A short walk

As it is so mild out again, I decided I would do a short walk to blow some of the cobwebs away and burn a couple of calories, having been stapled to the sofa all week. I took the car to the bottom of the hill, as I knew I wouldn't be able to struggle back up it at the moment, as my peak flow reading is still down (though improving).

It was a . . . mindful . . . walk. I was able to clear my mind of all my worries, and just really LOOK, noticing a sodden Celendine, and then one which had just burst into flower, and plenty of Celendine leaves pushing through now. Fresh grass on the banks, leaves of wild Strawberries and Ground Ivy, and in the wet Alder-carr woodland, whole rafts of Opposite-leaved Golden Saxifrage. The birds were singing - Robins and Great Tits mostly, whilst a Wren flew across the lane at ankle height, and I saw Blackbird after Blackbird in the trees beside the lane. A Jay's raucous call sounded from the Hazel copse, and I watched a Buzzard hunting for worms in one of the pasture fields which normally has sheep in. The deep red walls of Goitre farmstead were even darker after the rain and the house stood out against the winter-bleached fields around it.

Sheep grazed just below the Gorse coverts which surround the lips of the Iron Age hillfort and I watched a solitary Red Kite languidly riding a thermal. The emerald moss on the grey stone bridge was sporting a beard of scarlet and russet which held droplets of moisture, such an intense concentration of colour. The wheelrut of a tractor had turned into a mini-lake as a leaf-filled ditch, no longer maintained by the farm, seeped into it.

What we miss when we don't LOOK . . .

Just in case you're worried . . .

We're not snowed in. It's been arctic outside, and the hill turned into the Cresta Run when a spring decided to re-route itself across the road instead of into the ditch . . . Next door, him with the tractors and Landys, had no trouble getting up or down. We had to spread some grit, but got out on Friday. Yesterday though, I had a chap at the door looking for someone with a tractor, as his delivery van had fallen foul of the ice and was in a precarious spot, hanging over a sharp drop into the stream. I pointed him in the right direction for our neighbour (still milking), but gosh, it took two hours to get the van out safely, and my OH got involved in gritting the hill so he could get back up it.

Anyway, it's been raining all afternoon, and hopefully will stay a little warmer. We have been snuggled up by the wood burner all afternoon, covered in quilts and cats and quite snug! I've finished my Daphne book, and can heartily recommend it (Daphne, by Justine Picardie - just a penny on Amazon . . .) I didn't want it to end.

The custom of wife-selling

Herefordshire city centre.


Many of you will be familiar with the custom of wife-selling through it figuring large in "The Mayor of Casterbridge" when Michael Henchard sold his wife to a sailor in the doorway of the frumenty tent at Weydon-Priors fair. However, it was not confined to Wessex, as this webpage shows. Far from being frowned upon by the Judiciary, as one might expect, it was even actively enforced by the Poor Law Commissioners, so they were absolved from having to support the entire family in the Workhouse. The standard procedure was for the wife - usually more than willing to take her chance with a new man than the one whose failings she was only too familiar with - to be stood with a halter around her neck or arm or waist (as if she were a horse for sale) and for bids to be offered until a mutual agreement was reached. "Marriagable age" at the time of the Marriage Act in 1753 was the age of consent (12 for girls and 14 for boys). HERE is Wikipedia's take on wife selling.

Anyway, I must be feeling better as I have been blowing the dust off a bookshelf looking for a.n.other book and my eye fell on The Folklore of Herefordshire, and this has mention of the practice:

"There can be no doubt that the horrible custom of a man's selling his wife, in the open market, with a halter round her neck, was kept up at Hereford into the 19th C. In 1802, a butcher sold his wife by public auction, in Hereford market. The lot realised one pound, four shillings, and a bowl of punch. "Nonagenarian", an old lady whose reminiscences of old-time Hereford have been referred to, witnessed a similar scene more than once. Here is a description of it in her own words:

