Self-Winding · A Sort of Progression

When Ann rang she sounded fed up. "Let's have a day out, I need a laugh and a chat." We left at ten, I having quickly dreamt up a couple of itineraries - Cambridge - the Backs & Kings, or bits & bobs round Bury St Edmunds. At the convergence, she plumped for Bury and I drove through yellow oak and beech tunnels to Hengrave Hall, a Tudor House outside Bury. But the gates were closed, a For Sale notice decorated the lodge. The religious community that once allowed freedom to walk the quiet gardens, visit a living, candle-lit chapel and wonder at the superb facade of the house had given up the struggle to survive. The estate has been sold privately, according to locals, for £4.5 million; this had been recouped already by the sale of cottages. I will not see it again & Ann will never see it.

A couple of miles further on, Risby Barn offered good browsing through stacks of books and antiques and a meeting with Tom the Tabby. I bought a boxed mint copy of 1066 and All That in a Folio Society edition, for a fiver; and a wonderful Edwardian photograph. The proprietor, a chatty Suffolk ex-RAF chap with a fund of aviation stories is someone I must introduce to G, they would anecdote up a storm.

We bought Mexican chicken rolls & coffee & ate them (or, in my case, dropped most of them down my front) in the Abbey Gardens, with faces lifted to hot sun. The nearby Cathedral came in handy while it rained for half an hour and the organist practised Bach. Then a quick whizz around Marks before strolling over to the cinema and an appropriately chicky flick, The Devil Wore Prada; all froth, fashion, gorgeous women, sexy guys and a happy ending. Just what the doctor ordered. The twilight was settling with a green light as we drove home and scatter of stars shone at the end of the chestnut avenue. A day out is A Good Thing, to quote my new acquisition.

World Service

By Hugo Williams

Ten to four and the World Service is still on upstairs,
which means that you are sleeping well again tonight,
which means that it got you off to sleep
and hasn't yet woken you again. The sound of waves
from the sea at the foot of the cliff
washes over the voices coming and going in waves.
A motor scooter starts up, then fizzles out again.

I can't sleep, so I get up and look out of the window
onto the dim-lit esplanade, where one or two couples
are finding their way home from the clubs.
I feel jealous and sad, but I like to see them,
lingering at discreet intervals under the palm trees.
Out at sea, the last fishing boats are coming in
their big lamps slung below the horizon like stars.

For a moment, the broadcast voices upstairs
rise above the waves, insistent, incoherent, cracked.
You wake yourself and manage to reach out a hand
to switch it off. 6.30 and the World Service is quiet,
which means that you are sleeping well again tonight.
Far below, the beach tractor ploughs back and forth,
readying the beach for another day.


I have used the radio as night comfort all my life. You choose music, Sam, while I prefer the mutter of voices. Your memories in Snapshot were painful. They made me want to give you this poem which captures the atmosphere of the therapy.

I can't get over the impact of this image of nightfall approaching the UK. I chanced on it on a website called What A Beautiful Blue Planet. The drama of its foreshortened perspective, closing the huge distances between here and the great deserts of North Africa, is strange and affecting. There are other good aerial photos on the site, but I suggest that you zap the music, if Strauss played on paper and comb is not to your taste.

Out of the Stone Age: The awaited BT Home Hub broadband package arrived today. A new hard drive is to be delivered next week by the local computer wizard who is going to set the whole deal up for me. With my usual propensity for postponement, I have struggled along with Windows 98 and dial-up until now. I have been sifting a mass of files and email folders, copying what I need to CD. I can't wait to have 24 hr web access and decent download speeds; my current browsing performance is that of a constipated sloth.

As mentioned elsewhere, I plugged a gap in my collection and ordered The Essential Leonard Cohen a double CD set from Amazon. I chose the cheapest option from 'new and used'; within 5 days it arrived, immaculate, cellophane wrapped from Singapore at a total cost of £8.13. Unbelievable, cheap as chips.

When I'm set up on the new PC, I'm definitely going to register with Shelfari. Instead of dull textual links, you may instead create lively virtual bookshelves that communicate the appeal of the original dust jackets. A perfect format for bloggers. Some of the collections there already are pleasantly eclectic.

Most drivers in this densely forested area have had a collision or a close call with deer on the roads. The Colonel emailed this picture of an incident in Ontario where a moose went clean through both windshields of a woman's car. She walked away with minor cuts apparently. Ah, North Americans always do things in cinemascope.

Sadly, we have lost our old matriarch Ivy and most of our garden muntjac deer family; now we only see shy youngsters hugging the treelines. There has been a massive cull recently of this species in the local forests; it was necessary, they breed so fast and do much damage to young plantations. But we miss our tame friends. I console myself by thinking of Ivy's failing arthritic knees and knowing that a clean bullet was probably kinder than a painful descent into lameness and probably starvation.

Alf: 'Look, mate, I've ate me carrot and done me chin scratch and petting session. Now I've just about had it, standing here for the last half hour with flies biting me backside. You and the missus are only talking a lot of rot about hair styles and M & S versus Sloggis, whatever they are. I've been stamping me back hoof over & over but still you keep wittering on. So, I'm looking straight at you & saying "put a sock in it, love". I've got a nice cool, clean stable to go to even if you ain't.'

Laurie Lipton: Leashed passion

It's a while since my last post. In the interim, John the builder installed a new back door, T & G have been building a new hen house, Skinny & FSB came to stay for a long week-end. Then came babysitting, long walks, picking sloes and organizing G's birthday party for 21 on Sunday. I forgot to take photos and only caught the last few guests draining the bottles in the kitchen. After a long gardening day I made him a special steak dinner on Monday - with a rare and heavenly treat, proper home-fried, rustling, sea-salty, golden CHIPS.

Most of a yesterday was spent in bed with a sore throat & slight fever which come and go. Virus, I suppose. While snuggled down I polished off Alexander McCall Smith's 44 Scotland Street, a literary soap (serially published in The Scotsman) about bohemian life in Edinburgh New Town, easy reading that left me nostalgic for the city.

Next book in line is Francis Spufford's The Child that Books Built - self-discovery through remembrance of his 'almost catatonic' reading habit. Chapter One, 'Confessions of an English Fiction Eater' begins a delicious description of the bookish child with whom I (and I suspect many of you) would identify.

Always one to love the angst-ridden, I anticipate another delicious read in prospect by 'the poet laureate of pessimism' - the new book of poetry (self-illustrated) by Leonard Cohen, his first for 20 years. I have worn out old tapes of his songs and need now to invest in a CD or two, as well as the book. I like this one, but I think he's wrong:

Thousands
Out of the thousands
who are known
or who want to be known
as poets,
maybe one or two
are genuine
and the rest are fakes,
hanging around the sacred precincts
trying to look like the real thing.
Needless to say
I am one of the fakes
and this is my story./

I've also been trying to do at least one quick sketch a day, most of them are awful blotchy things, but I have found my draughtsman's pen at last and hope it will refine my line a bit. I'll put a few of them up when I improve. I was consoled by something Lucian Freud said in an excellent (and very rare) interview recently - "Looking at art schools and people drawing, I always thought that slick drawing was far worse than the most awful laboured mess."