60 Going On 16

At Broadhembury: on churches, pubs - and dogs

My dear friend, the Only Blonde in the Village, recently celebrated her birthday and we decided to mark it with a visit to Broadhembury in East Devon. Broadhembury is one of Devon's most historic and picturesque villages and has a fine, centuries-old - and dog-friendly - pub, the Drewe Arms: perfect for a birthday lunch.

Our first stop was Broadhembury's parish church of St Andrew Apostle and Martyr, which was originally consecrated in 1259 but most of which dates from the late fourteenth to early fifteenth century.

How many feet, we wondered, had walked across these tiles?

How many eyes had gazed up at the gilded stars and moons of the barrel vault ceiling?

St Andrew's still has a gallery, where the church musicians would once have played. Suddenly I was 15 again, reading my first Thomas Hardy novel, Under the Greenwood Tree, in which the Reverend Maybold, the vicar of Mellstock, attempts to replace the village church's traditional musicians with an organ player . . .

England's ancient churches are such repositories of local and national history - ecclesiastical, political and social. St Andrew's is no exception. These donation boards offer a window into the harsh and impoverished lives of Devon's agricultural labourers almost 300 years ago: 

Babies, children and adults have been baptised at this font since the 1400s:

The north porch, with its elegant white tracery, reminiscent of the lace made in nearby Honiton since the 1600s:

Above the door, keeping watch on those who enter and leave the church, St Andrew the Fisherman, complete with birds' nest:

The Drewe Arms is just a short walk from the church and is as rich in history as its towering neighbour:

from its low broad door, constructed of solid oak panels:

to the linen-fold panels within:

Despite being a summer's day, it was chilly and grey outside, so the thoughtful hosts had given us a table near the woodburner, for which we were more than grateful. The Only Blonde had the seat of honour, a splendid old oak settle, and we enjoyed a delicious lunch, which was excellent value. (It was such a contrast to our own dismal village pub, which a series of inexperienced and unimaginative landlords have driven increasingly downmarket over the past 10 years or so, to the point at which it was running at a permanent loss. It is now closed, along with the village school, the village shop and the village post office.) 

Dogs are as welcome as people at the Drewe Arms; on a previous visit on a busy Saturday evening, I had seen dogs galore, including an Irish wolfound, a yellow Labrador, several Springer spaniels and a Jack Russell terrier. On this weekday, however, there was only one but he was rather special: a gentle, sweet-natured Doberman Pinscher, who emerged from under the table where he was resting to have his photo taken:

He has cancer but is still well enough to enjoy an outing. The Only Blonde and I exchanged sympathetic looks with the owner. Lump in the throat time.

A few days after our visit to Broadhembury we were talking about our own dogs, two of whom are now elderly in terms of dog years: the Only Blonde's Jack Russell-Norfolk terrier cross, Sir M, and my Edinburgh Boy are both almost eleven. Being a terrier, Sir M could go on for many years yet but I am conscious that the Boy is now well into his third age. He walks more slowly, sleeps more deeply, wades in the water rather than swims, but still enjoys life, albeit at a gentler pace. 

A love of animals runs deep in both the Other Blonde and in me and in our respective families. We grew up with animals, as did our children. We could not, we said, imagine a life without four-legged companions; well, we could imagine it but it would, we agreed, be a far poorer life.

Dear oncologist, are you listening?

It's two and a half years since I wrote about the alarming ignorance shown by my erstwhile oncologist (and by one senior radiographer) on the role of diet in the treatment of cancer. So, when I read that today's Food Programme (BBC Radio 4) would be on this very subject, I made sure that I was listening. The oncologist and radiographer are both still working at the hospital where I was treated - and where, thank goodness, the staff at the Breast Care Centre took a more enlightened view - so I can only say that I hope that they were also listening.

These days I rarely post about my  experience of being diagnosed with and treated for breast cancer (fondly referred to on this blog as the Massive Inconvenience). That's because I continue to be cancer free, am fit and healthy and, to be honest, cancer is not uppermost in my waking thoughts these days. But . . . I take nothing for granted.

