Clarissa et al.

It's the village fete tomorrow.

It's raining again.

SATURDAY

It rained. By six the sun was shining, but that was too late.

Still, as somebody said today, our fete may be a bit of a wash out, but we have electricity, we are not flooded, and by the law of averages it will rain for every fourth fete regardless.

Recently I decided to make some elder flower cordial. For anyone who doesn't know it here's the recipe. Personally I don't like the stuff, but two of my nephews think it's wonderful.

Elderflower Cordial

2 kilo bags (4½lb) Sugar
2 pints Boiling Water
2 dozen Elderflower Heads
2 oz Citric Acid
2 Lemons, grated rinds, sliced

Shake elderflower heads to ensure they are free of insects.
Dissolve the sugar in boiling water stirring well.
Add the grated rind and sliced lemon, plus the citric acid.
Add the elderflower heads to the bowl of hot syrup.
Leave for at least 12 hours covered with cling film.
Sieve the liquid, to remove the solids.
Strain the liquid through a jelly bag or coffee filter to clarify.
To serve dilute with sparkling water.
I am told it is good with gin and soda and can also be used to flavour Gooseberry dishes.

You will notice that the recipe includes citric acid. I bought mine at a supermarket in-house pharmacy with no difficulty whatsoever, but a friend tells me that she has been refused in several shops as apparently citric acid is used in the preparation of illegal drugs. Before anyone suggests that the different responses were a matter of location or of my being known in the shop, we were both in Scunthorpe and neither of us spends much time or money in pharmacies. Nor is it a matter of age since M is just two years my senior. Can it really be that M looks like a superannuated hippy who has in the past been known to have the odd canabis plant in her greenhouse, while I look totally the respectable churchwarden and parish councillor who has never made whoopi on anything stronger than a couple of glasses of dry white wine?

"Of course," said the man on television, "in the middle-ages they knew better than to build on flood plains."

Well, that will come as news to the landlord of the King's Head in York which floods with such stunning regularity that it has its cellar in the attic. The natives of Shrewsbury must be laughing fit to bust that the waters of the Severn never creep into their ancient town. And of course the Bishop and Burgers of Sarum never suggested that they leave their windy hilltop and descend unto the meads.

In the middle-ages roads were impassable for wheeled traffic for much of the year, so rivers were used to transport goods. It followed that mediaeval towns and cities were built along major rivers, and that the wealthy merchants built their warehouses and homes on that river frontage.

Out in the country, while in prehistoric times defensible hilltop villages with a half-mile trek to the nearest spring may have been de rigeur, by the middle-ages a stream or other convenient water source had become a must have facility. No to mention the fact that the land near the river tends to be the richest and most productive.

Of course, there were big differences between their houses and ours: the main living quarters of wealthier establishments were upstairs with the carpets (if any) hanging on the walls not lying on the floor, furniture was made of wood which could just be wiped down once the flood receded, there were no electrical goods and upholstered furniture to be ruined by the wet, no electric circuit needing to be replaced . . . despite all this, I have no doubt that our mediaeval ancestors found floods every bit as distressing as we do today, and were certainly no more immune to them.

Of course we all know what the man on TV meant to say was that with all our modern knowledge we should know better than to build all over the water meadows and marshes which our ancestors left alone save for grazing animals on them. Well, yes, we should. But more than that, why not learn a lesson from our ancestors and, when building on land prone to flood, design houses with the living quarters upstairs, perhaps on concrete piles with the garage and a covered play area for the kids underneath and any lighting and electrical circuit for that floor at eye-level or above?

Still nervously touching wood since there is more rain to come this weekend, we have not flooded this time - just a little standing water on the drive - but here are some pictures of our garden and the road outside in the flash flood we experienced in July 2004. (I am glad to say that the waters did not get into the house.) Sorry the pictures are such poor quality, but I converted them to low resolution to send quickly by email (pre-broadband) at the time and failed to keep the original versions.

Rev Ruth also had some discussion about modern art and how we perceive the people with whom we share comments.

Here is my feeble attempt at the said Rev Ruth -

I was going to do Skip next, but I found that someone had got there first . . .

I've visited the counties in yellow. Which counties have you visited? made by marnanel map reproduced from Ordnance Survey map data by permission of the Ordnance Survey. © Crown copyright 2001.