I must recall to your memory my statement as to my being playfellow to Mona Delnotte Coates, for it was while walking with her that I first saw a man selling his wife. We were going from the Barton to the other side of the town, and necessarily had to pass the bottom of the pig market. Here we saw a crowd. The girl was desirous of knowing what was the matter, so she elbowed her way through the people, and was followed by the children to the open space in the centre. There stood a woman with her hat in her hand . . . This woman's hat was a very smart one. She stood looking down. At first I thought she was admiring her own red cloak, but as she stood so still my eyes wandered over to see what was amiss, and I shall never forget how surprised I felt when I observed she had a rope about her neck, and that a man was holding one end of it. "What has she done?" we both cried out, for I believed she was going to be hanged. "Oh," said a bystander, "she has done no good, depend upon it, or else he wouldn't want to sell her." Just then there was a loud laugh, and a man shouted, "Well done Jack, that is elevenpence more than I would give. It's too much, boy, too much." But Jack stood firm. "No," said he, "I'll give a shilling, and he ought to be thankful to get rid of her at thatt price." "Well," said the man, "I'll take it, though her good looks ought to be worth more than that." "Keep her master, keep her for her good looks," shouted the laughing bystanders. "No" said he, "good looks won't put victuals on the table without willing hands." "Well," said Jack, "here's the shilling, and I war'nt I'll make her put victuals on the table for me, and help to get it first. Be you willing Missis to have me, and take me for better for worse?" "I be willing," says she. "And be you willing to sell her for what I bid maister?" "I be," said he, "and will give you the rope into the bargain." So Jack gave the man his shilling."


Well, I had better go and see to the evening meal now before a) I freeze my extremities off (9 deg. today in the house - I've known it warmer!) and b) in case my husband decides to get a shilling for me . . .

N.B. header photo taken a couple of days ago, so a slight change in the colour balance of the sunrise.

Daphne du Maurier and Branwell Bronte

Ths morning we visited our local shop and PO, which is now run by volunteers. It is a mere 6 mile round trip away which is "close" in rural terms, and also has an excellent book recycling system. Several shelves of donated books are there for you to browse, and it is 25p to take a book and swop it for one of your choice, or 50p if you are empty-handed. This morning I pounced on a book titled "Daphne" sure that it must be about Daphne du Maurier, an author whose life intrigues me and whose novels were milestones along my literary quest. I was right, and better still, it involved du Maurier and her research into a book on Branwell Bronte and his personal genius. This is all wrapped up into a modern-day story, based on the true story of du Maurier's work and correspondence with a literary academic who was also fascinated by Branwell. Justine Picardie is the author and one I've not read before.

Perfect timing, given that I finished Philippa Gregory's "The Virgin's Lover" last night, glad to get to the end as I knew the real-life ending (Amy Robsart's death of a broken neck and weakened physical state from probable breast cancer) and the shadow this placed on Robert Dudley, Amy's ambitious husband. It kept him from sharing the throne with Elizabethg I. An interesting take on it, and very well-researched.

Anyway, I am now at Menabilly in my head and on familiar ground with du Maurier's psyche and her increasingly distant relationship with her husband "Boy" Browning, who had by then found himself a mistress - although the deception of his wife and family was destroying him mentally and causing a breakdown.

The Bronte details are familiar territory too, especially as I was re-reading Juliet Barker's "The Brontes: A Life in Letters" last Autumn. The Bronte family have been a passion of mine since my late teens, when I moved on from my early interest in Jane Austen. I have quite a few literary biographies about them (and many other authors) and love to discover more.

So this book had my name all over it. As I am also hock-deep in Edward Thomas books too, the sofa is getting quite crowded at the moment. Me, books, cats and sewing (for later tonight I hope). I feel a little better, but although the a/b's have kicked in, making me feel slightly better, I woke up with a desperately nasty headache first thing, and I get out of puff very easily.

Weather-wise, there is snow on the hilltops around us, but we are above the frost line and below the snow line here, but I will say it is bitterly cold outside, with a piercing East wind - the lazy sort which goes through you instead of around you. It's fair to say that we have known the house to feel warmer - average temp. in the kitchen (indeed all the house bar the sitting room) these days is about 9 degrees in the daytime. Set to get worse on Friday apparently, when strongly minus temperatures arrive from the Russian steppes, so it will be a bit like living in the Gulags then . . . Well, we survived last year without heating, though we did at least have enough to put the Hergom on in the kitchen (not that it made a great deal of difference). Perhaps we should buy a scratch card . . .

Still poorly

I thought I was getting better, as my temperature had subsided, but now I find myself with the first Chest Infection of 2012. . . I took myself off to the Doc's this morning before it really got a hold, but won't get the A/Bs until tonight, when my OH goes in to town to collect D from work.

Or leastways, I hope he will be doing that as it's just started snowing. It's too wet to lay right now, but if it starts to freeze later then things may change. This of course coincides with getting so low on heating oil we can't have the heating on and believe me, 11 degrees is COLD. So we have all decamped to the sitting room and the wood burner - the cats too have migrated like Gnus across the Serengeti! Who can blame them?

As I drove out of the Doctor's car park, I thought - as I often do - of the Roman road which crosses the surgery grounds and as I waited to turn onto the road, the line of the Roman road stretched ahead of me, disguised as a gravelled farm track. I bet those Roman legionaries cursed the Welsh winter and missed the civilization of hypocaust central heating and locally-procured olives and fruit back home. (Well, those from the Med, anyway).

