CAERPHILLY AND THE SLEEPING HABITS OF THE FRENCH

Stung out of my blogging laziness by Jane who is blogging on roller-coasters somewhere in the exotic Florida never-never land even as I speak, I can only tell you that I have boringly spent a deprived day in that mecca of the wilderness otherwise known as Llandrindod Wells: you know where you have to exit the hotel to find a two bar mobile phone signal and where, some years ago, I was reliably informed, by no lesser authority than the Mayor, that tourists flocked because nothing ever happened there after 7pm and therefore that they could go early to bed safe in the comforting knowledge that they would not be disturbed.

It was, yet again, the machinations of UNESCO that drew me to those parts: we have members in North Wales and South Wales and therefore Llandrindod - Parish of the Trinity in English - represents approximately equal misery for all. The ‘Wells’ part of the name seems to be a kind of Victorian fiction to which towns in these parts (Llanwrtyd is another) are much given to adding to their titles as a extra species of embellishment for those for whom 7pm is a watershed behind which lurks the devil and alcohol.

Even more misery for me, in fact, as I had to divert in the rush hour traffic to Caerphilly to collect an otherwise immobile member. Do try to visit Caerphilly, once in a lifetime, for it is indeed a surreal experience. The closest thing I can find to describe it is that painting by Magritte of a businessman with an apple for a face who ends life being played by Piers Brosnan in the Thomas Crown Affair.

Well, Caerphilly is just an ordinary town, a very ordinary town in fact in the best tradition of urban Welsh ugliness, but there - in its not so muffled middle, by the pump and the town clock and the welfare hall in widows weeds, almost frisking with discomfort as if it had sat unexpectedly on a thistle, sits Caerphilly Castle, the second largest moated castle in Europe (after Windsor seeing you ask). Golly it’s huge when set among the pharmacies and pound stores and the Harold Wilson Industrial Estate

This morning with the sun shining down out of a grey and damp sky, Caephilly castle looked exactly as if must have done 460 years ago when Oliver Cromwell blew it up - well not all of it, that would have taken a minor weapon of mass destruction, but at least one of its towers, which remains cracked and leaning to this day.

So there we are, Caerphilly, and I am asking myself how can I possibly make the retreat to what I wanted to write about which was the sleeping habits of the French. I am like an actor who knows they have gone wrong on stage and is desperately trying to ad lib with lines approximately appropriate to the plot and resisting the temptation to invent something totally bewildering such as ‘Yes, darling, but have you actually read the story of the Plantagenet Parakeet?’

I fear that there is no easy way back, so like a car racing towards a crevasse just please close your eyes and grit you teeth and....... there we are - the French spend more time sleeping and eating than most people and also live longer, according to a fresh study by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

With an average of almost nine hours per day, "the French spend more time sleeping than anyone else in OECD countries," the survey unveiled last Monday (4 May) shows.

The French are followed by the Americans and the Spanish, with both nations sleeping around eight and a half hours per day.

At the other end of the scale, with an hour less than the French, Japanese and Korean people sleep the least among the 30 member countries of the OECD, at around seven hours and 50 minutes a day.

The French, who are known worldwide for their culinary skills, also "devote more time to eating than anyone else and nearly double that of Americans, Canadians or Mexicans," the OECD, says.

They spend more than two hours a day eating, followed by the New Zealanders and Japanese, who also spend close to two hours daily at the table.

In Italy, which is another country with a worldwide culinary reputation, and Belgium, people spend around one hour and 50 minutes a day eating.

Spaniards, Germans, Poles and Swedes also spend more than an hour and a half a day eating, while Finns, Norwegians and Britons spend the least time at the table (around one hour and 20 minutes).

Their way of life seems to have an impact on French people's life expectancy, since they are among the top three nations living the longest, together with the Japanese and Spaniards.

An average Japanese woman lives to almost 86 years, while a man lives to 79. French and Spanish women live up to 84.4 years, and men 77.3 and 77.7 years respectively.

Hungarians are the European OECD nation to live the shortest lives, with women's life expectancy at 77.4 years and men's at 69.

The survey, called "Society at a Glance," also looked into leisure time in 18 of the 30 countries where data was available.

It found Norwegians spend the most time on leisure – around 27 percent of their time, followed by Finns, Germans and Belgians who all spend around a quarter of their time on their favourite activities.