It's not as if my pre-cancer diet was unhealthy but, from the point at which I received the diagnosis, I paid even greater attention to what I was eating and I still do. I chose to give up alcohol and certain foods, including dairy products, because the type of cancer I had was oestrogen dependent and I wanted to avoid anything that would push up my oestrogen levels. I missed cheese but, as neither alcohol nor other dairy foods, such as milk and butter, had figured highly in what I ate or drank, going without was not much of a sacrifice. I also stopped eating anything that contained sugar, which I am now convinced is the devil's food. (Did you know that sugar consumption in the UK has gone up by 31 per cent since 1990 and that the average Brit now eats 1.25lbs a week of the wretched stuff? Yikes!)  That's stopped as in routinely; there has been the odd glass of champagne at celebratory events and an occasional cake, but only very occasional. Yes, I enjoyed them at the time; no, I don't want them every day or even every week.

Lest anyone should think I lead a hairshirt culinary and dietary existence, nothing could be further from the truth. I love good food and I've always enjoyed cooking for family and friends - and for myself; I just don't want to eat stuff that does my body no favours. Also, as a woman of well over a certain age, I'm on a tight post-60 budget, so I can't and don't spend a fortune on food. But a healthy diet does not have to be expensive; nor does it require spending hours in the kitchen. The phenomenal success of A Girl Called Jack, a brilliant blog about eating well on a minimal budget, shows what is possible and provides a welcome relief from the increasing and often ludicrous excesses of far too many television food programmes. 

The photo above in case you are wondering, is a double-page spread from Nigel Slater's Tender: Volume 1, which I picked up for a snip (ie £5, that's about 1.54 US dollars) at a local charity shop on Friday. Pristine, still in its  wrapper and seemingly unused. A great, fat book, by one of my favourite food writers, it's full of wonderful things to do with delicious veg.

Yum. 

'We never shall have any more time . . .'

That's Arnold Bennett in How to Live on 24 Hours a Day. The quotation continues: 'We have, and we have always had, all the time there is.' The Zen-ness of this notion appeals.

I shall print Mr Bennett's words and pin them above my desk or write them, by hand, on a small piece of paper, then fold the paper and slip it into my wallet, which is what I used to do, years ago, with quotations that made me stop and think.

So, I am at last easing my way back into blogging, which I have missed but which I could not do - because every time I thought of something to write about, I then dismissed the subject matter as trivial. I knew why and there was more than one reason. I knew that the feelings would pass, in time, and they have. I just had to let time do its work, and it did. I knew that I would see or hear something that would make me think, 'Ah yes, that is the something.'

It turned out to be the sound of bleating, on a visit to my Smallholder Friend last week. She has six Castlemilk Morit ewes and all but one of them had just lambed.

Violet - still waiting:

Abigail, the boldest of the ewes, has already given birth; she is a very protective mama:

Abigail is just as watchful of the other lambs - and of me trying to taking photographs without disturbing the flock. She's just checking . . .

These moments with Violet and Abigail, and with the other ewes and the lambs, remind me that I must get myself back to the here and now and stay there. So I do. Back is good.

The comfort of stories by the fireside - with Jackie Morris

I knew it would take something special to jolt me out of my seeming inability to write anything at all in recent weeks. I'd reached a point at which everything I thought of writing was dismissed almost immediately as trivial. Well, that is one of the stages of bereavement and one simply has to wait for the leaden feelings to lift and get on with life while waiting for them to move away from centre stage.

And, yesterday, there was something special.

It's five and a half years since I included one of Jackie Morris's exquisite paintings in this blogpost; discovering her work at that time was the source of immense pleasure. Since then I've followed and greatly enjoyed Jackie's delightful blog, We Three, Ginger Cats' Tales. There is now, sadly, only one ginger cat remaining - the redoubtable Elmo - but he and his elderly tabby companion, Max, have been joined by two Bengal kittens . . .

Apart from the feline tales, We Three and Jackie's other blog keep admirers of her work (her words are as inspriring as her paintings) up to date with what she is doing and, at the moment, she is very much on the road. As luck would have it, that road led yesterday to one of my favourite shops, the wonderful Number Seven, run by Jan, her daughter Davina and Davina's husband, Christopher, in nearby Dulverton. Jackie was spending the afternoon at Number Seven, giving readings, discussing her work, and signing copies of her books . . .

including the latest, East of the Sun, West of the Moon.

