The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The Good

A couple of weeks ago, Nancy in Charlotte left a comment about Primula eliator – Oxslip – which she has planted and is hoping will be happy in her neck of the woods. We both hope this works for you, Nancy, as it is a lovely plant and just as quintessentially English as its cousin, Cowslip, as is demonstrated by this quote from Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.

“I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,

Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,

With sweet musk-roses and with eglatine.”

Cowslip or Primula vulgaris

I’m not sure which musk-rose Shakespeare had in mind but I assume not the Rosa moschata (which I understand is a native of the Himalayas and unlikely to be common in England in the late 1500’s) although he would probably recognise Rosa rubinosa as his Eglatine. Any thoughts, Nancy?

The Bad

Anyway, enough of that. We have moved. That part wasn’t too bad but having arrived we started to hit the usual IT problems that seem to beset us whenever we do anything unusual on the computer front. This time, of course, it was a transfer from one ISP to another and so I called in a chap called Richard Bravo to help us out. In the old days I would probably have struggled on until I found some sort of resolution but life is too short so I thought we needed a bit of proper expertise for once. I’m glad I did as I would not have solved this one. It seems that the house is so built that the wi-fi signal from the hub cannot penetrate properly into my study. This is, as I have now learned, easily solved: use the house ring main as an ethernet connection. There, now you know (but my guess is that it will mean as little to you as it does to me).

Meanwhile, I have been having problems with my PC which has been infected by various odd programmes I don’t want which has slowed it up to the point where some things are quite painful. Richard took it away and carried out some clever first aid and all seems to be well again.

The grass covered car – again. 

These pictures were sent to me by Ros Foreman with the following comment. “Photos attached of another artificial grass covered car taken during the Iford Butterfly day event in 2012. It was parked in a field being used as a car park and was almost camouflaged against the real grass.”

The Ugly

Another Richard, with the help of Nick and Dean, moved us. These guys are not beautiful but they’re wonderful which, in the circumstances, is far more important.

Moving can be extremely stressful but this trio made it pretty much stress-free. We were so lucky with the weather. It was wonderfully sunny but the fine spell broke on Thursday so the “window” was quite short. Anyway, all the boxes are now unpacked in the house even though there is still a fair bit to be done in the office. That doesn't really matter, all the urgent and important stuff is to hand and the rest can be done gradually over a couple of months.

The main downside this time is that I have put on weight. This is because we have been spoiling ourselves and eating out (mainly in The Cott Inn) most lunchtimes. Time to cut down.

Taken at lunchtime to-day: one of the hanging baskets now adorning the walls of the old Cott Inn.

We do not know what this chap is called. He was wandering around Totnes market with a lead over his shoulder but I couldn’t work out to whom he belonged. He was obviously on very friendly terms with a number of people, traders and customers, but clearly none of these were his owner. In the end, I ran out of time (or, to be more accurate, the parking ticket on the car had) so he has remained nameless.  

And finally, I promised a photograph of a carver chair.

On tables, chairs and pigs

Wednesday and I am sitting at an old French country style table (probably made in the late 1920’s or early 1930’s) on a rush-seated chair from about the same period and also French. The table and chairs are in our new kitchen and we are here waiting for a cooker to arrive and for the electrician to come and wire it up for us. The sun is shining – as you can see in the photographs of the garden. (This is the sort of garden we both like. Rather wild and definitely not regimented in any way.)

Yesterday we were waiting for the table and the chairs to arrive so I brought over our two most comfortable garden chairs with which, until Monday, our sitting room is furnished. We were probably mad to buy the table. It is very beautiful – the top is of mahogany but it is not as simple as that. Apart from the edges, the whole is inlaid. It is covered with dozens of square pieces of mahogany, each about an inch and a half square, set diagonally and each with the grain running at right angles to the grain of its neighbours. We shall have to take great care of it – always using table mats and coasters to protect it. We might even get some backed oil cloth (it will have to have a gingham pattern – blue and white, I think) to use when some of our less disciplined friends are with us.

