To Westmorland and Beyond

Mo and Timmy yomping across Arkengarthdale Moor, Yorkshire, and in the distance, the quite remote Tan Hill Inn.

Mo and I like to take our annual holidays around the end of September, when the remnants of Summer still linger in the air, but there is also that beautiful early Autumn glow. This morning we walked across Lodge Meadow in an early morning mist with the sun piercing the trees in slanting shafts of light. It is a perfect time of year.

This time last year we were in Yorkshire, striding over the moors or through the dales. That was a glorious carefree fortnight staying in a small cottage by Arkengarthdale Beck running down to Swaledale, about three or four miles away. The year before that, we enjoyed two weeks on the Isle of Mull, and in 2017, to celebrate our fiftieth wedding anniversary and Mo’s seventieth birthday, we treated ourselves to a delightful month on Lipari, a small island north of Sicily.

Currently, we should be languishing for two weeks in a tiny cottage just outside the fishing village of Glandore, County Cork. But quarantine restriction would have meant us staying indoors for the entire time, staring out of the windows wondering what Southern Ireland was like. We have, at least, been able to postpone that booking until the same time next year, when we all hope this terrible pandemic will be behind us.

 But for now we are consoling ourselves with a week, commencing Friday, in a one-room cottage in Hoff, a tiny hamlet near Appleby-in-Westmorland. Hoff itself stands on the banks of Hoff Beck, and from what I can see on the Ordnance Survey map, consists of a bridge, a telephone box and a pub. Sounds good to me.

Appleby, charmingly and with an admirable doggedness, still clings to the old county name of Westmorland, although this ceased to exist in 1974 and was incorporated into the newly formed county of Cumbria.

So, for the remainder of this week we will be preparing for our trip north, planning little, except for the possibility of calling into Reeth Market to buy some bread and artisan Yorkshire cheese, then heading up to the lovely Tan Hill Inn for lunch. But we know what Robbie Burns said about the best laid plans.

the self-isolation diaries #10

Just a couple of months ago, the whole of the UK was suffering from the wettest spell of weather on record. Vast swathes of the country were flooded, mostly to the north and west. Even here, in the driest part of England, we were not spared the relentless rainfall, and the fields all around were quagmires, difficult to cross by foot or even by four-wheel-drive farm vehicles. The field shown in the above photograph is called ‘the linen field’. It’s where the bedsheets and table linen was laid out to dry in the summer. Here you can see where tractors have struggled to cross the grass in the winter, carving deep ruts in the ground. Now, after two months without any rain at all, the land is dry and cracked, the ruts fixed for the foreseeable future.

Apart from this little observation, so little of what I might choose to write in this blog is from first-hand experience. Events reach me through radio, TV or the internet. Radio 4 seems to be more like a constant series of phone-ins, with all the commentators and guest speaking from home. I don’t really watch much TV, and Facebook is full of ‘amusing’ video clips of dogs doing the craziest things. Anyway, I should now be sitting in the Sweffling White Horse, enjoying a lunchtime pint of beer that tastes of kumquats, and enjoying some excellent company. Well, I can get the beer as a takeaway, but the unruly banter across the bar is but a distant memory.

But now, the resourceful landlady, (Marie known as Maz), of the Sweffling White Horse, the world’s most wonderful pub, has set up an online virtual pub that is really working. A group of regulars, all established friends, get together on a Thursday evening, well-stocked with beer, and talk and laugh and get merry until the early hours. Having all downloaded the Zoom app for free onto our phones and ipads, we can chat visually from home, without fear of being busted driving back. It really is as close as you can get to the real thing.

Meanwhile, the lock-in continues, and a hapless, bumbling Prime Minister is so evidently out of his depth. His inadequacies are being ruthlessly exposed at PMQs each Wednesday by the new leader of the opposition, Sir Kier Starmer. The loathsome Rees-Mogg is calling for MPs to ‘set an example’ to the public by turning up for work. This is really so that a horde of baying Tories can rally to Bunter’s defense. Meanwhile, three Tory MPs have posted on Twitter ‘doctored’ film clips purporting to show Sir Kier in a bad light, but their ruse was spotted and they’ve hastily taken them down. Despicable.

