Willy's World

FEB/MARCH 2012

2012-03-08T17:49:00.004Z

Patois:

Speaking French is bad enough, but now I am having to learn Norman as well. It is a Patois and I have been speaking patois various all my life. Nowhere has more Patois than England - for instance I can speak Cornish, Devon (Anglo- Saxon) N.Yorkshire, Northumbrian, Ulster, I used to think that I spoke good southern American until I was told

'No, but you speak good Nigra', I do a fair Ballspond

Road.... I once wrote an entire 1,000-word article in

Northumbrian dialect; the Editor was not 'best suited'. Dialects (patois) have always fascinated me. When I was a child every field on the farm had a name in Cornish. Nobody could translate them for me. Nobody speaks Cornish any more except, the odd Druid and there are some very odd ones. The last person who spoke native Cornish was a lady called Dolly Pentreath and she died in 179? I am told that Cornish was very similar to Bretagne, or even some versions of Welsh, but - watch out the Cornish hate the Welsh (‘they bliddy old welshies") don't ask me why.

Place names are funny things. There was an isolated steading on the Cheviot (now there's an odd one - Cheviot is supposed to be Pictish) Hills. The Steading was beside an old drove road and it was called 'Sea View': This was odd as it was 20 mils from the North Sea, for any crow with several hill ranges in between. I asked a local chap about the name. He laughed and said that it was probably 'See Few' and 'Man, 'he said' they were gey right aboot that'.

To go back to Norman Patois - it is strongly preserved amongst older people in remoter places, but if you are a keen hunting man in England, much Norman will be familiar to you. Many of you will have shouted 'War Riot!' at a young hound hunting a rabbit. Have you ever asked yourself 'why?' after all the young hounds are not breaking shop windows and stealing TV sets. No - Ryot was Norman for Rabbit. There is a 'Ferme Ryot' just up the road from here. What about 'Tally Ho ?' 'Il est haut' is Norman for ' he is roused'. Now try saying 'Il est haut' several times very quickly and you soon get 'Tilly ho!' So the French French have changed it to 'Tai-oh!". The French think that that Normans are a bit 'Local', as the posh people in Sussex refer to those who sound a bit 'Saxon'.

Ghyll Head is an iconic name for the Family Poole. Ghyll is a norse word for Slack, Haugh, Goyle, or any other patois word meaning a small valley. Ghyll head is an old stone house on the banks of Lake Windermere.

The northern basin of Windermere - Photo courtesy John Morrison

It was the ancestral home of the Pooles for some 400 years. It is now an adventure HQ for Manchester council. The Pooles fell out of it when the 19C Incumbent - John Poole set off in his boat one dark and stormy night for a rendezvous on the other side of the Lake. He was never seen again, although the empty boat was washed up on the Lakeside. That was the end of the family connection with the Lakes after some 600 years, although you will find many Memorials amongst the stones in the charming little Church at Cartmel Fell - just over the hill. My father celebrated the family connection by registering Ghyllhead as the Kennel Name for all his dogs - "There were Pooles before there were Lakes" so no more Pooles, but you can still find Ranter and Nigel of Ghyllhead in the Book - 'what's in a name?'

January 2012

2012-03-08T17:40:00.004Z

JAM was the best car I ever had. It was a Wolsey 5 - 80. Think of Ealing studios - police cars with running boards and pop up indicators. It was a truly lovely car and I still regard having to part with it as a great sorrow.. It had been hand built in 1947 and had lived a sheltered life with 'one lady owner'. How did it come my way? ….a good question. I was living in Wiltshire at the time and driving about in a Mini Van. Tony had recently come to work for me as a Kennel/terrier man, he came from the Dengie Marshes and was certainly a Roma outcross. He was also a mechanical genius. I did not know that at the time and when I came out of my cottage one morning and found him kicking my van, I was not best suited and asked why he was doing that:

"Not much of car for a MFH he said", I could hardly argue with that. "Like me to find you something better?" I knew Tony's cleverness with motor dealing because he had already supplied me with a hound van. Much of his spare time was spent at the Salisbury scrap yard and he had found me two Vanity Fair cleaners’ vans painted in blue and white regency stripes. We had cannibalised one for the other and made a good runner - £35 each. So I told him to crack on and a week or two later I came out of my cottage and there was JAM standing outside. It was love at first sight. It was a great car; handsome rather than pretty and a good mover with a lovely smell of leather - all walnut wood work - a running board and pop up indicators. I am not mechanical, but the motor was tremendous; In top gear you could pick up from 0 revs to 80 mph without even a whinge of complaint. Mind you I never took it over the ton (much). Fuel wise, it was a bit thirsty, but I did not complain too much; this was 1967 and petrol had just climbed to 3 shillings and 9 pence a gallon (you can decimalize it if you wish; it was when the 10p coin was known as a ‘Wilson' - it being 2 faced and many sided. Wilson was the politician whom I despised the most until Tony Blair climbed out of the midden. How much? I got it for £35 and cruised 100s of happy miles in it. Jam gave me great pleasure and kept me out of trouble - I was coming home from the Rose and Thistle one night soon after the breathalyser had come in. I had taken a back road, but I got Blues and twos up my backside. I pulled in and a grizzled Sergeant got out and prowled round JAM:

"Ere Bert " he said, "come and look at this" another grizzled copper appeared and joined the prowling; I knew that my license was done for.

The Sergeant reappeared at my window: "What a bloody lovely car! you don’t see many of those now!"

"What you think, Bert? ‘avent seen one of therm since we was on the Sweeney. The Gent's go’ a smasher there Bert” - "too right Wal"

"Going far, Sir?" - “Just over to the kennels”.

"Well go carefully, wouldn't want anything bad to happen to this old car". With that they stood back, saluted smartly and waved me on my way. I don’t think that a mini van would have produced the same experience.

JAM stayed with me for many years and was much loved by my new wife.

"I knew you couldn't be all bad with a car like that - whatever my brother said about you".

The only problem with JAM was spare parts; Wolsey had disappeared into maw of some conglomerate and although Tony used to make spares in the workshop of his friend Bruce, this happy situation could not last forever. When Tony moved on to bigger and better things, JAM came to the boil. It was with great sadness that I sold the old car to Bert, who had a car business in Bristol. I actually made a profit, but, I have regretted the passing of JAM ever since.

It was just such a lovely car.

Food and More Reflections

2011-12-05T09:08:00.004Z

Madam and I (and little Pip) have lived in France for 5 years now - do we like it? Well, up to a "Point Lord Copper". There is a lot to like about France and the French, but there are disappointments. Take the food for instance, I am greedy - I like my food. Before we left England "kind friends" liked to point out how fat I would get on "all that lovely French food"; that has not proved to be the case; French food has been a great disappointment. The French seem to have turned aside from their famed culinary skills and prefer to stuff their systems with Pizzas, Burgers and other such fast food rubbish. The old family Resto seems to have pretty much disappeared. French cooks seem happy to serve fast food as fast as the French public is happy to shovel the rubbish down its' collective gut. Very sad, but at least it has removed any tendency I might have to overeat. My great sadness is "The Beef". When I first arrived in France, I used to look at the beautiful 'beef on the hoof' feeding in the pastures and salivate; it was not to be. French butchery is a complete disgrace. Meat is not hung, indeed, I understand that it is an offence under French law to sell meat that is more than 3 days old. This is all the fault of the British, of course. They get blamed for inventing 'Mad Cow Disease' (as though the nastiness was completely unknown in France). This means that any steak offered for sale will be marked (V.B.F) - Viandes Bovine Francais - steak that is only suitable for re-soling a boot. I have given up trying to chomp French beef - very sad.

We first went to the Vienne (West Central - Poitiers), it was not a part we knew, but it seemed worth a punt because Madame and I are monstrous keen on hunting. I had tried French hunting back in the 1980s and greatly enjoyed it. According to the official map of the Society of Venerie, the Vienne had the largest number of packs of hounds per square kilometre of anywhere in France. A man told me that it was possible to hunt 7 days a week in the Vienne. This may have been true - what is also true is that in five years - I did not have one day that I remember with pleasure. French hunting had greatly changed for the worse in the previous decade. The great hunts that I could remember were no longer possible. Hunting had become 'parked'. For example, our local hunt that pursued both Stag and Boar, lived in a forest of 30,000 acres. After the Hitler war the noble owner was thought to have been too sympathetic in his approach to the German occupiers, so his house was burned down and he moved away. He put in a 9ft stock proof fence around the forest and leased the sporting rights. I used to hunt there a bit, but churning round the same bit of forest, day after day, can quickly lose its' charm. The local farmers told me that there used to be great hunts out of the forest, but as with the tender 'beef', those days were gone.
These days I fear the 'Parking Craze' has increased. I can see the reason for the landowners; parks can be stocked. Busy main roads avoided and insurance costs reduced. Gone are the days when a hunt would be accompanied by its' own van of Gendarmes who held up lesser traffic when hounds had to cross a main road. The modern sort of hunting may be practical, but it lacks excitement and zest. There was plenty of hunting in the Vienne, but it had no sparkle.

Now we have moved to Normandy and we are hoping for a fresh start. What about the French? We have met many pleasant and helpful French. The big problem is that the French are deeply engrained with petty bureaucracy. Take a problem - I was christened Robert, William Frederick Poole. All my life I have been known as William, or one of the variations. The French do not go in for multi prenames - they have hyphens - Jean-Paul; Sophie-Anne etc. so to the French bureaucracy I am, Poole-Robert. If you try to change it they will object. For instance: I needed to change my mobile phone. My wife took the old one to the Orange shop in the town. "But", said the woman, "You must bring Msr Poole's passport". So she did. "But", said the woman, "you must have the written permission to use it". To cut a long story short, it took Mrs P six visits to Orange - I could not be William, my name was officially Robert and so on.
You may think that petty officialdom is an annoying joke, but the results can be tragic. Do you remember Srebrenicia in 1995? The inhabitants of the town had a UN protection force of Dutch troops. The Dutch asked their French Commander for an air-strike to stop the Serbs shelling the town. "No", said the French General - "the Dutch have filled in the wrong form". Because of this bit of petty lunacy - 8,000 men and boys were slaughtered.
A fine example of Bumble-dum.

NOVEMBER 2011 – Brr...

2011-12-01T01:49:00.000Z

We are taking France out to Lunch. In case this confuses you, France is our best French Friend. We stayed with her when we were house hunting in Normandy and she has proved a very good help and stay ever since. France was born in 1942. This was not a good time to be born and raised in France. Her father had her christened 'France' so that there would be something French left in France. She lives on a large farm just outside our shopping town, which has expanded onto the farm. On what is left of the farm she keeps horses. Normandy is renowned for its horses. They are of a really good old fashioned type - short legs, short back, deep chest, good back end, any English Hunt would be very happy to have a stable of Norman horses. Sadly there is little mounted hunting in Normandy. The French custom decree that 'La Chasse a cours' is a matter for Forests. These are few in N. Normandy. In the area where we live it is mostly 'Horn and Corn'. It would be good country for a pack of Harriers, but no one has got round to that. The French are a bit ticklish about hunting hares anyway, them being a bit scarce. I remember having a lot of fun with a rather good pack of harriers where we lived before. But they caught too many hares and the locals stopped it. I have studied the country whilst bodging around on my 'Mobility Scooter'. Most of the country would be un readable now, what with wire and mechanical hedge trimmers. It must have been a good bank country once with nice, roly poly, double banks, but they are all covered in scrub and brambles now. It was a great tank country, I believe - the Panzers liked it dearly. The country is cobwebbed with little gravel lanes, so you would get about quite nicely on a 'quad', without jumping. It would suit me quite nicely. We did find a useful looking Foxhound country out on the Channel coast - very like W.Cornwall, but the Government has plonked huge Nuclear power stations all over it, which have killed the job - pity it must have been rather good rough hunting. We did find a pack of hounds to the South, but it would have meant a 4 hours drive to and from the meets which frankly is too much for old retired people and most often hunting that we had down in the Vienne was of such poor quality, we decided that rather than go out for disappointment, we had had a bloody good innings we would rather sit by the fire and relive the good hunts that we had in the past. And especially now the 'as exciting as watching paint dry' Flat Racing season has ground to a halt; we can watch the jump racing on the telly. I am sure that if we asked France, she would take us Trotting. This is the big equine THING in Normandy and there are horses scattered about at nearly every farm. I know that France's family are big in it, but I have watched it in the USA and it does not stir my adrenaline at all. I would as soon watch Paschale sweep my chimney, which I did the other day and I found it quite intriguing. It is quite different to the English method. No brushes are involved for one thing. 'Rammonag takes 2 men - two ropes and a bugger's muddle of twisted metal. Man the First climbs up on the roof and drops a rope down the chimney with one end clamped onto the Buggers' Muddle. Man the second waits down below and catches the rope as it is dropped. He then bellows 'Allez! ‘up the chimney and hauls on the rope. The BM is then dragged down the chimney, sticking its hooks into any bits of tar it may encounter. Then the whole boiling arrives in the fire place - ALLEZ! And the nest of hooks goes up again and the process is repeated as often as Paschale deems it necessary. I must say that I consider it much better than sticking a pipe up the chimney and sucking. One thing to remember is that smoke in France is 'wood smoke'. Coal is expensive and hard to come by. I go through a haze of fragrant wood smoke when I go through the street each morning. It is better than 'smog'. In case you are confused by my mention of a 'Mobility Scooter'. They are comparatively rare in Rural France, but you will see a lot in London - dashingly ridden by Chelsea Pensioners. They are electronic and have to be plugged in and charged up. They do not like mud and and they are flat out at 8 kph on the Tarmac. They are supposed to have a range of 50+ Klicks. I am not so sure. Mine died on me the other day half way up a hill. I rang the supplier in Gloucestershire. He suggested that it had not been charged properly. This was a good idea because it made Mrs Poole feel guilty (she being I/C charging, me being considered too stupid) What the Scooter is excellent for is Dog Jogging. In traffic Pip sits up like a Duke or a Lord in a bag on the Pannier, but on the little roads he trots along for miles and I must say that the French rural cars are very good about little dogsPS for Mr H: I do not remember when you spoke to the Stukleys (Simon?), but no parcel has yet arrived Blessings Willy