Last Saturday, we drove up onto the moor as I wanted to film some people kayaking on the River Dart. My timing was terrible: they had just left the water when we arrived. On the way back we came across this person. On close examination it turns out that it is owned by a company that supplies artificial grass. Obvious when you know that, isn't it?

The carvers that we both sit in at the moment are much more comfortable than the one I am using here so, although at first we planned to sell them and buy two more on the French art deco theme, we have changed out minds. It has been a bit of a battle between style and comfort with comfort has won. This probably means that I shall paint them eggshell blue or somesuch which is a bit of a compromise between the two.

Meanwhile, being here has certainly proved a good thing on the book front. Marcia’s characters, and especially this ‛new’ man, have been chattering away like mad and she now knows a great deal about him, his connection to one of the main characters and where he fits into the story.

Our first ladybird this spring enjoying the sunshine earlier today (Thursday)

Obviously I mustn’t say anything that would let the cat out of the bag – which thought leads me down what I feel is a quite interesting aside. I am sure you have all heard or used the expression “a pig in a poke” to describe buying something that has not been inspected properly. It seems that the pig was, in fact, a piglet and it was quite usual to carry them to market in a bag (or poke). Well, some authorities suggest that crooked sellers sometimes put a cat in the poke instead – a large cat being about the same size as a piglet – hence “letting the cat out of the bag” came to mean disclosing a secret.

For the last year and a half we have been rather lazy and have taken advantage of there being a pub a short walk away where you can have an excellent Sunday lunch. It would be wrong to say we have eaten there every Sunday but . . . Anyway, the Bar Manager at the pub was John, until last week. Now he is off to Switzerland where he will be in charge of the catering in one of the chalets popular with people who want to enjoy skiing but have a restricted budget. Thus it was that last Sunday we had lunch with him and his girlfriend, Leah who used to work in the chalet and, indeed, told John about the vacancy. We shall miss him and wish him great success in his new post.

Leah and John

This blog will be going up late on Thursday evening as I have to be at the hospital on Friday to have my new hearing aids fitted. Will they work or be as useless as the last ones? I am, of course, hoping for the best whilst preparing for the worst: fingers crossed everyone.

This is Reg. Reg works (well, goes with his owner to work) in Totnes.

The Man in the Shadows

Moving is certainly an interesting occupation. We took over our new office on Monday but had to wait until Wednesday for the removal men to have a vacant slot for us. This move was not really all that complicated: all the archives, of course (which are quite bulky), and a file copy of every edition of each of Marcia’s books (including Large Print and Audio versions) in every language. By the time they were all packed up there was an impressive stack of boxes.

Just outside the office window, spring is announced

As it turned out we were incredibly lucky with the weather. The sun shone down and it was one of those days when you just know that spring is on the way. This was confirmed when I looked out of the office window onto a carpet of snowdrops against which clumps of bright yellow daffodils glowed cheerfully.

This was a meadow - a field with grasses and wild flowers which was a delight to see and the stock that were turned out here definitely looked as if it was good to eat, too. Then came the floods. I suppose it has been under water now for about six weeks. Now, at last, the flood waters are draining away but you can see the damage. Will this sea of mud give rise to enough grass to feed stock this summer? We shall see: I am not very optimistic.

The removal firm we use (South Hams Removals) started off with one man and his van some twenty years ago. Said man (Mark) moved some stuff for us before he gave up the day job to become a full-time removal man. We have used the firm for every move since then and would happily recommend them to anyone. It is now quite a big firm but Mark has managed to collect together a group of extremely cheerful and very efficient people. It is said that the three most stressful moments in life are bereavement, divorce and moving. When Mark’s team (it was Richard and Dean this time) appeared on the scene bringing with them their “can do” attitude we could feel all that stress roll away. Next, in about ten days time, they will be tackling the domestic bits and pieces.

Since most of this material had been in the garage here – a very damp garage – I had been quite worried about what sort of condition they would be in but I need not have worried: all was well. When I have finished unpacking all these boxes (which I intend to do at my leisure rather than run myself into the ground) they will be on proper book shelves in a properly ventilated and warmed office. Sorry the blogs are a bit below par during this period but life is extremely hectic. Hopefully we shall be back to normal in a few weeks.