There were gaps between men and women's leisure time however, notably in some countries.

In Italy, men have around 80 minutes more a day of leisure time than women. By contrast, Norway appears to be the most equal society in that respect, with men and women having practically the same amount of leisure time.

Most of that time people spend watching TV, listening to the radio or on "other leisure activities," while attending events and practicing sports remain rather unpopular, taking not more than six to seven percent of people's time.

Visiting or entertaining friends is also a popular free time activity, especially in certain countries.

Turks spend around 34 percent of their time "entertaining friends," making them the most "sociable nation," followed by New Zealanders (24%), Canadians (21%), Americans (16%) and Koreans (16%).

Europeans come out as much less generous in that respect, with people in Germany and Spain spending not more than four percent of their time "entertaining" or visiting their friends, the OECD says.

All of which (after the Caerphilly bit!) I have taken word for word, with only the occasional comma inserted, from the pages of EUobserver, so let it not be said that I am not doing my bit for greater integration, especially if means that we end up like the French - sleeping for nine hours a day and eating for two. And that is exactly what I shall be doing, all being well very shortly - and in the Auverne too.

I knew there was a reason for the 35 hour week if really you looked for it.

MEME or ME-ME-ME

I have been tagged by Jane to write about myself - hence I presume the word ‘meme’ (Me-Me!). As usual I have written too much. I’ve tagged a few others below. I’ve included for fun a couple of husband and wife pairs.

What are your current obsessions?

In days gone by, no variety performance was complete without the man who put dinner plates on a high vertical wire and spun them around. The gyroscopic effect enabled them to defy gravity; the plate thus stayed balanced on the wire. Or not as the case may be. Clearly the object was to see just how many plates and wires could be erected, the performer continually having to rush around rescuing the early plates as they slowed and began to wobble, giving them a deft flick, that would ensure another minute or two of life.

Being self-employed, running a business, house and garden and with a variety of voluntary interests like UNESCO and acting, my life often resembles that sea of plates. I am governed by a long to-do list and its complement of unremitting deadlines. In the background is the constant need to manage cash - will there be enough in the bank to pay for the stock orders this month? By how much will expenditure increase next year? How much do I need to earn from writing? What can be fitted into the day? When can I learn my lines? Let’s move this to the evening - do that on the train; get up early to do the other. And so on. Those plates are my obsessions.

What are you listening to?

Radio 4, when I’m not doing something that requires concentration. I love the midnight news. Classic FM, if I’m reading in the evenings.

Which item from your wardrobe do you wear most often?

If the government really wanted to reduce carbon emissions, and to generate employment, they would give me a grant towards replacing my 20 year old central heating boiler such that the fuel savings would pay the net cost within a couple of years or so. They could reclaim the money afterwards by charging me more tax - which they will do anyway - but presumably my ongoing fuel savings would be enough to pay this. We should all then benefit: me, the climate and the government.

As it is I can’t afford the investment to raise the efficiency of my boiler from 60 per cent to 90 per cent. So I have to reduce my heating and wear more clothes, which brings us to my most worn wardrobe garment. Which is a padded gilet: my Christmas charity shop present from Younger Daughter in 2007. I still wear it almost every day. It cost £5 and the cost per wear must have been reduced by now to about twopence.

First spring thing?

I’ve always been a country person. Though born in a city I grew up on a small farm. Ever since I never been really happy unless I can walk on grass; over moors and hills certainly, but mainly just through fields.

So for me spring is that eruption of new grass that begins in mid-April. The field grass grows three inches in a week and the insects buzz around the early wildflowers. Sit on the bough of a low tree and you can survey a scene that must have been repeated year by year ever since farming began: the rolling grass-covered hills, bursting with spring life. It always fills me with energy and hope.

What's for dinner?

Probably a salad starter, rocket, olives, feta cheese, followed maybe by pasta or some such and after some fruit or cheese or rhubarb from the garden

Planning to travel to next?

Thanks to our dear friends Rosie and her husband we are off again to France next month to stay once more at ‘The Mill,’ with its walnut trees, deep down in the Auverne. Spring will have long arrived there. The chestnuts will be in full leaf. Even the walnuts, the latest of trees, will be bursting into leaf.

