Eventually and inevitably, things happen.

A week or so after my last blog, the Sue Gray one, when matters on that front had gone quiet, I thought my Loyal Readers needed something to take their minds off the boredom of February so I settled down at my keyboard…and immediately got Blank Page-itis. Nothing came to mind that was any interest to me, let alone you lot. I’d done dog walking tales to death and the weather was too cold and wet for taking pretty pictures. 

In desperation I turned to trees: the beauty of their shapes, I wrote, impossible to appreciate in summer, embellish the landscape during the dreary months either side of Christmas. I waffled on in this vein, bemoaning the monotony of Friston Forest’s beeches and suggesting that some of the trees had in desperation shaped their own personalities. For what it’s worth here’s how I tried to make the point.

And after that the little grey cells ceased to function. It was definitely time for a snifter, supper and kip. And hope something would turn up soon.

Be careful what you wish for. Because overnight mice decided to decamp from the chilly garden into the warmth of the house and, finding no food, thought the cables that fed our lighting and burglar alarm might be tasty. Result: no lights and an unstoppable alarm. As if that wasn’t bad enough the Law of 10 Year Obsolescence kicked in and things began to go wrong in the house. The underfloor heating malfunctioned, the Aga threw a tantrum, the boiler had a strop and then along came Storm Dudley to cut off all our remaining power. And no sooner than it was restored than Storm Eustace arrived, determined to outdo Dudley. Which it did, very successfully, knocking Westdean’s power lines for six and plunging us into outer darkness and cold once more, this time for five days. And because the garage doors required electricity to open, we couldn’t even go out to shop, let alone eat.

But that wasn’t the end of the mice saga: we got the PestArrest man in to lay poison in the roof which successfully exterminated the pesky creatures but their bodies became breeding grounds for giant bluebottles who then found their way into the bedroom below, in swarms that would have inspired Hitchcock. 

Enough of all that. Here are a few images of those happy days and some of the heroes who helped us survive them.

Stuff to write about came thick and fast after that. A drama on the A259, our local road: police, ambulances, fire engines, even a helicopter air ambulance, all called because a boy racer had taken a steep bend at high speed and catapulted through trees, ending upside down and unhurt inches from the river.

And Sophie, Bay, Bash and Gemma all came to visit. And we found a lovely lady gardener to help us. And a chap to mow the grass. And the weather perked up. And then got cold again. And life got generally back to normal. 

Until Putin decided to play silly buggers. And then things really did begin to happen.

Ask Sue Gray.

As we’re only days away from the report that everyone’s waiting for, and before reality takes over from fiction, I thought that non-readers of The Times would be amused to read Hugo Rifkind’s take on Sue Gray’s week. For once, no comments from me are necessary.


Shuffling along.

At this time of year, when the weather is bleak and cold and the birds aren’t singing and there’s mud everywhere and the only other dog walkers scuttle by silently and even the dogs would rather be at home tucked up in their warm beds, there’s only one way to try to enjoy the obligatory trudge round the forest and that’s to clamp on the headphones and tune the iPod to shuffle. No need to decide what to listen to, just enjoy whatever crops up. And what does is always bizarrely random: it could be Miles Davis’ trumpet followed by a movement from a Mahler symphony, an aria from Mozart, an old Elvis hit, some Cretan dance music, Lady Bracknell interviewing Mr Worthing and often something annoyingly unidentifiable…but the haphazard selection is what makes it interesting.

As does the setting on my computer which determines that, after a couple of minutes of non-use while I think or blow my nose, goes into shuffle mode and selects from my library of 78,148 photos and brings onto the screen one after another, each for about five seconds and lasting for a total of ten minutes an indiscriminate selection of about 120 images, some of which I recognise, many I don’t, but never mind, the interlude is quite mesmerising and completely addictive. To give you a flavour, my Loyal Readers, and although they’ll not mean a lot to you and because you haven’t had any pictures yet on this blog, here’s a sample:

A week or so ago, while I was gazing absentmindedly at one such diversion, an email from a brother pinged into my inbox asking whether I could find a photo of the Lady in Black amongst my childhood nostalgia file. Who was she, you ask? Well, every day, when we were kids, the Lady in Black would pass by our garden, dressed in the same clothes, carrying her umbrella, pushing her mother in a wheelchair and would cover vast distances from their home somewhere in Hersham. Later when her mother died she walked alone. Rumour had it that her fiancé was lost in World War 1 and she remained in the same style clothes so that he would recognise her if ever he returned. And why did he want the photo? Because he’s writing ‘Memories’ for his grandchildren and would like proof. Eventually I found the photo but only after hours of searching over several days but in the process stumbled upon all sorts of memories of my life too, shuffled together in boxes, drawers, files and albums. Not that you’re interested in those but you might like to see the sad Lady in Black.

