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Not Political — But…

Things are not necessarily the way the BBC leads us to expect — Today I awoke to radio warnings of major disruption — most generalised and widespread strikes for many years. Looking for excitement I set off with my camera to record this mass political action in an East Midlands post-industrial town. Firefighters, health workers, railway workers and teachers — all out?

Fire Station — Fire engines having a lie in — No picket line, no muscly men and athletic young women gathered round a brazier… Disappointing

Railway station quiet — should have pictured it for my friend Steve it as it is a fine example. Next stop — General Hospital…

Very quiet — no picket line — I walked all the way round — I saw 4 ambulances waiting peacefully to be deployed (both crew in the cab and not looking after patients in the back).

Sorry everyone — not very exciting. But wait! What have we here?

Two friendly lads in disconcerting ski masks practicing to be stunt men… That’s better! Sorry boys I should have got your names and asked if your teachers were on strike!

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Uncategorized

Large, detached family home!

One careful resident, since refurbishment in 1603 — the Sackville family, who still live there though it is now owned by the nation and managed by the National Trust. Literary note: yes, Vita Sackville-West lived here for a time and was visited by her lover, Virginia Woolf, who wrote about the house in Orlando (1928).

NT Information board picture displayed by the cafe.

It was always said to be a Calendar House, with 365 rooms, 52 staircases, 12 entrances and 7 courtyards, P G Wodehouse added that it also had [only] 20 bathrooms! Modernisation has removed some staircases and added some yards, but it is certainly substantial — the footprint is 4 acres!

Before the dissolution of the monasteries, it was home to a series of archbishops of Canterbury, here is the tithe barn. Henry VIII put pressure on the last one, Archbishop Cranmer, to swap his splendid archbishop’s palace at Knole for various abbeys and monasteries between Canterbury and Dover. One wonders if the fine deer park was a factor — they say not.
A survivor of the hunting, but still uneasy.

Some of you know my preoccupation with drains and plumbing generally. One of the things that impressed me at Knole was the Jacobean leadwork — the magnificent ornamental rainwater heads with turrets and fretwork. Other examples have initials, dates, chequers, stars, chevrons and bartizans.

Thomas Sackville set his order of the garter from ERI on the pipe collars
Arms of Sir Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset KG. Rs-nourse — own work CC BY-SA 3.0
Thomas, 1st Earl of Dorset
Lead Cistern in one of the courtyards. Initials LD, the arms of the order of the garter and half a date 17… Lionel Sackville received his in 1714. Became 1st Duke of Dorset in 1720…

But wait — I’ve found another photo.

1749 — what happened then? Can’t find out — maybe they just renovated the plumbing! Does anybody know?

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Uncategorized

Happy New Year!

At last the cloud has lifted. We have said good-bye to all our covid-tested Christmas visitors — family now gone home leaving that empty anti-climax and separation sadness. But wait! — It is the beginning of the nature-watchers year!

This kestrel feels the same!

We’ve been up to Rutland Water, up before dawn and seen 46 different bird species for the first time in 2022 — including red kites and kestrel, 2 avocets —

There were 4 great white egrets, 3 curlews and lots of pintail ducks (this one with tail sadly depressed).

Several beautiful smew were enjoying the unseasonally warm weather.

There were more golden plover than you could shake a stick at and anyway I have given up my stick as my new knee is now fully commissioned!

We looked high

and low!

And we listened to the yaffle of the green woodpecker and the piping of the widgeon.

The RSPB rat, cleaning up under the bird feeders, came to say hello — I have a soft spot for rats!

We witnessed the ferocious battle between two cormorants as they wrestled for possession of a large fish which eventually got away. One bird attacked from the air, dragging the other below the surface of the now turbulent water, they were gone for a few moments then erupted again and again with more splashing and flailing of wings — what mastery of their elements — how silly… They lost the fish and sailed off in opposite directions looking embarrassed.

Great white egret — like some of the other illustrations, this was not actually taken today — spot the seasonal inconsistences!
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Uncategorized

Fair Do!

Have you ever wondered why robins have such iconic status at this time of year?

It’s because they raise our spirits on miserable days — coming close as we garden in the winter rain. This week we have been excavating the old farm dump — decontaminating! Guess whose been helping? Actually (Bill points out) they use us (turn over this clod for me, will you?) They seem to like our company but they want our help (can you move this log?) They make us feel useful and you’ll catch yourself chatting to them as they flit about picking up the creepy crawlies that your digging uncovers. They used to sit still when we sketched them or painted them and now they come in close when we want to photograph them. You don’t need a great long lens to snap this little chap. He may be a cliche but he is most obliging!