October 2011 - Another story

2011-12-01T01:42:00.002Z

The Little Dog (aka - Pip) wakes me each morning He sits outside the bedroom door and whines gently. This is usually at 0500 and usually, I am already awake. I have been conditioned over years to waking up to " Reveille' in the original French or ' really' as the British Army has it. Whatever - I am accustomed to becoming swiftly awake and conscious, whether it be to the whine of a small dogs, the Pipes and Drums crashing into 'Hey Johnny Cope' , a pick helve being rattled on a metal bedstead, or an empty bucket being dropped on a concrete yard outside my window. I have been conditioned long years of getting ready for Roe stalking, Autumn hunting, or just letting little dogs out to take 'an easement' or as it might be a pee. Whatever it might be I have become accustomed to early rising and consciousness with an even temper. I cannot say the same about Madame, whose temper is entirely toxic until c:10.00 hours. Those of you who follow PG Wodehouse may remember his egregious hero - Ukridge (Ewekridge), who was permanently broke and was always finding new and useless answers to his problem. He tried to solve the 'early morning dog problem' by inventing a chute from the bedroom window down which you could slide the offending dog to the lawn below. This did not solve the problem of having to get up to let the blighter back in. This problem did not often arise as little dogs, dropped down Ukridge's chute tended to break their necks which may be a reason for his invention failing to catch on. My 'EDP' is different anyway. I sleep on the ground floor and putting the dog out only means opening a door, but getting the little bugger back can be more of a problem. The neighbourhood cats like to make free with our tiny garden each night and no self respecting terrier could be expected to come back in until every inch of cat line has been worried out and remarked upon. This may take a little time, whilst I stand about with a gale from the Channel driving round my dangly bits. I must say that the Little Dog is fairly obedient with me. This is because, during the day time, I often take him out with my Scooter and he does not want me weaselling off in the darkness without him. Anyway this is how Madame chooses to explain the fact that he is not as obedient with her as, she says, he is with me. She is often reduced to chasing him round the garden with a yard broom. - Well it seems to work in the end. A good stiff broom is very useful with difficult animals. I remember (many years ago, when I was hunting on Dartmoor, being bidden to attend a Pony Club Camp. It was being run by a terrifying old lady called ' Granny Howard'. She and the Merry Campers were trying to get a pony into a trailer with a marked lack of success. At last I stuck a stable broom up its arse and it shot into the trailer: "Now children “said Granny “that is totally the wrong way to load a pony." but it was loaded. To my mind, the wrong way to do anything is the way that does not work, but it was not my place to tell Granny Howard that. Still on Dartmoor and another terrifying old lady - The Missus managed my stables for me - 'The B B Bloody Boy' as she liked to call me. She was lovely, but had the most appalling flow of appalling language and a stammer. One day we had a big horse to load in a lorry. The B, B B Bugger was not having it. "Go and get Mr Dennis and his t t t,tractor, Boy" said the Missus. Phil Dennis farmed next door to the Kennels. When he came with his tractor, the Missus hanked a wire rope on the draw hitch, ran the rope through the door at the front of the lorry hauled it back and attached the end to a stout collar round the horse's neck. "Take it away, Phil" the rope tautened. The horse lay down on its side and in this way it was loaded on to the lorry minus a bit of hair and skin "There yer b b bugger!" said the Missus " That's you loaded" and it was. I am not sure that Granny Howard would have approved. But I said nothing to the Missus. The horse was undoubtedly loaded and If I had said anything, she might have given me a good s swearing.

October 2011

2011-12-01T01:42:00.001Z

Returned drained and exhausted from England and had a day at home. The day after we got up at 0430 to catch the Guernsey Ferry - lovely place for a holiday, I hear you say and I have no doubt but that you are right. I will try it one day. We were on business to see our accountant. 'Gosh' people will say,'they must be hell's rich, having a Channel Island Accountant,’ No we are not, it is just that Sarkosy is trying to pull a fiscal stroke to make us even poorer - a very moderate little man in my opinion and that has nothing to do with his ethnicity. We are fortunate in that our lovely Virginie, is well upsides of all the knavish tricks of 'Johnny Crapaud'. Whatever - the crossing to Guernsey was very rough, with that nasty Atlantic swell. I know from hard experience that that particular sea scape can make one lay out one's kit. All my life I have, like Nelson, been a victim of Sea Sickness, but this time I was spared although many of our fellow passengers succumbed and I felt very sorry for them. That is one pleasure I have to look forward to that I can do without St Peter Port is a pretty little harbour. We set off for lunch in high hopes and a taxi cab, being lame gives one certain privileges. The lunch was excellent, but I regret that Madame Virginie's upsum did not cheer us up much. It seems that Sarkozie has it in for the English; something to do with Waterloo - the battle, which the French won as any French school boy will tell you, not the Station in London. And he wants to fiscally screw the wicked English. However Madame V says that nothing is certain as the French cannot make up their minds - that will amaze you. In as much as I have ever given the Channel Islands much thought room. I had always thought of them as part of France that had come our way after 1812 - not so, it seems. Les Isles de la Manche have always been highly independent. They were and remain the personal property of the Duke of Normandy. Now if you shrug and say 'Yeah, well 'ees dead, innee?' You are quite wrong. The Duke is alive and well in the person of Our Gracious Queen. You do not have to ask how that works, just know that it does and stop asking damned stupid questions. The Channislanders won't thank you for it. They are a very independent people. At one time they spoke a French patois that was thought to be the nearest thing to Norman French that existed, since the real thing - it still does, but only just - amongst the older generation. The present Generation still speak Patois but it is an English based a sort of a bastard Cockney, a bit like Pompey English. I do not find it very attractive, any more than the embryonic sluts in the pub by the Portsmouth docks, but for some obscure reason, no one give two monkey's for my opinion - very strange. My wife's Great Uncle owned an island off Guernsey. You can see 2 or 3 from the harbour, so I suppose that it was probably one of those, but nobody seems to know, or, if it comes to that, care. The Channislands remain very much their own. They refuse to join Europe and who is to say that they are wrong in that? I mean would we English have done it had Grocer Heath not lied through his teeth to us and told us that Brussels would never have more power than a District Council ? The Islanders won’t pay VAT and they would not bomb Libya or anywhere else come to that. The Islanders will only take up arms if the person of H.M the Queen (aka the Duke of Normandy) is under threat. All in all they are cussed buggers, who have many good negatives. Search for 'good positives' and you will find them in the crew of the boats of the 'Manche Express'. These are the fast launches that ferry you over the troubled waters from Normandy to the Isles. I was officially posted up as 'disabled' and they were brilliant at getting me (slim as I am) and my wheel chair up and down steep stairs and gangways. I know that Mrs Poole wrote a thank you letter to them, I would like my own Gratitude to be recorded. Mind you, it took, the Bosun and two Engineers to manhandle me and m'chair up and down and all in French too, them and the launches coming from Normandy.

AUGUST (Apologise for tardiness)

2011-12-01T01:32:00.000Z

How is my French? Well - pretty ropey to be honest, especially since I have lived here for 5 years: One of the problems is that Mrs P speaks it much better than I do - I hold my position that the world would be a better place if everyone spoke English. I mean who speaks French? The Quebecois - a few Francophone tribes in West Africa - apart from that - nobody; possibly not even the French. We had a kind neighbour in the Vienne, who comes from Toulouse. This meant that as far as the local locals were concerned, she spoke no known language. Comprehension is my problem and being a bit deaf does not help. Lack of understanding in a strange language can lead to unhappy situations. Some years ago the Mem and I were eating at a good restaurant in the Bourbonnais- the food was good and the patron was bilingual, both good recommendation. As I was nibbling a bit of cheese (Cantal: which I reckon to be up there along with a decent Cheddar) a man from a nearby table got up and gave me a lot of Fast French - too fast for me, but I knew that I was being given wrong. It seemed that he was upset because the Prince of Wales had burned his family farm. This made me gulp a bit; it did not seem to fit in with what I knew of the gentle Prince Charles and did hi mother know about this? anyway after a bit more rant; the man departed in high dudgeon and a motor car. I turned to the Patron who had been ear wigging the whole conversation, with great interest: was the story true? I asked him It was entirely true said the Patron, up to a point. The point was that the Prince concerned was the 'Black Prince' who burned a lot of farms in the area. He then gave me glass of excellent brandy ease any strain on the 'Enconte Cordiale'.. So you see how a lack of comprehension can lead to problems. I can speak it better than I can understand it: if you can understand that. This is because the French have a poor understanding of their native tongue. The French get by with a vocabulary of c; 40,000 words. We (the English) are accustomed to some 100,000 words (English). In short I can get away with rather limited French conversations although, these can end in tears of incomprehension. I will give you an example. On an early visit, the Mem and I were staying with some smart friends in the Bourbonnais (top end of the River Loire). I was rather taken aback to be (apparently) asked - 'if we had Cider in England?''Certainly', I said, 'but mostly in the West. But you also have Cider the most excellent, but mostly I think in Normandy, I felt a sharp pain in my shin as it might have been of a kick - it was;'Shut up, you fool - they are talking about SIDA and its AIDS' So, you see what I mean. This brings me back to my opinion that the world would be a better place if everyone spoke English. I mean what is the practical use of French? Who speaks it apart from the French, the Quebecois and a dwindling few from Franco phone tribes in West and Central Africa... In the World of the 'Noughties' - English, Mandarin and Spanish are the ones to speak. Do the French really talk French? We had a nice neighbour in the Vienne. She came from Toulouse; the other neighbours solidly maintained that the French that she spoke was 'like the Peace of God' - past all understanding. The French language has always been riddled with patois and dialects. As I understand it, what we would now regard as 'Standard French' was at the time of Napoleon, only spoken in and around Paris. There were some 200 variations to be coped with. It was Napoleon's lust for conquest got this sorted. After all if you are going to send men to conquer somewhere you do not want them kicking the shite out of the wrong place because they had not understood their orders. There was an example of patois that I came across in the Bourbonnais. This area was much fought over by the English 'Free Companies'. So the older Bourbonnaisers do not say - 'Fermez la porte'; they say:'Bar de do'. This is pretty sound advice when English 'Free Lances' were kicking around Mind you it is not for me to complain about dialect problems. I lived in darkest Northumberland for the thick end of 20 years. The older generation speak a sort of Old Norse dialect, which I found pretty impenetrable. I did manage to write an article in it once. Whichever, Editor I did it for was not best suited. There was a nice man who lived near us in the Vienne. He was a Franco-phone Vietnamese. One day I was complaining to him about some bureaucratic bêtise (you can be spoilt for choice) He shook his head: "The trouble with the French is that they are not a serious people." That, I think says it all

Reflections

2011-12-01T01:31:00.000Z

So when DO we move house? Well, I wish I knew - the problem is that the hauliers will not tell us - this is France you understand. As well as I can tell you it will be at the end of July or early August. I am looking forward to it. I want to be near the sea again. I was bred and buttered by the sea on the Estuary of the Fowey River;"Oh the harbour of Fowey Is a wonderful spot and there I enjoy to sail in a yacht;
To sail in a yacht round a mark or a buoy;Oh a wonderfil spot is the harbour of Fowey” - Hilaire Belloc and how I agree with him. How I loved Fowey Harbour. Golant which was the Family home was a mile or two upstream, but we had a base in Fowey. The 'boat house' just downstream from the Bodinnic Ferry it had a hard landing, two fixed moorings, a two story boat house, and a three story cottage. The whole thing was owned and shared by various parts of our family and I well remember my horror when it was decided to sell it when the house up the river was up for sale after my much loved grandmother died. Bless her it nearly broke my heart - that was my home and I loved it. This all happened back in the early 1950s. I got an early lesson in taxation. I don't know how many of you remember Death Duties. The system then was if the deceased bequeathed his or her possessions and then held on to life for 7 years he / he escaped the payment of duty. Granny had little time for the Labour government of the time and hung onto life, but it was no good the poor old lady handed in her cards just 6 weeks within the seven years. This was a disaster for the family as apart from losing Granny, her death came at a time of a fiscal slump and all the family assets had to be sold off at fires sale prices. I remember the Boat House, as it was much discussed at the time. I remember the sale price as being some £10,000. As a water front property in a prime position, it would have been worth a very moderate fortune today, with several extra zeros on the end, but such, I suppose, is life. How are you on éoleonnes (French for Wind Farms). If you had travelled from my Northumbrian Home to Edinburgh, you would have gone through a great plantation of the things on top of Sutra Hill. Well now they have plonked another gracopse of them on a neighboriun farm near here. I cannot say that I am best suited but they do not worry me over much. The thing is what can be the use of the things? Nothing at all says my friend the Professor of Engineering. He says that the cost of building and erecting these things can never be paid for out of the income they might produce. In other words they are a complete waste of money, which is pretty much what all the locals have been saying. In our local town, where Madame does the shopping, there are lots of pedestrian crossings and I have to say that the French are pretty good about stopping to let a pedestrian cross, especially lame old buggers hobbling along on sticks. As I set forth out to cross the road by the Bakerie the other day and I could sense a car approaching the crossing the from the other side. As I set out across the crossing and I could feel the car creeping up to me. I kept going and then I felt the car coming along and then I could feel the tyre creeping along the side of my foot. That was enough - I shouted - "That's my foot you stupid old Bitch!" Anyway that stirred up the Market Place - the man who had been painting the wood work on the Baker's window vaulted down from his cradle and began a high volume row with the car driver, whom I now saw for the first time. It was not a woman at all. It was a tiny man who was too small to see over his steering wheel, he had to look through the wheel and quite obviously could not see the foot he was running over. I began to feel sorry for the poor wee feller, especially as he now had half the market people shouting at him - well no one likes their foot being squashed even by very small people in very small vans. No one thinks that it is a good idea and sorry as I now felt for the poor little bugger, neither do I. .Just had a visit from two people who wanted to look at Basil He is called Basil because he was made in Basle,. He is my four wheeled cycle and a jolly good egg I think. I plod all round the local lanes on him and as he has 'assistance electronique' he trolls along very happily as long I remember to charge his battery up regularly. The Monsieur was very lame and as I understood it he needed a caliper to make his leg do what he wanted it to do, rather than the other way about. Well I thoroughly understand about the annoyance of bits of you not co-operating with you, so I wish him well, but to the point of letting him have Basil.

