Emotions reflected in tranquility

For D in your sadness.

Beware the lastest email scam

I received a series of emails today from an American blogger that I've been friends with for several years via the internet. These emails claimed that this friend was in London and had all her money and papers stolen. She needed money to pay the bill and buy a new ticket back to the States, where she would refund my money immediately.

No, I didn't fall for it either but I sent her an email to warn her that her ID had probably been stolen. The scammers intercepted that email and a message that I posted on her blog and sent more emails saying "It really is me." I replied to one of them (mistake!) saying she should contact the US Embassy and got an immediate reply that she had tried and they would replace her passport but not cash.

I checked with the embassy myself and this scam is doing the rounds. Don't be fooled - the embassy staff will help any US citizen who is in trouble. What is concerning though is that the scammers can get into someone's email account.

If anyone gets an email purporting to be from me, begging for money, don't reply to it. I promise that it won't be genuine.

End of the festival

This weekend saw the end of the North Devon Festival which has been an absolute feast of music. It ended for me on Friday night at the Queen's Theatre, where John Mayall lived up to his status as "legendary."

He had a really good band, none yet as famous as past members of his Bluesbreakers but watch this space as there was a lot of talent on stage with him. Not having any video footage of the current line-up, I offer you a clip from 2007 with Buddy Whittington.


My dear friend over at 60goingon16 is in Hyde Park at this moment enjoying the Hard Rock Festival. We 60-somethings never forget our musical roots!

A bag to put it in

As Christmas or birthdays approached and we children started to list all the things we would like to have, my mother would put a stop to our greediness with, "Oh yes, and a bag to put it in."

My son and daughter-in-law were not at all greedy when choosing something from The Quilted Nursery, so when I finished the quilt they wanted, I made them a bag to put it in.

Summer is coming in

Or, to put it in a 13th century way, sumer is icumen in.*
The lavender is coming into flower and I'll soon be busy making lavender biscuits, cordial and champagne. It is also time to eat lovely salads made with home grown goodies.


And then, of course, there is Wimbledon. It would be good to see Andy Murray win but even if he doesn't, it has been great to see those traditional Fred Perry shirts and shorts.
* Okay, you purists, I know it really is really a song about Spring! But it always makes me think of summer.

Sing! cuccu, nu. Sing! cuccu.
Sing! cuccu. Sing! cuccu, nu.

Sumer is icumen in
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweth sed, and bloweth med,
And springeth the wude nu.

Awe bleteth after lomb,
lhouth after calve cu,
Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth,
Murie sing! cuccu.
Cuccu, cuccu,
Well singes thu, cuccu -
Ne swik thu naver nu!

Thanks to erp for suggesting this:

A happy childhood memoir

Looking along the shelves of contemporary biographies in the book stores, I see only rows of depressing accounts of childhood deprivation and abuse. I was beginning to wonder if memoirs had become the monopoly of the miserable when I came across Priscilla Napier's A Late Beginner. This was first published in 1966 but my edition is from 1999. It is the story of an Edwardian childhood in a happy, loving family where privilege went hand in hand with duty and responsibility.
Priscilla Hayter was born in 1908 into a world of nannies, governesses, horse-drawn carriages, bathing machines and close family ties. Her father was Sir William Hayter, the legal and financial adviser to the Egyptian government during the period of the British Protectorate, and her mother was Alethea Slessor, daughter of a Hampshire rector.

Priscilla's childhood was spent in Cairo, but her mother brought the children to England each year to spend the summer months with her sisters and their families. A Late Beginner is Priscilla's detailed, witty recollection of the two very different worlds she inhabited during the closing years of the British Empire; years including the Great War, which impacted on her family in many ways.

Priscilla went on to marry Trevylyan Napier, a naval officer who was killed in action in 1940. With a young family to support, she turned to writing biographies of some of her husband's illustrious ancestors then, in 1966 she produced this story of her own childhood experiences. This biography does not touch on her adult life, it ends with her final departure from Egypt at the age of twelve to attend school in England. So what we have is a concentrated account of impressions from her formative years, told so convincingly that they seem to come fresh from the lips of the child.

