Ageing

Sure, the inmates of Forges-L’Evêque are ageing, but so too are their belongings.  I noticed a day or two ago that the screen of my iPad has started to part company with the case thereof, and that the whole thing is running rather hot.  I donned a mask and went to the iShop in the mall today, and they say it’s cheaper to replace than to repair.  Like its predecessor, this iPad is heading for the scrap heap after a little more than three years.  Three hard years, however: it’s been in use for most of my waking hours, not to mention many days at the hobby, where HM iPads were provided rather late in my ‘career’, and I often found I needed two screens open at a time.  A spot of training might have obviated the need, but...  Anyway, the shop is out of stock, as also is the warehouse, so I’ll have to coax this one along for a bit longer.

Back in the 1980s, I signed up for an upholstery evening class, and with a lot of help from my teacher, re-upholstered a wing armchair from the wood up.  I’ve since replaced the springs and the cushion, but of course daily use (and the fact that my weight is not decreasing) take their toll on the upholstery.  My arthritic hands no longer allow me to do the work myself, so I plan to get it redone professionally.  My upholsterer of choice is the firm set up by my teacher, though I think his son and grandson are doing most of the work these days.  They seem to have opened up again, so I’ll ring them on Tuesday.  (They stay closed on Mondays, but show no other Gallic tendencies.)  If the reupholstered version lasts as long as my job did, I’ll be about 105 before it needs a refit.

Oh, and the washing-up bowl has sprung a leak.

Colour

The garden is doing pretty well, despite systematic neglect.  Penstemons old and new are flowering well, and the overwintered rudbeckias are starting too.  The tomatoes have needed some tying up and pruning, but we’re hopeful of a decent crop.  I pinched out the runner beans today, since they were threatening to drop a curtain over the earlier growth.  Martyn’s salad leaves are doing pretty well, but are in danger of being swamped by potato and bean foliage.  If, as we plan, we have the leylandii out and put in a veggie plot up the top, we’ll have a bit more space for the good life.  If we live that long.

Crops beginning

First of the charlottes: some decent sized spuds, but I think the others can stay in their bags for a week or so longer, with a good bit of feeding in the meantime.  their compost is now scattered amongst some of the rather dried out bedding plants.  The parent tomatoes are fruiting well, and the cuttings promise a second crop.  Beans are coming along well with the best results from seed we saved last back end.

We find that the wildlife likes the dill as well as the basil.  Paciência.

Landmarks

Today marks the 75th anniversary of my parents’ marriage.  I still wear the ring she wore from that day.  Yesterday we learned that Vera Lynn had popped off at 103.  I heard her sing her trademark song at the Festival Hall back in the 90s when she received her Honorary DMus.  My mother received her degree during the same ceremony: there were no graduation ceremonies in wartime, and London University had spotted a fund-raising opportunity. I remember how disappointed Mum was that she didn’t recognise any of her fellow graduands.  Still, by and large a good experience.

I learn today that my sister-in-law is pretty much out of it.  She is asleep much if not all of the time, and though she can’t swallow easily, she can still take liquidised food.  John seems to be coping admirably, and tells me they’ve decided that she’ll stay at home.  All very sad.

On a more prosaic note, I drove down to the village this afternoon for essential supplies (frozen peas and white wine).  Though the key fob worked the car door locks, the starter couldn’t see it, so I’d to come back indoors for the spare.  When I got back, I turned to the owner’s manual to find out how to change the battery.  Hopeless.  I then googled [Make, Model] key battery change, and instantly found a how-to video.  By some miracle, I had a spare battery of the correct type, so we’re back in business.        Having now been let down three times by key fob batteries, it’s time I kept spares in the glove box - and in the garage.