I like to speculate how the ending of this ordeal will manifest itself. Will it be a slow drifting back to part normality, where certain chosen people are allowed to return to work, then specified businesses will reopen, a sluggish normality revisited? Or will it be an enormous explosive celebration, like VE day? Many commentators on the radio seem to think that the aftermath will offer a new world order, where the rich are made to pay their taxes to help unburden the nation of its debt, and that farm work will be valued and much sought after as a healthy means of employment, and that the importance of small business to our economy will be recognised. Yeah, dream on. As we know, the world’s wealthy are already circling, hungrily waiting for the businesses to collapse so they can get their nasty hands on some rich pickings. T’was ever thus.

the self-isolation diaries #9

If I believed in God; that is to say if I believed in an interventionist, Old Testament, wrathful God, rummaging through the detritus of human society, seeking out sinners on whom to wreak his vengeance, I’d look back at the events of the last twenty years, and I’d say, “He did this.”

He sent the religious zealots to indiscriminately rape and murder innocent people. He sent religious bigotry and racial hatred to polarise communities. He sent savage wars and He sent pain and suffering to blameless victims of war. He sent climate change to burn our forests, and to scorch our farmlands, and to heat the oceans. He sent hurricanes to destroy our townships. Locusts to consume our crops. Plastics to pollute our seas. And now He has sent a murderous plague to strike fear into the hearts of all men and women.

But luckily, I do not believe in God, so I can view these events with a calm, analytical eye and know that these cruel events are the work of man. Mankind’s very success at the top of the food chain, having no natural predators likely to threaten our existence, exposes us to the need, in evolutionary terms, of some form of population control. The territorial competition, as our numbers expand, lead us into often violent conflict as land becomes increasingly scarce.

The majority of society lives quite happily in multiracial and multi-religious communities, benefitting, as we so often do, from the cross-cultural influences. But then a slow burn of hatred begins to fester from a seed of revolution into a global terror whose origin is lost, but the enraged have-nots, using self-righteousness as justification, target anybody who might have. It’s indiscriminate and plants fear into the heart of peaceful communities throughout the world.

As industry races to meet the insatiable demands of a global population wanting more and more stuff that is created to fulfil the desires conceived by an advertising industry serving a capitalist market investing in greater and faster growth designed to enrich the ever-increasing numbers of billionaires, the inevitable result is massive waste and pollution. Finite resources of fossil fuels burnt in the production and use of the stuff creates a rise in atmospheric temperature through emissions of CO2. Polar ice caps melt with the rise in sea temperatures, resulting in rising sea-levels, and our anxiety increases. With climate change come hurricanes, whose destruction is shown around the world on our TV news broadcasts, and protracted hot, dry spells leading to terrifying forest fires rendering thousands of people homeless. Discarded plastic choke the oceans, killing entire species of sea-creatures, and brought to our attention in shocking footage presented by David Attenborough.

Now the need to feed this ever-increasing global population has led us to invent new industrial farming methods, dystopian in concept, where livestock is packed into vast hangars to produce meat to satisfy the appetites of billions. And now it is becoming widely believed in the scientific community that these conditions, with men and livestock jammed together, are giving rise to successive corona viruses. And as each new virus mutates, so it becomes increasingly virulent. And the fear grows into a global panic unprecedented in history. But despite the evidence, the impending catastrophe is denied by the astonishingly greedy and stupid leaders whom we have elected to positions of power.

Below is a link to an article written by Laura Spinney in The Guardian, entitled “Is factory farming to blame for coronavirus?” Below that are the stats published today by Worldometers of the coronavirus cases worldwide.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/28/is-factory-farming-to-blame-for-coronavirus

the self-isolation diaries #8

I walked today. It is the first Sunday of the month, and as a rule I lead a charity walk from the pub to raise funds in support of the Brain Tumour Charity. In normal times, a couple of dozen friends will gather at the Sweffling White Horse at 10.30 in the morning and set out for a healthy stroll along a circular route of around five miles or so, bringing us back to the pub for a leisurely hour or two in fine company and excellent beer.

But today I walked alone. Well, I say alone, but Timmy was with me, analytically sniffing every blade of grass over the three miles of our route. I have no idea how many people did the walk today, but it was suggested that we go-ahead regardless of the social distancing rule that overhangs all our days.