"Do very small children have thoughts?" she asks at the beginning of the book. Her opinion is that everything that happens to a young child remains in the memory as feeling: "Passionate surges of delight, anger, grief, affection, terror and surprise imprint on the memory a series of highly-coloured photographs with blurred edges; brief incidental exposures without before or after."

Reading her vivid accounts of childish embarrassments, delights and terrors stirred many of my own memories. How I used to dread the scornful laughter of grown-ups and here she describes it perfectly: "If only, if only they wouldn't laugh! Punishment I could have endured. It was grown-up and straightforward and soon over, and carried anyway a certain dignity and importance. It was not diminishing, as laughter was."

Older, more sophisticated cousins had the same ability to undermine the confidence of the young Priscilla. They travelled from India to spend the summer holidays in England, "Their sophistication was electrifying. They even knew to say tiger and not tigers. Would one ever arrive at being so superbly scornful? Thus early do the Joneses raise their never to be drawn level with heads." Who hasn't been intimidated by the apparent polish and experience of slightly older children? My older cousins could not impress us with tales of tiger shoots but they had the superior status of being boys who had pocket knives and knew Morse code and semaphore.

Another memory common to all families is the childish misuse of language. Priscilla and her brother were taken for their daily walk along the Nile, "A mile south along the river bank was the bridge to Giza, interestingly called the Pongly-Zongly: it was many years before these words revealed themselves to me as Pont des Anglais."

While readers of any age will identify with many of the insights into the child's experience and behaviour, the book is also a vivid account of a time and way of life long past. Priscilla's parents grew up in the time of Queen Victoria and married in the Edwardian era. She describes her mother and aunts as "true Victorians; not in a general way frightened of battle, murder and sudden death, but perfectly terrified of insects." These women left the comfort and certitude of upper middle class life in England to accompany their soldier or diplomat husbands to the far reaches of the Empire; they crossed the ocean twice a year with their children to summer in England and accepted that, at a frighteningly young age, their sons would be left behind to be educated in English schools.

The men of the family grew up with a strong sense of duty and honour. This description of her uncles and cousins is a poignant reminder of just what was to be lost just a year or two later:

"Their voices, heard in mockery, affection, or sternness, rang always with that confident buoyancy that was to sink for ever in the mud of the Great War battlefields, with that unquestioning sense of the rightness and fitness of the Pax Britannica and of their place within it. They basked in what they imagined to be its high noon, in what were in fact its last rays ...... Consciously Christians, of a sort, they fought the good fight against an excess in drinking, smoking or spending; against paying insufficient regard to mothers-in-law or dull old relations. They believed in practically everything except Father Christmas and votes for women, and it made for great peace of mind.... They believed in right and wrong, with a strong line drawn between.... Their self-mastery, and not only or mainly sexual matters, was truly adult; and when the appalling calamity of World War 1 avalanched over them, they confronted it without self-pity. From their loss we all still suffer..... There was something marvellously entire about them."

A Late Beginner is a beautifully written, absorbing autobiography. While it touches on some of the most important issues of the early twentieth century, they are presented, as they were experienced, by a perceptive and imaginative child. It is funny and charming and I am tempted to go on quoting from it. I will select one of my favourite bits as a final offering before recommending that you get a copy for yourself:

"Why should I divide 7 million, 5 hundred and 23 thousand, 8 hundred and ninety-one, by 373? What is the point of long division? None; I decided in a sudden burst of glorious rationality, truly none. This was one of the few sensible rebellions of my childhood; life has never called upon me to long divide.... The rebellion was dramatic and satisfactory, at least at the moment of its inception. I threw my book on the ground, overturned my chair and jumped out of the window."

A girl after my own heart!

Another baby, another quilt

I have just put the last stitch into this quilt for the expected addition to the family. In good quilting tradition, I have made a number of mistakes. I love that tradition as it means I can pretend they were deliberate mistakes.

Recent distractions

I have been in London for a few days, enjoying the company of my delightful granddaughter. As you can see, even a picnic in the garden can be an occasion for high drama."Okay, Grandma, you can have some pictures for your blog."