COON HUNTING

2011-12-01T01:29:00.003Z

COON HUNTING
My old friend, Tupelo C Claiborne 111, was a “mighty hunter before the Lord”. He had his own pack of Coonhounds since he was 5 years old, but he thought that his hounds lacked a bit of venom and were seldom “in blood”. This may have been something to do with the quarry – put a coon under pressure and its’ instinct is to climb the nearest tree. Hounds then claim knowledge of its’ presence, by “marking” at the base of the tree: The racoon then sulks as they do and figuratively speaking picks up its’ ball and goes home. ‘Tupe’ thought that he was getting too much of this sort of thing so he consulted his grandmother and Mr Hett, the farm manager and Hon 1st & K-H.Granny Claiborne was a mighty power in the land and when invited to visit the County Prison farm she took Tupe with her (“educational”). Tupe was very impressed by the ‘Warden’s’ kennel of Track Hounds. He thought that they were a mighty fine kennel of dogs and tried very hard to persuade Granny Claiborne to use her charm with the Warden to get one for his kennel. Granny Claiborne used her undoubted charm with the prison authorities, with the result that “Lucifer” appeared one morning at Tupe’s kennel:- “a mighty fine dawg” in Tupe’s opinion, who just needed a bit of training. “Old Moses” worked on the garden staff at the family estate and it was easily arranged that he would help out. Mose and his long family lived in a wooden cabin down by the creek at the back of the estate. It was arranged that each day at the end of work, Mose would tie a string on a deceased coon and set off through the woods to his cabin and his long family. Lucifer would fasten on to the scent of the coon and hunt out the line to the bottom of the chosen tree. So it came about on the night of Lucifer’s arrival, Tupe, with Lucifer and Mr Hett, set Mose away with the deceased coon and, soon, his deep baying was echoing through the thick woodlands of the Claiborne estate. Tupe listened to his new hound with great satisfaction, until Mr Hett came up and spoke. “Hey Tupe”, he said, “Y’all hear that dog?” “Sure do” said Tupe, “he give voice real good”, “he sure do” said Mr Hett – “thing is, that dawg don’t sound to me like he’s huntin’ any coon trail” – and no more he did.“Hot shit! ” said Tupe, “that dawg’s hunting old Mose! We better git along to Mose’ cabin”. And so the crowd of hunters set out lickety split along the banks of the “crick” to the cabin where Old Mose lived with his long family. The hunters had made good time in pursuit and arrived at the cabin just in time to see Mose going in the front door with Lucifer close behind him. The long family were piling as fast as they could out of every opening in the back of the cabin – the “long family” made a long and vocal trail which was barked at enthusiastically by Lucifer. Mose was standing amongst the long family tail on a loading stand amongst the tangle of the “long tail”, when Tupe came in sight the old man raised a dignified and magisterial hand at him. “Mis’ Tupe” he said, “I’s truly sorry suh, but after today I ain’t trailin’ no more coon skins for you, no suh!” As Tupe said later, “you couldn’t hardly blame the old man – He was a damn good gardener, but you couldn’t blame him for it was not Lucifer’s fault that he just loved to trail a man, that’s what Prison Hounds
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Bottom of Form

May to June - Dartmoor memories

2011-06-07T12:05:00.002+01:00

"Vust er rained then er blawed
Then er ailed, then er snawed
Then er comed a shower of rain
Then er vruz and blawed again"

This is a very neat demotic encapsulation of the Dartmoor climate. I lived and hunted on Dartmoor for some years in my youth. "The Moor" made a huge impression on me. It was and is an impressive place, you could love it or hate it (I sometimes managed both), but it demanded respect. You do not mess with the Dartmoor bogs - "the Stuggy".
In case you are wondering why everything in Devon seems to be female, "Er" is the Anglo Saxon word for "it". At the time when I lived there, Dartmoor was still a wild place. You could ride or walk all day and never see another human. The Crown of the Moor is one huge sponge from which all the rivers flow "Taw and "Torridge, Okement, Dart - these are the rivers of my heart" - this is "The Stuggy", the bogs which do require great respect. For best you need to find the crossing places of the wild ponies, they really know "The Moor".
I have before me a hand-drawn map of the "Stuggy". It was drawn by a man who had worked as a carpenter at Devonport dockyard. When he retired he was hired as a "Moorman" by the then Master of the Dartmoor Hounds, he used to walk the Moor in the Summer and check out the paths. Where maintenance was necessary, he would dig out a drain and put in a cundy made out of Elm planking as Elm does not rot. When I rode the Moor back in the early sixties, many of the drains were still maintained and rideable (with care). The map has advice and warnings scribbled on it in a spidery hand - "Bad Ground" between Shavercombe and Green Hill - which has "BAD GROUND" in capital, bold letters. One I remember with great feeling was Black Lane, which ran from Green Hill to Swincombe Head. This path was across a green bog, it floated - and as you rode along it, it undulated. The path was about 3 foot wide and as you passed along it, the green scummy pools would wink at you and ask you to join them - a foot off the path and that was your lot. I have seen horses so badly stugged out there that they had to be shot. Once (and if) you got through Black Lane and onto Swincombe Head you were back onto "Good Ground" again and I always heaved a sigh of relief. I do not know what this bit of the Moor is like now.
But Dartmore has always required respect. There is an old saying that on "Exmoor you can ride anyway except where you can't". On "Dartmoor you can't ride anyway, except where you can" - requires Respect.
There were no motor roads across my end of the Moor. This did not worry me too much except that my best squeeze lived on a farm on the other side - 25 miles by road. The distance did not worry me, but the fact that petrol had just gone to 3 shillings and 9pence a gallon did. But by the crow, the Squeeze lived only 15 miles away; I could ride across the Moor, but it meant crossing Black Lane. I remember coming back down Black Lane in a fog and about 100 yards visibility - it was ticklish. As I came onto sound ground, a big dog fox jumped out of a rusher bed - I gave him a good "View Holloa"
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Message to Henry Hutchins (Plymouth):

Dear Henry - of course I remember you, it was all a long time ago. I am 71 now and you must have had a very active life - all those marriages - I am still on the first:
Sorry I can't eMail as my machine is wobbling, but very nice to hear from you. As you can see I now live in Normandy, but have never forgotten Dartmoor. Please give my best to J Hoare.
Well cheerio my Handsome,
All the Best, Willy Poole

More for May - Marriage

2011-06-07T11:57:00.001+01:00

Did I watch The Marriage? Too right I did – You do not miss important family occasions like that. I would not miss Cousin William’s wedding. You did not know that he is a cousin of mine? Well, a lot of people did not; including, I suspect, William. It all rested with the Duke of Cambridge (Queen Victoria’s wicked uncle). He may have been head of the army, sorted out the terrible state of military supplies after the Crimea – still rides as bronze horse down Whitehall as Duke of Cambridge, but he was still a wicked old rake. All this requires a bit of explanation which involves my Great, Great Grandfather (I always get a bit muddled with “Greats”). His mother was a dairy maid at Windsor Castle; her father was a brick maker in Slough, who retired to a pub in Windsor. His daughter was put on as dairy maid at the castle where she caught the eye (wicked and lecherous) of the not quite so old Duke, which led to the girl becoming pregnant (good eyesight those old Royal Dukes). She produced a son and probably worried about his future (dairy mailing was not well paid) and her being an unmarried mother. It was fortunate that someone showed an interest in the boy and paid for an expensive education and a degree course at a French university, which allowed him to marry the girl who became my maternal Grandmother, whom he later dumped. This seems to suggest that if you are going to be a bastard it makes sense to be a Royal one (as it might have been a lecherous Duke of Cambridge). So now you understand how I might be HRH William Wales’ cousin – that’s all right, just call me “Sir”.
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I now have a “Scootair de Mobilité” which gives me a great freedom of local movement. It is a funny little machine with an electric motor (runs off a battery). The battery is charged off the mains and a charge will give you about 50 Klicks and a top speed of C.8.KPH on 4 wheels. It is definitely not an x country vehicle, but I can get around the shops on it and it gives me a great feeling of independence. I saw my first in London, ridden by a Chelsea Pensioner; he gave it a very good chit. I got mine from Optimum Mobility in Gloucestershire and it changed my life. I can now walk with two sticks, but distance and speed are somewhat limited. On the Scootair (French pronunciation), I can whizz around the town (no licence required) and on the back roads. Normandy is cobwebbed with sunken stone lanes. I can chug about for 2 to 3 hours without meeting any traffic (except the occasional tractor). Pip loves it, we have bought him a dog bag which goes on the front pannier. He rides there like a Duke or a Lord, off the motor road he runs along the lanes. At half speed the Scootair produces a good “dog jog”, on the tarmac he jumps up onto the foot plate and rides between my feet and is rather rude to passing Poodles or Yorkshire Terriers.
The “Scootair” has indeed come as a boon and a blessing to us, it deserves attention from any handicapped person.

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Someone asked me what I thought of Mr Clegg. The answer to that is “very little and very seldom”. I have a problem because for 20 years I shepherded in Northumberland where “cleg” is the vernacular for that dreadful thing – the “Blowfly”. It is not that I am suggesting that he is a possibly lethal pest – it is just that I wonder what can be the use of him.

G.W.R. - MAY 2011

2011-05-06T21:37:00.001+01:00

When I was a “tacker” (West Country vernacular for a youth) and wanted to go somewhere, I would go by train. I was bred and buttered in G.W.R country.
G.W.R. country was highly rural and had spiders’ webs of branch lines that connected remoter towns and villages – parts of the Country Railway System, which was to be butchered by Beeching in the 1960s. The tiny road that ran past our house petered out in Golant on the Fowey River. If you went through Golant you might come to Golant Halt, the primitive and only station on the Lostwithiel and Fowey Railway. Lostwithiel was on the main Paddington/Penzance Line – very few main line trains seemed bothered about stopping there but it was the terminus for the Fowey Line. The Fowey Line was a typical G.W.R. branch line.
Trains normally consisted of a tank engine, a single passenger coach and on high days, a parcel van.

On really high days, begging the absence of a Railway Inspector, I was allowed to ride on the footplate – especially if Ken Williams was stoker. Ken had an “understanding” with Amy, who worked for my grandmother, so Amy was my passport. It was only about 10 miles to Fowey, but the line followed the winding of the Fowey River. The line may have been short but it must have been one of the most scenic in England (which it wasn’t - it being in Cornwall).
After leaving its’ spur in Lostwithiel, the little train would cross the splendid Resprynn viaduct, then along the steeply wooded bank of Pelynn woods. I might then have been told to pull the whistle card to alert the seething mass of shoppers, (possibly as many as 6) crossing the platform at Golant, the only halt.
The line then continued below the Golant Downs, past the creek at Saw Mills and the signal cabin at Carne Point, where Tom Bassett could always be relied on for a mug of strong milk-less tea; After that it was past the docks where a line of ships waited to ingest a load of China clay. Then a clatter over the points, blast on the whistle and into Fowey station.

Before the Hitler War, passengers could travel on through the Pinnock Tunnel and along the coast of Par Bay and into Par station. “Par, Par! Change for the Newquay Line” - another branch line I always wanted to do and tried very hard to persuade Nanny to take me. I was told very firmly that “The Gentry” did not go to Newquay; so that was that. Be that as it was, the “Golant Flyer” was part of a magical childhood. There is no passenger service now – the line is freight only “Ehen Fugaces!”

In another world, I used to be sent from London (where I was learning to fail as a Chartered Accountant) to do an audit in Bedford. This was extreme boredom, but I could relieve part of it by a bit “Extreme Steam”. There was ‘Country Railway’, which dawdled over the Cotswolds from Kingham Junction to Cheltenham; passing through enchanted names like Stow-on-the Wold, Bourton-on the Water, Naunton, Hawling, Andoversford (where the Cotswold Hunt Kennels were) and down the hill to Cheltenham. This was a magical sleepy journey, but it is not for you, because whilst you were drowsing someone has ripped up the tracks – the sad fate of so many Country Railways.

Poisson D’Avril

2011-05-05T14:25:00.002+01:00

In case you are wondering about the heading, I understand it ( as much as I understand anything French) to be the French for “April Fool”.
This is a mucky story – true, but mucky. My old friend Michael came from Galway. He spent most of his life building “England’s Motorways”. He had inherited a deeply felt hatred of the English in his genes – after all we had hanged 11 of his uncles in the market place at Thurles (Co. Tipperary). In spite of this he became a firm friend of mine (I don’t know why). Anyway this is his story. Whilst he laboured for MacAlpines he was put up in digs, hither and thon. The digs were Spartan and all the workers slept in dormitories – long attic rooms with basic beds. The other thing basic were the lavatorial arrangements - I was reminded of Michael’s story after I came out of hospital, by the problem arising from getting to the loo when being unable to walk. In hospital, it is not a problem – you have a plastic bottle (in French it is a “pistolet”) and when it is full you just ring your bell and Nurse arrives with a replacement. This service is not available in our little bed back home. Nor was it available in the dormitories of the itinerant road builders. They had the use of a free-standing bucket in the corner of the room. The itinerants, being mostly Irish who had easy habits with drinking, which is not to say that they were often drunk, but they were inclined to “have drink taken” as the Irish so tactfully put it. This meant that their aim when approaching the bucket tended to be a bit wobbly. Early one morning the itinerants were wakened from their slumber by a crash and screams of female rage; what happened was – years of poor workmanship had rotted the wooden floors of the dormitory until it finally gave way and deposited the bucket and its’ contents on the floor below. This happened to be the bedroom of the landlady of the digs, who, as they say, copped the lot. She was not best suited

Song Birds
I see that the RSPB want us all to list the little birds in our gardens. With this house, there is a tiny garden at the back, but quite a large population of birds (?) can birds make a population (?) There is a family of Blue Tits who nets in a hole in our ancient Apple tree. Our little town is an ancient port and it should be thick with Gulls; I think of Berwick on Tweed and Fowey in Cornwall, which were full of clamouring gulls; Here I hardly see, or hear, one. I can only think that the French pinch all the eggs. I cannot blame them, I love Gulls’ eggs– they are always available at the bar in my London club. I cannot believe that the French would deny themselves such a delicacy, but as they glory in tripe sausages – “belief” has to be suspended.
From my armchair, which I use rather a lot during my convalescence, I get a good view across the back plots of the neighbouring houses. Through the windows I could have counted at least 3 pairs of Flycatchers. I think of all the small birds, these agile little birds are my favourite. I admire their agility as they flutter in the air in pursuit of their flying food.
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I am sure that you all felt deeply affected by the Japanese tragedy, I could not help wondering how my dear old father would have felt about it. Dad spent 3 years in a Japanese POW camp. He was left with a deep physical scar and an even deeper hatred of all things Japanese. He always said that the Atom bomb saved his life. All the POWs were told that if the British soldiers continued to insult the Emperor by winning things, all the prisoners would be marched into the neighbouring mine shaft workings and all the shafts blown up. No, Father did not like the Japs and I cannot blame him.
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APRIL 2011 - SPRING AT LAST