Music and things

Since we’re out and about so much less than usual, I’m spending far too much time watching stuff on YouTube, slouched in my usual chair with the iPad on my thigh.  I happened the other day on a performance of Eugène Gigout’s Grand-Chœur Dialogué, a rather flashy piece I first met on a record of Nicolas Kynaston playing the Albert Hall organ.  It’s not a work of great finesse, though there is a little fugato section towards the end.  It does serve to show off the resources of a big instrument, so has a lot of immediate appeal.  Well, the performance I happened upon was recorded in St Paul’s, and the dialogue was between the horizontal trumpets above the west door and a pretty full organ over the choir.  Must have made the phrasing a bit difficult.  As is common with YouTube, once you’ve visited a particular subject, it now puts up at least one other take on the same thing every day.  Yesterday, it was a performance by two organists on the two organs of Antwerp cathedral.  (I didn’t know it had two, having always been too tight to pay the admission charge!).  Today, YouTube brings an arrangement for organ, brass and percussion, and still another arrangement for organ and brass ensemble.  And yet another creditable performance by a self-taught American organist who died suddenly, aged 24.

Being a bit reactionary in my musical tastes, I tend to prefer stuff played on the instrument it was written for.  But a number of exceptions reinforce this rule.  For example, I’ve enjoyed performances of Bach’s rather over-exposed Toccata and Fugue in d minor on harp, on handbells and even on a glass harmonica.  And going in the opposite direction, I’m enjoying Jonathan Scott’s arrangements for organ of popular orchestral pieces, very much the stock in trade of municipal organists in the early 20th century, and the reason why so many English town halls sport big, brassy four-manual organs.

We had a minor catastrophe yesterday.  Dislodged, probably, by vibration from the washing machine, a box of scrapers and sandpaper fell off its shelf in the garage, scratching the wing of Martyn’s car as it went.  I took some coloured polish to it today with a limited degree of success.  The car was very reluctant to start, however, so once I’d done with the polish, I took it for a run round a ten-mile circuit.  Shortly before I got home, a chap stopped me and asked me to back up a bit: he was ushering a vociferous cow back into her field.  ‘Come on, Daisy!  Good girl, Daisy’.  Smallish scale farming, I suspect.  We can occasionally hear cows from home.  It helps us to feel as though we live in a village rather than (more accurately) a suburb.  Anyway, the little circuit did its job: the car started a little more willingly after Daisy had been led through the gate.

Two steps forward, one step back

Best part of three weeks since we asked the local chippy to come and sort the side gate he fitted last autumn, Martyn ran out of patience today and moved the staples so that we can once again bolt and lock the gate.  As we expected, and indeed had been warned, the gate had dropped, so that it could no longer be bolted.  Ten minutes with a drill and a screwdriver: Bob: uncle, Fanny: aunt.

We have treated ourselves to some new terra cotta pots for the terrace, since we now have more tomatoes and aubergines to accommodate.  Four out of the six are planted up, and we have another two waiting in the wings for the best of the tomato cuttings.  Elsewhere in the veggie department, the beans we sowed from seed saved last year are flowering nicely.  The local wildlife, however, has also been active, digging into one of the potato bags, dammit.

The new containers were not cheap, but to put things in context, they probably cost little more than a couple of bottles from the Cunard wine list.  And since we heard today that the September/October cruise has been cancelled (no big surprise) we can spend it on pots, rather than spending pots on Cunard.  We think we’ll leave the deposit, with its 25% enhancement, with Cunard rather than the bank, where it would just depreciate.  We’ve enjoyed most of the time we’ve spent in the floating care homes, and there are still lots of places we want to visit before we turn our toes up.

A distant glimpse of normality

My Monday routine includes a ride down to Fortnums, which, again, was pretty quiet today.  On the way there, I fell in behind a couple in a Ford Ka+ at the foot of our street.  They took the same route as I, at a steady 25-30 mph regardless of the speed limits.  This did not make for great patience on my part when it came to Ordeal by Fortnums.  People still seem to be shopping in pairs, which we’d been told we weren’t allowed to.  What is worse, said pairs tend to dither around in the aisles (unmasked, of course) so I can’t even hold my breath and dash past.  Oh, well, I got what we needed and got out again, unscathed, I hope.  I used one of our disposable masks today, and think it was fractionally less unpleasant than the fabric washable ones.  But I acknowledge that I’m so very fortunate to be able to drive (however impatiently), go shopping (dithery co-shoppers notwithstanding) and breathe (with only a mask, rather than a policeman’s knee, impeding the process).