Then, caught red-handed picking out the favourite bits, it is.......... "Get that camera out of here!"

Just before leaving for London, I noticed a lot of activity in the garden: two pairs of young blackbirds started building nests inside the garage. After zooming around to collect twigs, they started to look for softer materials for the linings. Click on the pictures for a better view.
Eventually, this one noticed some string on the wall beside him.

While he was putting that into the nest, we cut up lots more string and the birds kept us busy for an hour.
They didn't mind our presence at all, just as long as we kept on cutting up bits of string.

They are sitting on the eggs at present but I'm hoping to get some pictures of the stringy nests when they have finished.

A treat for your feet?

Readers of Random Distractions have been offered a discount on purchases of Ugg boots. Sarah at Whooga has created a gift card for us to spend on their website. It is worth $30 USD or £15 GBP. Just enter the code RANDOMIST in the box in the cart to claim the discount.

Not my M & S

Don't believe the logo, M&S doesn't care about you or me. I can't claim to have been one of their most valued customers but I have been a regular and loyal customer for almost 50 years. I had a store card, which became a credit card a few years ago. I would use the card for my purchases and pay it off online as soon as my statement arrived.

Oops! Last month something happened to distract me between collecting the mail and going to my desk and I forgot to make the payment and by the time we returned from the wedding in Lancashire my payment was overdue. Today I received my punishment - an interest charge of £1.57. Fair enough. I came to my desk to make the payment and discovered another sheet of paper in the envelope:

You have failed to make a payment
Failing to make your minimum payment can mean that you have broken the terms of this credit agreement and could result in us taking legal action against you. It could lead to your having to pay additional costs and make it more difficult for you to obtain credit in future.

In case you are wondering what enormous sum I owed M&S to incur such threats - FIVE POUNDS!

My account is now closed.

Out of time

I always seem to be out of time these days. However, the title of this post isn't about my hectic schedule but a reminder that I am going to see Chris Farlowe perform tonight and Out of Time is, of course, his most famous number from 1966. Here, courtesy of YouTube is the early version:

I don't know about you, but I think he is one of those people who looks and sounds better forty years on:

The power of honey

Put away your pills and lotions and try the honey and cinnamon cure.

I read all about it in today's edition of the Bulawayo Morning Mirror.


The magic of Honey

It is found that a mixture of Honey and Cinnamon cures most diseases. (Their words, not mine!)
ARTHRITIS
Take one part of Honey to two parts of lukewarm water and add a small teaspoon of Cinnamon powder. Make a paste and massage it on the itching part of the body slowly
Arthritis patients can take one cup of hot water with two spoons of Honey and one teaspoon of Cinnamon powder every day
HAIR LOSS
Apply a paste of hot Olive Oil, one tablespoon of Honey and one teaspoon of Cinnamon powder. Massage onto head and keep on for 10 to 15 minutes then wash off. Do regularly to alleviate hair loss or baldness
BLADDER INFECTIONS
Take two tablespoons of Cinnamon powder and one teaspoon of Honey in a glass of lukewarm water and drink to destroy germs in the bladder
CHOLESTEROL
Two tablespoons of Honey and three teaspoons of Cinnamon powder mixed in 16 ounces of tea, when given to a cholesterol patient it reduces the level of cholesterol in the blood by 10% within 2 hours
STOMACH UPSET
Honey taken with Cinnamon powder cures stomach ache and also cleans stomach ulcers from the root. It also relieves gas in the stomach
INFERTILITY
If men regularly take two tablespoons of Honey before sleeping it can help to resolve the problem
For women, a pinch of Cinnamon powder in half a teaspoon of Honey, applied to the gums frequently throughout the day, so that it mixes with saliva and enters the body, can help to strengthen the uterus and aid with fertility
IMMUNE SYSTEM
Daily use of Honey and Cinnamon powder strengthens the immune system and protects the body from bacteria and viral attacks. Also good for cancer etc patients and heart disease. Though sweet, Honey when taken moderately as a medicine, will not harm diabetic patients
SKIN INFECTIONS
A paste consisting of three tablespoons of Honey and one teaspoon of Cinnamon powder, when regularly applied to the skin can get rid of pimples, eczema, ringworm and all sorts of skin infections
WEIGHT LOSS
Every morning, on an empty stomach half an hour before breakfast, and again at night before sleeping, drink Honey and Cinnamon powder boiled in one cup of water
LONGEVITY
Tea made with Honey and Cinnamon powder, when taken regularly, arrests the ravages of old age, increases life span and makes you look and feel younger
LOSS OF HEARING
Honey and Cinnamon powder taken in equal parts daily, can restore hearing.