Gladeye the War Horse

I'm afraid that I have this post all out of context as I meant to write about this book just after I had seen the film War Horse recently. Then the book got overlaid by a pile of other books and has only just resurfaced again.

It was written by Brigadier Walter Brooke, a lesser-known brother of Brigadier Geoffrey Brooke whose books on horses I have on my shelves from teenage times. Geoffrey Brooke married Dorothy Gibson-Craig and they set up the Brooke Hospital for Animals. Primarily they wanted to rescue horses which had been sold into slavery in Egypt following the end of WW1. Many of the officers took their horses out into the Desert and shot them, rather than have them sold to the locals, as they knew the fate which awaited them. Many thousands upon thousands of horses remained in Egypt, and even by 1930 when the Brookes first started their Hospital, many were still alive, though aged and half-crippled by work. Amazingly her appeal for funds in 1930 (time of the Great Depression) raised sufficient funds to rescue 5,000 ex War Horses and is still doing good work today. You have probably seen their adverts in National newspapers and magazines.

Anyway, Gladeye was Walter's horse, and was his partner from the age of 4 years, to the day of his death aged 29 - a good age for a horse. He was bred in Ireland and was a chestnut with three white stockings and a blaze. Walter was ADC to General Sir John Keir at the outbreak of the war and they were shipped out, horses and men, to the Aisne front, near Rheims. Gladeye tells of his warmtime experiences in the book - being saddled up after dark and taken to the trenches to bring his master back, and how they used to find their way home on the transport tracks, across country, passing columns of limbered wagons drawn by pairs of teams of 4 horses, loaded up with rations and letters for the men, or more mundane things like barbed wire or ammnition.

Gladeye was then sent to Egypt with his master. After the cold and mud of Flander, being camped by the seashore with its golden sands and stunningly blue sea was wonderful, the beauty only being spoilt by the flies and the trams, which had screaming horns. From here, they later sailed for Salonica, which was described as being a true melting-pot of huymanity, with soldiers from France, Greece, Russia, Italy, Serbia and England. If you ever doubt the fitness of Army horses in those days, think of Walter and a fellow officer deciding they would like to go and explore the country a bit - they rode for 50 miles (landing up in the French part of the line), and then they rode 50 miles home again. All in the same day, and because there were no roads, only grassy tracks, they cantered much of the time - certainly on all the flat stretches - although their riders got off and rested their backs walking up and down the hills,

He must have been a pretty unflappable horse as on one occasion his groom took his saddle off and put it to one side, when a shell came and blew the saddle to kingdom-come. Gladeye carried on eating his rations as if he were deaf . . .

This marvellous old war horse went on to lead a full life, hunting, playing polo, show jumping, showing and even ploughing! back on Walter Brooke's West Country farm. One of the lucky ones.

Richard Jefferies by Henry Williamson

I collect Henry Williamson's novels. This one turned up at the Car Boot Sale last weekend and I had to have it. Indeed, Williamson's assessment of Jefferies' personality from childhood made me think he could have been describing poet Edward Thomas's personal development . . . Jefferies was Thomas's first literary hero and he happily roamed the countryside which Jefferies knew and loved - that South Country which Thomas was to later write about, and indeed in 1909 he had his own biography of Jefferies published. Apparently Jefferies was a lasting influence on Edward Thomas's wife, then widow, Helen Thomas, which is displayed in her antidote to grief, "As It Was" . . . THIS is an interesting blog post on the subject.

Here is a little taster of Jefferies' observational writing from a chapter entitled The Life of the Fields:

"It was between the may and the June roses. The may bloom had fallen, and among the hawthorn boughs were the little green bunches that would feed the red-wings in autumn. High up the briars had climbed, straight and towering whils there was a thorn or an ash sapling, or a yellow-green willow, to uphold them, and then curving over towards the meadow. The buds were on them, but not yet open; it was between the may and the rose.

As the wind, wandering over the sea, takes from each wave an invisible portion, and brings to those on shore the ethereal essence of ocean, so the air lingering among the woods and hedges - green waves and billows - became full of fine atoms of summer. Swept from notched hawthorn leaves, broad-topped oak-leaves, narrow ash sprays and oval willows; from vast elm cliffs and sharp-taloned brambles under; brushed from the waving grasses and stiffening corn, the dust of the sunshine was borne along and breathed. Steeped in flower and pollen to the music of bees and birds, the stream of the atmosphere became a living thing. It was life to breathe it, for the air itself was life. The strength of the earth went up through the leaves into the wind."

Have a good weekend - I have been laid up on the sofa today with a Bug which has given me a nasty temperature and aches in every joint, but I am feeling slightly more human now.