I have always loved France and quite frankly would be content if I never travelled anywhere else. I was semi-offered a trip to the Smithsonian Festival in Washington DC this summer, though it now looks as though I won’t be going. I am not the slightest dismayed. The thought of jet lag (from which being a bad sleeper at the best of times I suffer greatly) compounded by a hot, humid and crowded city outweighs the attraction of novelty. I prefer the shady comforts of an outdoor lunch in an Auverne village and to walk in solitude over the fields of Wales.

Best thing you ate or drank lately?

Having been raised on a pig farm I grew up with a great fondness for pigs. They are the most intelligent of animals and generally diligent, clean and respectful folk. If only pigs could learn to grow soft coats, to remain the size of piglets and above all to procure padded feet rather than pointed trotters, I am sure we should never have started to eat them.

Indeed, for many years in fact I didn’t, cringing at the conditions in which these wonderful animals were raised. Then came the movement for outdoor-reared, organic pork and I confess I have succumbed. Last night I feasted on organic pork sausages, bought in the farmers’ market, and made with prime meat flavoured with chives. With them went a most unusual and flavoursome country wine from the deep south of France, which some kind guest must have left as a calling card. Mas des Deux Frères it called itself.

Last thing you bought?

From a charity shop Monmouth: a book about how to tour vineyards.

Flower of the moment?

I would say nasturtium, for which I have a likeness almost as fond as for organic pork sausages, but, of course, they are still at the toddler stage - bravely shoving a couple of leaves above the bare earth in promise of all those vermilion trumpets to come. So I better say geranium, my next favourite flower, particularly when scarlet. I bought some a week ago in town. Already they are in full bloom.

They have a particular resonance for I remember, aged about 4, being taken by my father to paint a picture of a nearby house outside which scarlet geraniums were blossoming. My painted geraniums looked almost like the real thing, I thought. At least from a distance.

Favourite ever film?

I hate such questions. In fact I hate choosing in general. There is so much to enjoy. Besides films you enjoy at one time, you may not enjoy on another. Some have repeated watchability - Casablanca, for instance - but I have never been as thrilled by that film as by watching Jungle Book, with its elephants, rubies, tigers at the age of 7. Or so moved as by the dreamy romanticism of ‘Un Homme et Une Femme’ or Dr Zhivago, which I first watched in a cinema in Hannover, snuggled up in the darkness. Or even Lawrence of Arabia, which triggered a lifetime of admiration for Peter O’Toole and a general infatuation with camels.


Care to share some wisdom?

One of the best pieces of advice I have ever had - though I have to confess it is not always easy to apply - is to find yourself good professionals to assist you on your voyage through the high seas of life. Good doctors, good dentists, good solicitors, good accountants, good architects and so forth. Sadly, most professionals are not good. Too many are in the profession for the money, or for a career, instead of being dedicated to their client and most, in my experience, are simply not half as competent as they think they are, at least in the sense of having the common sense to see the big picture and to understand your agenda rather than what they assume automatically would be good for you.

If you were a god/goddess who would you be?

As at least part of my life is in communications I had better say Mercury; besides, I’ve always fancied those winged anklet thingies. For the greater part of my life I have laboured under the delusion that if one only concentrated one could step of the bottom of a stair and remain floating. I guess Mercury would have been able to do that with a little flutter of his heels. Unfortunate, though, if he ever got cramp.

If I were allowed a second shot, however, I would say Cybele, who appeals to my dual nature. She was one of the minor goddesses. Even so she was the mother of King Midas, and as a young and extravagant woman had the panache to drive a chariot pulled by lions. On a Turkish holiday her chariot harness broke. It was fixed by a farmer named Gordius, who had a sideline in untiable knots. In recognition of this the ever extravagant Cybele made Gordius a King (or maybe it was Prime Minister) and in another extravagant gesture liberated northern Turkey to give him something to rule over. She called the land Phyrigia: no doubt because it was very hot.

Being a timid and retiring soul, I have rather fancied Cybele’s extravagant streak and the ability to create Kings and liberate lands on the scale of an American President. And to bear a son with the incidental ability to turn things into gold, would, I have to say, come in most handy when faced with the ugly coincidence of paying the VAT bill and needing a new boiler.


Rules of the meme.