I wish I had discovered this before embarking on that year of chemotherapy and wouldn't you just know that it cures weight loss and not weight gain!

Gilad with Strings

June promises to be a glorious month, not just for the sunshine but for the cultural life of this part of Devon. The 11th North Devon Festival runs throughout June, with music, dance, drama, art and literary events to suit every taste. As with all good festivals, the Fringe offers many additional events and the MM and I went to our first, last night: Gilad Atzmon with Strings.The venue was the Parish Church in Barnstaple, a rather ugly (to be honest, a very ugly) Victorian building with very uncomfortable pews. The discomfort was ignored, as was the fact that only those with seats on the aisle could see the musicians, because the music was sublime. The combination of Gilad Atzmon's jazz quartet and the Sigamos string quartet is, as the Independent on Sunday said, "... as perfect a jazz marriage as you could wish for." You can hear some of it by visiting the Gilad website.

We have tickets for the Chris Farlowe gig on Sunday. I have a high regard for him as a generous performer after seeing him at Westonbirt, where he was the introductory act before the less-than-generous Van Morrison came on stage. Later in the month we will be going to some concerts at the Queen's theatre: first to see Darius Brubeck (son of Dave) and then the legendary John Mayall. We are also going to Exeter to see Courtney Pine in the middle of June so I can no longer complain that living in Devon means being cut off from all that is interesting.

Comment moderation

Random Distractions was invaded by a series of spam comments today and I haven't been able to delete them. Until Google come up with a solution, I'm afraid I have switched on the comment moderation. I do hope that it won't put off all you really nice people whose comments are so very welcome.

Poetry season

The perfect antidote to the current obsession with MPs' tax evasion and fiddling of expenses, is the BBC Poetry Season. Last night, actress Sheila Hancock presented her choice of poetry in the moving and inspiring launch of the series My life in verse. Poetry has played an important part in her coping with grief and finding a way to move on after the death of her husband, John Thaw and in this programme (available on iPlayer for a few weeks), she maps her progression from despair to light through the poems that comforted or inspired her along the way.

Some of her choices were familiar pieces and I simply enjoyed the beautiful delivery of the verse and the wonderful settings including the Fens, Provence. Tennyson is not a favourite of mine, but Sheila's setting of Break, Break, Break into her own childhood experience of friendship, followed by the exploration of its origin in Tennyson's grief over the death of his friend, gave a new insight into the poet and I am encouraged to look at his work again.

The focus of this programme was human relationships and I heard this poem by Primo Levi for the first time. It brings all of our human associations into the compass of friendship and wishes for all the kindest hope of a long and mild autumn.

TO MY FRIENDS

Dear friends, I say friends here

In the larger sense of the word:

Wife, sister, associates, relatives,

Schoolmates, men and women,

Persons seen only once

Or frequented all my life:

Provided that between us, for at least a moment,

Was drawn a segment,

A well-defined chord.

I speak for you, companions on a journey

Dense, not devoid of effort,

And have also for you who have lost

The soul, the spirit, the wish to live.

Or nobody or somebody, or perhaps only one, or you

Who are reading me: remember the time

Before the wax hardened,

When each of us was like a seal.

Each of us carries the imprint

Of the friend met along the way;

In the trace of each.

For good or evil

In wisdom or in folly

Each stamped by each.

Now that time presses urgently,

And the tasks are finished,

To all of you the modest wish

That the autumn may be long and mild.

