Almost the last preserve of 2020

A week ago we walked across the fields and found damsons, small, black, sour plums that were sweeter than they would have been a month ago. The label on the jam jars reads as follows, printed beneath this picture.

Foragers’ Final Flourish 
November 2020 
Damsons, crabs, and other hedgerow delicacies.

The good Mrs T had brought home the windfalls a while before that. Their bruises were romping away like a rugby forward on warfarin, so now there are jars of apple puree awaiting the winter. I’m always gratified to hear the click of the jar lids as the vacuum takes effect!

Some Things We Can’t Think

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Frank Cottrell-Boyce

There’s a chance to see author and screenwriter Frank Cottrell-Boyce when he gives this year’s Sir Harold Hood Memorial Lecture entitled ‘Some Things We Can’t Think’ on 3rd December 2020 6.30pm – 8.20pm

Frank will be talking about stories which tell the world who we are. What happens if we don’t get to tell our own stories? What happens if we don’t recognise ourselves in the stories that are told about us?

This year’s lecture will also combine with the premiere of our new short documentary by Martin Freeth, ‘Hidden Sentences: Voices of Prisoners’ Families’.

Following the film and lecture, there will be a Q&A session with Frank and some of the people with lived experience of the justice system who feature in the film.

This is a free event. Donations to the work of Pact are warmly welcomed and can be made online here. There will be a brief talk by Andy Keen-Downs, Pact CEO, about the work of the current work of the charity in support of people affected by imprisonment.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce is an award-winning storyteller. Frank Boyce was born into a Catholic family in Liverpool in 1959 and studied English at Oxford where he met Denise Cottrell, a fellow undergraduate. They married in Keble College chapel and together have seven children. Frank first worked as a television critic for Living Marxism magazine, and wrote episodes for Coronation Street and Brookside. As one of the most respected screenwriters working in the British film industry, Frank has written the screenplays for many feature films including Welcome to Sarajevo, Code 46, Butterfly Kiss, 24 Hour Party People and Goodbye Christopher Robin. His first novel, Millions, was based on his own screenplay for the film of the same name, and was published by Macmillan in 2004. In 2010, Frank co-presented the Papal Visit at Hyde Park with TV personality Carol Vorderman. Frank’s long-standing artistic collaboration with Danny Boyle included their work together to craft the Olympic Opening Ceremony in 2012 telling the story of Britain through a multi-media extravaganza. He has authored numerous children’s books including sequels to Ian Fleming’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. In 2004 he was awarded the Carnegie Medal for Millions, and in 2012 his novel The Unforgotten Coat won the Guardian Prize. Frank’s most recent children’s book, Runaway Robot, was published in 2019.

The Sir Harold Hood Memorial Lecture is held most years by Pact (Prison Advice and Care Trust) as an opportunity to celebrate the life and memory of a great friend and champion, the late Sir Harold Hood. The lecture seeks to contribute to public knowledge and understanding of how we as a society can make our prisons places in which individuals can achieve personal change and growth, and leave to live good lives, in stable and healthy relationships with family and the wider community.

This is the eighth lecture in memory of Sir Harold Hood. The first was held in the Chapel of HMP Brixton and was given by Cardinal Vincent Nichols. Other lectures have been given by the late Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, Lucia do Rosario-Neil, Bishop Richard Moth, Dr Gemma Simmonds CJ, Dr Galena Rhoades (transcript not available), and His Honour Judge Nicholas Hilliard QC, Recorder of London.

To find out more and book your place please go to: www.prisonadvice.org.uk/Event/hh2020

Going Viral XXV: Overheard in the street

Scraps of conversation heard in passing can be instructive.

• the students are back in town. I’ve no reason to believe these two young women are representative of anyone but themselves: ‘Yes, but we need to get our drinking in before we go out’.
• The electric invalid buggy was parked at a sharp angle because the rider was taking a call on his phone: ‘I’m not that good a grandad. But it’s good to hear your voice, thanks for ringing, much appreciated, thank you, Good bye.’
• A widowed neighbour, after a friend had helped with advice: ‘Thank you for taking time to help me. I do appreciate that. It means a lot.’

Street near Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh.

Manna from heaven

It was a day that demanded a Sunday Walk. With foraging bags. Just as well, since the chestnuts are beginning to fall. Christmas preparations are under way. Small nuts will make stuffing, many are large enough to roast in the fire.

The local rector, Jo, was out foraging the day before. Her post reminded us to be grateful for God’s bounty. Amen to that, and how good to live in this part of the world! The chestnuts are a reminder of manna: we foragers have only to go out to gather them in – but they do not have to be eaten the same day.

Thank you!

There came a knocking at the door, and there stood A & I, Mme Frog’s son and daughter. ‘Mum is deadheading and sent you these!’

How could we not rejoice?