The weather was magnificent, and there were a few souls out and about, but mostly seen at a distance. It is heartening to see how we recreate normality from such bare bones. I mentioned on Facebook that I was fundraising with this walk, and friends have been so remarkably generous. So far today I have raised £84.00. That’s wonderful.

The idea of this fund-raising walk began with Matt Bayfield, a local singer who was diagnosed with a tumour three years ago, and set up his walk and talk challenge. He was a popular figure at the pub, although I didn’t know him personally. Matt died a few months ago.

But we keep this going every month, regardless of weather. Now the relentless rains of winter are behind us, and the soil has hardened in just a few weeks. The ground here is either clay, which holds the water and becomes swampy in wet times, and quickly becomes too hard to work, or sand, which is given to erosion, and drains suddenly. It will be a poor harvest this year, I fear.

Marie suggested that as an added incentive, we make this a treasure hunt, and forage for wild garlic. I picked a decent bunch from the woods beyond the bothy, and made a pesto sauce when I got home. I used pistachios, in the absence of walnuts, which is the usual nut to put with garlic. It was surprisingly delicious.

the self-isolation diaries #7

The one person in out household who seems to be suffering the most from confinement fever is our dog, Timmy. He’s stir crazy, because he really wants to walk around the village. But we won’t let him because there is some kind of dog sickness there that will set us back £800.00 to fix. We have been told from reliable sources that this nasty infection must be avoided. He loves the smells, though. He sniffs and pisses every four feet all the way around the place, and a short morning walk takes about an hour. The obvious rapture in his tiny face as he lingers over a small patch of weed, forensically extracting every last morsel of stink before he pisses over it to claim it for his own is a wonder to behold. But now we are denying him this major treat. One of the few pleasures in his life, and he finds himself socially distanced from it and doesn’t know why. So he is now ‘confined’ to the several hundred acres of the estate, where no other dogs wander, and therefore no dog smells to overpiss. And he is evidently discontent. Poor little sod.

People seem to be out enjoying the sunshine today. And there are even a few cars on the road. Suffolk has suddenly become undeserted. I picked up a few essential groceries from the Crown at lunchtime, then picked up some essential beer from the White Horse. Marie was sitting outside, worrying a piece of wood into submission. She and Mark seem to have resigned themselves to the fact that the campsite will not be open by Mayday, so they have eased up on preparations outside, and she has turned her attention to domestic items. Apparently, the piece of wood is to hang cast-iron pans on. Nice.

I then went on to get some prawns from Chris Whiteman at Friday Street. I made a Parsee prawn curry last night using frozen raw prawns, and was left with a pile of heads and shells that are not to be wasted. So I made stock for tonight’s prawn risotto. But the only prawns we have for the risotto are again frozen; this time in a large block, that were not taking kindly to the idea of defrosting. Hence the trip to Chris’s.

Eventually, on arriving back home, I poured myself a beer, and did my daily three-minute bop. It’s my exercise routine, which is about all I can manage for now. I share it on Facebook in the hope that it will catch on, and with luck, by the time I’m released into society, I’ll be as slender as a whippet, and hungry for the dancefloor.

But while I’m confined to my cell, I’ll start a new poster. The subject is a 1928 Bentley, for the Le Mans 24-hour event of that year. I’m always a slow starter with a new design, and anyway, there’s no rush as I’ve closed the website to sales. I can hardly justify my journey to the post office as essential.

Meanwhile, people are dying and people are being born.

the self-isolation diaries #6

I awoke to a strong north-easterly wind blowing cold Arctic rain against the bedroom window, followed by a late-morning shower of hail stones to welcome in the British summer. Having been denied an hour’s sleep overnight by the irritating custom of putting the clocks forward for British Summer Time, I’m struggling to find any joy in the new season’s arrival.

So little of what I might choose to write in this blog is from first hand experience. Events reach me through radio, TV or the internet. Radio 4 seems to be more like a constant series of phone-ins, with all the commentators and guest speaking from home. I don’t really watch much TV, and Facebook is full of ‘amusing’ video clips of dogs doing the craziest things. Anyway, I should now be sitting in the Sweffling White Horse, enjoying a lunchtime pint of beer that tastes of kumquats, and some excellent company. Well, I can get the beer as a takeaway, but the unruly banter is but a distant memory.