Painted ladies come to call

It has been a gloriously sunny day today so I have spent a lot of time in the garden. Even mother-in-law, who generally complains of the short walk from her room to the dining room, was persuaded to join us for lunch al fresco.

We noticed that we had a few uninvited but most welcome guests; at first just two Painted Ladies who were joined by a few more. At the last count there were fifteen.

I had heard that there are lots of painted lady butterflies in England this year but it was a lovely surprise to see so many in my garden.



If you spot Painted Ladies in your area, you can help Butterfly Conservation to map their migration by recording your sightings here.

War on the Margins update

In September 2008, I wrote about Libby Cone's self-published novel War on the Margins, an excellent novel based on real events during the wartime occupation of the Channel Islands. I am delighted to say that the book will be appearing in the bookshops in July, published by Duckworth.

The new cover is more evocative of the book's content than the original was and there is a surprise for bloggers on the back cover: the teaser is a quotation from Dovegreyreader's review. (Click on picture to enlarge)
Much has been said in the media about bloggers reviewing books, mostly suggesting that it is a Bad Thing and that reviewing should be left to The Professionals. Earlier this year, in a debate on radio, Cornflower made an excellent case for the two to co-exist. The major newspapers and magazines would not have promoted War on the Margins but bloggers saw it, loved it and recommended it to one another. Well done Duckworth Publishers for acknowledging the significance of the personal recommendation.

The road that leads home

I have been in Lancashire for a few days, attending my niece's wedding and catching up with family and friends. It was really good to be there for such a joyous occasion since my visits in the last few years have been more solemn, visiting sick relations or attending funerals.

We set out after lunch on Thursday on what should have been a four to five hour journey. The first two hours went well, with very little traffic on the motorway but then the traffic announcements started: a lorry had shed its load, a pothole had opened in the road, a caravan had overturned and so on. The predicted long delay became a tailback of 7 miles, then 27 miles then between three,four then five, motorway junctions and growing longer. We had to choose between sitting in a queue of traffic for many hours or leaving the motorway and driving in the real world. This was one of the occasions when I was very glad that I had married a professional navigator!

We drove through parts of Shropshire and Cheshire on the wonderfully straight and wide Roman roads. We could see for miles across fields, rivers and canals, such a different experience from driving through narrow Devon lanes with their high banks and hedgerows.

Here are just a few of the sights we would have missed if we had stayed on the motorway:Stapeley Water Gardens
Churche's Mansion House, Nantwich

River Weaver, Nantwich

Aqueduct, Nantwich

Sankey Canal

Driving through the beautiful northern countryside, I was reminded of the pre-motorway and seatbelt days of my youth, when we would squeeze six or eight people into a car and head for the country pubs or picnic spots. I suddenly had an almost physical longing to be back there and thought of Mole, in The Wind in the Willows, being overwhelmed by the sense of his Dulce Domum:
He stopped dead in his tracks, his nose searching hither and thither in its efforts to recapture the fine filament, the telegraphic current, that had so strongly moved him.......... Home! That was what they meant, those caressing appeals, those soft touches wafted through the air, those invisible little hands pulling and tugging, all one way!........ his old home that he had hurriedly forsaken and never sought again... he had hardly given it a thought, so absorbed had he been in his new life, in all its pleasures, its surprises, its fresh and captivating experiences. Now with a rush of old memories, how clearly it stood up before him in the darkness.

Mole goes back to his old home and enjoys all the "familiar and friendly things" again but he realises that he doesn't really want to give up his new life above ground, "But it was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome." Like Mole, I thoroughly enjoyed my brief time in my old haunts, but I suppose one can never really go back. I do recommend leaving the motorway and driving through your childhood memories, though.

Shoe stories

Like most women, I love shoes. I have more pairs than I care to admit and yet always seem to need more.

This morning's Woman's Hour on Radio 4 featured artist Alice Instone talking about her latest exhibition Interview with a Shoe. The shoes in question are described as belonging to some of the most influential individuals in London and each pair tells a story, revealing something about the owner.