2011-05-05T14:17:00.001+01:00

It occurs to me that I have not blogged you for some time. My excuse for this has been quite simple – I have been in hospital having bits chopped off me. The last time this happened; I got a new knee in a French hospital – I had always heard of the efficiency of French surgery – well, speak as you find – I was not impressed. The French staff made no attempt not to display obvious contempt for my impoverished attempts at speaking French – worse was to come: a week after the op my stitches were taken out and the following day I suffered a “rotule” of the knee cap (in other words it slipped) and if you want to suffer extreme pain (and who does), let your knee cap “rotule” a bit and you will be sorry (very).
Fair play to the French, they mended the bloody thing, but that was 2 years since and it is still not fully right yet. So, when the other knee went on the blink, I decided to give the Gallic Orthopods a miss and caught the ferry from Cherbourg to the Lister hospital (Lwr Sloan Street). The Lister came very highly recommended for the carving ability of Mr Lavalle, which I am very happy to endorse – a very neat piece of carving, even my (very) French GP has said that it is “tres joli”.
“Spring is Sprung” and that’s official. In France Spring comes on March 30th and you better believe it. “I wonder where the boidies is?” They say “de boids is on the wing, but that’s absoid, because de wings are on the boid”. Remember that.
Spring in Normandy reminds me of Spring in Cornwall – roadside banks full of Daffodils and great clotes of Primroses – gardens full of songbirds, flights of the water birds coming in from the sea-side to the marshes.
We are only a couple of miles from Utah Beach. In fact our little town was the first place freed after D Day. If you watch the movie: (again) “The Longest Day” you will see a shot of John Wayne leaning on a road-isle town sign. It is a neat little cruciform town (pop: 2,600) and you can be out of it and into deep rurality in 10 minutes.

Next blog will be in the right month! Apologies to all who are confused with delayed posts

2011-02-02T16:08:00.001Z

December 2010 – Brr!

2011-02-02T16:03:00.001Z

This should not be happening – Claude told me that it was impossible because of the Gulf Stream. The locals all said the same, but the sad fact is that Normandy is full of snow and frost. Last year, you may remember that three times we booked on Euro star to join the family in England for Christmas and 3 times Euro star was frozen up in the “Chunnel”. Mr Sarkozy was very cross and gave the head honcho of Euro star a right bollocking and we all assumed that that would be that. After all, as Sergeant MacFadyan used to say “Assumption is the mother of F---up!” And he was only a platoon sergeant. Still, we never did get to England for Christmas 2009 and had we tried to go to England in December 2010 we might not have got there either – you just never know, especially with all the “ Chauffage Mondial” as President Sarcozy likes to call it. Mind you, Albert, who runs the local scooter shop, says that Sarko promised to cut the burden of French paperwork – and you will have to take it from me that he has not.
Still and all, the Dragon Lady and I did get a Brittany ferry to Portsmouth at the beginning of December and I had no need of my seasick pills – the crossing being a flat calm.
I also did get my watch from Mr Collin as he had promised. Mr C is a man of many trips to (and contacts in) the Far East and he had promised to get me a Rolex watch at a ridiculous price. It works thus: (or so I am told). Many expensive watches are not – expensive – yes: - Swiss, well not exactly, them being made by highly skilled Chinese in Kowloon, or Shanghai. A Chinese businessman sets up a factory which makes watches. You can have an “A” watch, which will pass the vet as Swiss, or you can have a “AA” watch, which will pass any test of Swissness you may ask (at a price), or for slightly more you can get a “AAA” which even a snowbound Swiss watch-maker will pass as kosher – the difference being that the “AAA” copy retails at very considerable discount. It was one of these and at such a price that Mr Collin had undertaken to supply me and so, bless his heart, he did: it lies on the table beside me. It may not be a kosher Rolex, but it looks like a kosher Rolex and I would challenge you to spin it, always supposing that you got the chance, which I intend that you shall not have.
What about us wopping the Aussies at cricket then? A rotten shame I reckon, surely everybody knows that we (the English) are no longer allowed to kick the backsides of less clever nations – it is quite simply non P.C and the Aussies do not like us much anyway. But I would like to know what the Aussie skipper said to our bloke; but still I do not think either chap went to Eton, therefore nothing said by either is of the slightest importance. I just hope that nothing may make the English forget their manners to the extent of actually winning The Ashes. That would be very poor show, so come on our chaps – you may not have been to Eton either, but please just “play up and play the Game”....
It has been a bad week weather-wise and I have not left the house since last weekend. Now it is thawing like billy-o and Claude’s much vaunted weather system has put its’ hat on and it’s coming out to play.

So may I wish you all a Very Happy Christmas.

More – November 2010

2011-02-02T14:07:00.001Z

I am sitting outside the house under the old apple tree in glorious sunshine. It (the weather) really should not be like this. This is Normandy (Northern France) and it should be cold and wet. This is what our friends in the Vienne told us when we talked about “emigrating”. – Edith (local taxi) assured us that it only rains twice a year in Normandy – Once in the Summer and once in the Winter. It is certainly true that we get an Atlantic climate here. It is really very similar to Cornwall, which suits me very well. The church clock is tolling because it is All Saints day, a national holiday and a Monday, which means that the French have another excuse for shutting down everything. Not that they need an excuse for not working. It was all explained to me. The French do not work on a Monday as a way to make up for working on a Saturday. “But” I said, “Most of them don’t”; “Ah” said my friend, “But they might and anyway it’s All Saints’ day and that makes it a Public Holiday”; “But,” I said, “France is anti-clerical and it has 3 hour lunches”, “So what are you? Some sort of Anglo Saxon work bigot? – you wish to subvert the spirituality of the French soul?” “No I just want to be able to do some shopping on a Monday and between 1 and 2 in the afternoon – and perhaps in August”. August is a buggeration. I remember going to an ironmonger’s and asking for a particular widget. This was in May, Monsieur the Shop made a face; “I will have it for you in September” “But surely you can get it before then?” “Not during August, Monsieur” I left in a Saxon rage and complained to my Vietnamese neighbour. “But” said my neighbour, “you have to understand that the whole of France puts its’ bucket and spade in the back of the car and spends August on the beach with the family. “That is serious” I said, “It could be” he said, “but the French are not a serious people and nothing is allowed to disturb the family holiday, which is what August is for”. So I never did get the urgent widget and by the time September came round, I found that I had coped so well, that I dis-ordered it from the Shop and I still have managed to hack on without it. This shows that there really is nothing wrong with the French that could not be put right by a good Drill Sergeant.
A good example of the French ‘work ethic’ is demonstrated by France Telecom – the French telephone system which is so useless that even the French realise it, to the extent that it has the highest rate of suicide amongst its’ employees. I remember the Dragon Lady and I having a mobile telephone problem and taking it to the FT office in Poitiers. We got nowhere and I remember that there was a nice Frenchman in the queue behind us, who said (in perfect English) “You must remember Madame, that France Telecom is not for working – it is a government charity”.
Another example of French efficiency as we were preparing to leave the Vienne – they put up a wind farm just up the road. It did not worry us, but when a friend rang up the other day I did ask him how it was going. “Ah” he said, “not well”. It seemed that much money had been spent on a firm of experts from Germany to erect the wind farm. It was unfortunate that having had permission to erect 10 windmills, which was done and the money paid, it was then discovered that the wiring would not stand the power from 10 wind things running at once. That after all the fuss and local unhappiness the system would only allow 5 turbines to turn at the same time.
Vive la France.

November 2010

2011-02-02T14:05:00.001Z

Belatedly - Emperor of Exmoor
Growing Old – Animals

Gruntled, that’s what I am, very gruntled that so many of you seem to remember me enough to look up my Blogs. I am told of this by Heather, who actually gets the stuff on-line and who keeps me writing. When I first came to France, I had given up. I was hacked off by papers and magazines closing down the columns that I wrote for them and, in some cases, had written for a long time, but there we are, nothing lasts forever and I had some good innings – so thank you all for hanging in there with me – a scribbler needs the encouragement of being read to continue writing.

I expect that many of you will have seen or heard reports of the killing of the “Emperor of Exmoor” – it may have upset some of you, but I suggest that you look at this from a practical point of view. The old boy was a magnificent stag, but he was (I understand) 12 years old – that means that he was ‘past mark of mouth’ and was definitely ready for culling. I say this because whilst I lived in Northumberland I did the deer management (all right: culling) on 12,000 acres of vertiginous forest. The deer on my patch were all Roe – perhaps the most kittle of British deer. I used to shoot 40/50 deer per annum. “But why?” people would ask me, did I shoot them, why can’t they just die naturally? That is a good point and worthy of thinking about. Without culling, the wild deer population would grow out of control. In parts of G.B it already has. “Ah!” people say, bless them, “but what harm do they do?” Deer are attracted to forest plantations; they can do tremendous damage to young plantations. Trees are a crop that has to be harvested. I am not a forester, but I have many forester friends who tell me that soft woods are a crop that is ready for a profitable harvest at 60 years. Should the young trees get damaged, their growth will be stunted. It will not be profitable to harvest. Deer damage trees, therefore deer must be controlled, but people say “can it not be left to Nature?” Yes, it can, but you should remember that Mother Nature is not a kindly old dame – she kills by disease, sickness and hunger, - she runs no Social Services. Some years ago I was stalking a steep and rocky piece of forest – out in the middle of nowhere, I had been out for 3 hours and seen nothing except a distant buck on a distant hillside. Too distant to be practical. “Breakfast” I thought. Heading back to the van, I crossed the top of a wide steep fire break. I glassed it and clocked on to a little roe standing clear in the middle of the fire break. This was the beginning of August, so the doe was out of season, but I thought I’d stalk up on her for practice, so I did. I was in plain view, but the doe did not move as I crept closer and closer. At last I spoke, “Look” I said, “I am going to raise my rifle and if you do not move I shall shoot you”. She had seen me, must have heard me and as I was up wind she must have winded me. I got the glass on her. She was in rotten condition for mid summer, her coast was ragged, her ribs stuck out, - I moved closer. I could see her watching me, but she made no move. Something was wrong. It was an easy 50 yard shot and she dropped where she stood. It was when I opened up the carcase that I found the problem. Her insides were rotten with ulcers. She must have been in terrible pain, which would eventually have brought about her natural death, but it would not have been a quick end. Not like with my bullet.

October /November 2010

2011-01-29T18:43:00.001Z

SINCERE APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE FOR LAST FEW MONTHS, NOW HERE YOU CAN CATCH UP

OCTOBER/NOV 2010

An old and treasured friend in Yorkshire has just collected her life P45. The family did me the honour of asking me to speak at the funeral, but I had to refuse as I am just not fit enough at the moment. The horse of life has just come down with me and rolled on me. My son (bless him) said that I had just overdrawn on Life’s Current Account and I was starting to feel the pinch. Well, I suppose that I cannot argue with that, but I am sorry that I cannot see Joanie off properly. She and her husband, Colin, were both treasured friends. I well remember the first time we met. We were dining at a smart-ish house. Colin and I were arguing because we both enjoyed arguing – the subject was something to do with “The Book of Common Prayer”. I do not remember what, it was in 1975. If you drew the covert (the Prayer Book) with Colin, you were certain to find an argument. We got rather heated and Colin whipped out his false teeth, slapped them on the table between us and said that if I insisted on talking such “Papist crap” he would set his teeth on me! He was a lovely man but very human. One Sunday they both came to lunch and Colin was late because he had to call on a client. It was obvious that the client had been hospitable. Colin loved a glass of Claret. He sipped his glass and then fixed his gaze on his neighbour’s plate: “He’s got more f.....g shprouts than I’ve got,”, then with great dignity he slid feet first under the table where he lay for the rest of lunch.

Just been down the town to get some petrol. You see our Prime Minister (French) has hacked the voters off by telling them that they have to work longer to get their pension. They are not best suited and have been picketing refineries to stop petrol getting out – this means that Jean and Jeanne have had great problems topping up the tanks on their cars – the whole point of the Dragon Lady and I moving to a town is to make shopping easier in our Old Age, everything is supposed to be within walking distance. Our nearest Petrol station is just beyond the ring road. It is within walking distance but that is a waste of time, should you need to take your car with you. Well, I had walked down the road to see the man who crushes my bones, joints etc – the things that you need for walking – he lives some clicks out of town. So I asked him about petrol – “Pas de Problem” he said as he had refuelled at the Supermarche that morning! That was good news, as the Supermarket had shut its’ gates yesterday: Anyway, I limped home and roused the Dragon Lady from her chair and we popped down the road and filled up the car. It was a great relief, because we do need a car, even if we are retired and walking to the shops is all very fine, but if you are a cripple, the idea seems to lose its’ gloss somehow. We need to go to England in November and a General Strike is just what we do not want and the French ‘do dearly love a strike’. Some years ago I was stuck on the decks at Cherbourg with 4 horses, there was a seamen’s’ strike and the Channel ports were closed. But that, as they say, is another story.

