The gate at Snailham Level Crossing

Not any old gate

We came across this gate while walking in Sussex. When we got home I saw that there were a few stories to be heard – or seen – here.

This is where a track crosses the railway, or better, the other way about, because the track was there well before the railway was built. There was a station here, though few passengers. The station had a wooden platform, wooden shelter and no lighting, oil, gas or electric. Not surprisingly. there is little to be seen of the station, nor of the crossing keeper’s cottage.

The footpath is on the Brede Level marshland. It must get very muddy, so someone has added cobbles to make the foot crossing dry. The crossing keeper would surely have kept the gates open to trains, closed to road vehicles, so the position was something of a sinecure, or a job for an elderly worker still strong enough to manage the heavy gates. There were fewer road vehicles than trains. A lightweight farm gate either side of the track is all that’s needed.

The old pedestrian gate is a picture; I guess it’s XIX Century. Its new galvanised post suggests that a surveyor did not want to scrap this unique specimen – the one on the opposite side is quite different, but both were clearly handmade by carpenter and blacksmith, probably in the South Eastern Railway works at Ashford. No question of an off-the-peg gate here. Note the decorative work on the top hinge, and the swivelling pulley cover to keep fingers safe; its makers took pride in their work. The gate frame will have been made of hardwood, possibly English oak, and when the upright palings had perished a sheet of marine plywood was substituted. Railwaymen seem to have had a soft spot for this gate over the last 150 years or so.

Modern technology is represented by the telephone: drivers of slow moving vehicles are warned to call the signaller for the all clear before crossing the railway. We arrived here by foot downhill from Udimore where King Edward III once stayed. He was supervising defensive fortifications at nearby Winchelsea in 1350 when the Spanish fleet came into sight and gave battle, ending in an English victory, witnessed by Queen Phillipa from the top of the track we are following.

Since then a naval safe haven has become a saltmarsh, supporting sheep beside the river; and the sea is now some distance away.

In the distance across the marsh is a hill with a village and pub, a destination for our walk. A shared walk, a shared meal; reminders of why we chose to share all things, for better or worse, forty-three years ago.

22 July: a Memory awoken.

‘They are French apricots today, and very good and juicy, so much better than the Spanish,’ said the stallholder in Canterbury market. I bought a pound – half a kilo – and she wrapped them in a brown paper bag.

As I said, ‘Thank you,’ the confluence of the warm sunshine, the brightly coloured fruit, the French text printed on the cardboard trays, the brown paper bag and the swing with which the lady sealed it with a twist, all together transported me back half a century. Almost without thinking I went on: ‘I remember when I was young, walking and hitch-hiking across France to visit a friend. I bought a kilo of apricots and a bottle of water, they kept me going through the mountains.’

‘You would remember that!’ she smiled: I did indeed.

Clement was about to be ordained a missionary priest, I was travelling to share the joy of his ordination. I was coming to the Massif Central from Switzerland, going cross-country, a challenge then in France.

I hitched a lift to the border on a quiet road, and it was getting dark when I came upon a railway station that offered a slow train to the South Coast. En marche! as they say. I sat in a pull-down seat in the corridor, wrapped in a blanket, and slept fitfully as the kilometres went by. At Nîmes I slept on a bench until morning. The first bus in my direction was going as far as Alès, a market town, where I bought my kilo of apricots and walked on.

Lifts were few and far between but soon I was in the mountains under the blazing sun, eating my way through the apricots and replenishing the water bottle from wayside springs.

I met a cart drawn by two oxen, going the wrong way for me.

I kept on walking, accepting lifts of one or two kilometres until the bus from the morning overtook me, stopped and took me into Marvejols. The driver’s return journey began from there, but his drive from Alès was off timetable so I had a good ride for free. We shared the last apricots.

The driver showed me the famous statue of the Beast of Gevaudan, a man-eating monster from the time of Louis XV; he also showed me the road to my friend’s village where my arrival in a passing car was greeted with congratulations and a warm welcome. A day later, two friends of his offered a lift to Paris which I gladly accepted.

This month Clement is celebrating his 50 years as a missionary priest. Let’s give thanks for his faithful service in all that time.

Today, I’ve been picking apricots from our tree and Mrs T is preparing damaged fruit to make jam to share at Christmas time. The BEST apricot jam. EVER.

A therapeutic exercise for January

My friend Thomas sent an email to say, ‘We are not failures’ if our New Year Resolutions have not borne the fruit we’d hoped for. So be good to yourself: ‘if only for a moment, let yourself be at home with yourself’.’

One place I am at home with myself is the kitchen. The school Thomas and I attended expected us to master basic cooking, but many of the lads can do better than basic. My January therapeutic special activity is making marmalade. Not much foraging to this one but come Autumn we can make October marmalade using citrus peel, sugar and windfall or crab apples, which supply the pectin that helps the preserve to set.

January the set depends on long boiling and added pectin, using most of the stored jars from under the stairs. That’s our label up above. Friends and relations look out!

. . . but also . . .

A second consecutive evening meal in the garden; at least two frogs calling, and the bats flitting across the table. The fat hawk moth on the ivy stayed low and safe.

Ratatouille with added French beans, since you enquired!