At five o’clock I joined an online game of bingo, livestreamed by young Layla from the Crown, and was narrowly beaten to the top prize of a bottle of Prosecco by somebody who doesn’t even live in the village. I was outraged. There should be rules about these things. Luckily, I don’t like Prosecco, or I would have taken my protest to a higher authority.

I like to speculate how the ending of this ordeal will manifest itself. Will it be a slow drifting back to part normality, where certain chosen people are allowed to return to work, then specified businesses will reopen, a sluggish normality revisited? Or will it be an enormous explosive celebration, like VE day? Many commentators on the radio seem to think that the aftermath will offer a new world order, where the rich are made to pay their taxes to help unburden the nation of its debt, and that farm work will be valued and much sought after as a healthy means of employment, and that the importance of small business to our economy will be recognised. Yeah, dream on. As we know, the world’s wealthy are already circling, hungrily waiting for the businesses to collapse so they can get their nasty hands on some rich pickings. T’was ever thus.

9.00 pm edit: We’ve just had a delightful four-way Zoom chat to the family in America. Molly, Sarah and Sam were with Lianne. Things in the States are much the same as here, as far as people being stupid is concerned. Packing into the lakeside park like sardines. They never do that at the height of summer. But the family are all well, even though Sam is bored out of his mind and left the chat to watch a movie. Ho hum.

 

the self-isolation diaries #5

Helpful suggestions given on Radio 4 this morning by well-meaning people, concerning constructive ways to pass the time whilst self-isolating, included ‘learn a foreign language’, ‘complete an Open University degree course’, ‘learn to play a musical instrument’. How long are these people planning to self-isolate? Do they know something that I don’t?

I am reminded of a story some years ago, about a Japanese soldier discovered in the Burmese jungle forty years or so after the end of the second world war. He didn’t know it was over, and refused to surrender.

One day, someone will pluck up the courage to announce that the storm is past and it’s safe to go outside. Individual governments will no doubt defer to those World Health Organisation, but I’m sure they will pass the buck back to the countries who might announce that the worst is over. China is already talking about relaxing restrictions next week in Wuhan, where the pandemic began. And the oaf Trump, who only thinks of the money, wants to open up the country as soon as possible, despite the fact that New York currently has one of the fastest growing number of infections in the world.

Of course, there will be another global pandemic behind this one, and another one behind the one behind the one behind. And how will the world cope then, I wonder? Surely, another lockdown will be out of the question; the economics would make no sense. So the world leaders must put their heads together (once it’s allowed) and plan a solution for the future. It will probably involve stockpiling face masks for the public and specific emergency procedures for hospitals. In the meantime, we get by through our own initiatives.

Somebody here in the village has co-ordinated a list of volunteer helpers to pick up shopping, walk dogs and collect medications. People are so lovely. There is also a list of local suppliers of vegetables, groceries, fish and meat who are happy to deliver. And The Crown has a opened a shop, plus a menu of ready-made meals and fresh bread for delivery. This is a real community.

I picked up my veg box from the Railway Farm shop this afternoon, then I drove over to Sweffling to buy some beer at the White Horse. Carefully maintaining our two-metre distance, I stood and chatted for half an hour or so with Marie and Mark. It was warm in the sun, but really quite cold in the shade of the pub. So I stayed in the sun. Already I miss this; the simplicity of standing around and talking. Delightful.

It has always been a constant in the area, particularly with small independent retailers, that cash is king. Now it has become noticeable that BACS payments are the way to go. An unspoken acknowledgement that the virus might be lurking on the face of the queen is understood, so quite small payments are made online. These are strange times indeed.

the self-isolation diaries #4

Here’s a sobering thought for you:

To date, the total number of Coronavirus (Covid-19) cases reported worldwide is 446,946, with the number of resultant deaths stated as 19,811. These figures are courtesy of Worldometer https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ a highly respected global statistic gathering website. They also say that the number of recovered and discharged cases stands at 112,058, updated today 25 March 2020.