Settling in

2010-10-12T02:48:00.005+01:00

So how fares life in Normandy? Well, quite nicely really, thank you. We have been here for about a month – I think.
The climate is quite different – all our friends in the Vienne told us that. They said that it would be much colder and wetter. It has certainly been wetter, but as the area had been without serious rain since April, it was grateful for it. It freshened up the grazing on the Marshe, which is an essential part of raising the livestock that is an essential part of agricultural income around here. Normandy is famous for its’ beef and lamb. The sheep meat is certainly excellent, with very good flavours from the salty grassland. I wish I could say the same about the beef - I felt duty bound to try some the other day. After 5 years of grave disappointment with the beef in the Vienne, we hoped that Normandy beef would be good. The cattle looked good, but the problem seemed to be the same as it is throughout France – the French have no clue about butchering. The beef is badly cut and is not hung – it is therefore inedible. Very sad and a waste, but the French do not seem to mind how tough and grisly their beef is. So, you may think that after the failure of Normandy beef, I am going hungry? Not so, I am glad to say. I refer you to an excellent little book – ‘The Pocket Guide to French Food and Wine’ published yonks ago, which has been in my pocket ever since. It says that: “Nouvelle cuisine seems to have given the area a wide berth and the classic regional fare is still very much alive” and Amen to that say I. The “classic regional fare” contains a lot of fish. As Normandy lies where the English Channel meets the Atlantic this is not surprising, but it is very pleasant even if you cannot always get a translation as to what a particular fish might be – I mean, do you know what a ‘Monk Fish’ is in French?.....well no more don’t I, but it is very tasty.

Our little house takes up one side of a village street. The village is quite well-known, as it was the first place ‘liberated’ after D-Day. It was an “omelette” which caused many eggs to be broken – for instance on our street side wall there is a little bronze plaque, which tells you that “on this spot (on 6th May 1944) a section of airborne engineers under Sgt Smith were shot down”. If you look at the high wall on either side of the road, you can see that it was a perfect shooting alley for the Waffen SS. This quiet spot was indeed a piece of “Dark and Bloody ground” in May 1944 when the section of Airborne Engineers marched into the Trap. Normandy was not ignorant of stirring times. The other day, Madame and I motored North to look at boarding kennels for the little dog. One of the compelling reasons for moving to Normandy was a regular ferry service to the family without the Eurostar flaking out in the Tunnel. As we drove North, through lush and rich-looking countryside, I was interested to see a lot of fortified farm steadings – against whom were they fortified? It should be remembered that this area is only c. 10 miles from the Channel coast and for centuries there was a strong tradition of piracy between Normandy and its’ cross-channel neighbours.

One of the comforting things to me about Normandy is that it is Cider Country. I was brought up at my grandmother’s house in Cornwall – it had its’ own cider press and every year it produced its’ own pressing – it was so sharp and sour that it was known as “Torfrey (the name of the house) Razor Blades”. Normandy produces an excellent commercial product. Some years ago we were staying in a house in the Bourbonnais and I was asked if - in England – we had “Ceeder?” “Bien sur” I replied, “most in the West Country, but you in France have Ceeder, the most excellent especially in Normandy.........” at this moment I was halted by a hefty kick on the shin – “No you fool – they are talking about AIDS”. Well it’s not my fault if the French can’t spell – I am still fond of Cider.

Our street is one of the principle roads out of town. Just beyond us there is a dual carriageway by-pass, a main route to Cherbourg. There is a daily passage of heavy lorries so it is fortunate that this road is sunk in a deep cutting. In the house, the thunder of heavy traffic is almost completely muffled – and a good job too.
So by and large and taking it all in all, we like Normandy and find it passing pleasant.

Normandy - September 2010

2010-10-11T02:34:00.001+01:00

Well – we’ve done it; we’ve moved. This is being written in Normandy. It is being written in long hand, because I can’t find my computer; it is undoubtedly in a box somewhere – along with most of our personal items.
The move was fairly painless. We found a firm called “The Moving Gentlemen of the Atlantic”. Their only fault, if fault it may be, was that they moved so fast that it became a problem – as it might be - a pause in the operation of teeth cleaning and by the time you returned to finish off the fangs, all the tooth brushing equipment would have been neatly packed away and has not been unpacked yet.
“The Gentlemen” took two days to pack our little house up.
We were a little sad. It has been our home for 5 years and by and large, we had been happy there. I worked it out that this had been my 17/18th move of house and we have firmly agreed that “THAT IS IT – no more!”
My most ‘interesting’ move was when I moved from Somerset to Yorkshire in 1975. Freddy Oram’s furniture van took the furniture. Johnny offered two horseboxes to carry the sundries – as it might be 6 horses, 4 couple of hounds, 2 goats, 4 terriers – and all the odds and sods that went with them. We were to set off at midnight and drive through the night – good idea, except that Lorry 1 sank to its’ axles beside the drive in Somerset. I had to rouse the next door farmer to haul us out with a tractor. That all went well until somewhere up the M1 when Lorry 2 got a puncture and we had to change a wheel on the hard shoulder in the black of night and streams of rain. I do not recommend this if you are seeking pleasure – and what is a new home if it not be a pleasure? I am pleased to say that over the next 5 years it did indeed become a pleasure and it became HOME.

Then we moved to France; well, it seemed a good idea at the time. We had had good hunting in France in the past. I have a weakness (one of many), in that I do not believe that things can change. France came as a nasty shock because things have changed and in some time – the last 20 years have seen a lot of changes. The biggest change in French hunting has been the Park system – large sections of woodland have been fenced off with animal proof netting – the result being that the animal of the chase is hunted round and round the interior of the fence until it is “taken”. I share the opinion of my neighbour who thinks poorly of fences, on the basis that they make it impossible to have a good hunt in the open.
When I first came to France there were no Parks and we used to have tremendous hunts. The Countess with whose hounds I used to hunt, had pretty poisonous opinions about ‘Park Keepers’, but as she and various members of her family owned most of the woodland where we hunted, the hunting was wild. That happy state no longer maintains. I can see the practical point of view for Parks. There is much more traffic than there was 20 years since, also bigger, faster roads for it to troll along. This does not make for better hunting. I remember making a 20 mile point with a pig from the upper Loire – 3 couple of hounds – 6 children and man who actually stuck the pig in a field of sugar beet. You just do not get hunts like that anymore, not with 15 foot of pig netting surrounding the hunting area.
All in all I found hunting in the Vienne, which is where we lived, very disappointing.
When it got about that we were moving to Normandy, people rubbed their noses with horny fingers and said “Ho! Ho!” I am still waiting to get a half decent hunt out of any of “them”, so perhaps I shall do better where there are not supposed to be ANY hunts – time alone will tell. Anyway here we are in Normandy.

We drove up here. It is a 4.5 hour trip. You go straight up the Paris motorway as far as Tours and then strike off through the flat land of Central France, where the traffic disappears until it drops you off into Normandy at Caen. Caen is not a place that I would want to visit again. We nearly had a nasty there.
We stopped for a bite at a Burger Bar. Mrs Poole took the Lucas terrier out for a walk and the little sod slipped his collar and had to be pursued across 3 lanes of Urban Motorway! Now this frightened all of us and the burger was a load of s...e anyway.
It was about an hour’s easy driving from Caen to France’s house where we were to be billeted. France is a lovely lady and is christened “France” because she was born in 1942 during the German occupation. Her father thought there was every chance that France would be ground down under the German occupation so he christened his daughter “France” so that the names would not be lost. She is a very jolly and kindly lady and it is a very comfortable billet – and from there we moved into our house.
Many people from the Vienne asked us why we should move to Normandy. The answer is very simple - the journey to England from Central France is a bugger. From Normandy there is a regular (and fast) ferry service to Southampton, Portsmouth, Poole or even Rosslare, all with good access to the family – not like the Eurostar Goat F..k that ruined our Christmas visit in 2009.
Normandy seems a pleasant spot to live and the house is also a pleasant spot on the edge of a village with all the mod cons that ancient persons like us need. The Viennese warned us that it would be colder here and wetter. “Edite” who runs the local taxi, says that much nonsense is talked about the Normandy climate – she said that it only rains twice a year – once in the Summer and once in the Winter.
“To Press” as we used to say in the Daily Telegraph, the weather has been very pleasant and equable.

Taupes

2010-07-04T11:50:00.003+01:00

How are you on Taupes? Taupe is French for 'MOLE'. Our lawn is lifting with the beggars. Duncan, the old Rottweiler used to love digging huge craters to pursue them and Pippy the terrier used to love helping him. I stick to mole traps, but French mole traps are pretty much a waste of space, though I did see a bright idea in the garden centre. You dug into a run and set the trap. The mole would come frolicking down the tunnel and go through the trap (and this is where it gets fiendishly clever): as it went through the trap it set off a thing like a 4.10 cartridge, the theory was that the resulting explosion terminated the mole With Extreme Prejudice, by spreading it all over its underground system - quite a good theory really, but remember it is a French idea and the fell machine was built in France. Anything designed and built in France is going to have a BUT in it somewhere. I was sitting in my office one day, when I heard a bang from the lawn. I went out to look and saw a scattered crater of earth. Then I was met by a 'Lucas Terrier' carrying a foreleg and complaining piteously. He had obviously set out to dig for a mole and triggered off an explosive device. He was not best suited and required a little T.L.C. Well that was it and no great harm was done, but ever since then, Pip has shown absolutely no enthusiasm for mole digging.
I often hear the 'noises’ of the Night Bird (a Tawny Owl). I like owls and have done since the days of the '100 acre Wood'. I once met a man who kept owls and I asked him about their reputation for wisdom - "Attention span of about 3 seconds" he said. Well, that buggered that one, but I still liked them and I was pleased when I found that the hen owl had a successful nest under the roof in the garage - successful that is until I began picking up dead fledglings, apparently unharmed. However a closer look showed that she had built her nest in the roof ridge of a corrugated iron roof and with the fierce heat we have had, the poor little buggers had just roasted. When I picked up the sad little corpses, mother would fly by and scold me. I don’t blame her for being cross but as Mr Jeanes used to say - "what's born, must die" and if it is up under an iron roof in 40 degree heat it is very likely going to.
Kind people keep asking me when we are flitting - the answer is "at the end of July" and I hope that the weather will have cooled down a bit. Other kind people ask for our new address - 'Need to know' is what I apply here, but I will tell you that it is near Cherbourg. There, that'll do you won't it ? Addresses can be a problem. I remember once receiving a letter from the USA addressed to WILLY POOLE, THE CHEVIOT HILLS, ENGLAND

Willy's post for June

2010-06-13T20:46:00.002+01:00

There are people who are kind enough to tell me that I speak good French - this is very kind, but almost certainly untrue - I speak passable shopping French, but I very quickly get lost when the French switch into High Box. Like, for instance the other day when the Countess had taken us out to lunch with a crowd of smart natives who were all talking their native tongue at max revs, whilst I had long since gone into neutral. Then came a pause in talk and I realised that the Marquise (oh yes, I do have smart friends) had been addressing me. It seemed that she had been asking me if we had much "Sida" in England ? “Oh yes”, I said, “we have cider - the most excellent, but normally, in the far west, in Devon and Cornwall. But you also have good cider, I have tried it in Normandy - it is of excellent quality”. There then followed the sort of deep silence, which tells you that you have shot a conversational cat. It was then that I got a sound kick from Madame Poole:
" You bloody fool" she said, “they're talking about AIDS”.... well, how was I to know? I mean they had all been talking foreign and talking very fast too. How did they expect a chap like me to keep up with them, especially when they had started talking ' mucky'? Ah well all part of life's rich pattern, I suppose, but there we are. Mind you, speaking foreign can be a problem.
Our telephone rang at lunchtime and Madam answered it –
" yes”, she spoke English,(the caller), then gave a stream of rapid foreign. She was very sorry but could Madame speak more gently? Madame was obviously incensed by this and dropped into rapid and even more difficult French. We have found that there is one sure way of stopping one of these tirades. This is to state the truth that we have sold the house and are moving to Normandy. This works because no one in the Vienne knows where Normandy is or might be and they certainly do not believe that anyone from the Vienne would be so stupid as to go and live there. It stops them dead. It shut this woman up immediately.
"What on earth did she want?"
" I don't know -she couldn't speak English"

So, when do we move house? Well, I wish I knew - the problem is that the hauliers will not tell us - this is France you understand. As well as I can tell you it will be at the end of July or early August. One of the things about Normandy that I am looking forward to, is being by the sea again. I was brought up by the sea in Cornwall and have missed it ever since. We have been going through boxes of old photographs, most of which I shall offer to the boy and then burn, as they will be of no interest to him, but they have smartened up my memories. I was bred and buttered on the beautiful Fowey estuary - a place much loved by many people. Hilaire Belloc described it neatly in a bit of doggerel:

‘Oh the harbour of Fowey is a wonderful spot
and it's there I enjoy to sail on a yot
To sail in a yot round a mark or a buoy
Oh a wonderful place is the harbour of Fowey.’

How I loved Fowey Harbour. Golant which was the family home was a mile or two up-stream, but we had a base in Fowey. The 'boat house' just down-stream from the Bodinnic ferry; it had a hard landing, two fixed moorings, a two story boat house, and a three story cottage. The whole thing was owned and shared by various parts of our family and I well remember my horror when it was decided to sell it when the house up the river was up for sale after my much loved grandmother died. Bless her it nearly broke my heart - that was my home and I loved it. This all happened back in the early 1950s, I got an early lesson in taxation. I don't know how many of you remember death duties. The system then was if the deceased bequeathed his or her possessions and then held on to life for 7 years he/she escaped the payment of duty. Granny had little time for the Labour government of the time and hung onto life, but it was no good, the poor old lady handed in her cards just 6 weeks within the seven years. This was a disaster for the family as apart from losing Granny, her death came at a time of a fiscal slump and all the family assets had to be sold off at fires sale prices. I remember the Boat House, as it was much discussed at the time. I remember the sale price as being some £10,000. As a water front property in a prime position, it would have been worth a very moderate fortune today, with several extra zeros on the end, but such, I suppose, is life. That was part of the sad story of my family and its many disastrous financial dealings and of course, with the 'boat house' went the boats and a piece of my father's heart. That is why I shall keep some of those old photographs - memories of another world

How are you on éoliennes (French for wind farms)? If you had travelled from my Northumbrian home to Edinburgh, you would have gone through a great plantation of the things on top of Sutra Hill. Well now they have plonked another great copse of them on a neighbouring farm near here. I cannot say that I am best suited but they do not worry me over much. The thing is what can be the use of the things? Nothing at all says my friend the Professor of Engineering. He says that the cost of building and erecting these things can never be paid for out of the income they might produce. In other words they are a complete waste of money, which is pretty much what all the locals have been saying.
In our local town, where Madame does the shopping, there are lots of pedestrian crossings and I have to say that the French are pretty good about stopping to let a pedestrian cross, especially lame old buggers hobbling along on sticks. As I set forth to cross the road by the bakery the other day, I could sense a car approaching the crossing from the other side. As I set out across the crossing I could feel the car creeping up to me. I kept going and then I felt the car coming along and then I could feel the tire creeping along the side of my foot. That was enough - I shouted -
"That's my foot you stupid old Bitch!" Anyway that stirred up the market place - the man who had been painting the wood work on the baker's window vaulted down from his cradle and began a high volume row with the car driver, whom I now saw for the first time. It was not a woman at all. It was a tiny man who was too small to see over his steering wheel, he had to look through the wheel and quite obviously could not see the foot he was running over. I began to feel sorry for the poor wee feller, especially as he now had half the market people shouting at him - well no one likes their foot being squashed even by very small people in very small vans. No one thinks that it is a good idea and sorry as I now felt for the poor little bugger, neither do I.