But it put me in a philosophical mood: maybe life’s just one long shuffle…completely uncoordinated events coming out of the blue and taking us by surprise, for better or worse.

And that’s the profound musing - my metaphor for life - I was going to leave you with until, a couple of days ago, I got my first ever attack of gout. Truly a shuffle moment, unpredictable, unanticipated, unforeseen. Leaving me literally shuffling along. Not at all philosophical, just painful.

Only six days to go.

It’s a ‘will we, won’t we get to Christmas Day unscathed’ sort of time just now. Come to that, will Christmas be cancelled anyway? And if it is, by Order of Boris, will people feel inclined to obey his command? What a delicious irony it would be if the only ones totally obliged to do so would be him and his ministers while the rest of us follow the example of him and his ministers and cheerfully disregard the rules.

Anyway, for those of my Loyal Readers who aren’t on our incredibly privileged mailing list, here’s our Christmas card for you:

You’ll notice the title is an enigmatic if hopeful ‘Towards a brighter 2022’. It was printed a couple of weeks ago when things looked fairly cheerful but it proves the point about a week being a long time in politics because now I’d have added a question mark. Which just goes to show the importance of punctuation. On the subject of apostrophes - which I know is dear to the hearts of all of you - here’s proof of why we must continue to use them correctly:

My Loyal Reader’s wife’s car (one Loyal Reader, one wife)

My Loyal Reader’s wives’ cars (one Loyal Reader, more than one wife)

My Loyal Readers’ wife’s car (more than one Loyal Reader, one wife)

My Loyal Readers’ wives’ cars (more than one Loyal Reader, their wives)

Even with apostrophes the complications are confusing, without them we’d never know whether we’re coming or going. On that note I’ll wish my Loyal Reader and his wives a very merry Christmas and the happiest of New Year’s. 



Baby, it's cold outside.

Whatever the weather the dogs have to be walked. Worse still, every couple of days I need to do (sorry to mention this) a pooper-scoop around the garden. Today I had to do both and as I was donning my protective clothing Frank Loesser’s famous song popped irritatingly into my head. Remember it? Dubious lyrics consisting of a host (male) trying to convince a guest (female) that it was too cold to go home. And a banal tune too. But enough, according to Wikipedia, to have been recorded over 400 times by amongst others Louis Armstrong and Lady Gaga. Not together of course.

It got me thinking: last week we were basking and this week freezing. Why and when does autumn end and winter begin? Another excuse to resort to the internet: winter is the coldest season and is caused by the axis of the earth being oriented away from the sun. Some cultures do indeed define the start of winter by the weather, but officially it depends on whether you’re referring to the astronomical or meteorological winter. Astronomical winter begins on December 21st this year and ends on 20th March 2022 and is determined by the degree of tilt of the earth’s rotational axis in relation to its orbit around the sun. In other words it begins with the day of the year with fewest hours of daylight, the winter solstice, and ends when the day is longer than the night, the spring equinox. The Meteorological winter is reckoned to be the three coldest months of the year, so is defined as December, January and February. So either way, here on November 30th, we’re officially still just in autumn. So here’s what it looks like, courtesy of Guiseppe Arcimboldo:

And here’s how Alphonse Mucha contrasts the two seasons:

And in case you’d like to know what Sussex looks in the autumn, here’s how I saw it:

But as far as I’m concerned, because the temperatures are hovering around freezing and there are more leaves on the ground than on the trees, it’s dark by four o’clock and there are crumpets for tea, it’s winter now. So there.





On taking on nature.

Dog walks are a useful time to cogitate. Not much happens apart from the occasional good morning to fellow walkers or Taz and Inky making the odd dash into the forest after mythical rabbits. Yesterday I was idly pondering on some of the pro’s and con’s of our first ten years in Westdean. The improvements we’ve made to the house, I decided, was an obvious success. Convincing the recalcitrant locals that we should open the garden for charity was a mini-triumph. Rescuing the village pond from the jungle of nettles, brambles, reeds and willows counted as a battle only half-won as nature is fighting back. But my attempts to persuade the village that the verges should be discretely maintained and perhaps planted with naturalising daffodils and that the flint walls should be cleared of the destructive ravages of ivy were definite failures. Why, I mused? (That’s the trouble with dog walks, too much time to think.)