The wet winter has not been all bad: the mosses and ferns growing out of the walls in our old towns have loved it and look splendid in the sunshine.

Meanwhile, Marcia had thought she had finished the book she is working on but then remembered a rather indistinct figure who had been lurking in the shadows when she first started the book – only to then disappear from sight. He has come back and so will have to be woven into the story. She tells me he will appear in the first chapter and I am really looking forward to finding out more about him.

Molly is a Border Terrier.

On our way to Dartington Hall

We think (hope?) that we have finally found where we want to live. We can't buy the house because it is extremely unlikely that it will ever be sold on the open market. However, we can rent it and do so for as long as we want to stay put - hopefully for a very long time. It is substantially smaller than the house in which we have been perching for the eighteen months or so but that is not a problem as you will see.

The explanation is that the house in question is on the Dartington Hall Estate. This estate - which has featured here on my blog on a number of occasions in the past - covers over twelve hundred acres, includes Dartington Hall itself (where Marcia has spoken at Ways With Words) as well as a couple of schools, a farm, the Barn Theatre, The White Hart (a pub), The Roundhouse (coffee and snacks), the Cider Press Centre (now called Dartington Shops), a number of office blocks and, crucially, lots of houses and cottages. Click here to see more about Dartington Hall.

In addition to the house we are renting a couple of small offices (which is why we can manage in a much smaller house) and earlier today we took possession of those offices and have started to move things into them.

Gosh - even golly gosh. It has all happened quite quickly and incredibly easily which - rightly or wrongly - persuades us that this move was meant.

From the above you will realise that we have been very busy indeed, sorting things out and beginning to pack up ready for the move which will be in two parts: all the rest of the officey bits next Wednesday and then the house stuff about half way through March to give us time to have curtain poles and so on put in place first. So we are in for a fortnight of general chaos and a tumbling of our usual mediocre cuisine which will, I fear, major on quantities of unhealthy snacks and pub lunches during this period.

Fortunately there is one thing we will not have to worry about. The move is so local that we shall be able to stay with our present doctor and dentist which, for some reason, I find quite comforting.

The proposed cover for Indian Summer which will be published in October.

Meanwhile, on the booky front, last night I finished checking through the copy editing for Indian Summer - the book that will be published next October - and the final mss has gone off to Transworld and to Marcia's agent, Dinah Wiener (for the foreign publishers to read).

Dinah has just returned from the island of Bhola, off the coast of Bangladesh, where there is the headquarters of a children's charity - Bhola's Children - of which Dinah is a trustee. The island is not the easiest place to visit: there is an overnight ferry journey which follows the long flight from London and I cannot help but take my hat off to Dinah who, despite being in her seventies, makes this trip at least twice every year.

There is a big problem looming on the horizon for this charity, one we are beginning to see only too clearly here in the UK. The land that the charity has bought on which the hospital and school have been built is very low lying - as, indeed, is most of Bangladesh. There is an ongoing concern that rising sea levels will make this area untenable - and there is absolutely nothing that can be done to protect the island. Here in the UK we are realising that large areas (such as the Somerset Levels here, in the South West) are under attack in two directions: from rising sea levels and heavy rainfall. Now it seems that it is California that is in the firing line as, after months of drought, it is now facing its second torrential downpour: one that forecasters are suggesting will dump two inches of water in less than twenty-four hours. Hmm.

Colin the collie cross will not be going to Spain with the four "D's" (see last week's blog) but will remain behind to look after Debs' mum.

Sunshine and water

Last Sunday and something quite unexpected happened. The sun shone, it was warm, there was spring in the air. Then, also out of the blue, Marcia received a text from a friend of ours: he was on his way to Totnes with his family (and dog) - could we meet?

