Our mate Dave has recently bought a new house in Carlisle, and today held his grand housewarming barbeque. Since all the rest of Britain seems to be inundated with flood waters, I was convinced an outside party was a silly idea, and asked our pet Sun Goddess to do us a wee sun dance. In the event, though, she didn't read my request in time, and it didn't matter, as we managed a nice sunny afternoon without her help. I guess we deserve a break here in Cumbria, after last year's catastrophic flooding. It's someone else's turn this time.
So, what is it about blokes and barbies? They'll spend half an hour or more fighting to get the thing lit, then get fed up waiting and stick the food on top anyway, even though it's still not hot enough. They believe that pouring fat on the charcoal to create smoke speeds up the cooking process. They'll happily stand in the garden all afternoon watching a miniscule bit of flame sputtering under half a dozen sausages.
We women, now, if we're hungry, we put the food in the kitchen cooker, cook it and eat it. Done. And... in the end, the blokes ended up doing just the same. The sausages, burgers and kebabs went in the oven, got cooked, and were laid on top of the BBQ supposedly to keep them hot. (They didn't. They cooled down.) And the smoke wafted and gusted round the garden, making sure everyone got a turn.
Halfway through this non-cooking process I got fed up and took a wee trip to Asda as I'd heard they were selling the new Harry Potter book there for a fiver, but of course they were sold out. The kebabs still weren't ready when I got back. Mind you, they were worth waiting for. Absolutely delicious. Yum. And certainly nobody would have left hungry - there was loads to eat besides the hot food.
Since Dave's a Carlisle United fan (I was about to say the Carlisle United fan, but that's unfair - there must be another one) and his brother, who's also going to be living there, is a Workington Reds fan, I created a picture as a housewarming gift, showing a fictional tackle between two players from Carlisle and the Reds. I suspect this would be impossible in real life as they play in different leagues, but this is a bit of fantasy, so why not? Note the group of fans behind the Cumbrian flag, by the way...
...Himalayan balsam. Yes, this pleasant-looking plant, which was originally introduced to this country as a garden plant (just like giant hogweed - see below) is now in danger of taking over our rural river banks and smothering our indiginous wild flowers.
Went for a wee wander on my bike at teatime - up the main road past Crosby Villa, down into the dip, up the long climb known locally as 'Slowly On', and turned right up a narrow road I'd never been along before. It leads down a long hill towards the River Ellen. As I whizzed downhill I thought to myself, "you'll pay for this when you have to use your muscles to get back uphill on the way home," but it was lovely to fly past meadowsweet and red campion, cow parsely and knapweed, and many other wild flowers with their gentle scents.
Halfway along there's a turn off to the right, that takes those who wish to do so to Cockermouth, and this road crosses a little hump-backed bridge across the river. I stopped to have a look, and found a huge swathe of Himalayan balsam all along the river bank. Pretty stuff, but lethal.
(There was also the carcase of a dead cow on a little island in the river, but I thought you'd prefer the photo of the Himalayan balsam to the one of the mouldering bovine.)
And the steep uphill stretch? Yes, I found it all right, on the stretch up through Oughterside towards Prospect before rejoining the main A596. Oh well, I keep reminding myself that every time I pedal my way up something like that I'm getting fitter.
Must be something to do with all this damp weather we've been having, but there do seem to be more slugs about this summer than usual. Now when I'm trying to be a gardener, I despise them and their leaf-nibbling habits, but from an aesthetic point of view there's something quite wonderful about a nice big black slug, with its surface of Klingonesque corrugations and its wet shiny coat. They remind me of tiny wee bikers, black and tough.
They're everywhere this year. Trying to avoid standing on them while walking is bad enough, but this afternoon I discovered a new sport - slug slalom on a pushbike. Because the rural roads are busy, and the rural footpaths are almost unused, its safer to cycle on the path around here. Easy enough to dismount on those rare occasions when you meet a pedestrian.
Today, however, all the local slugs had come out to promenade and show off their black shiny finery. Sure, there's plenty of room to get your wheel between them, but it involves quite a bit of weaving to and fro. So I wove and meandered, to and fro avoiding slugs with great care and diligence. I don't think I squashed a single one. Hurrah!
Unfortunately, so concerned was I to miss the slugs that I almost didn't notice the scattering of broken glass. Coulda been nasty, that.
Someone left a dead pot plant behind in the flat Chris was staying in last year. I took it home, pruned it a bit and kept it wet, and now look at it! This is not a dead orchid. Isn't it pretty? Thank you, nameless person who abandoned it!
