Danskcolin: Tuesday March 16th 2021

09:00 Bliss - Lois and I can have a nice time lying in bed for once: Mark the Gardener is not coming till 12 noon-ish, instead of his usual soul-destroying 8:40 start. He's also going to pick up some bags of compost and a new wheelbarrow for us on the way here.

Mark the Gardener in happier times: on a picnic with his partner

Having a gardener is a wonderful hobby, especially for retired people - it's very fulfilling - we knew that already from Susan Tager's popular "gardenering" programmes on TV: and now we know it can also mean more time in bed, which is nice.

Flashback to Susan Tager's first ever commentaries on this subject, way back in 2006. Remember this article in Onion News, that went viral round the world, just as Lois and I were retiring?

If you had asked me three years ago if I was ever going to have a gardener, I probably would have thought you were out of your tree. Sure, I loved the idea of lush greenery and fresh vegetables, but in my mind, it was simply not worth the finding the time and expending all the effort to deal with a gardener every day from spring till fall: way too much hassle.

Nothing seemed more tiring than having to figure out what my gardener was going to have to plant and where to order him to plant it—all the countless headaches of getting someone to take care of the garden just seemed overwhelming. To say nothing of the hours and hours I'd have to put in under the deck umbrella watching his every move, making sure every last detail was exactly as I wanted it. Everything about it just screamed "No, thanks!"

But my mother and sister and the servants kept insisting that I needed to get out and be more active. "Why Susan," they'd say. "Look at you! You barely have the energy to get out of bed after breakfast each morning!" They kept telling me how rewarding it was to have a gardener, what wonders an outdoor hobby would do to invigorate my delicate constitution. So I finally gave in and decided to give gardenering a try.

And you know what? They were right! And now I can't imagine life without a gardener any more than I could without stables, the wine buyer, or my kitchen staff!

Today Mark is thoroughly composting our raised beds and fruit bushes, using the contents of our 4 compost tubs. He finds a leg in one of them - not a human one, luckily. Mark thinks it's a chicken leg, but Lois has doubts: she thinks it must be an extraordinarily big chicken, she says. What a mystery!

Last time Mark came he thought that rats were living under our neighbour Bob's shed and that they had built a series of tunnels to access our compost tubs without getting wet. Now he thinks it must have been a fox doing the work - it's too "labour-intensive" for rats, he says: but the rats could have "outsourced" the work to a local fox, conceivably.

It's all very odd, because we stopped putting food waste in the compost bins almost a year ago now. Bob, our neighbour keeps chickens, but they're normal size ones - they're definitely not "freaks" ! So the jury is still out on this one.

What a crazy world we live in !!!!

13:00 Lois and I notice during lunch that there is no particular increase in traffic volumes going past our house, which is nice. The 4-day horse racing festival known as Gold Cup Week is starting today, but without spectators, because of the pandemic. Suits us haha!!!

I think it's now pretty widely accepted that allowing the festival to take place in March last year was a major mistake in the Government's early handling of the pandemic.

14:00 After lunch we settle down on the couch with a cup of tea. I look at my smartphone. Steve, our American brother-in-law, is concerned about dates of holidays in the UK; we tend to make them different dates from other countries - this last Sunday was Mothers Day here, also in Ireland and Nigeria, but nowhere else in the world. All other countries celebrate this day in May I believe, or some such time.

Now it seems that the UK has been holding National Beer Day on the wrong day - it's in April in the US, which seems appropriate: it certainly resonates with Steve, because April is his birth month. But in the UK it's held on June 15th, and Steve wonders if somebody can speak to Boris about the anomaly.

last year's National Beer Day in Britain

I wonder about drafting a letter to Boris on this question, but after checking online I find out that the date of June 15th is tied to the date of Magna Carta, signed on June 15th 1215 at Runnymede between King John and the barons.

When I check the text of the charter, I see that one of the barons must have seized the opportunity to include a clause about drinkers having the right to have a full pint of beer in pubs - many landlords had been serving it in "undersized" glasses: is the implication.