Respond and rework. Answer questions on your own blog. Replace one question. Add one question. Tag 8 people. OK, I’ll tag the following (though if it’s a pain or a chore, just smile sweetly - or curse me roundly - and move on…)

Westerwitch
Happy Snaper
Faith
ElisabethM
Little Brown Dog
Un Peu Loufoque
Jackofall
Pondside
Lampworkbeader

Apologies if you have been tagged already!

EASTER, ELY AND FREUD

I had a call from Elder Daughter during the week asking whether it was I or Younger Daughter who had mischievously hidden Easter eggs in her tubs of growing potatoes.

Well, both of us had been concerned that her Easter egg hunt had turned out to be less of a chase than we expected, even allowing for the impediment of glasses of champagne consumed beforehand in the spring sunshine of her Frome garden. Not so much a hunt as a harvest we thought: well, we should give her something to hunt for and discover in a quiet moment long after the shock troops of the Easter family get-together had departed.

Her garden lies on the side of a hill and when she came to the house, three years ago, it consisted of a simple strip of unpromising lawn surrounded by brooding and sentinel-like conifers. Now the garden is transformed, the trees are gone, flowers blossom from every corner and the expanse of grass is broken up with flower and vegetable beds. Not a corner is wasted.

The hillside descends, increasingly steeply, to the river Frome - on which, so I learned this week from Radio 4 - is being mounted the biggest exercise in counting and tagging young salmon ever undertaken. Fewer and fewer salmon are returning to the fold and the scientists want to know why.

Quite how it will help to count and tag the fish I don’t know; that wasn’t fully explained. My grandfather, who fished keenly for salmon all his life, maintained that the salmon’s decline was consequent on the Danes discovering rich marine feeding grounds somewhere off Greenland: a sort of superior restaurant quarter and conference centre for salmon from all over Europe. Once discovered, at the end of the 1960s, the Danes just scooped the fish out of the water by the ton. Presumably they still do.

Once this Frome hillside was covered in artisan terraces that dated from Georgian days. They became bigger, and the houses more substantial, the higher you climbed up the valley. This was the parish of Trinity presided over by a grand church at the top. You can still see a few remnants of these terraces today, now beautifully gentrified with large cottage gardens hidden away in a maze of leafy lanes. Sadly, four fifths of the parish was swept away, like the salmon, at the end of the sixties when bulldozing became as popular as the miniskirt.

The change from one townscape to the other is abrupt and horrid. One moment you are surrounded by leaves, by gentle stone work, by pleasing curves, by buildings, which however humble, fit the Georgian ideal of proportion. The next you are precipitated into a barren world of inelegant modern houses, themselves crumbling now after only forty years, the tangled lanes replaced by wide paving, the grand trees swept away and the whole shebang a weight on the soul.

Visual elegance ought to be so easy to achieve. It ought to cost no more to build a modern house to Georgian proportions, or terraces with a frontage and set on a gentle curve. And yet we don’t. And, what is more, no one can tell me why. Unless it be that these days the supreme qualification to be an architect or town planner must be to have a visceral hatred of the visual beauty of the past. We condemn the fascists for burning books while rewarding those who bulldoze our architectural heritage with knighthoods.

Oh dear, what a sombre piece this is turning out to be. Let me enliven it by mentioning Sir Clement Freud, who sadly, has been called to give entertainment somewhere known more for its harps and song than for anarchic comedic brilliance and cooking.

I did have the good fortune to meet him once, although I cannot for now recall either what the meeting was about or why I should have been present. I can only assume that it must have been something to do with politics, he being at the time the Liberal MP for the Isle of Ely. Perhaps it was a by-election, maybe even the Brecon and Radnor by-election of 1985 in which I had some minor involvement. We were in the same party after all - or at least on the same side.

I have no recollection whatsoever of what was done or said. Clement was supposed to be chairing the meeting and I seemed to remember he arrived late with little idea of what was supposed to be happening, which problem he resolved by appearing larger than life and delivering a succession of funny anecdotes.

None of which took us very far as regards the serious business of winning the election (although win it we did despite all predictions to the contrary). Being something of a Young Turk in those days I remember feeling rather let down by this most unserious of politicians and concluding that if he had won the Isle of Ely constituency on a electoral whim, he would lose it in the same manner. Which sadly he did in 1987

If I had had the good fortune to win the Isle of Ely I should have made a desperate attempt to hold on to it if only for the magnificence of Ely Cathedral with its great octagonal lantern. I should have sought permission to hold constituency surgeries underneath it. A better use anyway than that of Oliver Cromwell who stabled his horses there in the Civil War.