They've devastated our vegetable crops this year, but how can you be angry with something as cute as this? It appeared, for the first time, in the front garden this morning, and spent a long time working on the long grass. If they want to mow the lawn, that's fine. Bring your brothers and sisters, little Bunny! Bring your aunties and uncles, your parents and your children! Let them eat grass. But leave the bloody veg alone.... what's left of it.
Spent a couple of days in Edinburgh last week. This was in order to meet up with some people I hadn't seen since I was about 20, but all sorts of things happen, of course when you're there.
A TRIP TO TESCO'S
Going grocery shopping with my son has always been fun, ever since he discovered, at the age of about 3, that he could get his name shouted out over the tannoy if he wandered up to a member of staff and pretended to be lost. Nowadays he sticks defenceless women in shopping trolleys and gives them a quick hurl around the car park. (But then again, just how defenceless is Jenny, really....?)
GIANT HOGWEED AT FORT KINNAIRD
I was surprised to see this stuff still growing in Edinburgh, and in such large, obvious clumps too, after all the work people did in the past trying to eradicate it. Squads of people went out, hauling it up by the roots and burning it. But here it is, growing at the roadside next to Fort Kinnaird, one of those big retail parks that have sprung up around the town since I left. Giant hogweed was a serious pest in Edinburgh when I lived there. It infested the banks of rivers, railway tracks - anywhere that the seeds could be transported. The sap can cause skin lesions if exposed to sunlight, and children used to uproot the stuff to use the stems as telescopes or pea-shooters. You can imagine the results. Why is it being allowed to grow in such a populous area?
THE WAVERLEY
We used to hang around there when we were young and even more foolish than we now are. It's hardly changed. Every Saturday night there was folk music upstairs, and in those days, in Edinburgh, the folk scene was the cool place to be. (Yeah, I know, from our ever-so-knowing
21st-century viewpoint that might be hard to believe, but really, it's true.) We played music, folk and blues and stuff, and there was good Scottish heavy beer, and certain other substances, and everything else you might associate with groups of young people - and some not quite so young - under the influence of such substances. As time passed some of us went here, and others went there, and others stayed put and drank themselves to death, or just got old. Some survived, others disappeared, but most settled down, had kids and played music to them. We all lost touch.
The nice thing about the internet is that you sometimes find people again, quite unexpectedly, even when you're not looking for them. Jim (above) and I found each other by chance, and although neither of us now lives in Edinburgh we thought it'd be fun to track down a few other old reprobates and get together in the old place. Amazingly, this actually happened, and was so successful that we're hoping to do it again soon. I was surprised to see Jim's astonishing hair, but even more surprised to find that Harry (above) is now 74 and still - after a brief respite of a few decades - a master of the blues guitar. He has always looked younger than his years.
There are other photos to be seen here - some of these are the ancient black and white ones which started this whole thing off when I published them on Flickr, and people started creeping out of dusty corners, giving themselves a shake, and declaring their memories of Sandy Bell's, Stewart's, the Waverley and other somewhat disreputable musical pubs of the late 60s and 70s.
A BIG EMPTY HOUSE AND FOXES ON THE LAWN
Camping overnight in a big empty house with hardly any lightbulbs should be a creepy experience, but it wasn't really. I had my torch, and a comfy bed, and a MÖRKER table lamp from Ikea. What more could I ask for? Foxes, of course.
You open the shutters on a fine Tuesday morning, look out across the lawn, and see a family of 4 big healthy foxes cavorting on the grass by the shrubbery. That's the way to start your day. It really is. And even better, you discover your camera is lying there beside you, just waiting to be used.
I watched them for about half an hour as they chased each other across the grass, engaged in play-fighting, and scrambled up and down on to walls like cats. Eventually they went off in search of food, which kindly Edinburgh people tend to leave out for them. No huntsmen with hounds here.
I was interested to note that their behaviour is far more cat-like than dog-like, despite their canine appearance. They are quiet, graceful in their movements and have the ability to climb and jump and land elegantly. Like cats, of course, they're predators. Here in the country they're not popular, as people keep poultry, but in the cities they have found a safe haven. Good luck to them, beautiful wild creatures that they are.
There are more foxy photos here
Well, it went fine last night. 5 of us plus the caller took to the Kirkgate stage, and after a certain amount of faffing about with mics and lights managed to produce a pretty good sound for a scratch band. I know I made loads of mistakes: I hope I wasn't the only one.... but so long as you keep the speed up people keep dancing. We'll get better.