1 July: Into the forest

I don’t think the ancient Israelites were altogether fond of the forest. One of the most vivid forest stories tells how Absalom, King David’s rebel son, was caught by the hair as he rode under an oak tree while his mule galloped on without him. Absalom was a sitting duck for Joab and his men, who killed him, bringing David to tears. (2 Samuel 18, 19). Earlier, in Joshua 17, we read how the tribe of Joseph cleared away the forest to have room to settle and farm, a process that continues around the world to this day.

But, even setting aside the effect on the climate, something is lost as we clear the forest and then build suburbs over the resulting fields. Closeness to creation and the creator. Abel, at 3¾ years has found it at Forest School: he spends a day a week in the woods with his nursery school, getting muddy and enjoying himself among the trees. We would wait forever for him to tell us what he gets up to, but my teachers’ magazine ‘Educate’ tells how children are equal partners in learning and can take over the leadership of such sessions, under the guidance of their teachers.

One teacher, Jen Hawkes, says, ‘It’s about shared experiences and making friendships. They build a bond in the forest that helps them in the classroom. We’ve had lots of children making friendships who have previously struggled with that – which is so important, especially for mental health.’ So what the children do is by no means all that they learn out of doors. They learn to trust each other.

Perhaps the priests who ran my school were prophetic in sending us boys into the woods on half-holidays. There would be one or two at least in July; the priest-teachers were probably as sick of lessons as we were, and whatever we may have fancied they were up to in our absence, they no doubt had meetings to discuss our progress and all the routine matters that arise in any school. But we were free for the day. Note the seven pound jam tins, blackened from being used to cook a shared meal on the open fire to the left.  Glamping this was not!

Fifty-odd years after this photograph captured the moment, I am in touch with three of the lads shown, as well as others not here present. That says something for the bonds built in the forest and other parts of our shared life. Perhaps the fathers were prophetic!

MMB

I was not best pleased

I was not best pleased to find the hosepipe all rolled up and disconnected when I arrived at the garden. The pump is temperamental, the hose likewise, and reassembling it all takes longer than it should. Perhaps we need a few more connectors.

Well, I was feeling as temperamental as the equipment when, on my knees, I caught site of this damsel fly drying its new wings beside the river. I would never have seen it, just walking by. I even had chance to grab the phone from my coat and snap! These creatures do not sit still for long once the new life is surging through their veins, so I was grateful to have had a good look and to be able to share it with you.

‘It makes it bigger.’

I was dining alone with 3½ tear old Abel the other day, when he put a spoon into his glass of water. (His mother need not know about the 50 year old toy truck that helped feed him by ferrying grapes across the table.)

‘It makes it bigger’, Abel announced of his spoon in the water, so taken with this that he did not notice the photograph being taken,

‘Like your magnifying glass’, I suggested. He considered this for a moment. ‘My magnifying glass is missing.’ I feel sure he knows exactly where it is. He seems to think that things like to hide. Under the piano is a good spot.

But note the budding scientist: don’t tell him he’s wrong, when he is simply not in possession of enough facts and enough vocabulary to say more clearly what is happening. Let’s see if he can find that magnifying glass!

The community of gardeners

Where the council took out an ailing cherry tree in the next street, they left a void. One neighbour offered a hazel, and another cuttings of hydrangea. With a little tlc they are thriving, but the annual flowers have not enjoyed the dry summer so much. Other neighbours have offered their outdoor tap for watering, saving yours truly a few yards carrying watering cans. Someone else has promised daffodils which can go in next month.

Today I was tackling some of the weeds which have sprung up between the annuals from seeds that have lain dormant for years; fat hen, various docks, sow thistle, dandelions and their friends and relations. Mrs H stopped by: ‘I might have known it was you. Thank you for doing this.’ And just when I could get no more in the bucket, a professional gardener offers to empty it into his van and ‘save you carrying it around.’

All very encouraging! I’d best keep up the good work.

 

Signs of Summer

As I walked along Canterbury’s  Saint Peter’s Street on Saturday I saw a sure sign of Summer. Not the gaggles of French and Dutch teenagers squeezing into the pound shops, nor the obedient American and Japanese tourists following their guides’ uplifted, unopened, umbrellas.

No, It was the cherry lady from Faversham, but selling gooseberries this time. She promised ‘cherries next week’.

I bought gooseberries.

That afternoon as I was cycling home from visiting friends,  I sought out the elder flowers needed to make the best gooseberry fool and gooseberry jam. Along the Crab and Winkle cycle path they were as unpolluted as anywhere.

Mrs T made the fool, and froze some puree to make more when summer is mere memory. It all went. Polish friends could not get enough of it, nor could I. Maybe the spare puree won’t make it till Christmas!

And I made the jam.

But yesterday there were cherries in town.

Summertime can begin!

At this table

A meal in the garden in the company of friends is a great blessing, one Mrs T and I shared this week in Wales. Good local food well cooked. Our friend’s granddaughter has a chef for a brother and seems to share his love for cooking – one passed down the generations!

There was talk of the brother as well, of course, of cabbages and kings. The lad takes a pride in his work, to the extent that he has persuaded his bosses to buy butcher’s meat and fresh fruit and vegetables so that he could prepare better meals at no extra cost. He is feeding young people on activity holidays.

‘And now, instead of frozen, ground down whatever and jars of sauce, they have spaghetti Bolognese with proper, lean minced beef and sauce from scratch.’

…….

I hope you enjoy a few outdoor meals this summer, and that the cooks enjoy them as well as the diners. The next day was bread and cheese for just the two of us, halfway up a hill in Herefordshire. That was enjoyable too: we’d walked up an appetite!