How the lantern and the Cathedral itself remains standing on such insubstantial fenland ground is indeed a miracle. For sheer architectural glory it must remain the finest in England.

Ah, I see we have reverted again to buildings. Time to stop, I think, and plant out the scarlet geraniums that I have just bought in town. God gives us flowers and trees, I sometimes think, to disguise the visual ugliness of our present day constructions and to enhance still further the skill of those unsung architects of long ago who were determined to weave beauty from a warp of bricks and stones.

The Photograph of Ely Cathedral is from the official Cathedral Website

IN WHICH I RESCUE A POT PLANT

The other day we were discussing how the recession was affecting businesses. Our own little label business, now nearing its year end, looks as if it will come in about on budget, which is to say slightly down on the year before. But then labels are a declining industry.

Label firms seem to be dropping like flies and catalogues of their redundant equipment, for sale at knock down prices, drop through the letterbox with increasing regularity. Why we no longer need labels when ‘labelling’ seems to be the new found craze of government is another one of life’s impenetrable mysteries.

For us, therefore, managing the decline, is what it is all about. We don’t mind declining slowly. It’s sudden jolts we worry about. A bit like ageing really. We are, though, at the small and simple end of the market, contracting out anything difficult or complex. Operating from home we don’t carry the heavy overheads that are what seem to push so many businesses to the wall. Those and finance costs, of course. So it looks like we shall be battling on into another year.

But sadly, not all businesses will fare so well. In the town one or two have already gone under, including our most handy - and therefore useful - Garden Centre, just off the High Street, and nestling beside the river and its willows. In normal times this would have been full over the Easter weekend with eager gardeners looking to fill their hanging baskets and herbaceous borders.

A couple of months ago the Centre closed suddenly and unexpectedly. No one knew why exactly for it had always seemed a thriving business. There is talk that the landlord may have wanted more money for the lease, or maybe wanted the land for ‘development.’ But who knows what to believe? Maybe competing with the B and Q’s of this world for an industrial supply of petunias and nasturtiums is a mug’s game.

Anyway, the fact remains that this thriving and bustling hub of town activity, where you would meet neighbours between the Vietnamese ceramics or over the rails of clematis, where you would rush down on a Sunday afternoon to buy an extra trellis or set of bamboo canes, has gone the way of all things mortal. Now it is just a sad and empty yard, full of decaying pallets, litter and collapsing sheds. All the plants have gone, the stock of fertilisers and watering cans, likewise. It all looks very woebegone.

Wandering home a couple of evenings ago, on my way back from my daily trip to the Post Office to despatch parcels of labels, something made me divert along the path that runs past the old place. Past the little gate which fiercely said ‘No Entry’ - you were supposed to go in via the shop part which has now been leased to the Antiques Centre - which was not barred but in fact wide open. So I went in and had one of those idle moments of wandering around vacantly trying to remember all I had bought there in happier times.

Yes, here was where they kept the trees, here the climbers, here the water plants and those pond liners, here the stand of rubbishy rhubarb. Not a long wander: I was half-conscious that some uniformed (or even non-uniformed) jobsworth might turn up to enquire what I thought I was doing and automatically suspect that as I was clutching my now empty parcel bag, I must be someone clearly up to no good.

So driven by a mounting feeling of illicitness growing vaguely in my nether regions, I turned around to wander out again. I suppose I had been looking for some souvenir, something to remember the place by. Two months ago perhaps, had I been alert, there might have been any number of discarded bargains to be had; but today all that remained were plastic pots, polythene and broken pallets. Or so it seemed. For then I saw something - a pot with something still in it - lying on its side in a heap of rubbish that had been swept into a corner. Whatever the something was it looked pretty dead.

It still had its label: Pennisetum, it said, with instructions in half a dozen languages; dwarf tufted grass producing pretty colourful (well, whitish) tufts of something or other in the summer. Would it ever do so again, I wondered? For the whole thing looked pretty dead. As if the pot had lain on its side all winter and the plant had shrivelled from drought. Just dead grass, wasn’t it?

Nevertheless I thought I detected a small green shoot - a patch of greenness anyway - so I scooped it up and brought it home. Ever since, at a young age, I learned the parable of the lost sheep, things rescued have always had a particular place in my affections. Into the parcel bag it went and home it came.