It was an end-of-term event for a bunch of teachers from a local school, and they were all up for a good time so the floor was never empty. It was a lot of fun, but amazingly tiring. Don't know which takes more out of you - playing the music or dancing all night.
So. There ya go. If you want a ceildh band, you can now call on us.
Questions have been asked.
Well the chicks are now enormous, and ready to fly off any day. They have taken to hopping from roof to roof, and sit on the apex stretching their wings and making loud bizarre squeaking noises. The adults are still in protective mode, but don't seem to be attacking up quite so diligently. Today I watched 5 adults trying to see off a flock of swallows which are nesting in our barn. This had very little effect. There's not much a big clumsy seagull can do in pursuit of a nippy elegant wee swallow, which can fly at top speed towards the tiny broken pane of glass in the barn window and swoop straight inside without even slowing down.
When we encountered a place in the fence at the top of the field where I could climb over into the next field, I saw the wire was bent down in such a way that other animals must have used it before. I clambered over, and pointed to the top. Ghyll jumped up and down, examined it a bit, put his paws on it, had a wee think, and then, quite elegantly for a border collie, leapt very neatly over it.
"Right Pace, " says I. "Your turn next." But Pace steadfastly kept all four feet on the ground and refused to budge. She tries to find somewhere to squeeze through, but it's hopeless. Ghyll and I try to encourage her to attempt a jump, but she's not interested. OK, she's getting on years a bit, and she's quite a heavy dog these days, but I thought she might have at least tried.
Ghyll and I return to Pace's field, and wander back the way we came, contemplating. I realise that although Ghyll will jump a fence, and he's slim enough to slither under a gate, he won't swim under water like Pace - in fact, he won't swim at all, whereas she'll jump into any depth of water with no qualms, and swim to the bottom to retrieve a toy. I also realise that a few weeks ago Pace discovered how to negotiate a cattle grid, quite a clever feat for a quadruped. Ghyll had to be manhandled through a gap in the fence that time.
Between them we have one perfect dog. I guess I'll just have to keep them both...
KESWICK THROUGH THE SEASONS
I've lived In Cumbria for nearly 11 years, and I've been visiting Keswick on and off for more like 18, so I'm pretty familiar with the place by now. One of the things you notice is that during the tourist season all the shops are occupied with some business or other - some old, long-established ones (those these, sadly, are dwindling) and others belonging to optimistic enterprising souls hoping to start up the next Big Thing in town. A few of these survive but most vanish as soon as the tourists do.
When you visit Keswick in the winter there are always a number of empty retail premises, but in summer they're always in use. The only exception was 2001 during the nightmare year of Foot & Mouth disease, when visitors had to be discouraged from coming to the Lake District in case they spread the disease across the bare, sheep-free landscape.
EMPTY SHOPS?
OK. I've set the scene. Now, it's July, surely one of the busiest months for a town like Keswick. All the shops will be occupied, won't they? But they're not. Shop after shop is empty, with a 'To Let' sign on the window. It's eerie. There are plenty of visitors strolling around the market place with its fancy new tented stalls, but fewer shops for them to spend their money in. I wonder what's going on?
We've been invited, rather suddenly, to become a scratch ceilidh band. Well, a few of us either play for another ceilidh band at the moment, or have played with ceilidh bands in the past, so it's not exactly an alien concept, but it's going to be a nice change from playing recorder music with intricate harmonies.
J, a friend of B's, is a caller, and needed a band, so here we are, practising for a gig at the Kirkgate in a couple of weeks' time. And we are actually going to get paid for it. Gosh.
J turns out to have been one of the founder members of Belfagan, way back 26 years ago. I thought her name was familiar. It's a small world around here.
So it's B on accordion, K on fiddle, S on flute and R on flute and recorder, with me providing a steady rhythm on guitar. I am impressed by R and S who sight read accurately music they haven't seen before at top speed on woodwind instruments. I couldn't do that. I'd have to go home and practice. (It's dead easy to rattle out a few guitar chords, but playing the tune is much harder.)
We sound bloody good. If it goes down well on the 18th we might want to do this more often, though I don't know how S2 would feel about a rival ceilidh band in the area, especially since it uses a couple of his musicians...
S, B and I decide to have a separate practice session next week to work on some of my songs to play in the interval. It looks like our little virtuoso folk trio may end up being called Sheeps in the Oven.... (more on this later).