Merry Christmas!

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Uncategorized

Bats!

When you have lived in a place for a long time you can become accustomed to its variety, even as its flora and wildlife change week by week. Showing it to someone new is an opportunity to throw off that familiarity that blunts your perception and see through refreshed eyes.

We have been playing with a new bat detector — a little gizmo that lowers the frequency of the otherwise inaudible echo location calls of bats into the audible range producing a sound we can hear and a pattern we can recognize and use to identify the species of bat as it flashes past.

Around our house in Wales we have recently identified pipistrelle, common and soprano, and noctules. The sopranos have higher pitched calls peaking at 55kHz, common ones at 45kHz. The detector makes one much more aware of their presence especially in the trees where there is much more activity than we had thought. It helps to demonstrate just how many and how busy these airborne insectivores are.

To aid identification one individual stopped by in my bedroom. He seemed very torpid and I was able to transport his sleeping body to the woodshed where he rested for a suspiciously long time.

Further investigation confirmed his extremely poor state of health and we buried him.

The following week the local bat group came to look at the colony of bats that have recently occupied our neighbour’s log cabin. They came armed with state of the art bat detectors, deck chairs, counters, tea, coffee, biscuits and insect repellent.

445 Soprano pipistrelles exited the roost that evening which led our neighbours to seriously ponder the possible toilet arrangements of their new tenants.

Thus, despite our own personal experience, soprano pipistrelle bats would seem to be thriving, at least in Wales.

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Humour, Uncategorized

Sunday Craik – the pity of it all

God spends quite a lot of time in the pub — sometimes he’s there when he’s supposed to be at chapel — that’s what I say to friends who ask where we are bound on a Sunday afternoon when the good folk are heading down the valley to the chapel.

Yesterday there was an added incentive (for the pub, not chapel) — Liverpool were playing Man. City in the League Cup.  It’s not that Alan supports Man. City (he would warm to anyone in competition with Manchester United  — it’s an underdog thing.  The landlord is an avid Liverpool supporter which adds to the fun enormously.

‘Can we have the Rugby on?’ asks Alan as we arrive.

‘There isn’t any!’ snaps the landlord.

‘Wasps are playing against ‘Quins on BT Sport,’

‘Can’t afford BT Sport with the pitiful amount you drink!’

‘Do Wasps have a ‘B’ team? asks Ikey, ‘Bee team’, he repeats, at which point a man in an overcoat, a knitted Balaclava and thick scarf runs into the bar and sexually assaults several ladies, it is the muffled titter running around the room — a tribute to My Dad — it was the only joke he knew!  No one takes any notice — they never did.

The landlord asserts himself by switching on the commentary.  That way he can follow the action despite all the distractions we can throw at him like the full glass of Stella I knock across the domino table due to the excitement of a penalty — it misses Alan almost completely.

As the match progresses the joy of winding up the landlord is irresistible — people who normally have no interest in football whooping with every Man City  tackle and berating the ref for every decision that favours Liverpool —  carried on a wave of affectionate teasing — warmed by our own mass action.  But Liverpool were never meant to lose.

If we want any more beer we had better shut up — during the penalty shoot-out there is a respectful silence — we have probably already gone too far.  The instant the winning Man City goal hits the back of the net the sound is switched off and program turned to Countryfile and someone says how Adam is a ‘really good farmer’ so everyone, relieved to change the subject, can discuss why he never has mud on his boots and where the puddles might have gone and why doesn’t he get a move on and swing that lamb.

 

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From Omaha to Hiroshima.

He wasn’t a hero.

Young GMB in uniform

He was a bookish boy with an academic interest in anything and everything to do with flight – that’s flying not running away. His father and uncle had been World War One aviators – the uncle was a hero (MC and DFC) and died. The father, whose wits were very quick and eyesight very good, was not a hero but survived and after the war produced the boy whose eyesight was poor and who took after his mother who was of a nervous disposition.

When the next war broke out the boy volunteered for the Royal Air Force, not to fly but to serve in the RAF Regiment as an officer on the ground, building runways and keeping up, just behind the lines, with all the logistics of flight – that’s flying not running away.

Unusually for the time, he had spent his childhood holidays, between the wars, in France and while a bookish boy at Highgate School , had been paired with a German Jewish refugee boy (Gerard Hoffnung) – the one to learn English the other German – it worked.