The fault lies with Isabella Tree I concluded. She of rewilding. Sadly too many people think rewilding means doing nothing, letting nature do what it likes. A bit like letting a six year old having free rein over their toy box…before you know what’s happening there’s stuff all over the floor that someone has, in the end, to clear up. Usually Mum. The same with the countryside: neglect it and it’ll become a mess. And uninhabitable. Rewilding, proper rewilding, is large scale, expensive and has to be managed to be successful. And land management is of course the key to looking after any size of plot. Here’s a couple of examples in Westdean of what can happen if you don’t:

We’re quite pleased with our own bit of land management and I thought my Loyal Readers might like to see what we’ve done. Before we moved in to The Long House the area at the back of the house was mowed within an inch of its life. Only the occasional brave dandelion dared show its face. Now, after sowing a perennial mix of wild flower seeds, planting hundreds of bulbs and tending it carefully, this is how our meadow unfolds throughout the year:

And this is what we find in our toy box: all the result of what’s called, misogynistically, good husbandry. But worth the effort, whatever it’s labelled.

Sorry about the silence.

It’s been a bit of a while since I last regaled my Loyal Readers about doings at The Long House. Apart from a touch of arthritis in my typing finger the only excuse has been lack of time. But today it’s belting down outside so no shilly-shallying…I’ll reveal what we’ve been up to.

We found Somerset. Not that it was lost, nor that we weren’t aware it was there, but we discovered what a wonderful county it is. (Pity they can’t ever win anything at cricket but that’s another story.) Rosie and I, minus the dogs who would have terrorised Monkey and Jones, their cats, went to visit Bash and Gemma (who, as my LR’s know, are son and multi-talented wife) at their house in Axbridge. Once a coaching inn they are now painstakingly restoring it so that by early 2022 they’ll be able to take paying guests. While they were tiling a bathroom, repairing window frames, plastering walls & stripping paint we explored the town and went further afield to Wells and even did a spot of gardening for them. Later, seeking inspiration, we all went to Tyntesfield, a house chockablock with craftsmanship, and all built from the proceeds from guano, confirming the principle that where there’s muck there’s brass. Thought you might like to see a few photos: Axbridge (1st row), Wells (2nd), Tyntesfield (3rd).

On the home front the last two months have been quite frustrating: no apples, figs, quinces, plums because of the frosts, no raspberries, strawberries or blackberries because of the rain and lack of sun. We hardly had a plant left standing because of the gales, we got peculiar viruses on the fuchsias and our beech hedge turned yellow. The slugs and snails decimated most of the vegetables that the wind didn’t smash or the sun didn’t ripen. And the rain made the grass grow at such speed it had to be mown every four days. As for the bindweed…! Still, the hollyhocks and the dahlias tried their best. 

On the plus side Sophie and daughter Bay have visited quite frequently, Bob and Bob returned to hunt for rare aphids and eat Rosie’s cake and Adam the Aquarist paid his bi-annual visit, this time to replace the pumps in the pond, one of which swallowed a frog and conked out. And Romke van de Kaa - the Alan Titchmarsh of Holland - sent us some Rhinanthus augustifolius seeds for our meadow. Although Covid put paid to his and other overseas groups visiting the garden we had a few local ones including the East Dean Art Club and two of their masterpieces are below.

So there you are, reasonably up to date with matters. Including, pictorially, the garden:

Except that ten days ago, just as I was composing this, the gale force wind brought down a tree which took out our broadband line leaving us completely cut off from the world…already marooned by a lack of petrol and without internet, emails, instagram, WhatsApp or phone. Bliss for a couple of days but as time passed and BT’s excuses became ever more inventive desperation set in. Still, after a quick word with our MP Open Reach finally appeared and now we’re back in business. Sorry about the wait.

Ephemera and other stuff.

Every so often, for no particular reason other than it’s a day too hot or too rainy to do anything else, one is liable to find oneself in one’s attic rootling around and finding things that have lain unlooked at for ages. I’m sure it’s happened to you. Well, it did me the other day, and amongst the suitcases, the old cricket bats, the carpet offcuts that’ll be useful one day I found two boxes. One, labelled Bits and Bobs, belonged to me, the other, Ephemera, was Rosie’s. Mine (in a tatty Badger’s original Chinese figs box) contained all sorts of souvenirs from early childhood onwards: bus tickets from an era when the conductor punched holes in them with a ‘ping’, several 5-year diaries filled with such twoddle as would have me platformed these days, a JetEx speedboat (‘the fastest boat for its size in the world’), an autograph book that once contained the signatures of Jim Laker and Tony Lock until daughter Sophie axed them in preference for the autographs of her school friends, a miniature Toby jug (souvenir of a Cornish holiday), a packet of Joss sticks, a Dinky model of my first car ( Morris Oxford LGC436) and a plastic Muffin the Mule (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZwubBK78nw). Amongst much else of little value other than sentiment.