Damn! The chances of having Magna Carta repealed after 800 years is pretty slim, I would imagine. So I'm having to think again - oh dear!

flashback to April 2018 - I enjoy a few glasses of beer with our son-in-law,

Francis, at the "Cheeky Monkey" Brewery in the Margaret River region

of Western Australia. Magna Carta applies in Australia just as much as in the UK,

so we find that we don't get cheated by the Cheeky Monkey's landlord, which is nice!

17:30 An early dinner, during which unfortunately one of Lois's crowns come loose in her mouth. Oh dear - I see a visit to the dentist coming up before long.

After the meal I check my smartphone. Our daughter Alison has been moving house in the last few days, from Haslemere, Surrey to Headley Down, Hampshire. Tonight we speak to her on the phone and I see the first couple of photos from the family's new house. Things are still in a bit of a pickle there, apparently, to put it mildly - oh dear!

this is just a small bit of the massive garden - the old tennis court

this is the kitchen, as it looks at the moment

There are still masses of packing cases and boxes everywhere. The house is currently heated by some old Rayburn heaters and everywhere smells of smoke, Ali says.

I take the opportunity of tonight's phone call to ask Alison for a book about Philip Larkin, my favourite poet, as a birthday present. My Hungarian penfriend, Tünde, has notified me about Fodor András's beautiful Hungarian version of one of Larkin's poems, "Church Going".

19:00 When Lois disappears into the dining-room to take part in her sect's Tuesday Bible Reading Hour on zoom, I take the opportunity to look at the Hungarian version of Larkin's poem. The poem is about a visit Larkin made to a country church on one of his cycle rides. He wants to be respectful, but he isn't wearing a hat he can take off, so he takes off his cycle clips instead - a nice touch!

Larkin with bicycle

One of Larkin's points in the poem is to wonder what life will be like if Christianity goes the way of previous religions and decays, and the churches become mysterious places, no longer understood, like the old temples of ancient gods, the Pyramids, monuments like Stonehenge etc. There will be nothing to frame people's lives like there was in the old days, when people were baptised at birth, got married and got buried, all in the confines of their local church.

Larkin writes in his penultimate stanza:

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly label

Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground

Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt

So long and equably what since is found

Only in separation - marriage, and birth,

And death, and thoughts of these - for whom was built

This special shell? For, though I've had no idea

What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,

It pleases me to stand in silence here;

Or in Fodor András's haunting Hungarian version:

ki látja, hogy a lelkiüledék

szétporlott, mégis, a bozóton át

e keresztforma telekre belép,

ide, hol együtt volt soká, mi szertevált

később: menyegző, halál, születés,

hol e zárt kagyló őrizgette rég

eszméiket? Fogalmam sincs, mit ér

ily cifra, dohos csűr, ez az egész,

de tetszik mégis, ahogy csendben áll.

And, while we're on the subject, who can forget the song "Les Trois Cloches" sung by "Les Compagnons de la Chanson", or its English version "The Three Bells".

All the chapel bells were ringing in the little valley town
And the songs that they were singing were for baby Jimmy Brown
Then the little congregation, prayed for guidance from above
Lead us not into temptation, bless this hour of meditation
Guide him with eternal love…

…All the chapel bells were ringing, it was the great day in his life
And the songs that they were singing were for Jimmy and his wife
Then the little congregation, prayed for guidance from above
Lead us not into temptation, bless, oh Lord this celebration
May their lives be filled with love

From the village hidden deep in the valley
One rainy morning dark and grey
A soul winged its way to heaven
Little Jimmy Brown had passed away

Just a lonely bell was ringing in the little valley town
It was farewell that it was singing to our little Jimmy Brown
And the little congregation, prayed for guidance from above
Lead us not into temptation, may his soul find the salvation
Of thy great eternal love

What a poignant song! Sob sob!

21:00 Lois emerges from her zoom session, and we watch a bit of TV, an old episode of the 1970's sitcom "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin", starring Leonard Rossiter as a bored, middle-aged middle-manager having a mid-life crisis at his job working for the "Sunshine Desserts" company.

Reggie's wife is away for the weekend, but Reggie decides to go ahead anyway with the dinner party they had planned for some of his work colleagues. The awkward aspect for Reggie is that he has to conceal the fact from his guests that he hasn't got any food for them. Oh dear, typical Reggie!