Curry and Bier in Somerset

Taking my parents (aged 94 and 88) to North Curry yesterday to see my father's sister (aged 92) offered the opportunity for lunch in the really rather pleasant Bird In Hand Inn (sexist signage aside) and then a quick pop into the Church of St Peter and St Paul.  

The Levels are prone to flooding, of course, and along with every other old settlement, North Curry was built on a ridge of land. Good views from the churchyard, then.  

Octagonal towers are quite common around here. as are gargoyles and hunky punks in glorious golden Ham stone.  

 

Inside, a man was tuning an old piano with much stabbing of the keys.  The older members of the party sat and chatted while I fossicked quickly and quietly. 

There's a bier, upon which the mortal remains of Colonel Chard, of Rorke's Drift fame, were borne to their everlasting rest in nearby Hatch Beauchamp ... 

  

Cadaver effigy of an unidentified cleric 

Toma atte Sloo

This is my favourite thing - an old parish chest made of elm that weighs over 600 lbs and is believed, by its form of construction, to date from well before 1200 and possibly even Saxon times. 

Evidence suggests it was at one time forcibly looted. I blame this lot.

1348-9       John Leyat (Seyat) of Harewell

1349           Thomas Dauyntre 

1349-50     John Trowbrugge    

                    John Muleward(e)

We know the Black Death, which arrived in Somerset in early 1349, had a 50% mortality rate in some parts, and that a large proportion of the clergy perished, but I've never spotted quite so many priests appointed in such a short space of time as here in North Curry.    

An entry from nearby Curry Rivel’s court rolls from May 1349:

‘John Pypping who held of the lord a cottage . . . is dead, by whose death there falls to the lord nothing of heriot because there is no live beast. And the said cottage remains empty in the lord’s hands’

It seems the plague had claimed Pypping, his entire family, and all his animals as well.

Blooming Metaphors

Dug up at the arse-end of autumn and transported from Grimauld Place to our new home in a wheelie bin strapped to the top of a Morris Traveller.  Rather ignominious treatment for a little apple tree.

Re-planted by a woman who knows what she's doing, however ... 

... and blessed by a wassailing ceremony and a visitation of jays ...

... and my grandmother's apple tree*, which never properly thrived in its former location, has not only survived the winter but is blossoming.  




And how happy am I that every happening in my life handily serves as a metaphor for something else.  


*grown from seed from the last apples gathered from my grandmother's garden,  a couple of months after her death in 1991

Fresh Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs - now available to buy from Indigo Dreams Publishing and good, independent bookshops.  Oh and Amazon will have it soon too, if you must. 

'It's not doggerel!' says Ted.

Pebbles On The Shore

On Thursday we were off to Teignmouth for the launch of Pebbles on the Shore, an anthology of poems about the town. We went via the scenic route. 

Gibbet Hill and Brent Tor

Cox Tor car park

My glee at being on Dartmoor under my favourite circumstances - bright slanty sun and pewter cloud - dissipated as rain rolled in over Tavistock and hit the moor. Hard. 

The same rook which had been preaching in the shade of the ice cream van almost exactly three years earlier was there again, but wetter.   

There was nothing for it but to retreat to the car and eat a Magnum.  My dog, Ted, kindly offered to do some of the driving through driving rain.  

By the time we reached Shaldon, the weather was brilliant and beautiful ... 

 ... though fitful.

  

I'd felt a bit apprehensive about returning here while I was driving down the M5.  The sudden death last spring of the owner of the caravan park, where my family had two caravans, had resulted in a massive hoick in ground rent, followed in September by two months' notice to everyone to get their vans off the site so that his sons could install a fieldful of lodges at £180,000 apiece.  

It was painful to lose what had been our home from home for the last 45 years, but the nagging fear inside that the landscape I loved had somehow abandoned me turned out to be unfounded. (Of course it did!) I'd simply forgotten Herman Hesse's wise words: 'Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.'

So now I was looking at everywhere with new eyes, stripped of complacency.  A new relationship, a fresh and fruitful way of interacting with a place that is part of my heart.  And still less than 100 miles from where I live.  

(Of course, we wouldn't be in this situation if my parents had bought this house, Thalassa, when it was offered to them decades ago, but £3,000 was a huge sum then and they couldn't raise it.)

I must have eaten dozens of meals in the Clipper over the years, but this was the first since they dismantled the glass-walled booth selling souvenirs of Devonshire pixies and unpinned the tea towels from the walls, and it was by far the best, being decidedly palatable.  The cider was pretty good too. And it's dog friendly. 

A quick wander up to the bridge ...

... a glimpse of a still rainy moor ... 

... a peep down School Lane, through which my sister and I would walk to fetch our dad's newspaper ...

... a peek at the river between cottages ... 

... and it was time to head to the Alice Cross Centre in Teignmouth for the launch of Pebbles on the Shore.  

As well as reading some of the poems, anthology editor Neil Howell explained about the work of the Centre and gave the audience background information about them, while the artist Maureen Fayle spoke about her ink illustrations, many of which were executed in part with twigs.  I love this one of the back beach she drew to accompany my poem, The Poet and the Boatman, which you can read here. 

The whole evening went well, and it was a pleasure to meet some of the local poets. Even Ted behaved himself, although in the penultimate poem I heard a couple of loud, theatrical sighs emanating from the back of the hall to signal that even dogs who are dark poets can sometimes get poetried out.  










Information about Pebbles on the Shore and where to buy it is here on Neil's blog.  

'The Poet and the Boatman' is from my collection, Map Reading For Beginners.

Into the Black Mountains Part III : Llwyn Celyn at Crucorney Fawr

The reason why we'd come to the Welsh Marches was the chance to explore Llwyn Celyn, a Grade 1 listed farmhouse and one of the finest mediaeval hall houses in Wales, the day before a multi-million pound restoration was due to begin. 

Although we couldn't actually go inside the house, because it's deemed too fragile.  Here's a link with some photos of the interior.

We did, however, get to have a good fossick about in various barns, sties, stables, etc.

  

Dru detected two ploughs scored into this old stable door. 

I liked the spring rising between a barn and the house and running down the hill - must be murderous in the winter.  

Jamie Lake, artist in residence, had set up some light installations, of which the ones mapping the cracks and fissures in the stonework were the most effective.  Bristol-based poet Fiona Hamilton also read some of her poems, encapsulating her response to this resonant site, to the loud bleating of sheep.  Two of them were translated into Welsh, which was pleasing. 

Once restored, the farmhouse is to be a Landmark Trust holiday let for the well-heeled.  Dru and I wondered idly what would become of the sheep dip. An ornamental pond, I hazarded. She rather thought it might be turned into a hot tub. 

The barns and outbuildings are to be reserved for educational and community use.