It’s the middle of
July and it’s autumn. This mighty mushroom was found last week. Just now it’s
evening time and here in North Norfolk the cock pheasant’s are cuck cucking
and geese fly over honking. Meanwhile I try to believe it’s summer. I’m sunset bathing (wrapped in a blanket, but
let’s pretend) on the giant trampoline sipping (gulping really) sparkly rose
and washing it down (?) with half a pack of milk chocolate digestive biscuits.
I’m reading and drinking Cold Comfort Farm. Again. It’s genius and I love
it. Listen to this for a bit of raw
rural writing:
“…A snood full of porridge hung over the fire, and standing with one arm resting upon the high mantel, looking moodily down into the heaving contents of the snood, was a tall young man whose riding-boots were splashed with mud to the thigh, and whose coarse linen shirt was open to his waste. The firelight lit up his diaphragm muscles as they heaved slowly in rough rhythm with the porridge.He looked up as Judith entered, and gave a short, defiant laugh, but said nothing. Judith crossed slowly over until she stood by his side. She was as tall as he. They stood in silence, she staring at him, and he down into the secret crevasses of the porridge.‘Well, mother mine,’ he said at last, ‘here I am, you see. I said I would be in time for breakfast, and I have kept my word.’His voice had a low, throaty, animal quality, a sneering warmth that wound a velvet ribbon of sexuality over the outward coarseness of the man.…The porridge gave an ominous leering heave; it might almost have been endowed with life, so uncannily did its movements keep pace with the human passions that throbbed above it…‘Cur,’ said Judith, levelly, at last. ‘Coward! Liar! Libertine! Who were you with last night? Moll at the mill or Violet at the Vicarage? Or Ivy, perhaps, at the ironmongery? Seth – my son…’ Her deep, dry voice quivered, but she whipped it back, and her next words flew out at him like a lash.‘Do you want to break my heart?’‘Yes,’ said Seth, with an elemental simplicity.The porridge boiled over.He laughed insolently, triumphantly. Undoing another button of his shirt he lounged out across the yard to the shed where Big Business, the bull, was imprisoned in darkness.Laughing softly, Seth struck the door of the shed. As though answering the deep call of male to male, the bull uttered a loud, tortured bellow that rose undefeated through the dead sky that brooded over the farm.Seth undid yet another button, and lounged away.”
Cold Comfort farm, Stella Gibbons, 1932.
Agostino is protecting
me from the puppy giant named Balloo. He’s bravely (? – in that
kind of Lurcher-ish wet, but masterly way) leaped on to the trampoline with a
jelly-like confused but in control (of course, I’m a long dog) action. Now he’s
king of the castle. Happily. There’s a Jenny wren nesting in the ivy on the
fanged flint kitchen garden wall. Flit flying about. Like always. Like it
should.
My weekend has not
been unpainfully idyllic. My belly button is inflamed and pink from the humid
and tacky air that is the cheese room and my feet are grazed and sore from rubbing
the sandpaper-like board deck all day long. I’m learning to windsurf again. All day today and again tomorrow. Today was
hot hot sun and blue sky – no wind but who cares on the first day. Basking. Bobbing
up and down. I love how the wet suit makes you do that, like a cork. I half
listened about gybing tactics whilst trying to work out where the sea stops and
the sky ends. Or both. Strong wind forecast tomorrow, laugh.
 |
| It was windy on Sunday! |
A hermit crab
tickled my toe but the razor clams eluded me – even though it’s a spring
tide and I had a bottle of salt. I’ve been studying this rather horridly suggestive
film: Catching clams Westward Ho!!
I’m going to try again with the
equinox tides in September.
Less elusive is
the samphire. Yesterday we made samphire bread. A sort of focaccia thing
stuffed with Mrs Temple’s curd cheese and more samphire.
The samphire I had sprinkled on top, along with sea salt and olive oil, had
amusingly shriveled and shrunk. We picked pieces off and ate them like crisps.
Amazing. Samphire crisps! It went with
glorious crab meat, bought from the lady who sells it from a little shed near
Blakeney, and obligatory homemade mayo.
My knees are the tingling
victims of the stinging nettles who ganged around a deserted round tower
church I discovered on my way back from the beach on Sunday. They were naturally
protecting as much as they mightily could the shying hub that is a disused
church. How can anything be forgotten, or hidden, that has so many many layers
of silent thought, hope, sorrow pulsed into it? If the walls are one day not there
the echos of them will be. It can’t hide. Generations of us have made it a
forever place.
 |
| Hidden by a copse and surrounded by arable land. |
Hot scented bath
and scented hot candle. And end of bottle. Oh. How did that happen. And last
biscuit. Oh. Down biscuit and munch last
drop.
Dear Greta and Rex
– I’m going to plant out our sunflower seedlings tomorrow against the wall
where the espaliers are not. I hope the dogs don’t eat then, but never mind if
they do. Maybe they’ll be out when I get
back. It’ll be nice to see a sunflower in September.