It’s been a pretty decent week, all things considered. The weather has been the usual disappointing mixture of wet and muddy, made considerably more exciting by the arrival on Friday of Storm Éowyn which has been blowing the bejeesus out of the UK and Ireland. But, other than that, we’ve had a couple of outings as well as enjoying the Great Escape by our canine companion.
Monday evening, we trotted across to Nick & Lucy’s to help him (and them) mark the occasion of his 50th birthday. Surprisingly to me, he doesn’t seem to have aged at all since we saw them last weekend! We enjoyed another very acceptable meal at the Leopard and then retired back to their place for birthday cake and ice cream – Penelope made an extravagantly delicious chocolate fudge cake and I made some peanut butter ice cream which, despite my best efforts, turned out to be edible.
On Tuesday we had an unanticipated outing – Ms Playchute announced that we were off to Rousham House and Gardens on a scouting expedition for the Moreton Pinkney Garden Club. It’s about a half hour drive from here and Penny wanted to see whether it would be a suitable destination for an MPGC outing in the spring/summer.
The house was built in 1635 and the gardens were designed by William Kent, a landscape architect of some renown.
Rousham is completely unspoilt and uncommercialised – no tea room and no shop – just glorious gardens to explore at your leisure. Bring a picnic and comfortable shoes and it is yours for the day. Don’t miss the walled garden with its herbaceous borders, small parterre, pigeon house and espaliers.
One of England’s most important gardens, Rousham represents the first phase of English landscape design and remains almost as its designer William Kent left it. Many of the features that delighted its 18th century visitors are still there for 21st century visitors to enjoy.
A favourite of many great garden designers, in his ‘Around the World in Eighty gardens’ Monty Don says “Kent is the great genius of eighteenth-century garden design and Rousham is his masterpiece, one of the greatest gardens in the world.”
And “Yes” she thinks, it would be a suitable destination for a Garden Club excursion.
Wednesday morning Penny & I had one of the more stressful incidents we’ve had to endure in recent years – Daisy went AWOL! Normally, she is very good with pretty good recall. However, she has been known to chase the odd rabbit/bunny and, on this occasion, after a very lengthy walk with Penelope, she spied a muntjac deer which clearly needed to be chased. Not surprisingly, the muntjac reacted to her and took off running and, again not surprisingly, Daisy shot off after it like a rocket. Penny’s most vigorous and serious shouting failed to stop her and she was soon out of sight, a couple of fields over.
When she did not immediately return, Pen phoned me and I joined the search, shouting and whistling for her all the way up Plumpton Lane. Along the way we met a few dog-walking neighbours who promised to keep an eye out and, after about half an hour all told I guess, one such neighbour posted on the village Facebook page that she had her – she had eventually returned to Plumpton Lane, possibly in response to all our bellowing or perhaps because she had lost track of the muntjac – who knows? She is now the proud wearer of a new tracking device which, hopefully, should help in case of any future AWOL excursions.
We went to see the film A Complete Unknown on Thursday evening with some of our lovely neighbours which we all thought was good and a lot of fun. It’s mainly the music, of course – I don’t know that we learned anything “new” about Dylan’s life and career in New York in the early 60s. Having said that, Timothée Chalamet was astonishingly good, I thought. He looks like Dylan, sounds like Dylan and, through his acting, was able to convey the arrogance and condescension for which Dylan seems to be noted. (It reinforced our perceptions borne from seeing him in concert – he rarely, if ever, acknowledges the audience and seems the epitome of arrogance). My brother Steph’s friend Ed Norton did an excellent job of portraying Pete Seeger and the actor who played Joan Baez, Monica Barbaro, was sensational with an outstandingly gorgeous singing voice. Certainly worth seeing if you’re a fan of his music from this period – it’s good fun.
Afterwards we went along to Pizza Express alongside the canal in Banbury – I was pre-armed with my Buy One, Get a Second Pizza for only £1.00 Voucher! Sadly, when it came time to pay the bill, I was informed that I needed to have booked our table via the link in the email they sent me in order to receive the £1.00 pizza voucher. As you can imagine, my disappointment was palpable.
I see that some lefty-woke judge in Washington state (appointed by Reagan, apparently, that well-known Communist sympathiser) has issued a temporary order restraining the Executive Order denying US citizenship for those born in the US of undocumented immigrants. My view, it doesn’t go nearly far enough – immigration is clearly an important issue in the US (as it is here in the UK). The President obviously needs to go further – how about, for example, denying citizenship to all those for whom one or more of their grandparents was born outside the US.
I appreciate that would mean that I would fail the US citizenship test – my paternal grandfather was born in Russia. However, more importantly, it would remove US citizenship from the lunatic currently occupying the Oval Office.
Trump is the son, and grandson, of immigrants: German on his father’s side, and Scottish on his mother’s. None of his grandparents, and only one of his parents, was born in the United States or spoke English as their mother tongue. (His mother’s parents, from the remote Scottish Outer Hebrides, lived in a majority Gaelic-speaking community.)
It’s intriguing to me how so many first- and second-generation immigrants are so keen to pull the ladder up behind them. Certainly many of those politicians clamouring so vociferously for restrictions on immigration in the UK are themselves the children of immigrants who have come to the UK and succeeded. But clearly, we can’t allow any more “foreigners” to come and live and work and pay taxes here. (It’s a good job I sneaked in under the wire. Or, alternatively I suppose, it’s lucky that I am the “right kind” of immigrant).
YCNMIU
As many of you will know, the EU has regulations regarding “protected or named produce.”
In the EU, “protected or named produce” refers to products with a “Geographical Indication” (GI), which means their name is protected because it is intrinsically linked to a specific geographical origin and unique characteristics due to the production methods and ingredients from that region; “Parmesan” cheese from Parma, Italy, “Champagne” sparkling wine from Champagne, France, “Prosciutto di Parma” ham from Parma, Italy.
Meanwhile, keep breathing, keep happy, keep smiling, keep exercising, be good, be careful, and keep safe. And be gentle to wasps and bees – we need all the pollinators we can get.
Lots of love to you all,
Greg