I found the link to this site via Rev Ruth's blog: the above is my British journey. I have to admit that some of these areas (especially in the south-western parts of the midlands) have been little more than a pass through on the way to somewhere else.

I had two classes of year 5 children from Brigg Primary School today (the new school with the turf roof which I wrote about earlier this year) doing the Victorian School.

Poor little pets were just soaked walking from the coachpark to the hall, but they were so good even staying outside and queuing in the rain so that they could all wipe their shoes thoroughly as they came in. We have a lot of good children through the museums and even the naughty ones are seldom worse than excitably talkative, but these children really did deserve an award for being exceptionally well behaved despite being wet and uncomfortable, and having had no opportunity to have a run around at lunchtime.

Tomorrow Sharon is supposed to have a group from Goxhill doing Pond Dipping. As things are at the moment she says that they could perfectly well do that from her living room window. Many of the roads are flooded between Goxhill and Normanby, and the field path down to the ponds is totally waterlogged. Moreover no room is available for them to have lunch in. If I were Goxhill I would cancel.

Tuesday

Not only did Goxhill cancel, but the Hull school I was taking for the Laundry on Wednesday has also cried off because the school will be closed for the rest of the week.

Friend's birthday is on Christmas Day.

Friend is having a fifty-nine-and-a-half birthday party this weekend to make up for all the birthdays he has not had properly.

Friend is having a hog roast.

Friend is Jewish.

On a very wet day a couple of years ago a black cat turned up in our garden. He was clearly not a feral, and had probably been dumped. When nobody claimed him he went to live with Helen and Glen, although I think he was mainly Jess's cat. We have no idea how old he was, but we think probably in his mid to late teens, and on a wet day this week he died as quietly as he had arrived. We are glad that he had two good years as a member of the family.

We are now waiting for two kittens - one for each household - to turn up, as sooner or later they will when somebody we know finds him/herself with a pregnant female or a nest of ferals at the bottom of the garden.

My little sister has one of those emotionally demanding jobs as a sister on ITU and is used to dealing with death, however yesterday's death was wholly unexpected and she was for once so much at a loss that she had to phone someone even more senior for advice. An eighty-four year old man who had driven up from the south to visit his son had gone into the visitors' room for a break; when half-an-hour had passed and he had not returned to the ward Helen went to look for him and found him dead.

At the other end of the scale she has delivered three babies today - not in the course of her work but at home when Tilly, their border terrier, gave birth to three puppies. Here is the proud mother . . .

If any friends or kin are reading this - well, I know some of you do - check your email wastebin for emails from me because hotmail emails are being filtered out as spam by some systems. I had been told about this problem by Pam some time ago, but it seems to be more widespread than I had previously thought.

I've just had a lovely evening back at Normanby Hall where I work, but this time just as a member of the public watching History Wardrobe's Dressing Victoria whose Undressing Mr. Darcy I saw at Burton Constable Hall a couple of years ago.

To quote the blurb from their website:-
Many people have an image of Queen Victoria as a gloomy widow. In `Dressing Victoria' we give a more romantic impression - both of the young Princess and the newly-married bride. With a selection of real and replica garments we show how a young woman in the mid-nineteenth-century is quite literally formed by her clothes…

The talk is based on readings from Victorian sources, including selections from the Queen's own journals. Afterwards, audience members are invited to handle authentic Victorian items from the 1840s onwards, and to have their photograph taken with Her Majesty.
An intimate view of the young Queen as she is dressed from corset to coronet.

Knowing quite a bit about Queen Victoria, costume and the Victorian period in general, I won't say that I learned a great deal new this evening (except about pre-deoderant deoderants, if see what I mean), but that isn't the point as this was an evening of entertainment with the education thrown in - or should it be throne in this case? - for good measure.

I would really recommend this group to anyone whose job it is to find entertaining evenings for any sort of cultural/historical venue of group.

By the way, the backboard which I cheerfully use to punish fidgets in the Victorian schoolroom is actually very uncomfortable as I discovered when I voluteered to 'model' it.

Some weeks ago one of the ferrets gave birth. This was somewhat unexpected as the male had be vasectomised, and the vet was very sorry and did several freebies to make up. Now, I have to admit that ferrets are not my favourite animals, but these kits really are very sweet - although perhaps not in my kitchen in future please - and here are three of them to prove it.

