The Toilet Slime Incident

 

At the moment, when we think about our personal safety, we think of hand gel & face masks.

So it took me by surprise to find myself lying flat on my back at the bottom of some steps.  Nigel and I were having a half term break, walking near Falmouth.  My boots were very muddy and when I spotted the steps, I thought I’d go down to the river to get the worst off.  I noted with interest the strongly built home-made handrail.  However, I did not hold onto it.  I realised only as I described an arc through the air that this rail had been a sign that the steps were extremely slippery.

It had all happened so quickly that Nigel thought I had disappeared into thin air. 

‘I’m down here’ I called, hollowly.

Bruise on bottom and on elbow.

Two days later, we walked from Malpas along the Tresillian River.  I was now much more alert and successfully negotiated at speed a narrow path slick with puddles, lumpy with tree roots and blocked by fallen pines. 

On the way back, I decided to use the public loo at St Clements.  Set on a level concrete platform, it should have presented no hazard.  However as I turned sharply to enter, I felt the now familiar sensation of flying through the air. 

On close inspection (eye level, in fact) I could see the area was covered in green algae and was beyond slippery.

Bruise on knee and same elbow.

This time Nigel was at hand to haul me to my feet.

‘At least the last fall was sort-of wholesome and open-air,’ he opined, ‘Not like this time - slipping in toilet slime.’

Which I believe is known as ‘adding insult to injury.’

 

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She Stoops to Conquer

 

Every year, we go to glean chestnuts in the local woods.  I use them in all sorts of vegetarian and vegan dishes over the winter.  We realised they were ripe now and if we didn’t go soon, we would miss out.

I’d committed to a teaching conference at the weekend (on Zoom), so we couldn’t get away to the woods until almost dusk on Saturday.  We would have to be quick or the car park would shut with our car inside. 

We headed for the best spot and began combing the ground for the green spiny cases.  They always remind me of the land-bound version of sea-urchins.  But the only land-urchins we found had already been split open.

Many people and even more deer had been there before us.  The deer always leave the case spread out with the silky lining showing, like a pale star, completely cleaned of chestnuts. People do a less thorough job and leave small nuts behind.

Empty-handed, we rushed back to the car before we got locked in.

The following day, the conference again stretched into the afternoon, but when I got out, I remembered a new spot.  I’d discovered it a couple of weeks earlier, by the usual expedient of spotting other foragers and asking them what they were collecting. 

However, it was a long walk to get there and would there still be chestnuts?

In the green gloom of the woods, it turned out that there were.  Plenty of them.

And it allowed Nigel to make the annual repetition of one of his favourite puns.  As I bent to pick up a chestnut, ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘She stoops to conker.’

NB Despite Nigel's terrible pun, conkers ( AKA) Horse chestnuts are not edible. It was the delicious sweet chestnuts that I was collecting. 

 

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Birthday with Trees

 There have a lot of trees in my life this year. 

Just before Lockdown, Perran and I visited ‘Among the Trees’, an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery.

Twice this year, we’ve done the tree trail in our local park, and my tree identification has got much sharper.

I’ve read:

Ghost Trees by Bob Gilbert

The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Woehlleben

Wildwood by Richard Deakin

The Overstory by Richard Powers

I’ve produced reviews on books about trees both for Radio Verulam and for the St Albans Podcast.

And I’ve written a short story for WRITERSREBEL – Tree Girl.

So I didn’t mind at all when we decided to keep my birthday celebrations outdoors and visited the brightly coloured Autumn trees of Kew Gardens.  What could be nicer!

And as the evenings draw in, I am looking forward to the October finale as the trees around me turn to gold and bronze and I think I shall read ‘The sixteen trees of the Somme’ by Lars Mytting (passed on to me recently by my neighbour Alex).

 

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Lofty Thoughts

Everybody has one job they really hate.  Maybe defrosting the freezer or cleaning out the recycling bins.  (Although that last one now makes me smile since  I heard somebody suggest that the disgusting liquid left at the bottom of a bin should henceforce be know as ‘Farage’.)

For me, it’s turning out the loft.

I worry I may have hoarder tendencies.  And disturbing the layered strata of stored possessions in the loft brings me face to face with this dark side of myself. 

Best left alone.

So I tell Nigel it is a task which could, indeed MUST, be postponed – the longer we leave it, the easier it will be to see what we don’t need any more.

But faced with a rainy Saturday in the Covid season, Nigel would no longer accept my excuses.

He unhooked the hatch and lowered the Ladder of Doom.

However, to my own surprise, I discovered I had been right. 

While the loft hatch remained unopened, we had quietly passed a life stage. 

Up there was a stack of boxes containing modest household items such as mirrors, lampshades and small shelves.  All things we had no place for after downsizing.  But we had held onto them in case the offspring wanted them. 

However, it’s clear to us that they have now passed that needy phase of being students and new graduates and have accumulated a basic kit of belongings.  Meaning that a whole bunch of stuff can be put on Free-cycle and go off to a new home, thus freeing up the loft.

And we have, at last, found the mattress-topper which we stored up there in 2016 and have been trying to find again since 2018.

 

 

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A Mast Year

For months the oak trees have been growing heavy with a mass of acorns. Now those are becoming ripe and falling to the ground.  Jays and squirrels are ecstatic at the bounty. 

Sweet chestnuts are also well-laden this year.  The hazels are bearing plenty of nuts too although the squirrels always pillage them before I get there.  Dog roses and hawthorns are embellishing the hedgerows with hips and haws like blood-red beads.

A year when woodland nuts and fruits are especially plentiful is called a mast year.  It is the trees’ opportunity to reproduce – there are so many seeds that the animals and birds cannot possibly eat them all.

Folklore says that if seeds and berries are abundant in Autumn, it will be a harsh winter ahead -  God’s way of providing for the birds and animals.  However, weather patterns show little correlation between abundant Autumns and cold winters.  It’s more likely that the favourable conditions of the preceding summer are the cause.

But what always grips me is the exquisite details of these Autumn seeds – the burnished acorn fitting exactly into its cup. The beech pods like tiny jewel boxes lined with gold velvet to hold the precious, three-sided seeds. And the horse chestnut pod, armoured with spikes like a Mediaeval weapon – all to keep the polished mahogany conker safe inside.

Whether the folklore is right or not, Autumn certainly looks like the work of a Master Craftsman.