Searching The Desert For These Blues

You might go across the desert

Might travel through some mountain range

You might go across the desert

Travel through some mountain range

Ride through that lonesome canyon

And wind up in a place so strange

You might go across the desert

You might go across the deep blue sea

You might go across the desert

Might go across the deep blue sea

You might find a whole world waitin'

Inside of some old broken tree

Take care.

Built With Stones From The Fields

I said in the last post that we'd have a look at Barton church this time. And so we shall, we just have to toddle up this little lane, past the neat white fence...

Notice the chimneys on the brick house, they're set at 45 degrees to the chimney stacks. There are several chimneys like it in the surrounding villages; probably just a quirk of a local builder who thought it gave a bit of extra class to his houses. The other house has a chimney built of the yellow "Cambridge" bricks which are a feature of the local area too: they look nice when they're clean but soon weather and fade to a dirty grey, especially in town.

Ah, here's the church. I hope you weren't expecting anything too grand. It's just a nice country church of the kind which has quietly done its job to the satisfaction of its parishioners for centuries. Parts of the exterior have been rendered which has preserved the fabric if not the character of the building. Where the original walls are exposed you can see that they're built of field stones - just any suitably sized stones turned up by the plough. In an area like this where there's no readily available source of building stone it's the obvious answer to the problem.

The tower shows a less obvious solution to a different problem - how to incorporate a staircase without it getting in the way of the bell-ropes. Some churches have a corner turret, others opted for a bulky squat tower, here the builder has brought the corner out to a point and incorporated small windows to let in the light. I bet he was an ancestor of the man who built the odd, angled chimneys we saw earlier!

Once inside I found a tall, airy building with sunlight pouring through the large windows. Everything looked well cared-for and there were still signs of the recent Harvest Festival celebrations. However what's most interesting is that pinkish patch on the wall, just one part of a set of medieval wall paintings. But "alas" and "alas".....

"Alas" 1 - although the painting is full of exuberance, spreading across much of the walls, the artist is clearly a local man and no Michelangelo. Even so there's great charm in his naive efforts like the knight on the left spearing a demon. The artist also seems fond of country themes - there's a picture of St Anthony with a pig, St John with a lamb and a fair representation of a horse being ridden by St Martin  as well as a picture of St Dunstan holding the devil by his nose.

"Alas" 2 - these paintings were whitewashed over following a visit in 1644 from William Dowsing, who was charged by parliament with removing "all Monuments of Superstition and Idolatry" from the churches of Cambridgeshire. The paintings were re-discovered in 1929 and restored by Prof E W Tristram. Unfortunately the works, which were over 300 years old when they were covered up, have not fared particularly well and some are rather difficult to make out. This is a shame because they include the little-known saint, St Thomas of Cantelupe who, it is claimed, was born in the village.

My own feeling is that the paintings have an air of honesty, naivety and quaintness which more than makes up for their lack of quality and preservation.

Rather better preserved are the pulpit, which is dated 1635, and the screen which is thought to date from as long ago as 1370.

The carving on the screen clearly shows signs of its age but must once have been very fine indeed.

A rather inconspicuous little notice tells you that hidden beneath the red carpet in the chancel you'll find a brass to the memory of John and Margaret Martin who departed this life in 1593. It's a small memorial and Mr and Mrs Martin have had the indignity of being fixed to the stone floor by rivets through their heads. But at least it's still in place; so many have been stolen for the value of the metal.

But the sun was streaming in through the stained glass and, further enhancing the local, home-grown feel of the whole building, was falling upon the Harvest Festival arrangement on top of the simple stone font.

Take care.

Just Across The Fields

Those of you who are regular travellers with "By Stargoose And Hanglands" will know that I think nothing of walking or cycling miles to call in at forgotten churches in distant villages. It'll often include a train journey or hopping onto a rural bus to get even further afield. But somehow it's harder to kindle the enthusiasm to pedal a mile across the fields to photograph a place I've known for years.

I used to cycle through Barton every morning on my way to work. Sometimes on a summer's evening I'd wander over to The Hoops for a pint and I used to have friends who lived in the village. So lets start this brief nostalgia trip at the village duckpond.

Like most Cambridgeshire villages there's a lot of rather undistinguished twentieth-century housing, mostly semi-detached, brick-built houses, all very comfortable and practical to live in but lacking the character of older buildings. But if you look around you can usually find a few old cottages....