Just had a visit from two people who wanted to look at Basil, he is called Basil because he was made in Basle. He is my four wheeled cycle and a jolly good egg I think. I plod all round the local lanes on him and as he has 'assistance electronique' he trolls along very happily as long I remember to charge his battery up regularly. The Monsieur was very lame and as I understood it he needed a caliper to make his leg do what he wanted it to do, rather than the other way about. Well I thoroughly understand about the annoyance of bits of you not co-operating with you, so I wish him well, but not to the point of letting him have Basil.

Ding Dong!

2010-05-19T22:50:00.000+01:00

Well, I am bloody sick of cloudy ramparts or ice cold clouds ramping down from the North Sea and freezing everything. I mean, my old friend Claude tells me that the Vienne where we hang out, has the second best climate in France after the Cote D'Azur. All I can say is that I would not want to be hanging out much here at the moment - not if I did not want the bugger to freeze solid and drop off the line. It is all to do with volcanoes in Iceland I believe, or some such bloody nonsense; it shouldn't belong to happen here, not in the Spring which is what the French tell me it is here. So what am I making such a fuss about? Well you see the Memsahib and I have bought a neat little house in Normandy and we want to move our goods and chattels up there; thereby hangs a problem - the Vienne does not move - it stays where it is and if you want to shift your insight north of the Loire, well... no one round here can remember such a bloody nonsense since the Black Prince was around here kicking up arse, during the 100 years War. It is just not done. So finding someone to shift stuff is a problem. I mean, I had no problem finding a firm of English shifters to get me and my stuff to France, but finding a French man to shift things the other way, is not just a problem, it is fair nigh bloody impossible. Madame has spent hours on the telephone trying out her French and then explaining to unbelieving French persons where in fact we live and where we wish to move to. The French find it difficult to believe that those who have drawn first prize in the lottery of life by drawing out a billet in the Vienne might actually wish to leave this veritable Eden and go to live in Normandy (I mean, where?) many locals find it hard to believe that such a place can actually exist - "but you will freeze and it rains all the time” - In fact Bridget, who drives a taxi in Normandy, tells me that it only rains twice a year - once in the Summer and once in the Winter. In fact Normandy is very lush and beautiful - rather like Cornwall - and the people are very friendly: Also it has good ferries to England and the family. - 'Ah' people say but 'there is no hunting' That may be true, but we have spent 4 years trying to find good hunting where it is supposed to exist and that has been a complete waste of rations. So I reckon that if we lower our expectations, we might surprise ourselves and find something that does not officially exist, like many other things in France.
After we move I am going to have my other knee done, in London - in English. The French medical system has a high reputation, which has not been borne out by experience in my case - two ops and I am still bloody lame, so bugger it.
I suppose that I should not tell you where we are going - just in case you all turn up, wearing knotted hankies, well ... just bloody don't, or I'll hang you from the church tower - just like poor bloody Steele. Steele was a trooper in the US 82nd Airborne. He was dropped over France after D-Day and landed hanging from the church steeple by his parachute harness... it got worse as: he was dangling in plain sight of the village street and was there viewed by the locals and the Curé. This good man was so over-excited by the sight of an American uniform that he ordered the church bells to be rung, to the great discomfort of Steele, a foot away from the bell loft. To cut things short, Steele was rescued but left his hearing behind. However they did name a local bar after him, which must be some sort of consolation - I will let you know after I have had a drink there - Ding! Dong!

Chute

2010-03-28T17:20:00.001+01:00

Chute is a useful French word - Chute means a fall whether it be from a horse, a quad or a hay loft. Over some 30 odd years, I have had an awful lot of them. I have been blessed with good luck in as much as although I have had some real crumplers, I have never yet been injured seriously. Well yes I did break my collar bone when I was 10. My worst fall was about 18 months since, when my tricycle and I were run into and over by a white Citroen van - I do not know why - it never stopped to ask. I did not become conscious for another fortnight and for some months there-after; I was sunk in dreams - some pleasant - some not; It seemed that my head had had a good clattering, which is really not recommended and which has rather buggered up my memory, so when I go to London in April, I am to be shipped off to see Dr Kennedy at the Lister Hospital down by Chelsea Hospital. He is said to be good at disentangling muddled and scrambled brains. As my son says - I must have a huge mental overdraft and now it is 'payback time'.
How did you enjoy the recent windy weather? A real bugger was it not? We had damage to the roof. I had been to the market in the town and had just avoided being blown into the fish lady's stall.
When we got back home I got out of the car to close the yard gate. The wind was howling around the buildings and I had great problems standing. Eventually I managed to force my way out of the door of the front passenger seat. The wind came howling down the passage way by the building. It caught the car door, snatched it out of my hands, and slammed it shut. I had been leaning against the door for balance. The wind suddenly gusted and dropped. There was no wind against the door or supporting my balance, the door shut and removed my equilibrium. I fell flat on my back, dropping the back of my head on the concrete floor - not recommended procedure nor much fun. Nor was it much fun when I found that I could not get up: my knees are frankly buggered these days. Mrs Poole came to help, but, bless her heart, she is a little scrap of a woman and can no more shift me than I could shift a bullock, so she jumped in the car and shot down the road to where Gerrard and Josette live - they have picked me up before. They were not there, so she shot up the road and collared Laurens our other neighbour. He came at once bless him, wrapped his arms round me and hoisted me up so that I could grasp the top bar of the yard gate. We have good neighbours bless them. It took me two days to get my twisted knees working again. So that was a Chute and in all honesty, I do not recommend them. All you will do is to increase your physical debit balance - rather painfully.

Keep Orf

2010-03-28T17:20:00.000+01:00

If you trot about the French countryside you will often encounter signs warning you that " La chasse Is guarded" by the ACCA. In other words - the shooting is private. ACCA stands for various long French words, which mount up to " Keep Orf ". The shooting probably belongs to some local toff, or even, more probably the shoot run by the local Commune. Either way, the English translation will be - " Keep Orf ." The CCA carries some considerable political clout in its area. I have friend, a man who has been very kind to me. He keeps and hunts a small pack of Boar Hounds. I used to follow the boar hounds a bit, but gave it up as they could very seldom find a pig. When I started boar hunting, back in the 1980s, pigs became a bit scarce because they used to dig up the fields of maize and the farmers used to get a bit huffed. It was not that they were against the pigs being shot and then eaten. It was just that they reckoned that if anyone was going to feed and eat the pigs on their land, then it should be them, the agriculturers and their friends. This was very much the line taken by Mme La Comtesse, with whom I hunted. She reckoned that her family owned most of the woodlands where she hunted the pigs and de facto that the pigs belonged to her as well. That was a point of view that you might argue with, if you were a braver man than I was or am very likely to be. And anyway I am a great believer in the rights of private property owners. I put this theory to my friend with the pig free hounds. In fact it was just after a pig free day with my friend that I raised the matter. He looked at me mournfully and said: ah! but it’s not so easy. There had been three pigs in his wood until the day previous, when the ACCA people had walked his wood and had shot 3 pigs. I raised this with another friend and he told me that the ACCA controlled all the shooting rights in and around and if my friend complained they could take his rights away. I found this very hard to believe. But this is France.
Madam and I have just returned from Normandy. The reason for the trip is that we might move there. We both liked it very much. So - watch this space. Normandy is very beautiful and pleasant. We went to stay at a little Hotel - not very far from Omaha Beach. We had stayed there before about 20 odd years ago. Unfortunately it has changed hands and the wonderful food we remembered was not available - the cook was ill and the restaurant closed. So we moved to a very smart Chambres D'Hotes. It was very good except that the bed was a problem for Madame and I. The proprietress was a lovely lady who had been christened France - born in 1942, her father did not know what her country would be so he called her France for the memory. She and her family have a stable of Trotters - a big thing in Normandy. The Normans are very friendly and the country reminds me somewhat of Cornwall and is very mild. The other French will tell you that it rains all the time. This is not so says Edith the local Taxi Owner (this makes her "Edit - Taxi"" - she says that it only rains twice a year in Normandy - once in the Summer and once in the Winter so it is very mild. Its great advantage is regular ferries to England and more hope of seeing our family again - we shall try Eurostar once more and hope for better things. One good point for French railways. It is very good with the ancient and lame. I was wheel chaired onto the train, put into my seat, and then wheeled between every train (4) thereafter. We were stabled very comfortably with the 'Trotters’, except that the bed was too small - this gives Madame an excuse for complaining - not that she needs one. We looked at some houses; one particularly we liked - it is in the village that John Steele made famous and has a bar named after him. He was in the 82nd Airborne and was dropped during the D Day Landing. The Airborne Drop zone tended to wander a bit in the run up to D Day and John found himself on the roof of the church at St Mere L'Eglise. It was perhaps unfortunate that he was discovered by the padre, who went about ringing the bell, by way of welcome. John said that he would rather have been shot at, as the noise was quite literally deafening. Any way he now has a bar named after him, which must provide a measure of consolation. So are we going to buy the house? It depends on whether our house, which has been bought, has been paid for. So watch this space - we are.

Villy Vite!

2010-02-20T09:04:00.000Z

A lot of people have asked me about French Hunting - is it any good?
I first had the chance to go hunting in France, back in the 1980s and I thought it great fun. It was the thought of renewing my pleasure that made me want to go back to France when I retired (or got sacked, which ever one you want), but after 20 years, hunting in France has changed and not for the better - roads and villages have spawned and grown out - traffic has sprawled and Parks have appeared. 20 years ago they hardly existed and your boar or stag could set out and provide a splendid hunt. Those days are gone. The Park at the bottom of our road has pigs and deer in plenty, and they get plenty of hunting; but is it any good? I fear not, the Park (about 30,000 acres) is totally enclosed in wire mesh fencing from which nothing can escape. It is owned by an 'Ancien Famille' - apparently, or, so It is rumoured, they fell into problems during the German occupation. The Park is now let to a local hunting person, a very pleasant chap who lets out the hunting and the shooting by the day. Very often during the hunting season, I hear the cry of hounds and the tantootling of horns, which I find very frustrating, but that is my problem not anyone else's. The tenant is very kind and sometimes he persuades one of his clients to invite me to hunt with customers. I do, but I have to say that when you have chugged round the park once or twice, you have really seen and done it all. My neighbouring farmer who is chairman of the local Commune Shoot says that there used to be wonderful hunts out of the park before it was enclosed. This I can believe. I remember having wonderful hunts from the wild woodlands in the Bourbonnais; I remember once that we got away from a straggling wood in the upper Loire with about 4 couple of hounds and they made a 20 mile point before the lone follower and his four children took the pig (a big bugger) in the middle of a field of baigies.
By 'taking a pig' I am not talking about picking it up and stuffing it in your pocket. A taken pig is by definition a dead pig - it has to be dispatched. This is usually done with a 'couteau de chasse' which is in effect a short sword. It can be a lance with a tear shaped blade with a 3 foot handle which is screwed on to the blade; rather in the same plan as a drain rod so most lances are made by blacksmiths; So when a pig is at bay - you are likely to see a lot of men running furiously from the nearest road and screwing their lances together as they run. They are hoping to achieve the honour of 'serving the Boar'; which means giving the pig a thrust with the weapon into the heart; which means just behind the shoulder- such an honour I never thought to achieve.
One day when I was hunting with the Countess; we were having a hunt; a roughly driven jeep roared up and pulled across the road.
The Countess cried that no one was to touch the pig until the English man had arrived. Well, she owned the hounds, the pig and most of the country round about. I found strong hands dragging me from my saddle with cries of "Villy Vite!" Then with me sprawling in the back, we roared away until the jeep stopped violently outside a thicket from which came much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Dark deeds were obviously afoot in the thicket. It was obvious that I was to be concerned in what happened next - the thicket was also a bog, with a deeply trodden path running into its deeps. In these depths came the baying of hounds and a protest of pig. It was only then that I realised that a major part in the final scene was to be played out by me. I had not a clue as to what to do. “Villy est ici” cried some mud spattered voices. Knarled hand seized me and dragged me to the thicket. 'Villy Vite!' became a sort of chant as I waded through the bog - rough hands passed along the chain until I arrived at the centre thicket where the pig was at bay - what did I do next? Well I did not know - Alberique, the cousin of the countess, knew exactly - he thrust a lance into my hand
"Be'ind the shoulder - Vite Villy! Vite!" So, that's the way it was and I am glad to say that it is a quick end.
So I staggered back through the mud to the edge of the thicket. A handsome old lady came and threw her arms around me: “Ah!' Bravo! Villy! It is a great honour for the pig to be served by an Englishman!"
- well I must say that that is a point of view that I had not considered. The handsome old lady used to go everywhere with a basket on her arm. From this she produced a croissant which she thrust into my muddy, bloodstained hand. She was always known as 'Madame Croissant'... and that's about it - well you asked me about French hunting and now you know as much as I do - Mind you it is nothing like as good as it used to be - 20 years since, what is?

Bad Eye

2010-02-07T09:33:00.000Z

Did you all enjoy seeing old Tony Blair again?

You know that I cannot stand the little beggar - never have. When he became PM I was writing a column for the Daily Telegraph and someone asked - why did I not write a column about Blair? So I did, AND I told it like it was. I said that in veterinary terms he had a bad eye and no one should consider buying the bugger should they have the chance. After that the roof fell on me - I got letters saying that Blair was the best thing since sliced bread - that he was the only chance for Britain to become Great again and what was the matter with his eye.