Thank you, Frog, and may your writing garden continue to prosper. The flowers are lovely and it was so right to include the almost black dahlia buds. We sat down for coffee at the garden table when the young people had left us and I found myself admiring the five pointed black stars of the sepals safely holding the incipient flower. Thank you for opening my eyes to that beauty, hidden in plain sight.

Will

Follow the link to Mme Frog’s blog.

Going Viral XIX: Consider the flowers of the field margin

Lockdown has sent us out to the footpath across the fields or more usually along the edges where, provided the spray has not penetrated, the wild flowers can thrive. Consider those flowers – or the ones that grow beside your path. (Luke 12:27)

To the Almshouse.

Dear Simon,

We were sorry to hear that you and Ruth have divorced after so many years. We were unaware of the difficulties in your relationship which do sound beyond human repair. But if you can conserve a friendship then who knows what might not be built on the foundations of the love that brought you together in the first place? And of course, however imperfect the lovers, however imperfect the love, much good has come of your time together. Between you, you sustained two fine young people through to where they are now.

Do you enjoy living in the almshouse? Is there a community feel to the place? I well remember, soon after our George was born, a friend called Kathy came over from Canada, and was just visiting Canterbury for one day, so a quick personal guided tour of the city was required. All the main sights, of course, but also a few of my hidden favourites. We went down Hospital Lane towards the Poor Priests’ Hospital, and of course you cannot really miss the almshouses, which may originate as far back as the 12th Century.

Kathy absolutely fell in love with the idea of almshouses, which provide secure, if compact homes for senior citizens. These days someone in an overlarge rented house might free that property in favour of a family, and receive a handy place in the centre of town. I suspect that when Kathy leaves Planet Earth she’ll not have the money to leave to establish almshouses in Nova Scotia under her name. And nor will we.

The old ones were not built for the likes of me all 6ft 3½ of me— but I gather your place is a 21st Century built apartment, warm, convenient, comfortable. Rest and be thankful!

Will.

Growing up

Thirty-odd years ago, the road was new, noisily slicing through orchards, swallowing some of the best growing land in Kent. Nevertheless, our children all loved the walk out of town, by lanes and footpath, through those orchards to the ford with its wooden bridge that memorably was once washed away.

We enjoyed hunting for blackberries, and knew where to find a couple of self-sown pear trees, one quite close to the busy road, and the odd crabapple tree.

Now, as in this photograph, the trees along the road have grown up. I was just cycling that way: the path joins the river path to make a head-clearing short circuit for cyclists or walkers. I was keeping an eye for windfalls (too early) and wild fruit. A few crabs in the bag, one pear tree had been flailed back, the other?

It used to be here, I thought, looking for pears at eye-level, used to orchard trees on dwarfing roots with their fruit readily harvestable. This tree was not modified in this way, and it was by its bark that I knew it. I was reminded of one we had at school, the size of a forest tree, its fruit inaccessible; it was a lovely tree with no branches below 2 metres. With no close neighbour it had developed into a green pyramid, but we ate very little of the fruit.

The tree I was looking at today had plenty of neighbours, some planted by the Highways Authority, but mostly self-sown willow and ash, all so close that their trunks were growing straight up to the light.

And the pears, with their lovely russet peel, were high up, out of reach. Oh well, we might be able to find one or two windfalls for the L’Arche cider project!

The river path and a crabapple tree.

 

 

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When the shouting’s done

 

A man recently took his lie after appearing on a British ‘reality’ tv show where a lie detector allegedly ‘proved’ that he was unfaithful to his partner.

Thank God for the Samaritans, including my friend L, who listen in ways beyond the capabilities of such shows. They know, far better than the distressed caller ever can, how much their death will affect others. Here’s another reminder of how to contact them, a poster that greets the traveller at Canterbury West station in Kent.

Talk to us if things are getting to you, 116123.

And if someone desperate talks to you, take courage, and listen.

WT

6 May: the Happy Commuter

A public holiday in England seems a good time to share this story.

It’s Wednesday evening and I’m at Canterbury West station, chatting to a railwaywoman while I await my chance to slip onto the platform. Hundreds of people were streaming away from an incoming train.

‘You’d think if they were going home they’d look happy!’ she said, and truly, they did not. ‘I’ll get one smiling’, I said, as I saw M coming into view. To be fair, I’d seen him smiling already. I know he likes his job, and I knew he was not going home for long; he was due to attend a church meeting about an hour later on that cold windy night. But he smiled and chatted and went on his way.

‘Now you can start working in the other 451 of them!’ said the railwaywoman. (With a smile.)

So maybe I’ll share one of the station staff’s efforts to raise a smile at Christmas with this little plum.

• Why did the bicycle catch the train?
• Because it was two-tyred!

Northern Ireland Railways, 1969.