The Royal Seven Stars

So it was that found ourselves sitting outside the Royal Seven Stars enjoying excellent coffee and listening to his plans. Allow me to introduce David Hurst, his wife Debs and two small sons, Daniel and Darley . . . and Colin their collie cross, destined to be the blog dog next week.

The four D's: Debs with Darley - David with Daniel 

David worked for the Evening Standard as an editor until deciding that life in some rural spot would be better for them as a family rather than living in London. Accordingly they bought a cottage in Devon and David became a freelance writer. He is a very good journalist and works very hard so, almost against the odds, is very succesful. This next part of the story came as a bit of a shock - you will see why in a moment.

Before we left Totnes, I noticed something I had never seen before. This building on the left used to house the old Bradford and Bingley Building Society where I had an account at about the time we set off on our journeys around the country. What did I see? The first floor windows - detail below.

Shortly they will be setting off in a camper van - but leaving Colin with Debs' mother - and will be spending a fortnight travelling around Spain, spending time in various camp sites. All of this will result in an article about exploring that part of the world in a camper van with two smalls - four and two-years old. Watch this space for further news on this adventure.

I love these little details - see the stonework to the left and that little window looking up the road.

Now let us wind the clock back about thirty years. The year before there had been a "Village Ventures" competition throughout England supported by the Duke of Edinburgh and sponsored by Shell. I was to write a short book describing some of the more interesting entries into the competition and this meant, obviously, that I had to visit the various places to find out what people had been doing and to interview the movers and shakers.

The walk back to the car took us through this arch into one of the many narrow lanes in the old part of the town.

So it was that two adults, Marcia and I, set off in a camper van with two smalls. The basic difference was that our smalls were both dogs. We made three trips in all: the first took us up the western since of the country and back down through the Midlands, the second covered the eastern side and East Anglia and the last started in Bath and then followed the Kennet and Avon canal and the River Thames towards London before swinging south to visit the counties bordering the English Channel.

We had already passed the children's play area made from old house timbers.

Three events in particular stick in my mind.

In a small village in Shropshire, a village hall had been built which combined a number of functions. One of these was a doctor's surgery. The doctor in question was a delightful character who, half way through the interview, jumped up and sat cross-legged on a work top (we were talking in the hall's kitchen) looking like a very benevolent gnome.

On the way home we saw our first hazel catkins proving that spring is on the way . . .

Then there was Carlisle. I should explain that our camper van was an old Bedford with a three speed gearbox with the gear lever on the steering wheel column. Over time the links below had worn and every now and then she would jam in neutral. The cure was to jump out, crawl underneath and pull one of the levers back to reset everything. In the centre of Carlisle in a square that has traffic criss-crossing it in every direction and in the rush hour this is exactly what happened. A very small and very efficient young policewoman very kindly stopped all the traffic so that I could effect the needed adjustments.

. . . and another example of corrugated iron.

Our next encounter with the police was extremely upsetting. It was on the second trip and we were in Nottinghamshire. The miners' strike was at its height and as we travelled around, the sense of menace in the air was tangible with groups of miners confronting squads of policemen. We did not see any actual violence but on the ventures I visited was the creation of a sports field complete with a superb pavilion all on what had been a piece of wasteland. This had all happened thanks to the efforts of miners. We do well to remember that it is a terrible simplification to blame either the miners or the police for the the times when matters did get out of hand. On both sides there were a few hotheads but the real problem was that a situation had been allowed to arise where the outcome really mattered - was it to be the government that ruled the country or the unions? As in all cases of war - for that is what this was - it was the end result of the failure of diplomacy

Finally we can to the water. The lane passes under the main railway line and, as you can see, it was flooded. "You're not going to drive through that, are you?" asked Marcia. "Well, it's either that or we turn round and go back to the main road." Then as we were wondering what to do, a woman arrived (wearing gumboots, of course) and she told us that if we kept in the middle it should be all right. And it was.

Hopefully David, Debs, Daniel and Darley will encounter nothing but sunshine and friendliness wherever they go.

This week's blog dog is called Charlie. Charlie bounces a lot and most of the photographs, such as the one to the left, demonstrated this habit which, from the photographers point of view is unhelpful.