It just happened that I had been to Appleby Horse Fair and I had seen several gypsy lads riding about on those Palomino ponies (things with cream manes and tails and great rolling blue eyes and terrible temperaments) - that is what I call a bad eye. This I explained to my readers was what I meant about a bad eye - It was all to do with temperament and I reckoned that Blair had a dodgy temperament. In fact I called him a snake oil salesman. Nothing that has happened since has changed my judgement of that time. I stood by it then and I stand by it today. The 'Bad Eye' is still something that I mistrust instinctively and I have seldom been mistaken. I am afraid that I felt the same about the last Princess of Wales, whom I always felt would bring trouble. That brought the ceiling down on my head too - poor sad girl, and what about Bliar? Can anyone say that he has not been trouble? - and brought more of it around all those who have trusted and believed him . Well thank God that none can accuse me of making that mistake. I was horrified when I heard that Blair was in line for some sort of head shed ness in the foremost ranks of Europe - I have never thought much of Europe - but surely they could not be as stupid as that? - and in the end they the Euros napped at the idea and quite right too. Not even the French could be as stupid as that - could they? Well, I do hope not, in fact I hope that Blair disappears back to wherever he has been hiding, I think that he is supposed to be keeping the peace in the world. Do you really think that he has earned the thick wedge that he gets every week / month?

Anyway, I do not know how many of you listened to Claire Short talking to Chilcot yesterday. I have always thought of Ms Short as a pretty tiresome woman and I was not surprised when Blair chucked her out of his Cabinet. She loves TB even less than I do. Anyway, she didn't half pitch into the little bugger yesterday and gave him a right good gliff around his lug, which he well deserves. The unfortunate Iraqis do not deserve all the troubles in which Blair left them and where this government will quite happily continue to leave them.

If you get a chance, get a DVD called The Trial of Tony Blair. It won't happen; even If it should, but it might give you something to dwell on - it cheered me up just thinking that it might - hope springs eternal.

Memoir

2010-01-12T22:41:00.000Z

My blogs have got a bit behind. The reason for this is very simple, my mother put her finger on it straight away - '”The fool is too old to keep falling about on this head - his memory is buggered”. Well done Mum - right on the button as always, and of course she is quite right. A great deal of my life has been spent thinking of new ways of falling on my head. As I said to a friend the other day: I have been very lucky - I have had a lot of falls and have never really hurt myself. The trouble is that falling off things is like building up a Debit balance in the bank - one day it gets called in. This is what has now happened to me - I cannot remember what day of the week it is, I have to ask Mrs Poole. She is very good about dates, but it is a bit of a bugger.
I remember when I returned from my last spell of hospitalisation; (that really is a ghastly word) – anyway, the doctors asked me “how my memoir was”. Now “Memoir” means much the same in French and English. Oh, I said - it's fine thank you, just fine; but it wasn't you know - and still isn't. If I do not write things in my note book, they get forgotten and that can be a bloody nuisance - rather like falling on your head.
It was a very beautiful Autumn morning somewhere about last November. I had set off on my tricycle to collect my monthly Euro pills from the doctor in the village. It was a very bright sunny morning and the sun was dazzling me. I imagine that it was also dazzling the driver of the white van that was following the trike and it must have dazzled him to the extent that he not only followed the trike and I - but caught us up and ran over us rather comprehensively. What happened next I cannot really say as I was out for the next 2/3 weeks. I have to get my memoir from Mrs Poole who was following me to the surgery - when she caught up with the twisted remains of the tricycle and her husband I had been joined by 2 doctors, two retired persons, two Gendarmes, who were persisting in trying to breathalyse me, my neighbour on his tractor - about the only person who was absent was the driver of the White van - he had skived off and has never knowingly been seen again
This was how I became introduced to the French Health Service. The assembled company insisted that I be taken to hospital and as I was out of things, I was not in a position to argue. I was lodged in three different hospitals, before I regained consciousness. I do not think that the French Medics like me very much. It seems that I was prone to wander at night. The hospitals did not like this - So they tied me to the bed, however, this is apparently not legal in France, so they started giving me injections. These gave me sleep but they also gave me the most horrific dreams, which stayed with me for a long time.
The other problem that has remained is a lack of balance, which is what brings me to fall in the snow drifts and is rather tiresome, which brings me back to rolling in a snowdrift at the back of the house. I had set out for a walk down the lane when my equilibre gave up on me and I folded gently into a snow wreath at the side of the road. There seemed little point in getting up as my balance might let me down again. I had my mobile and so could ring my wife who was shopping in the town. So I rang her up and laid my head in the snow and hoped for help. Our good neighbour, Gerrard, has the next farm down the lane and he might trundle down in his tractor. Then I heard the tractor, it was coming down the lane, but was turning for the last farm up the lane. I turned on my back and waved my cap in the air...it was Franc - the other neighbour - he was not going to see me - but he was - the tractor turned on the cross ads and - Hooray! - I kept waving my cap and Frank drove straight to me in my snow drift:
'Good Job you saw me”: I said
“I didn't” he said, “It was him”. I had not realised but all the time that I had been grovelling in the road, Pippy my little white terrier had been sitting beside me. Franc had seen a distant white terrier, sitting alone in the road and Franc had come to have a look and had found me sprawled in the snow, with Pippy sitting firmly by my side.
Mother really is quite right, you know; I am truly too old for rolling about on the ground - even with Pip to look after.

Jonathan Brock

2009-11-01T20:15:00.002Z

Those of you who have struggled along with this blog {if indeed this is a blog} may remember the tale about Jonathan Brock and the W I - well, after that we kept Jonathan quiet for a bit. But the time came when military duties recalled me. The problem arose as to what to do with Jonathan. A 3 parts grown boar badger is a whole nest of problems, particularly if he has upset such an important section of the community as might be represented by the Womens’ Institute: it would not have been possible just to dump him with my family.

Dr Pip provided the answer. Dr Pip was our General Practitioner - a fine old fashioned sort of man, who was also a desperately keen naturalist. Apart from clearing up my spots, he and his young family had become devoted fans of Jonathan Brock. When the provisional wing of the WI had started talking about Jonathan's savagery, Dr Pip talked of nonsense and helped to quieten things down. Thus as the military drum began to beat for me, It was put to me that whilst I was away, Dr Pip and his family would billet Jonathan. My family could heave a sigh of relief and so it came to be.

Above Dr Pip's garage was an old loft, approached by a set of tone steps. Jonathan would climb the steps, pop through the cat flap in the door and retire to his spacious bed room. When the Army set me free from duties to return home, I would put Ginny the terrier in the van and we pop along to Dr Pip's - a couple of miles down the road. If the weather was fine, Jonathan Brock would be lying out in the sun at the top of his steps. The sound of the van would bring him lolloping down the steps to fling himself at me, chattering his welcome. He would then clamber up me still chattering. He would drape himself round my neck and nibble gently at an ear. He was always very gentle and well mannered.

So things continued and I told myself that Jonathan was settled in his new home and I saw no reason why things should not continue as they had started, which just went to show how young and stupid I had become. After all as far as I knew, Jonathan was well settled with the Doc, was doing no harm to anybody. But I had never considered the fact that Jonathan was a wild animal and as such his very existence in a ‘civilised’ village society was regarded by some as a sin and a hissing. It simply was not ‘fitty’ as the locals would say. ‘Not being fitty’ is a terrible social sin in a civilised rural society. The fact that Jonathan was living with local Doctor suggested to many that he had got ‘above his station’ and shouldn’t be allowed. None of this had been informed to me.

The first that I heard of a problem was a letter from my Mother, saying that Jonathan had been very ill and might well not live. On my first chance to get home, I went straight round to Doctor Pip’s to see Jonathan. He was very pleased to see me, but was obviously in a poor way. I asked Dr Pip for his opinion. He reckoned that someone had slipped Jonathan a dose of rat poison. Why would anyone do that to the poor badger? He scratched his head. Human beings can be very strange with things they don’t understand - he said. Jonathan is a tame Badger and how many others do you reckon there are round here?
There were no others that I knew of.

There you are then. He was something that did not fit in. In other words he should not have been about. So some well meaning person thought that Jonathan was not natural and needed levelling up. When I went to see Jonathan on my next visit home, he had been well and truly levelled up and I dug a hole in Dr Pip’s orchard and if I cried when I buried him, it was no one’s fault but mine. I had interfered with the natural rhythm of Jonathan’s life and he had paid the price.

This area of France is heavily wooded and mostly oak woods. These are just coming into their fine multi-coloured, Autumnal magnificence. Oak logs burn well (if they are dry). My friend Didier dumped a trailer load in my yard the other day - and the fire now goes well in the grate. Everywhere you go in rural France you are likely to encounter tractors towing trailer loads of nicely seasoned logs. It was because of this that France never experienced smoke pollution - there was no 'smog'. Even in the towns the traditional oak logs are still burned.

The other day I was out hunting and sitting in a woodland clearing. The trees were on the change and the colours were magnificent. There was a distant chatter of chain saws and a smeech of fragrant smoke from where the twigs were being burned. It was truly lovely day. Hounds were running in a desultory fashion in the wood below.

There was obviously very little scent, but as we have had very little rain for 6 weeks, this was not surprising. What was magnificent was the colours of the dying leaves. I was very content to sit on a log and just let it all sink in. I have always enjoyed just sitting quietly in the woods and watching its life go on around me. A flicker of movement caught my eye and through the oak coppice in front of me a fine Roe Buck moved out into a small clearing, where he stood, his ears twitching at the distant cry of hounds. It would have been a very fair 80 yard shot, but when I came to France I passed on my rifles to the Boy. I hope that he will get as much satisfaction from them, as I did, but that all seems long ago and far away.

Historical

2009-10-09T23:23:00.000+01:00

To London last week to inspect the Grandson, who is now 2 years old, with a mop of fiery red hair and the construction of a prop forward. There is a good French word for this - 'Cousteau'. Alex for, such is the child's name, is 'cousteau'. We went by train, because I like trains and the French TGV is an excellent way to travel, as long as it stands still. When it is travelling it hops about a bit. This does not help those who are écloppé, which is what the French insist on calling those who are lame. I am still lame in spite of the fact that everyone insists that I should not be. Anyway, be that as it may, the lameness or whatever it may be makes a train corridor a place of interest and peril. One of the good things about being unsound is that those who run trains and such like things are very helpful with 'assistance' which is the provision of baggage carrying, wheel chairs and such like, so that with Mrs. Poole to carry 'The Spectator' I was trundled happily throughout France and England, except for the occasion at Haywards Heath when a willing but unskilled youth made a determined effort to push me under rather than onto a train on the line for Victoria. I have to say that the French are very good about helping others. On my way back from England, my destination was Poitiers. Poitiers is a big and very busy station. The exit from a train is by steep steps to the platform. There was a wheel chair waiting for me. There was also a mass of people waiting to exit. There was great deal of Gallic enthusiasm. I found myself being bustled backwards down the steps and my lame leg being thrust between an urgent whistle blowing train and the edge of the platform - not really recommended. Another problem with a long sitting journey on a train is that joints can go to sleep. I had got my joint from St Pancras to Lower Sloan Street after 8 hrs on the train. The Joint decided that enough was enough and gave up; dropping me outside the Sloane Club where many kindly persons picked me up, patted me over, dusted me down and eventually guided me into the bar.
I will tell you something else that I did not know until I became lame. This piece of fascinating information is that being lame makes getting in and out of a black cab rather difficult. Yes, I know that they are all 'handicap' friendly and have floors that fold out into a ramp. This is fine, always supposing that (a) it is a model of cab that has been fitted with a ramp (b) that the cabby's partner / driver did not take the tool that opens the ramp to Southend with him and leave it there (c) that the present incumbent is of the obliging nature that does not mind having half his floor taken up and (c+) that the driver is not French and has therefore never heard of providing his passenger with such a totally unheard of and unnecessary luxury (without some extra payment). However, there is an alternative - when your 'andicappé' is struggling trough the cab door Taxi persons can provide physical help by applying a shoulder to the backside and applying a bit of firm forward propulsion and yes, your fare may well collapse in a crumpled heap on the floor, but if you knock a bit off the meter, then the chap may not complain, too much. A pleasant thing about train travel is the time you can spend reading books. Between England and Lille (Europe - return) I got well stuck into Anthony Beever's excellent book on D - Day. I displayed a copy to my friend Claude on my return to France. He assured me that he knew all about it. His family had lived behind Omaha beach and his family had been amongst the 3,000 French civilians who were liberated with extreme prejudice in the struggle. There are some very interesting historical snippets in Mr Beever's book. For instance: it seems that General de Gaulle spent time during the war to writing a book on French Military History that managed to avoid all mention of Waterloo and the fact that Napoleon was absent from the Battle (which as every French child will tell you was a famous French Victory) because he was squatting over a ditch battling with piles - poor chap.

