  They really did give their tomorrows for my today, and my love affair with France.    

"Vera May Atkins was the Intelligence Officer- French Section of the SOE, formed on 22 July 1940 to conduct warfare by means other than direct military engagement.  SOE's mission was to encourage and facilitate espionage and sabotage behind enemy lines and to serve as the core of the Auxiliary Units, a British resistance movement. 

"As an exile from Romania Vera came to Britain before the start of the Second World War. She joined S.O.E and was soon managing most of the men and women agents who were being sent into France to carry out clandestine work behind enemy lines. This memorial seat is a tribute to her courage and that of her women agents who lost their lives. Her dedication and resolve to go into Europe and find out what had happened to them after the war ended was not well recognised, except by the families of those lost. The tree at the centre of the memorial seat was grown from a seed found in a Fir cone picked up in 2005 from inside the electric fence that bordered Natzweiler Concentration Camp, which is near the village of Moussey, in the Vosges mountains of eastern France.

"The Natzweiller Tree is also a special tribute to S.O.E. agents Andree Borrel, Vera Leigh, Diana Rowden and also to Sonia Olschanezky, who was a locally recruited member of Robin, a sub-circuit of the Prosper resistance network.

"After capture earlier in the year the four women were taken to Natzweiler Concentration Camp on the 6th July 1944 and executed by lethal injection and their bodies burnt in the camp crematorium that very evening. Three had landed in enemy territory to work as clandestine radio operators, couriers and resistance fighters to assist the French Resistance Forces. Eight other woman S.O.E. agents had also been captured and 4 executed at Dachau and 4 at Ravensbruck, including Lilian Rolfe, Denise Bloch, Cecily Lefort and Violette Szabo.

Easter Sunday & Pablo Neruda's The Captain's Verses

I temporarily abandoned my duvet this week in favour of vintage monogrammed cotton sheets picked up for next to nothing at my favourite junk shop.  The sheets are almost as heavy as my duvet, but are such a delight to sleep under these recent warm nights.  Imagine waking up this morning wrapped in white sheets with the dawn chorus carolling around my consciousness.  Heavenly.

The hordes began arriving for Easter yesterday afternoon, and soon we were laughing and yahooing over cups of tea and endless, endless cakes and treats.  No chocolate though, as most of us gave it up for Lent, together with "chocolate-cheese-chips", the usual alcohol, walking the bloody dogs (we screamed with laughter at this one) and "not saying the rosary every night;" to which we all nodded and thought we should have done this too... One had even given up saying the F-word, and as the F-word is merely another adjective for someone born and raised in the North, this was indeed a magnificent achievement worthy of a very large glass of Bush after lunch today.

Flowers are banned from churches during Lent and make a spectacular appearance after the Easter Vigil on Saturday night.  It is one of the loveliest parts of Mass on Easter Sunday.  I try to operate a similar ban at home, so as soon as it was light this morning I was up and out into the kitchen garden, cup of tea in hand, looking for spring flowers for my Easter feast table.  Photos to follow.

And always at Easter my thoughts turn eastwards to my homeland. 

To war zones. 

To you.

"...and that there where I am,

under rain or

underfire,

my love, I am waiting for you,

I wait for you in the harshest desert

and by the flowering lemon tree,

in every land where life exists,

where spring is born,

my love, I wait for you.

If they say to you: "That man

does not love you," remember

that my feet are alone in this night, and they

search for the sweet, tiny feet I adore...

...and your soul which I awoke

so that it should keep on singing

until the end of life..."   

Acting Sergeant Dipprasad Pun

http://bfbs.com/news/people/kaija-larke?page=0%2C0%2C0%2C0%2C0%2C12

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/uk-12854492

"A Gurkha soldier who single-handedly fought off up to 30 Taliban militants in Afghanistan, even using his gun's tripod when he ran out of bullets, is today awarded Britain's second highest medal for bravery.

Acting Sergeant Dipprasad Pun used up all of his ammunition and resorted to using his machine gun tripod to repel an attack in Afghanistan in September.  The 31-year-old Gurkha, of Ashford, Kent, said he was a "lucky guy" and very proud to get the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross, BBC reported.  A total of 136 UK servicemen and women are being honoured, four posthumously.

Pun was on sentry duty at a checkpoint near Babaji, in Afghanistan's Helmand province, on September 17 last year when he spotted insurgents trying to plant a bomb beside the front gate.  Moments later, militants opened fire on the compound from all sides.  For more than a quarter of an hour, alone on the roof, Gurkha Pun fought off an onslaught from rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47s.

In total, he fired more than 400 rounds, launched 17 grenades and detonated a mine.  At one point, when an insurgent tried to climb up to his position, his rifle failed and he resorted to throwing his machine gun tripod to knock him down.  Pun, who is originally from the Nepalese village of Bima, believed at the time that there were up to 30 attackers.  The citation on his medal - which is only one level below the Victoria Cross - states that he saved the lives of three comrades who were inside the checkpoint at the time."