Which reminds me, I have just finished reading two showbiz autobiographies (both I suspect genuinely and totally the work of the subject) Himoff by Richard Whiteley and White Cargo by Felicity Kendal (the latter being the reading club choice this month); Richard Whiteley, Cambridge University English graduate, clearly couldn't write and the book included a number of errors such as flaunt used instead of flout and disinterested for uninterested, while Felicity Kendal who never went to school anywhere for more than a few weeks and had left altogether by the time she was in her teens, equally clearly can. I found that I liked both of them rather less than I like them on screen which is a shame.

So Josh has reached the first of the birthdays which flies him from childhood to adulthood and can now ride a motorbike (he has done for years on the farm - see earlier blogs), leave school (he may have been there in body on a regular basis, but was he ever there in mind?), can get a full-time job (already lined up to start the minute he finishes his exams) and can even get married (no plans here yet thank goodness).

I gave him a hawking glove and two giant bars of Galaxy chocolate.

"Dearly Beloved Brethren,
Is it not a Sin
To peel a New Potato
And throw away the skin?

Skin feeds piggy;
Piggy feeds you:
Dearly beloved brethren,
Is this not quite true?"

Today's 'sermon' was something on the lines of this rhyme from childhood. To be fair to Ian - and Ian is someone I like to be fair to - it was not his sermon but a green statement (or prospectus as it was entitled) from the Bishop of Lincoln to be read out in all the churches in the diocese this Sunday.

Now I was brought up with certain green policies long before these things became fashionable - I expect there are many people born during and just after the end of rationing whose parents were teenagers during the war who were brought up with these same precepts.

It is a sin to throw away anything which can be re-used.

It is a sin to light a fire or turn on the heating after March and before October.

It is a sin to throw away food - if it is too badly mashed about for human consumption feed it to the pig or the chickens or, if you don't have these, the dog.

It is a sin to take more food on to your plate than you can eat.

It is a sin to leave a light on in an empty room.

It is a sin to leave the television on if nobody is watching it.

It is a sin to waste petrol by making more journeys than really necessary.

I still mostly live by these precepts, and now we are being urged to follow similar rules to save the planet. Mind you 'Biggles' had automatically turned on the heating in church this morning (in June!) and we had to ask him to turn it off before our brains fried under its onslaught.

We are also being urged to make our churchyards a haven for wildlife. In Swallow we left the grass unmown last summer (more by accident than design, but that's another story) and got more complaints than we would have if we had allowed a black mass to take place. This year it is not quite lawn perfect, but is being cut every 4 to 6 weeks. We're leaving the hedges till the autumn though!

Anyway, I'm not sure what I made of it as a sermon substitute, but wouldn't any reasonable person agree with the message?

By the way, did anyone catch the Heaven and Earth Show bit about the creationist museum? I missed the end as I had to go to church, but apparently it has displays of human children playing surrounded by dinosaurs which apparently were created on the fifth day along with all the other animals, and died out (along with the unicorns?) as a result of the great flood which also carved out such sites as the Grand Canyon in the space of a few weeks. Am I alone in thinking that these scientific luddites are the sort of people who give christians a bad name in the modern world?

Josh is 16 tomorrow, and, since some inconsiderate swine has scheduled a GCSE exam for tomorrow, he had his party today.

No, not childish games, jellies and a magician.

No, not getting legless with his mates and throwing up in the gutter.

A shooting party: clay pigeons which apparently don't have a close season and are fair game even on a Sunday. Despite the spaniel's attempts to retrieve, they decided to barbecue the burgers and sausages they had bought rather than attempt to cook the game they had shot.

Since neither barbecues nor country sports are madly my thing, and Joe and I had gone to church in the morning, I put in a token appearance after lunch and watched one round of the shooting. They offered me a go, but, since I have never handled a gun and can't hit a dartboard at six paces, I said thanks, but no thanks to that one.

Anyway the round I watched was well and truly won by the home team although Jacob started with a dismal round failing to hit even one of his twelve clays, and the next couple of shooters were hardly better with scores of 0 and 2. To be fair this round was set up to be particularly hard, with the clays coming in to a background of woodland and rising briefly over the tree tops before swooping down into a group of Norway Spruce.

Then it was birthday boy's turn, and after a few misses he managed 5 and remained in the lead for a couple of no score rounds until his uncle (with his own vintage 1928 gun) scored 7. Ian (ex-police marksman) only added another 2 for the visitors, before Tommy equalled Josh's score bringing the home team's score to 17.