Jonathan Brock

2009-09-05T15:02:00.000+01:00

I don't know how many of you have heard the collective scream of a Woman's Institute - chills the blood it does. It was Jonathan's fault - bless him - mind you I got blamed as well. Jonathan Brock was a juvenile badger, who had come to live with us. Mind you that was the fault of old Matthews. He had some badgers to shift and had asked me to go with him.
"On no account bring anything back " said my Father who had a deep understanding of my weaknesses. So when we dug out a litter of badger cubs from underneath the Old Roman Road and Old Matthews winked at me and shoved a cub in my coat pocket. I was far too weak to do anything except wink back and that was how Jonathan Brock came to live with us. He was a charming little animal. His great delight was to climb someone and drape himself round their neck, where he would lie chittering and chattering to hmself, whilst he chewed the edge of an ear in a gentle absent minded sort of way - all part of life's rich pattern. The other thing that he enjoyed chewing was a nice pair of bare ankles. He used to have great games with Ginny the terrier, although his temper would fray a bit when he was outdistanced and the chittering would raise to a high level of fury. One day I was walking with the menagerie in the orchard. Ginny had been showing off her swimming in the pond. Suddenly the furious chitterin was cut short by a splash. Jonathan was in the pond and 'splash!' so was Ginny -could he swim? we never found out because Ginny suddebly appeared over the bank carrying a sodden and furious young badger by the scruff of his neck. So, can badgers swim? I still have absolutely no idea. All I can tell you is that sudden and total immersion, plays pop with their temper.
It was about this time that Mum became a Queen Bee in the Women's Institute. I do not remember that this did much for her temper. Sometimes meetings would be held at our house and Dad and I with the dogs would be banished to the kitchen for the afternoon. This was also the time that Jonathan Brock made himself a comfortable sett under the drawing room sofa, where he chose
to pass a 'Secure Hour'or two. So there one afternoon - our peaceful domestic scene was set - the ladies in the Drawing Room with Jam & Jerusalem, Father and I and the dogs eating excellent cake in the kitchen and all was right with the world, But and of course there must be a 'but' amongst this tranquil scene. If you are talking about Jonathan; he was fast asleep under the sofa making gentle ursine snores. It was possibly the gentle swell of conversation that roused him - we shall never know. But roused, he looked around him and saw, under the pelmet at the edge of the sofa - Ankles. No - as these were the ankles of Mrs Blowey and Mrs Truscott - not mere Ankles, these were Ankles - High Case Ankles. Let us suppose that Badgers can lick their lips, these were surely the sort of ankles that a chap should lick his lips over - well fleshed, plump ankles, the sort of ankles that you have to approach in a dream like state, prior to giving them just the slightest and most gentle nibble.
The first scream stirred Dad and I from our chairs and the cake tin.
"My God" said Dad " they're raping the WI - quick!" My initial questions of " Who? and "Why?" were maybe hardly pertinent, but my next of " where's Jonathan??" was right on the nail. Dad and I doubled down the passage to the Drawing Room, or rather, I did; Dad had had a leg shot up at Singapore. But what a sight presented itself at the Scene of Scream. Every WI member was up on a piece of furniture with her skirt wrapped round her legs. They formed a circle, in the circle of which stood Mum. Mum with an oustretched arm from the end of which dangled a furious young badger, who was objecting with fury. The dogs who had come with us, joined in the fun, leaping about and barking loudly. Mother, white with fury, handed me a chattering badger: "Take this!" she said - so I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and Dad and I beat a 'strategic retreat to shorten our lines of commuication'. It seemed that the WI meeting dissolved soon after. They were not best suited and by the same token neither was Mother. I did the only sensible move of the day. I stuck Ginny and Jonathan in the back of the van and we all went for a long therapeutic drive.

Who shares my bed

2009-09-05T14:59:00.002+01:00

It is a very long time since a dog slept on my bed. The last one was Ginny and that was back in the early fifties. I had been to Ireland to stay with The Captain . He was a famous Olympic horseman and a MFH of renown. He had a huntsman of renown called Harry and, in due course, Harry went on to hunt the hounds himself. He had some very varminty terriers and a litter of the same:‘Would ye ever sell me a pup?” says I
‘God love ye , Sorr’ says Yer Man – “ That’ll be a quid and I’ll put her in box for ye for the boat” Thus began a great love affair between myself and Ginny. I called her Ginny because because that was the name of the Captain’s daughter and for her I had a burnibg adoration and did she not marry an English Lord and me never seeing her again. But I had the dog and she was firmly tied up in a cardboard box and together we set off on the Boat train to Rosslare.
The Rosslare / Fishguard Crossing is not a kind one and both Ginny and I were sick. It was when the Fishguard customs demanded to inspect the box, that I realised just how sick the poor little bitch had been; well, I did tell him not to stick his hand in the box. Mum welcomed the poor little mite and a bowl of warm milk was well received, but when I staggered off to bed, I heard little feet pattering after me. Ginny came and sat by my bed with ears pricked – what to do?
‘ Alley up! ‘ I said and she was sharp up on the bed. When I woke up during the night, there was something warm snuggled up to my feet and there it remained for the rest of its life, or until I went to Ulster for a soldier – then Ginny had to stay behind with the family. I did not worry about her until I got a letter from Mum, to say that the Bitch had not been well. The vet had been and thought that she might be pining a bit. I still did not worry, until I got another letter which I read in a blizzard up in the Sperrin Mountains .– a desolate place for desolate news – Ginny had gone – ‘We had to have the poor little thing put down. She was so ill… ” said Mum. There is one good thing about the storm laden Sperrin mountains – it is such a miserable place that you can go outside and have a weep and no one will take a blind bit of notice.
Time has marched on; since that sad day, I have had many terriers, but none have shared my bed since Ginny – until Pippy came.
Pippy is a Lucas Terrierand and that is a pretty rare breed. There was a certain Sir Jocelyn Lucas ,Bart, MC, MP, a man of many parts, he was a ‘mighty hunter before the Lord’ for one thing and to help him on in his work he kept a pack of Sealyham terriers. You may like to think that Sealyhams are pretty hardened little sinners.
‘Not hardened enough’ cried Sir J and stuck in a dash of Norfolk, or even Norwich terrier [I cannot remember which] which produced a hellish mixture known as a ‘Lucas Terrier’. When I lived in Northumberland, I used to have occasional days with the Tynedale hounds. They had a Terrier Man. I used to like his dogs. They were small stocky dogs, rough haired with prick ears – very alert:
“What’s them, then? “I asked Paul one day
“Why, Sir, them’s Lucas Terriers” says he,without even the shade of a blush.
The next month would be my wife’s birthday. It would also find Mark and me down at the Tynedale kennels collecting a puppy. He had a brown head , a crooked stern and enormous charm. This he displayed when I got him home and he licked my wife’s nose. He was and, thank God, is a splendid little dog. He loves going hunting and with me has walked many miles following the Border Hounds. He has two trigger words. Say ‘Car’ and he has gone to sit by the garage door. Say ‘Basil’ and he is off like a flash to the shed door, because he knows that Basil lives in the shed. Basil may need a bit of explanation. When we thought of France, I rushed out and bought a bicycle. This was rather forward of me, as I had not ridden a bike for some 20 years – not since the days of exercising the hounds. They say that the skill of riding a bike is something you never forget – like many truisms this is a lie. I know that for a fact, because on my refresher course, I fell off 4 times and gave the bike away to a deserving boy. Behind my French home you can travel for miles on gentle roads and meet nothing but an occasional tractor. This would be ideal for keeping any surplus off Pip and myself. We could go for ‘Ballades’ -gentle rambles together. But as they say, first catch your tricycle. This was easier said than done. The French who are big on multi-hued bicycle gear refused even to consider such a ridiculous motion, But eventually I did find a supplier. He was a German who made, at a price, tricycles for the handicapped and if I wasn’t then I am now. A tricycle has poor equilibrium and if you are going too fast down a steep track and hit a large stone, the trike will very likely cowp and so will you. I had not broken a collar bone since I was 10 years old. I did not remember it hurting. I was wrong. In fact, I had many more nasty falls from wheels then I had in 20 years of hunting hounds and I broke things too – a thing that I never used to do out hunting – so I bought myself a fourwheeled cycle which is much more stable and which has things like transport boxes, of which Pippy thoroughly approvesand a small ‘aide electronique’ for the handicapped has which much the same effect as a low box on a quad.

My old friend, Claude, tells me that where we live has the second best climate in France after the Cote d’Azur. That may be but what we do get are humungous storms that whistle in from the Bay of Biscay. We had one the other day – thunder, lightning, wind, rain and all coming it seemed from right over head. It woke me up and I could tell that with all that rattling and banging, there was little chance of more sleep. So I went through to the front of the house to sit in my chair. I found Pip sitting in his chair. He was shivering and quaking with fear. No dogs like thunder, but this storm was too loud and too close. The poor little dog was absolutely terrified. There was only one way at it. I picked him up, took him to the bedroom and plonked him in the middle of the bed. He lay between us for the rest of the night and there he lies every night. We may not have thunder every night, but we do have Pip for company.

Les Scoots

2009-09-05T14:59:00.001+01:00

There was tremendous Bell ringing and hammering at the front door the other afternoon. I was dozing in my chair, in what I regard as 'my secure hour'. So Mrs Poole went to 'repel boarders'. “What was it?”
“It was a boy scout wanting a sandwich;” she said, “or rather 10 sandwiches.”
“Why 10 sandwiches?”
“Because there are about 10 scouts”.
“Did you not tell them what the Black Prince's Archers did to the Boy Scouts after the sack of Poitiers?”
“Yes but they said that is for the honour of France and they were hungry.” Then Aurora came and spoke to them and now they have gone. I am not surprised. Aurora is our neighbour and very fierce and she had seen the scouts off and a good job too. They would have got short shrift off me. I could tell you a thing or two about French Scouts and now I will.
Christian had invited us out to Lunch in Paris. It had been a memorable meal. The restaurant specialised in Duck and Burgundy. Both of which were excellent, so excellent that even a dumbo like me realised that there had to be a catch somewhere; there was. I knew that Christian was quite grand, but in fact he was grand beyond the belief of ordinary people like us. After some exceedingly rare brandy had been produced, Christian turned on me – he understood that we lived in quite a wild spot? Exceedingly ‘sauvage’. I assured him. Would it be a suitable place for his Scouts? He inquired? In fact he called them ‘Scoots’ and that is how I remember them. Well, it was a bit rough, I thought but that it seemed was no matter. These were top of the line scoots. In deed they could not be compared with or mixed with ‘ordinary' Scouts. The ‘Scoots' came from some of the finest families in France. I was to understand that they were from ancient Papist families who were so far to the political right that they regarded the Papacy as dangerously left wing. I had another sniff of brandy and swilled my thoughts round with it. I knew that the Honourable, my neighbour, was a great man for knobbly knees and toggles. I also knew that he had given his estate over to 2,000 scouts from round the world [His gamekeeper had fled to Wester Ross] and I thought that few Scoots would not make things worse. The Hon agreed with me, especially as the Keeper was too far away to argue. I passed the good news on to Christian, but I told him that the World Scouts would be leaving just as his men arrived. It seemed that the Scoots did not mix much with what they regarded as lesser Scouts. So as the Scouts moved out of camp The Scoots moved in. We arrived home from France to find that the Scoots had already established a ' reputation'. They had attended a village cricket match and by way of living off the country had consumed all the teas. Confronted by massed cricket bats, they had reluctantly agreed to wash up and when no one was looking they had filled the kettle with washing up liquid – so when the kettle had next been boiled....
Mrs Poole and I [as honoured guests] were invited to lunch by the Wolf Patrol. Jolly good it was too. If I had not known better, I would have said that it was roast pheasant. “Ah” said Kansas –“a slight mix up there”. It seemed that The Honourable had called to welcome them and they had understood him to say that they should make free with the Estate. Mind you, 'understanding' was an on going problem. None of the Scoots spoke English. They relied on Kansas who spoke it heavy with Yiddish. No one seemed to quite understand how he had got there, but now that he was there they dare not let him go because of 'the Misunderstandings'. We had one on the next day. The local garage was holding an ATV scramble on the Estate and had erected a wonderful course with ropes. These disappeared over night. I knew where they were because, I had seen them during a visit to The Leopard Patrol who had erected a splendid hammock system suspended from the roof of their hut. The hammock system just happened to be made from twisted rope. “It was”, said Kansas “an unfortunate misunderstanding”. They came thick and fast now; especially with the return of the Keeper. It was quite right and proper that the Scoots were strong on Hygiene. The Wolves had set their camp next to a pheasant cover. In this they dug a deep trench and covered it with brush and sticks making some excellent camouflage to cover up waste products. It was unfortunate that the Keeper should have attempted to walk across it, although 'unfortunate' was not amongst the many words that he used.
They say that all good things come to an end – the visit of The Scoots had to be included. On their final evening, I walked across to their camp to wish them farewell. I heard noise – growing noise and as I opened the gate at the bottom of their lane the noise grew and very nearly trampled me in huge knobbly boots – down the lane came a trample of Scoots screaming with excitement. I soon saw why – hard behind them came the Keeper. He as brandishing a spade round his head and screaming:
“ FUCK OFF! JUST FUCK OFF - YOU LITTLE BASTARDS!”
No doubt there was an explanation for all this unhappiness, but I did not think this the time or the place to enquire. So when the rush had passed, I made my way up to the Honourable's house and let him pour me a fighting dram, whilst I brought him up to snuff on local happenings. At last he held up his hand and said
“Willy, I want you to promise me that I shall never have to hear anything about Les Scoots again”. Well unless he reads this, I shall have kept my promise.

France has changed

2009-09-05T14:53:00.000+01:00

This is a Blog. I am not sure what a Blog is but Heather and Trevor say it is a bit like a diary. Heather and Trevor were respectively my director and producer for the time I worked in TV. They must be right because they always have been.
“ Tell them about your life, now” they said “ people want know what has happened to you. Tell them about France.” Because, you see, in early ’05, after nearly 40 years of Journalism, my last newspaper (The Newcastle Journal) breathed a deep sigh and defenestrated me. I became ‘retired’; sold my little farm and went to live in France. Was that a good idea? Well, yes and no – it is not like Powburn and,, thanks be to God., it is nothing like Alnwick. I first came to France in 1987. I had just become a columnist for the Daily Telegraph – a happy situation that lasted me for 17 years. The DT sent me to France to write 2,000 words on French Hunting, so I had cause to be fond of France. So when I became a retread, France seemed an obvious place for it to happen. The trouble is that over 30 - places and people have a habit of changing.
France has changed. It had a reputation for supplying punters with absolutely spiffing browsing and sluicing. It is now all too easy to eat very badly in France. The problem is the demise of the old style, family run, cafés - these have been rapidly replaced by pizzerias and ‘snak bars’.
The thing that has not changed is the French appetite for bureaucracy and form filling. This python like process strangles even the most simple seeming matters. An example is required – let me give you a 'Storm'. We get lot of storms that gather in the Atlantic, then wind up into an 'Orage' with thunder, rain and wind. They tend to be full of noise and dury, but fairly local in effect – very gallic. We had a bad one the other night – Thunder rolled, roof tiles crashed, roads were blocked and big straw bales rolled about. There was an unfortunate lady nearby whose chimney collapsed through the roof. She rang the insurance company to send someone to fix it.
'We would do this with pleasure said the charming French man, 'but the records show that there was no storm at La Tillier'
.Roads Blocked, trees uprooted, roofs smashed.... what was it then; a military training exercise?'
“Ahha!” replied M.Lassurance; “we have consulted the Bureau du Meteo and it has assured us that there has been no storm at La Tilliers and that is official, so we deeply regret....” or in other words – get stuffed – we don't know what caused your problem, but it was nothing insured with us.