Rosie’s Ephemera box (large, sturdy, bearing Bradleys, Chepstow Place WC2 signage and 2 x George VI 8d stamps) on the other hand was very much more interesting and seriously valuable. As well as fascinating personal memorabilia from previous generations were rare lithographs, an original cartoon by Gillray, Victorian watercolours, a page supposedly from Degas’s sketchbook and numerous prints including this one by Alfred Bestall called Spring Cleaning, drawn in 1932 for a calendar and probably included in the box because of his friendship with the family:

Alfred Bestall was, of course, the artist who wrote and drew Rupert Bear in the Daily Express from 1935 till 1965 and continued to draw the covers of the annuals for another twelve years. He was also Rosie’s godfather and used to visit from time to time. In 1980 Sophie made him a special soup using waterbutt stock, grass clippings, some mud for thickening and a couple of crushed earwigs for flavouring and Uncle Acky, as he was known, said he enjoyed it very much.

But while Ephemera in the attic boxes hasn’t proved ephemeral the sort of flowers that Uncle Acky took as his inspiration for Spring Cleaning certainly are. Here for instance are the spectacular array of poppies that this year’s June rain helped to produce in the garden, sadly here for a day but gone the next:

Thinking wistfully though it could be that, on our departure from this mortal coil, the ephemeral poppies could outlast the contents of the Ephemera boxes. The latter could end up on a skip while the poppies might remain forever on my computer’s hard drive. A nice little irony, n’est pas?

Getting back to normal (slowly).

As everyone knows Boris had hoped to ease the lockdown on June 21st. In the end caution prevailed and the country was urged to carry on with the existing arrangements. Which was a pity as we’d publicised the opening of the garden to the public on June 24th. What a dilemma…what should we  do? But after a lot of thought Rosie and I decided to follow the example of Boris himself, Mr Cummings and Matt Hancock and Totally Ignore the Rules. After all, the proceeds were all going to charity. And so it was that, yesterday, 206 cheerful and ultimately delighted people spent the day ambling around The Long House garden enjoying the sunshine that almost miraculously appeared amidst the rain and gloom of this summer.

And after they all went home we totted up the takings and found it was on a par with 2019 despite the attendance being 20% lower. The British public, it seems, have a natural reluctance to break the rules. Unlike our Lords and Masters. Will they never learn?



Spot the difference.

Perhaps to the relief of all I’m back to things horticultural this time, prompted not so much by comments unfavourable from my Loyal Readers (‘hopelessly at sea, stick to subjects you know about’) but more because of the effect this miserable weather has been having on the Long House garden. Here are just a couple of examples taken a year apart on the same day, the first showing how the walnut tree has struggled against the April frosts compared with last year’s warmth, the second proving we’re about four weeks behind where we should be. 

It would be comforting to think the slow start will prolong the season but, who knows, we might yet get a knot of frogs or a plague of locusts to further torment us, so better not to think too far ahead. Anyway, on the subject of differences I have been trying to teach grand-daughter Bay one flower from another. When it came to anything yellow she knew a primrose from a dandelion but when it came to distinguishing a celandine from a buttercup or a cowslip from a polyanthus she, quite reasonably, was also hopelessly at sea. So for the benefit of all, from left to right, are celandines (ficaria verna), buttercups (ranunculus acris), cowslips (primula veris), primrose (primula vulgaris), oxlip (primula elatior) and a dandelion clock (you really don’t need to see what a taraxacum officinale looks like).

But do you know the difference between an English and a Spanish bluebell? English on the left and Spanish on the right in case you don’t. English take about 7 years from seed to flower whereas Spanish breed like rabbits…get them in your garden and you’ll never be shot of them, and what’s more they’ll cross-fertilise with the English and wipe them out (don’t tell Boris that or it’ll end up on a bus).

And can you tell the difference between a blackthorn and a hawthorn? It’s not easy from the blossom but the clue is in the leaves: if it’s flowering on bare stems it’s blackthorn and if it’s surrounded by green it’s hawthorn. The thorns of both are spiky but the bark of the blackthorn gives it its name, hawthorn’s being lighter and rougher. If you’d like to know more I’ve just found a remarkably erudite article on google: https://www.thelonghousegarden.co.uk/news/2017/4/13/the-blackthorn-winter 

I spent ages telling Bay about how there are 219 different varieties of primula, how you can kill a bluebell if you tread on it, how a fig tree saved Romulus and Remus from drowning in the Tiber, how the dandelion got its name and how to make sloe gin from blackthorn berries. This is what she thought of it all. But, lest she hurt my feelings, she gave me her recipe for marmite and cheese scones.







All photographs © Robin Lloyd