All of which explains why, an hour ahead of the first scheduled reading, two women of a certain age settled themselves by the fire in Jan's kitchen behind the shop, while Jackie read us The Seal Children, her first book*. I felt about five years old again, lost in the wonder of words and magical illustrations.

And we talked about books, painting, writing, children, travel, cats, the beauty of the Pembrokeshire coast, dragons . . .

and Tibetan bowls. I happened to mention cheetahs and told Jackie about the sanctuary I had visited in South Africa, where I spent time with an adult male cheetah and had fallen in love with these remarkable big cats.

'Have you seen my cheetahs and cherries paintings?' asked Jackie. She showed me one. That's it, I thought, I'm starting a cheetah painting fund.

If there had not been two dear dogs waiting patiently at home for their afternoon walk, I could happily have stayed by the fire listening to stories until teatime. 

As I left the shop, carrying a precious parcel of signed books, I saw Jackie's van parked outside Number Seven and just had to smile.

At four o'clock, the dogs and I walked up to the top of our hill and then had half an hour of what we call 'extreme retrieving' - the object being to tire out the seemingly tireless Miss P; even though it was wet and muddy, I didn't mind one jot. It had been such an uplifting day and a privilege to spend time with someone as gifted as Jackie. But not just gifted, warm, funny and approachable too.

By this morning, the emptiness of the past two and a half months had gone; the sun shone and the dogs and I enjoyed a long walk by the river. We went up to the hill again this afternoon and I stood in the top field and did a 360 degree turn, looking across to all the other hills, disappearing behind each other, in every direction and into the distance, just to remind myself of the beauty of this place. The dogs romped and rolled in the sun and were as happy as I was.

So, thank you Jackie and thanks also to Jan, Davina and Christopher for a memorable Saturday and for inspiring me to start writing again.

If you are visiting Exmoor, make a point of going to Dulverton and calling in at Number Seven - tell Jan I sent you - and don't miss Toy Ahoy!,their shop in Minehead.

*You can find a complete list of Jackie Morris's books here. And there's more to see on Facebook.

'And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest'

On Monday, my cousin, his wife and I made the same journey from the South West of England to Wales, to the same village church where family and friends had gathered little more than a fortnight ago to say farewell to my niece. And, just as it had on the day of my niece's funeral, the sun poured down on us but even more brightly. It was the sort of weather that one always wants on the first day of a holiday; we could hardly believe that we were now on our way to say farewell to my niece's mother, my dear sister-in-law, whom my cousin and I had known for almost sixty years, since we were children.

But the ancient church gathered us all in and gave us time and space in which we could both grieve and celebrate a long life, a life well lived and a life full of love. The four of us who spoke in her memory, each had our own particular and precious recollections but, without any prior conferring, we were as one in recounting her great loves: family, friends, home, dogs - and all animals and wildlife, music, laughter, jokes, cooking, parties and entertaining. The doors of her home - and her heart - were always open and, over the years, she had welcomed so many across the threshold of both.

One of the passions we shared was music and it was my sister-in-law who introduced me, when I was still very young, to classical music. Her great musical loves included Italian opera, choral music, and the tenor voice; she shared those loves with me, a gift that has lasted a lifetime. But she made music too: playing the piano was the source of much joy and was her escape from the demands of everyday life. 

This being Wales, the music at her funeral was very fine indeed, uplifting us and soothing us like balm: as a congregation, we sang Psalm XXIII, set to Crimond and that great Welsh anthem, Cwm Rhonnda, (Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer). My sister-in-law had sung with the Monmouth Choral Society, many of whose members, including close friends, formed the choir who sang her to her rest - Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus during the reflection and, at the closing, the Sarum Prayer, God be in my head, set to music by Walford Davies. The simplest of words, centuries old, the profoundest of meanings. It mattered not who was a believer and who was not; the beauty of the music gave us a safe harbour for our shared tears and sadness and, above all, a setting in which to give great thanks for her life and for the love we had for her and she for us.

So, this, for my unforgettable sister-in-law, now resting at peace with the two of her beloved children who went before her.