It was pot bound, of course, and looked way past its sell by date: a dense thicket of straws in a small pot. But I have since re-potted it and may even plant it out on the lawn. It may be my imagination but I think it’s looking happier.

BARCELONA MONDAY

This week has been one of rich experiences. For as part of my voluntary UNESCO work I had the opportunity the visit Barcelona to talk to colleagues there and as part of that visit I also had the opportunity of a private tour of Gaudi's Sagrada Familia Cathedral.



Gaudi’s great Catalan edifice, excites strong emotions. Like the translucent Barcelona light it cannot be ignored: can never become merely another townscape. It demands urgent attention, regardless whether you prefer your Cathedrals much as the medieval builders of the high perpendicular left them: light transfixed in an echoing perfection, with spires that claw at the sky.



Not for nothing, then, that Gaudi’s defining creation, still unfinished after one hundred and twenty seven years, should have been created a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Our busy and ephemeral age will leave few monuments behind when finally it crumbles into dust. Apart from massive concrete accretions there will be little enough to remind future generations that our epoch can boast those who have striven to weave beauty and complexity from stone and light and who, too, have reached toward the heavens.



The Sagrada Familia - the name means Holy Family in Catalan - has already survived great turbulence. War, fire, political apathy, poverty are only some of the ills which its creators have fought since work on the cathedral commenced in 1882. Now at last, with its World Heritage status and annual visits surpassing the 3 million mark, the great work is finally in sight of completion.



Gaudi himself died in 1926 with little more than the great carved facade with its four iconic bell towers completed. That was a shock to a project struggling for funds, though not as great as the disaster of July 1936. Two days after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War almost every church in Barcelona fell victim to anti-clerical rioters. The Sagrada Familia did not escape. The works were burned. Gaudi’s studio with all his drawings and the complex geometrical models from which his works took shape went up in flames. Building work halted for a generation.



We ascended nearly seventy metres above the Barcelona streets and moved like so many Quasimodos among the skeletons of the high Cathedral architecture where the immense sculptured finials of fruit and flowers are reminiscent of some far off Aztec vision. Still far above us the mighty decorated bell towers soared against the blue Mediterranean sky. It as a long way up and a long way down.



The work proceeds from models recreated from pieces of the originals, burnt and smashed by fire. Gaudi’s obsession with geometry makes it possible to recreate a whole section from the smallest part. The new models, still on Gaudi’s one to ten scale are fitted around the fragments of the original and so manage to look like plants regenerated from from a small piece of rhizome. The work has been a triumph of detection, a fitting tribute to the conquering nature of faith and human dedication.



Yet the Cathedral faces one last challenge. What has survived war and destruction to become a World Heritage site risks now being, quite literally, undermined. For a long time there have been plans to build a transportation tunnel underneath Barcelona that will pass within two metres of the Cathedral’s Foundations.



The ground on which the Cathedral stands is not good. It is feared that if the tunnel excavations do not give rise to subsidence, then years of vibration will one day cause the great bell towers of Sagrada Famila to collapse.



Many species of engineer have looked at the threat and have given their opinion. Some are re-assuring. Others take a more sombre view. But to re-route the tunnel would be costly for work has already started. The tunnel is at the outskirts of Barcelona itself. Only high politics can now halt or deflect its relentless advance.

FLOURS AND FLOWERS

I am pushing Aged Mother around Waitrose again. She, in her wheelchair, attentively scans the aisles as we go up and down looking at the whiskies and the toilet rolls, the yoghurts and the shampoos.

I have written about Aged Mother before. She is 87 and is sadly now feeling the effects of age in her knee and memory departments. “I know I have seen something that I want,” she says, as we go patiently back and forth, her eyes alighting eagerly on some scrap of coloured packaging only to dismiss it with a “No, it wasn’t that! What was it?”

Being an even-tempered and long-suffering sort of person I resist the urge to mutter, “I don’t know you haven’t told me,” but can’t help thinking it all the same. I mean it is not even as if this was my mother, though everyone of course thinks she is. She is actually Helen’s mother, but I have been brought along as, so often on these shopping expeditions that J and Helen organise, I am thought ‘good’ with Aged Mothers. (I use the plural because Helen has two: her own and her husband’s with a combined age of 185) Helen and J each have each a trolley. I am the safe pair of hands on the wheel chair.