When Tommy started by missing the first three there was a lot of hilarity and remarks like "He'll be more used to a sawn-off where he comes from", and once he started hitting the clays "Whisper 'the social' in his ear, that should put him off." Yes, Tommy - a member of the Thompson Clan through marriage to Josh's cousin Joy - is a scouser, and apparently it is perfectly all right to make the sort of remarks about the natives of an English region which would be racist if directed at an ethnic group.

Another nil points for the visitors, then a disappointing 4 from Glen who is generally a very good shot, but nonetheless a reasonable addition to the 21 - 4 whitewash.

The shooting party them moved off to a different (and easier?) stand, and I - social duty done - set off down the valley back to my car.

I now have to admit that I forgot to take my camera with me, but here is a picture of the location of the barbecue looking back towards the farm, with the shooting site a furlong or so behind the viewer.

The observant reader will have noticed that no mention has been made of the birthday boy's mother, sister, older brother, cousins or grandparents.

Grandparents and cousin Roger had been and gone by the time I arrived, Helen and Jess had a long standing appointment with a Pony Club Event of some sort, Joy and Kirsty were keeping their respective under-fives out of the firing line, and Joe was being Joe and staying away. Such are families.

Monday
Jacob tells me that he scored a full 12 at the next stand, which all goes to show something - I hope that it is not what a liar my nephew is.

Jacob walked into our house at teatime and announced that he had just run over a horse. If it had been Josh he would probably have said in with such conviction that I would have believed him. Jacob is a much less good liar actor.

"Come and look," he said. So always willing to oblige, Jess and I went to look.

Then Jess brought in the horse.

It seems that Jacob had won him on one of the sideshows at a hunter trial he had attended from college today as part of his Equine Studies course - it must have been fun bringing a horse home on the bus.

So Jess decided that she would find out how the new horse shaped up over jumps.

Ooops! More schooling needed.

So she turned him out in the garden to eat the grass and get settled.

Well, who am I to criticise: I spent the afternoon at work as Mrs Tiggy-Winkle - a hedgehog who is also a laundress!

By the way, I don't know what the new horse is going to be called, but his breeding is clearly by Sweated Labour out of Orange Velour

PS Jacob tells me - and of course I believe him - that the horse trotted behind the bus.

I'm a bit worried about my best friend. She hasn't blogged since May 22nd, and hasn't commented on anything yet this month. What has happened to her? This is my suggestion;

Wednesday
That's a relief: she hasn't been abducted by aliens - just engaged in the writing of school reports.

Here is a short video of the mad partridge trying to fight off his own reflection. We now know the origin of the expression 'bird brained'.

And here is a photo of the desperate lengths we have gone to to prevent the silly creature bashing its brains out, Amazing what you can do with a dustbin bag!

Wednesday
The dustbin bag screen works - he has spent the last two days strutting round the garden showing off to the missus instead of fighting off his supposed rival

Just after the Rev'd Kirstin pointed out that my last blog showed the essential goodness of people, this email has been sent to a number of church people in Lincolnshire, and we are invited to pass it on. I know that it is true because someone I know has been a victim.

"I'm pretty sure that this is going on as it has happened twice within a week to my certain knowledge:

Thanks,
Xxxx"

On my way to the shop I came upon an accident which had just happened on the by-pass. Obviously quite a lot of people had already stopped to help, but one of the cars was smoking from under the bonnet which could have been something or nothing, so I stopped and handed my fire extinguisher to someone who looked as though he knew what he was doing, and he used it effectively. There was also nobody else who had a first aid box, although in this case mine was hardly needed as the worst injury appeared to be a bitten tongue, although both cars were quite badly damaged.

One man had gone a bit of a way up the road to slow the traffic down while a woman (presumably from a nearby house) swept up the worst of the debris from the carriageway. Most people went past at a sedate 20mph or less, but one idiot ignored every signal and shot past without checking his speed in the slightest: I sincerely hope that in his stupidity and lack of consideration he has punctured all his tyres going over the broken glass.

I have just filled my shopping basket with carrier bags to re-use and have realised that I have no loyalty at all and that I am a complete supermarket tart with bags from Morrison, Tesco, Asda, Lidl, Sainsbury and the Co-op.

Nothing from Waitrose or Marks and Spencer: do these omissions make me a cheap tart?