If you are lucky enough to be in the Bethnal Green area of London in the next two weeks, there are lots of reasons to visit the exhibition: love of contemporary art, curiosity about celebrities, interest in the role of shoes in literature or the history of fashion or in the ethics of the present day fashion industry. The charity Dress for Success, which helps promote the independence of disadvantaged women, will benefit from the proceeds of the exhibition.

The interview with Alice Instone reminded me of the significance of shoes in our lives. What woman can forget her first pair of high heels or the first pair of shoes she bought for her baby? Who can escape the impact of the image of the thousands of shoes confiscated from the victims of the Holocaust?
While out walking last week, I met an elderly lady from my church; she looked distressed so I stopped while she poured out her shoe story, a memory triggered by something she had just overheard. Maria is eighty years old, Austrian by birth but having lived in England since 1947. She was not quite fifteen when the Russian army invaded her village in Austria in April 1945. Already on the point of starvation, they had the added terror of stories of rape and violence as the soldiers advanced. Maria and her two older sisters fled with nothing but the clothes they were wearing and a little food. Maria was wearing an old pair of boots, passed down from her sisters.

The girls spent many weeks on the road, sleeping under hedges and eating whatever they could get. They eventually reached Bavaria, where they hoped to find the family of a German soldier they had met. By this time it was summer and Maria's feet were really suffering from the long journey and the heavy boots. The sisters found the family they were looking for and were taken in, although the lack of food and clothes was as bad as in their own village. There were no shoes to spare but the grandfather took his knife and cut Maria's boots to make her a pair of rough sandals: "The most beautiful shoes I have ever owned."

My own shoe story is far less noble but it taught me a salutary lesson.

I had an unfashionably happy childhood. We were not at all well-off but my mother contrived to dress us well and always took us to have our feet measured for our sturdy leather brogues and sandals, polished every night before we were allowed our cocoa. How she managed to keep four of us in the required outdoor shoes, indoor shoes, gym shoes, hockey or soccer boots, as well as wellingtons, slippers and play shoes I cannot imagine. But, when you are a stroppy teenager, such thoughts do not enter your selfish head.

I wanted a pair of fashionable slip-on shoes instead of the Clark's indoor shoes I was supposed to have for school. I was thirteen and "all my friends' mothers let them have fashion shoes." I must have worn my mother out, because I got a pair of cheap and rather nasty shoes with very pointed toes. They were very uncomfortable, more slip-off than slip-on but I strutted around in them and insisted on wearing them when we went to visit my Aunt Margaret in Cheshire, where everyone looks down upon their Lancashire neighbours.

We all went out for a walk after lunch but I couldn't keep up in the wretched shoes, which were really hurting by this time, pinching my toes and rubbing my heels. We had been joined on the walk by my aunt's friend and I heard them talking about my awful footwear. My aunt said, "Poor Winnie, she does her best but I expect they were all she could afford with four children to look after." I don't think I have ever quite forgiven myself for bringing such shame on my mother. I certainly never argued with her again when we went to buy our "sensible" shoes.

I suppose I deserved to have a daughter who insisted on choosing to wear her father's shoes to a party!

The veg box

For a few years, I have had my veggie box delivered from a well-known organic farm more than 75 miles away.The produce has always been first rate but I have been becoming increasingly aware of the struggle that our local growers are having, especially since Mr Tesco opened a store at the edge of the village.
I was chatting about this with a local young farmer and discovered that he does a home delivery of freshly picked vegetables at a fraction of the cost of my usual order. Not that price is the deciding factor for me, I think that, as a nation, we pay far too little for our food. As a result, we have lost some of the best varieties of fruit and vegetables.

I placed an order and I have been delighted with the three boxes I've had to date. This week I had lots of lovely asparagus and rhubarb and a surprise gift from the farmer's son: a box of little pullets' eggs. Here they are in a bowl with a regular hen's egg, small but perfectly formed and quite delicious.
I am going to be away for a few days and won't be posting or visiting any of your blogs until next week. I will be with a group of very energetic and enthusiastic young volunteers, planning for this year's summer camps. I feel exhausted already!