Actually I don’t mind at all. Aged Mother, in her own way, is quite fun, and the whole quasi-Buddhist exercise of subjugating the self leaves one quite serene. I may very well be in the same helpless state myself in only a handful of years. If so I want to know I have credits in the Karma bank.

In small doses the very old and the very young are no different. All that is required is the ability to remain unembarrassed and an aptitude for one-sided conversations on Joyce Grenfell lines for which shopping provides splendid opportunities.

“Let’s look at the orange juice, shall we? Mmm, what sort shall we buy? Do you like orange juice? It can be rather acid, don’t you think, though mixed with olive oil it is supposed to be good for the bones, or rather the joints. Does that make a difference? I mean if it were good for the bones could one expect that it would be good for the joints as well?”

I pause for the response: “I don’t really know, dear - but orange juice, yes! Did I ever tell you my grandfather was the Mayor of Harrogate......” This is the signal for rapid intervention. The Harrogate story lasts ten minutes and is recited faithfully on each and every occasion we meet and sometimes more than once). I plunge in heavily to effect a diversion.

“Ah yes, Harrogate,” I say. “Beautiful town. But I wonder whether they drank orange juice there. At the mayoral meetings, I mean. You know, to wash down the toffee? Did your grandfather eat toffee, and if so how were his teeth?....” and so we go on.

If all else fails I recite Shakespeare to her: though to mutter ‘For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of king’s........,’ can serve to raise the eyebrows amongst the unwary.

Written down like this it all sounds horribly patronising, but it does work. She doesn’t know what we are talking about, but then neither do I really. But we both are, on the face of it, having an intelligent afternoon’s conversation. I ask her to hold a random carton of orange juice while we beetle off in search of J’s or Helen’s trolley to put it in.

We are having a similar conversation about bread flour which I tell her I need. “There’s flour here,” she says observantly from her position two feet away from where I park the wheelchair to browse. Indeed, she is right! Bags and bags of it. What a surprise! But this is Waitrose after all. I am looking for a special flour, I tell her confidentially, one that has grains in it. I ask her opinion of granary flours. She considers the matter gravely and confesses she can’t tell, or doesn’t know, or has forgotten. But she says this most positively and we are both satisfied that this is a valid exchange.

We are joined at this point by a young woman holding a bunch of flowers in search of some Canadian extra strong, reinforced gluten, flour in a black bag with a red maple leaf, which happens at that point to be directly behind Aged Mother’s wheelchair.

“Look at these lovely flowers,” she says to Aged Mother, her attention temporarily diverted from flours to flowers. She thrusts them under Aged Mother’s nose. “I couldn’t resist them.”

“Oh those are nice!” says Aged Mother beaming. I move the wheelchair to one side and tell her we are looking for a flour with grains in. She replies not to me but to Aged Mother (which makes me want to complain that it’s the people in wheelchairs that are supposed to be invisible not their hardworking pushers) telling her that the aforementioned Canadian flour is excellent because the strong gluten prevents pumpkin seeds with their sharp edges from cutting through the dough and ending up at the bottom of the loaf.

We are rapidly bordering surrealist territory. Aged Mother enters the spirit of things by nodding sagely and opining helpfully, “Of course it does.”

“I suppose you’ve done a lot of cooking?” ventures the young woman wistfully, on the basis of those four words which have now elevated Aged Mother to the status of a sage to be deferred to on all matters of baking.

I will say this for Aged Mother, she knows how to milk a situation. She stretches out an arm and says in a stage whisper. “I used to bake for Lord and Lady Fermoy, you know, Princess Diana’s grandparents.” And indeed she did when she was a girl in her teens and before she ran away at the outbreak of war to become an aircraft fitter, leaving the Fermoy kitchens bereft of her culinary talents.

But the Fermoy story and how she first introduced the name of Diana to the household is another well-scratched record. Luckily, at this point, fate intervened in the shape of the young woman’s husband. Grabbing a bag of flour, we executed a hand-brake turn and sped off to the safer pastures of jellies and jams.

THE CHAIN SAW IS REAL

The car I picked up at Edinburgh Airport was a hideous shade of slime green. Why anyone would want to drive a car that colour, I don’t know. Still, it was a sporty little number - two doors and a petrol engine. Touch the accelerator and the car shot forward. And it was as nimble as a go-cart. The Europcar people said it was a SEAT Ibiza - so there!