Luckily his owner had a treat in her pocket which, as you can see in the top picture, overcame all such tendencies which were instantly replaced by intense concentration.

Commas

It is Thursday and we are in Totnes. That is a nice simple sentence but like its famous cousin, eats shoots and leaves, is open to misinterpretation. Did I mean because it is Thursday we are in Totnes or it happens to be a Thursday and it happens that we are in Totnes?

As it stands it probably suggests the former. To swing it in the other direction some writers would add a comma. 'It is Thursday, and we are in Totnes.' I feel that works quite well but a better solution would be to rethink the sentence so let's start again.

Since I could think of no photographs to illustrate commas, after the blog was written we popped over to Dartington Hall to see how the spring is getting on in the gardens there. This is the main gateway into The Courtyard with the entrance to the Great Hall in the background.

In fact it was really neither of those options. Yesterday (Wednesday) this part of the world was suffering from hurricane force winds (not at all usual in the UK) and torrential rain. The forecast suggests that tomorrow will be the same. Today there is a break in the weather complete with sunny spells. It would have been a shame not to make the best of it so, even though it is very cold making it essential to wrap up well, we decided to spend the morning in Totnes.

I write these blogs in all sorts of places - sometimes on Friday morning, sometimes on Thursday. I am in The Brioche for no other reason than that it seemed the right place to be today. Often I am on the other side of the road and a bit further down - in Rumour - and I have also worked in The Boathouse between the sea and Slapton Ley at Torcross. You may remember that the last blog of 2013 was devoted to the village and The Boathouse.

This is one corner where the crocus is king at this time of the year.

The storms that hit Torcross last week resulted in waves breaking over the sea wall and carrying tons - and that is no exaggeration - of pebbles from the beach and, like many other buildings facing the sea, The Boathouse suffered from smashed windows, broken furniture and general water damage. As if that wasn't enough, a few days later a fire broke out. Despite some seven fire appliances attending there was a great deal of damage done before everything was under control. I have no idea how long it will be before they are able to open for business. We both feel deeply for what they are going through and hope that getting things sorted out will not prove too traumatic.

Back to commas. A few days ago there was reported that John McWhorter, an associate professor of English at Columbia University, believes that the comma has outlived its useful life and should be abolished. His reasoning is that this is much misunderstood and misused - with which I agree - and should be put out of its misery - with which I do not agree. (The word 'actually' is much misused but I would not wish to see it abolished.)

How do these delicate flowers cope with this sort of weather?

One of the most important uses of the comma (well, two commas in this case) as far as I am concerned is to flag up a parenthesis where the clause between the commas offers additional information but is not an essential part of the sentence. Dartmoor, with its deep valleys and high tors, is one of the most beautiful parts of England. Take out the commas and what they contain and you still have a perfectly good sentence.

Problems arise when a sentence contains three commas. Let us look at the sort of sentence I have in mind. "The sense of anti-climax was almost overwhelming and, walking back down the drive to the narrow lane, he'd felt oddly hurt, thinking that she might at least have offered him a cup of tea."

The first daffodils.

Now I am treading on very thin ice. That sentence is taken from the opening chapter of The Golden Cup. Two of the commas here flag up a parenthesis and the third a pause but I feel that using the same punctuation to do two different jobs in one sentence can cause a muddle and so I am not that happy when it happens. The third comma, by the way, is what is known over here as the Oxford comma and (I think this is right) in the U.S. as the Harvard comma.

Accordingly there may be an argument for using something different to differentiate between a pause and a parenthesis. Actually, in some old documents everything was punctuated simply to mirror the speech patterns. They used all sorts of marks including forward slashes and dashes as well as most if the ones we use today.

So why do we use punctuation at all? If you look at a well drafted Will, for example, it will see no punctuation. This makes it harder to read but avoids any risk of misunderstandings and there is the key. Punctuation helps the reader to make sense of the sentence. As such it is not cast in stone but the way it is used will change with time. If I were given the job of copy editing (line editing in the U.S.) one of Charles Dickens’ works I have a horrid feeling that the only marks I would leave in place would be the full stops. The fact is that he was writing for his time and I am writing for now but, if I am honest, I am already out of fashion. Marcia, quite rightly, is moving with the times which is exactly what you would expect.