On D-day +1, about a week after he had married my mother, a bookish young man who spoke French and German was running up Omaha Beach in Normandy under fire, soaking wet and more terrified than he could ever have imagined. His kit was lost and returned, rotting in sea water, to his young wife in London; the family thought he had been lost but she would not believe it (she washed his spare uniform repeatedly until it smelled fresh and she had had news that he was safe — well not exactly safe… He went on (with others) to fight through France, Belgium and Holland, where he lived with a young Dutch family facing horrible hardship.  Later he went on to use his languages (he’d added Dutch and a smattering of Russian), and his unit’s bulldozer to bury bodies, in Belsen.

Just when he thought that the nightmare was over (or was he really alive for the only time in his life) he was ordered to embark for the War in Japan — a war without the niceties of the Geneva Convention or Red Cross parcels, where capture could mean starvation or summary beheading.

He sailed through the Suez Canal and was half way across the Indian Ocean when the Allies detonated the atom bomb over Hiroshima (6th August 1945), and three days later, over Nagasaki; Japan surrendered; the war ended; my dad – Geoffrey Mitchell Buck (1922-1991), who was not a hero, survived and was re-routed to the North where, armed with a copy of the Koran and assisted by a Muslim bearer, he was seconded to the Indian Air Force to witness the partition of India and the death throes of British colonialism.

When I was a child my father used to scream in the night. Once he was showing me how to sail a dingy in Norfolk and I pointed out a duck — Duck! He threw himself into the bottom of the boat and went pale, with perspiration on his top lip. Then he got cross with me which didn’t seem fair at the time.

Last week I found and read a book of his (signed and dated 1947). It was Hiroshima by John Hersey, It contains first-hand accounts from survivors of the bomb – everyone should read it – it feels like a latter-day gospel about the sacrifice of people for the sins (and future) of others.

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Hill Farming, Sheep, Uncategorized

The Worrying Case of the Good Friday Lamb

Considering it was born just after dawn with cloud resting on the hilltop and rain dripping from the trees, our first lamb seemed reasonably robust — it was standing but, ‘It looks a bit torpid,’ Alan said as he handed me the binoculas.

We watched — it had done the two most important things — it had breathed and it was on its feet but it would not suckle.  Our most skittish ewe had delivered it onto the moist leaf litter behind the hedge and it teetered around under its mother’s belly looking for something (it did not know what) but it tired and slumped down onto the wet grass when its mother pawed at it ominously  with her foot.  It stood again and she nudged it backwards along her side. Half heartedly it butted the ewe’s back leg, missing her udder, failing to let down any milk and not sensing the teat at all.  Again it flopped down in the mud.  This happened over and over and the ewe looked pitiful — uncharacteristically she let me come very close.

Something would have to be done — the lamb was getting weaker, the ewe was pawing at it more roughly, more desperately.

Worried ewe -- over 2 hours and the lamb has not fed

Worried ewe — over 2 hours and the lamb has not fed

A makeshift pen was constructed nearby and I carried the lamb into it, it was female, her mother followed without any fuss — even human mothers comply with their attendant’ suggestions when at their wit’s end.

Makeshift pen

Makeshift pen

The lamb didn’t like being picked up and a little surge of adrenaline probably did it good.  As I placed it on its feet, it ran to its mother (now restrained by a hurdle) it butted her udder, which is what they do when they run home for safety, and I squeezed the teat which squirted the lambs face with milk — she latched on immediately and fed.

P1050274

Full stomach, ears up, baa working, bowels working, bladder working, numbered like Mum (number 12, on the other side) and tummy sprayed with iodine, she is ready for a healthy sleep and not the engulfing drowsiness of hypoglycaemia that can carry off even a healthy lamb if she cannot achieve all three gaols of her birthday — breathing, standing and feeding.

Now she can do them all!

 

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Ten Mile Dive

By derivative work: Harpagon (talk) Image:Australia_satellite_plane.jpg: created by Image:Australia_location_map.png: Diceman [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

By derivative work: Harpagon (talk) Image:Australia_satellite_plane.jpg: created by Image:Australia_location_map.png: Diceman [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

When my cousin was lost (to me) somewhere in the Australian Out-Back or in Papua New Guinea, I looked at her last known address on Google Earth, which was relatively new, and wrote this poem.

Eye bagged,

not jet-lagged

but weary of travelling —

colonial first!

With cultural thirst —

I’ve been to Bathurst.

Didn’t fly —

eyes in the sky,

‘visit Bathurst and die.’

Down,

down,

to the gold-rush town.

Ten mile dive —

saw your Ute

on the drive.