On returning home, I’d a call from Miss, asking whether we’d be at home to take in some plants she’d been saving for us.  Rocket, tomatoes and aubergine seedlings.  She went off with a couple of little boxes of stuff from the cold frames.  This is the real joy of gardening: nurturing seedlings and cuttings, and then sharing them with friends.

So, with suitable physical distance, and exclusively in the fresh air, we’ve had our first visit for months, tradesmen apart.  What’s better, we now have lots of rocket, some tomatoes and a few aubergine plants to add to our little potager.  Where they’re all going is another question.

Well, if it’s good enough for Cummings...

I’m quite shocked at the virtual absence of masks on people we see on the rare occasions we venture out, and at the disregard of physical distance rules.  Of course, it doesn’t help that government’s handling of the whole business is vague, vacillating, and increasingly cynical and downright corrupt.  Have a search on YouTube some time for Dillie Keane’s Song for Cummings.

We finally got the fences sort of sorted yesterday, and are steeling ourselves for the arrival of the bill, which will take most of a month’s state pension (even before HMRC has had its share).  Our neighbours’ ivy has done more damage than we thought, so I suspect we’ll have to dig deep again quite soon.  We’ve also committed to the fitting of plastic gutters and adjacent surfaces some time this summer or autumn, so are rather hoping that Cunard will cancel the cruise we’d planned for September/October before the balance is due!

A few weeks ago, Annie heard a radio gardening pundit telling listeners that they only needed one tomato plant.  You can evidently propagate by harvesting the side shoots that would otherwise finish up in the compost.  Our sweet olive F1s are doing very well in tubs on the terrace, and we have more side shoots rooting on the kitchen window ledge than we’ll ever be able to plant.  Some say stick them in pots of compost, others say to root them in water.  We’re trying both, and both lots look pretty happy.  Meanwhile, we’ve spent our last gardening voucher on some new stakes - plastic-coated metal by the feel of them - and the six original plants are tied back and making lots of flowers.

Meanwhile, in the raised bed - which we can just about reach through the luxuriant foliage of the potatoes growing in bags on the terrace along the low wall - the first planting of runner beans is coming into flower, and the next lot are starting to climb.  I’d given up on a half-hearted sowing of ancient dwarf French beans that I’d put straight in the soil, and planted out some sitooterie-sown plants.  Needless to say, the outdoor sowing is now coming through.  With luck, we’ll be doing a lot of blanching and freezing in a few months’ time.

The flowering department is doing well too.  The polyanthus have largely gone over, though dead-heading seems to be encouraging one or two new blooms.  The rhododendrons have done very well, but have now finished.  The hydrangeas are coming along well, and the roses are getting into their stride - see previous post.  Some of our seedling tagetes are in flower, and the antirrhinums are starting to bud.  Every other spare square inch is packed with half-hardy rudbeckias.  Most are seedlings from the seed we saved last back end, but a few have overwintered at least twice.  I’m busting to see what mix of colours we get this year.

It’s a good job we have signs of life in our little bubble.  I can’t remember when I’ve felt worse about the world of politics either side of the pond.  It looks as if a rather feeble Democratic candidate stands a chance of toppling the orange megalomaniac.  Over this side, each day brings more evidence of the utter incompetence of HMG, whose handling of the pandemic is clearly motivated by the financial health of its donors rather than the health of a floundering, bewildered nation.  Please excuse my habitual understatement.

Roses so far

Queen Elizabeth

The Justice of the Peace

Blue for You

Abraham Derby 

Mrs Pat Austin

Compassion

Geoff Hamilton 

Handel

Birthday Girl