Scrolling down the page, you can find the figures country-by-country, and they show China, not surprisingly, at the top of the league with a total of 81,218 recorded cases, of which 3,281 proved fatal. Italy is number two in the chart with 69,176 cases but with a staggering 6,820 fatalities, almost 10% death rate. USA reports 60,653 cases with 819 deaths, and Spain now overtaking China in the number of deaths at 3,434 from 47,610 cases. Iran has 2,077 deaths and France, 1,100.

The chart also shows that the number of deaths per million of population in Italy is 113, the world’s highest figure, against China’s total at 2.

The UK shows a reported 8,227 cases, although with very little testing in this country it is difficult to say where that figure comes from, but the number of deaths now stands at 433, or 6 deaths per million of the population.

Compare this to the figures on seasonal flu. Seasonal flu has killed an average of 17,000 people annually in the UK alone since 2014/15 season, according to Public Health England. The death toll peaked in 2014/15 season at 28,330 with a low of 1,692 last season 2018/19.

When this awfulness is finally over, we will be able to assess the total carnage from this pandemic. But I’m sure we will also reflect on the damage to the global economy.

the self-isolation diaries #3

Silence. No aeroplanes droning overhead, no rumbling traffic noise from the A12, and no grinding farm machinery toiling across the landscape. None. This seems the strangest aberration in this, the strangest of times. The fields are still plough. No harrowing or drilling has been done during the dry few weeks that, at last, have blessed us, bringing relief from the cruel, saturating rains of winter. In a normal year, these fields would be greening by now, with stems of winter wheat and barley plumping up in the Spring sunshine. But there is nothing normal about this year.

I set out early with Timmy, for our one walk of the day, allowed under the new draconian, but sensible, lockdown rules applied to the nation by the Prime Minister last night. The dystopian atmosphere of dread has been racked up a notch to a level unknown in my experience since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

I see only one person on the whole of this ninety-minute walk; our friend Tessa striding across Linen Field a hundred yards away with her two dogs, the ageing Border Terrier and the Labrador puppy bounding ahead of her.

The path I’ve chosen today leads us past Haw Wood, startling a pheasant into sudden flight. In the trees a pair of fat wood pigeons coo between them, then the sudden hammering of a woodpecker drilling into tree bark to reveal some writhing thing. A buzzard circles low above my head, its ricochet whistle alerting me to its presence, and down in the valley, close to the village, the tuneless rasp of a rookery spooked into activity. Behind me now, the crowing of the White House Farm cockerels grows slowly fainter. I struggle along the narrow boundary strip of grass between the ploughed field and a long stretch of blackthorn blossom dominating the hedgerow. In the middle distance a hare suddenly springs from nowhere and scurries across the rough ground, and in the air a skylark singing on the wing, holding its place against the stiff breeze. But this is March; too early for skylarks. Nothing fits.

But unceasing through all this, the whine of the chill wind.

the self-isolation diaries #2

As self-isolating locations go, this idyllic pastoral spot is not bad at all. I like it particularly because it’s where I live. How lucky am I? We are fortunate to be able to walk quite long distances within the confines of the estate, often without seeing anybody at all.

At lunchtime I walked with Timmy across this lovely place, and we were closely followed by five lambs who seemed to think that Timmy was a new playmate. But we saw nobody for nearly an hour, until reaching Bob Keeley’s cottage and he was outside, servicing his Yamaha motorbike, cleaning off the rust. He clearly enjoyed his kitchen gig last night. In Saturday’s post I mentioned that he was doing a gig from his kitchen to earn some money. He had a hundred and sixty people watching at one point, and at last viewing had raised over three hundred quid. Tidy.

This is the beginning of the really difficult time in this pandemic. We are told that a full lockdown begins at midnight tonight, so if there is anything we are without, we’ll just have to get by. But there is still no flour to be had, so we must ration our breadmaking, and use our initiative with other areas of food preparation. It will be the season of the flat bread.

We could be here for twelve weeks, in this state of austerity. But our neighbour, Chantelle, who moved out today before the lockdown kicked in, left us a lovely food parcel that she’s unable, or unwilling to take with her. We are well provided for.

In the meantime, I am relying on the internet for nearly all of my social contact. When friends post messages on Facebook I find myself responding with a ‘heart’ rather than a ‘thumbs-up’, and I avoid the angry emoji as much as possible. This is surely a time for positivity.