It’s fifty years in our diaspora,

I’ve come to play,

what do you say,

Deborah?

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Hill Farming, Relationships, Sheep, Uncategorized

Love Potion — Or why you shouldn’t wash new born babies!

The secret behind creating the most powerful emotional bond ever known is revealed — remembered from our primaeval past.  It occurred to me as it probably did to our ancient ancestors — when it went wrong.

Yesterday we had to leave our lambing flock for a few hours, it was an imperative.  A friend had agreed to come as a locum (in between lambing a 180-ewe batch of his own sheep) but he wouldn’t get here until after we had left.

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I rose at 5.15 am to check and feed the flock — chaos reigned.

Two ewes were fighting ferociously over a new born lamb that was trying to suckle from the younger one, Number Nineteen (you know they are not supposed to have names).  Every time the lamb got near the teat the older ewe, Square Sheep (who you have met before) interposed herself with frantic baaing and butting of the younger ewe.  I chased her off but she would not leave the lamb and with her four-wheel drive and superior power-to-weight ratio I was not going to prevail.  I looked around for inspiration.

All I saw was a square wooly bottom.  A long silken thread of liquor glistened from it in the morning sun.  Square Sheep had given birth, she was right — it was her lamb.  She looked at me accusingly and who could blame her?  Still the battle raged.

The fence was nearby — I ran down the steep hill to the barn, 200 meters away, and returned with a hurdle (a galvanized fence panel — 2 meters long and quite heavy) then I got the other one and a pocket full of baler twine.  I tied them in a V to make the apex of a triangular pen with the fence as its base.

At this point there was a brief intermission in hostilities — Square sheep lay down suddenly and heaved out a second lamb which Number Nineteen licked and looked at me making the purring call that sheep make after birth, ‘look, I’ve got another lamb — I told you it was mine!’   Square sheep struggled to her feet, this was  her 10th lamb — she didn’t need this hassle.

Hostilities resumed — lambs were knocked in all directions but now I knew what to do — I grabbed both lambs and bundled them into the pen.  Both ewes stopped and looked at me as if to say,’That’s a good idea, now let me in.’  I opened the apex of the triangular pen to let in Square Sheep, Nineteen hurled herself into the pen.  I secured it with us all inside  and stirred it until Square Sheep and the two lambs were on the far side , then I opened it and gave Nineteen a monumental shove and ejected her.

Nineteen now danced around the pen, distraught, wailing and I had a sudden nagging little doubt — it could just be that the first lamb was hers — I had to examine her to see if she had just given birth.

We have a permanent pen by the house, but how on earth was I to get her there?

I climbed out of the pen and leaned over and picked up the first lamb, let Nineteen sniff it, and started down to the house carrying the lamb and encouraging Nineteen to follow.  A third sheep now started to wail further up the hill and my husband came out of the house to remind me it was time to go.

With lots of running back and forth and sniffing  and bleating and baaing we got down to the other pen and got her in.  I ran up the hill and returned the lamb to Square Sheep, pending further tests, then ran down — the other, third, sheep now wailing more urgently, husband tapping watch.  I pressed Nineteen in the pen, inspected her pristine, dry and tightly closed vagina and booted her into the next field.

As I ran up the field with a bucket of water for Square Sheep and some feed, by way of apology, I noticed the wails of the third ewe were now closer together and more imperative.

Now I applied myself to the wailing ewe — she had been lying on her side in strong labour but had now rolled almost onto her back with her legs kicking in the air, which was a bit of luck because I could catch her more easily.  I fell upon her and turned her on her side, she tried to get away but there would be no second chances — I was not letting go, we rolled over as she pulled me down the hill but she remained in my tight embrace.  We lay panting when the cavalry arrived to hold her head end.

The lamb was well positioned, just huge, I freed its head with the next contraction, which shook liquor all over my face and the half-born lamb baa-ed, it needed a big pull to deliver the body which was presented hastily to its mother who licked it.

We rushed off to our appointment, face and hair still splattered with the magic liquid.

Around the time of delivery it is the smell and the taste of the liquor that switches on the maternal behavior in sheep, and probably in humans.  That is how a curious young ewe (like Nineteen), nearly due herself and programmed to sniff out her own lambs which might be born in the black of night can accidentally get bonded to the wrong lamb.

This love potion is powerful stuff.

What happened to poor Nineteen?  She’s fine, within 24 hours she had twins of her own.

 

Number Nineteen earlier today with her lambs born a few hours earlier.

Number Nineteen, earlier today and none the worse, with her lambs born a few hours earlier.

 

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