Dave (otherwise Happy Snaper) had given me directions. But first I had to get out of the carpark, which wasn’t easy. True, there were no shortage of signs saying ‘exit,’ but these led into fences, or else nowhere. It was Kafkaesque. I was about to admit defeat when I spotted, under the red banners of the rival Avis concern, a tiny road to freedom. We were off, the car and I, to visit the Cowarts Academy far away among the snow covered hills.

First the M9 and then the A84: names, half-remembered from the mists of time came rolling back. Stirling, of course, and then Callander, Strathyre, Lochearnhead, all the while following the signs for Crianlarich - the Capel Curig of Scotland as I remember it - whose presence on the map is almost more important than its presence on the ground.

Half way up Glen Ogle, just as the evening darkness had closed in, the traffic came to a halt amidst a welter of flashing blue and amber lights. A car had gone over the parapet and plunged down into the valley below. A recovery operation was under way. Foot by foot the winches were dragging it up.

This did not relieve my state of apprehension as I approached Cowarts. One’s first day at school is always pretty nerve-wracking. And I am a lot older now, less malleable. What would I find over the brow of the hill and down the other side - look out for a wooden sign and a track, Dave had said.

Look out? It was dark and the sign was brown. I hurtled past and then, sensing something out of the corner of my eye, reversed and there it was ‘Wester Lix’ carved into a pine plank above a track that led into the black fastness.

Bump, bump, bump went car and I over the potholes. ‘Go as far as you can,’ Dave had said. ‘And then stop and toot.’ Bump, bump - a house here, a house there, all dark, a cluster of houses, a cluster of cars, no obvious end to the track - but no obvious continuation either. My heart raced as I tooted. Was all this wise?

Nothing. No lights - had I missed a turning? I got out of the car and approached the nearest house. There was a bell. A bell-type bell. Not something you pushed or pulled, but something into which you put your hand and waggled the toggle and out suddenly came a mighty and far too loud a clang and immediately there were lights and a pounding of feet, the door thrown open, and there was Headmistress herself, summoning her new pupil across the threshold.

Why had I been ridiculously apprehensive? The encounter with Gill and Dave was more like a home-coming. There are many houses into which I go where I say to myself ‘how odd’ and where you feel that you could never settle. But here was a house in which I felt instantly at home. A great whoosh of warmth and comfort, dogs demanding attention, a big glass of wine (ditto), a great bowl of nuts, laughter, charm and a conversation as almost if we had been cousins of many years standing. How do you classify a blend of intelligence and creativity, of caring and understanding, of laughter amidst sadness, of tidy and polished chaos and a welcome as big as the hills? I felt instantly at home.

A great meat stew bubbled on the hob and we ate and drank and swopped stories until it was time for bed. Sadly this was the most fleeting of visits as the next morning I had to return the slime green car to the airport and get myself into the centre of Edinburgh for a meeting with our Scottish UNESCO counterparts. But I got to stay in one of Westerwitch’s lovely cottages and in a bed big enough to sleep a whole family. And in the morning I snapped these pictures out of the window.





I wanted to take a picture of the red squirrels, but the Nutkin family were disobliging. Only one squirrel (was it Nutkin himself?) came racing across the lawn. I imagined I could hear him singing:

“The man in the wilderness said to me,
‘How many strawberries grow in the sea?’
I answered him as I thought good -
‘As many red herrings as grow in the wood.’”

Downstairs, Westwitch admits to having three studies. (I suppose it depends how bad you have been as to which one you are summoned). But in the one by the door lives Cyd Fishus, the shy, one-eyed Piranha with scales that glow orange and golden below his dark silver back. He is a most handsome fish, if a touch scary. Not something, however cuddly he might look, you would really want to put in your bath.

We were going to have walked out to see the sheep, Bam-Bam and Pebbles but the rain was falling by now and making their acquaintance had therefore to be foregone.

The dogs are wonderfully lovely. I especially liked Sassie, the Collie, so calm and patient, just enjoying having her ears fondled, chin tickled or head stroked. But then Arnie, the Jack Russell was lovely too.

But then it was time to go. Great purple hugs abounded, despite the fine rain, I turned to car around, waved out of the window and bounced away down the potholes and towards the road that would take me to the airport.