Hellebore

One thing I do remember. When I was a student, it was drummed into us that a bad sentence can never be improved by the use of punctuation and that a good sentence stands with none at all. And, (another use of the Oxford comma which I claim to dislike) where all that came from I really do not know. I promise that next week I will not write the blog in The Brioche.

These two West Highland Terriers, Millie and Maddie, are following in the pawsteps of our last dog, Jossie. All three belonged to elderly owners and were found new homes by the Cinnamon Trust when their owners died. To find out more about the trust, please click here.

Storms

This last week our lives have been dominated by the weather. I am sure that all of you, no matter where in the world you live, will have heard that there has been a series of disturbingly violent weather systems streaking across the North Atlantic and hitting the British Isles with storms: torrential rain, winds in excess of ninety miles per hour and much higher tides than usual (thanks to the strong winds pushing more water towards our coast).

The results has been considerable coastal flooding twice a day at high tide times – flooding which in places has done serious damage – and flooding inland because there has been more rainfall than the rivers could disperse.

We are told this is due to the position of the jet stream and the difference in temperature on either side of it. That all sounds reasonable but then others say that there is more power in the weather thanks to climate change and that also sounds reasonable. To be frank I really don’t know about the causes but I really do know about the effects.

Probably the most dramatic is the damage to the cliffs at Dawlish. The sea has carried away all the supports under the railway tracks and they are now suspended in the air, swinging as if they were made of rope and not steel. It will be many weeks before this line is opened again. Click here to see video of what happened.

For the people living down here this is rather a disaster: it is the only railway line that feeds west from Exeter. Plymouth and Truro, both cities, plus all the main towns – Newton Abbot, Totnes, St Austell, and Penzance to name but four – and countless smaller communities are isolated from the country’s rail network.

It is a line dear to both of us. So many characters in so many of Marcia’s books use it. In the Chadwick Trilogy Fliss used it to come home every week-end when she was at Rolle College. Kate used it to go to London for the presentation in The Sea Garden. It has really hit home because the book Marcia is now writing (I shall call this The Book) was conceived as she was travelling down on that railway having been upcountry to visit her son. Furthermore, in the second paragraph of The Book Claude (you will have to wait until the autumn of 2015 to meet Claude but I can tell you that I like him enormously) travels down through Dawlish from his home in Salisbury on his way to Dartmouth.

Then there is Torcross. This one hit both of us. I am (as you know) struggling to finish the first book about Marcia’s West Country – the one dealing with Dartmouth and Start Bay and the novels set in that area. The text is all written and I am working through now popping in the photographs and adding the required captions. Here follows a photograph I put in on Wednesday and the caption that I wrote.

Huge boulders were brought in to protect Torcross from the sea although, on such a placid day as this, it would seem they would never be needed.

It just so happens that on the day I am writing this (5 February 2014) it has been announced that Torcross suffered from another storm last night with a number of houses being evacuated - and that despite the new sea wall.

I said “to both of us” because Jemima returns in The Book – and Jemima is now living in Torcross which is one of the communities that suffered from those coastal floods. The seas were so strong that they carried huge amounts of pebble and hurled them against the houses where they smashed windows and caused other damage. Some people could not escape by going out of the doors on the landward side of their homes as the waves were breaking right over the roofs and there was water – very active water – everywhere.

So, yes, it has been a worrying time but there have been very few casualties. What it has done is to make many of us think quite seriously about the fate of people in other parts of the world. We are remembering those who died and suffered other losses in events such as Hurricane Katrina and the dreadful tsunami that followed the volcanic activity in the Indian Ocean in 2004.

Marcia and I have escaped unscathed although the noise in the house as it is being battered by the high winds is sometimes very scary.

Meet Percy - a dog that lives in a doggy heaven, s "deli".