So how bad a day do you think you've had?

The last word belongs with the Himalayan Times;

“Pun could never know how many enemies were attempting to overcome his position, but he sought them out from all angles despite the danger, consistently moving towards them to reach the best position of attack.  Pun’s father and grandfather were also in the British Army."

Bakewell Royal British Legion Garden Of Remembrance

And just in case my charming, witty and urbane readers think that Bakewell is a bit dreary, this!  The owners are certainly covering all the bases.



On Reading Into The Year Ahead

I don't make New Year's resolutions.  Complete waste of time.  I'm a Virgo; I make lists instead.  After parking up the parental taxi on Friday night I hopped into bed with a pile of books and luxuriated in the prospect of reading my way through the year ahead.  I've a precious selection of fiction, but most of the books in my house are reference and textbooks including a good selection of horticultural pornography. 

The best horti-porn combines few colour pictures with endless, sparklingly fabulous text.  Anything by Monty Don ought to be sold from the top shelf at Waterstone's.  Helen Yemm is so specialized her agent daren't peddle her via bookshop signings; her fans are considered too dangerous for open gatherings.  We include amongst our numbers parents of undergraduates, after all.

  

Listen to this example from Anna Pavord's Plant Partners;

"No garden can have too many tulips.  It is one of the few infallible rules in gardening... Tulips are natural companions for wallflowers, and although wallflowers are often badly used, they are never hackneyed. Their rich tawny colours consort well with both tulips and daffodils and the smell, when a warmish shaft of sun tickles their scent glands, is a glorious antidote to the sloth brought on by winter hibernation.  A late spring garden should be swooning with more scents than a seraglio and one sniff of a wallflower can open up a whole Pandora's box of emotions: rows, reconciliations, a particular meal, a birthday party.  A garden without smells would be a hamstrung thing." 

I classify all my cookbooks as reference books too.  I've got most of Elizabeth David; Jane Grigson; Sophie Grigson's Vegetables; lots of Jamie; ALL of Delia; some Rick Stein; a few bits of Claudia Roden and Jill Norman (of course); Margaret Costa's Four Seasons; Hugh Feathery-Walking-Stick's Meat;  a bit of Bill Granger; a couple of Tessa Kiros (from which I have never cooked just looked at in a daze); and some early Nigel Slater.  I used to love reading and cooking from his early stuff, then bought his Kitchen Diaries.  I read with pleasure every entry until I came to "Boxing Day" and his mealy mouthed description of ridding himself of yet another jar of someone's pickled harvest.  Oh really?  The irony of this statement is clearly lost on its author, and I have disliked him ever since.  Managed to catch Toast over the holidays?  We watched it screaming with laughter at the hackneyed dialogue and thoroughly repellent characterisation of women.  His attempts at gardening in his latest TV series are almost as funny.

Some authors are real authors, whose writing casts a spell upon their readers as deliciously perfect as the sight of Jeremy Clarkson in a burka.  They cast their spell upon first reading, then decades later you fall in love all over again.  At some point this autumn/early winter, I read a review of Nevil Shute, and  Requiem for a Wren came to mind.  I read it on my sister's recommendation when I was 14.  As she passed it to me I remember her saying how she wanted so much to suspend everything she knew of the tale as she read it, and that the ending came as a shock. 

And on Friday night I settled down to read Requiem for a Wren all over again.  I spent most of this afternoon stretched out on the sofa in a warm and quiet house reading and reading and reading.  And the ending still came as a shock.  After closing the book I lay still, thinking and mourning for some time.  Here I am, reading into the year ahead.

A German Sang Of Peace From No Man's Land

"1915 on Christmas Day, on the Western Front the guns all died away, and lying in the mud on bags of sand, we heard a German sing from no man's land.
"He had a tenor voice so pure and true, the words were strange but every note we knew, soaring o'er the living dead and damned, a German sang of peace from no mans' land."

Remember this?

Something perfect to think about and to be thankful for as across the UK as our schools break up for Christmas, our undergrads return home from universities and please God, NATO, Commonwealth and our forces' peacekeepers work to make our world that little bit safer.

Remembrance Sunday 2010: Anahorish 1944

“We were killing pigs when the Americans arrived.

A Tuesday morning, sunlight and gutter-blood

Outside the slaughterhouse. From the main road

They would have heard the squealing,

Then heard it stop and had a view of us

In our gloves and aprons coming down the hill.

Two lines of them, guns on their shoulders, marching.

 Armoured cars and tanks and open jeeps.

Sunburnt hands and arms. Unknown, unnamed,

Hosting for Normandy.

        Not that we knew then

Where they were headed, standing there like

        youngsters

As they tossed us gum and tubes of coloured sweets.”

Seamus Heaney

Sword Beach at dawn 2010