....and some rather finer dwellings.

Virginia creeper gets a foothold, softening the lines of some houses.

These board-clad houses are unusual to find in East Anglian villages, but don't you just love that wonderful heart-shaped gate?

This quiet road leads down to the church and the primary school too.

It's still got the old-style school sign, I think these were phased out in about the 1970s, but this one, on a back road, seems to have been overlooked. How many girls these days go off to school swinging a satchel, and how many boys wear caps and short trousers? I hope somebody saves some of these old signs for posterity.

The Hoops pub is still there.

And there are a few old thatched cottages to be found here and there.....

.....some with proper-job cottage gardens.

Cyclamen clusters around the old trees on the green.

And it's got a very nice village sign which celebrates the Women's Institute and the two pubs, The White Horse and The Hoops. The main part of the sign features the village duckpond and the church. Ah, I'll be getting to the church in the next post.....

Take care.

The Colloquial Carman

My grandfather was a Cockney, a true Londoner. He ran his own coal delivery business, operating from King's Cross station to which coal was delivered from the mining areas of the north by train. On census records his occupation is recorded as a carman. And what, pray tell, might that be?

The word car predates the automobile or motorcar by many centuries and just means a wheeled vehicle, so is related to cart and carriage. A carman was someone who owned and made his living from a horse-drawn cart and by my grandfather's time this mainly meant distributing goods, which had been brought into the railway stations, to all parts of London. Although he delivered coal as his main occupation he would swap to transporting fruit and vegetables during the summer.

Interestingly, although "car" is used for an automobile in most of England, in London it's often referred to as a "motor". Which brings us on to the subject of language and the fact that you might also hear a car being called a "jam jar" in some parts of London, an example of Cockney rhyming slang ( car = jam jar). 

A car like Granddad's

So here, in no particular order, are some more examples of Cockney as-she-was-spoke. I never met my grandfather as he died before I was born but these are all phrases he used as I learned them from my mother.

Some make a kind of poetic sense: if you were going out to one of the major fairs (as Granddad and family are doing in the photo at the top of this post) then you'd want to look your best, so it makes sense that Barnet fair is the rhyming slang for hair, though it's often shortened to just Barnet, which then gives no clue as to its origin. If you really wanted to get whistled at you'd wear your whistle and flute (suit). There's something comical about the sedate progress of frogs and toads so frog-and-toad became the slang for road.  I'll only get myself in deep water if I try to explain why it's trouble-and-strife for wife. Or alternatively she might be the love-and-kisses (Mrs). And the finest of all of them is dog-and-bone to mean telephone; old-fashioned phones really did look a bit like a dog sitting with a bone held in its jaws.

Skin-and-blister for sister suggests something very close to you, while north-and-south for mouth gives a picture of someone with a very large mouth indeed. Elephants trunk means drunk and creates an image of something or someone who could take up a vast quantity of liquid. Tiddly also means drunk and that's rhyming slang too, coming from tiddly-wink for a drink. There are quite a lot of these unexpected examples of rhyming slang, phrases in everyday use which no one ever considers to have a Cockney origin.

How many gangsters or hippies knew that when they were using the word bread to mean money, they were using the language of London street-traders - bread-and-honey means money. Using your loaf, on the other hand, comes from loaf-of-bread for head. And how many elderly aunts have amused children by blowing raspberries without realising that it's derived from raspberry-tart meaning fart? 

The word to scarper, meaning to run away from the scene of the crime, is sometimes said to come from Scarpa Flow (up and go). If you up and go it maybe because you just haven't got the bottle to fight - that's rhyming slang too, bottle-and-glass = class.

Your mate might be referred too as your china (china plate for mate) or else you might call them my old fruit (fruit gum instead of chum). If you haven't got any friends you'd be on your tod (probably from Tod Sloan an American jockey who famously rode 5 consecutive winners at Newmarket in 1898 - he was quite literally out there on his own!). 

Here's a few more:

                  daisy roots = boots

                  apples and pears = stairs
                  Rosie Lee = cup of tea
                  tea leaf = thief
                  I should coco = I should think so (used sarcastically to actually mean 'Not likely!' as in "Work all day for no pay? I should coco!" It probably originates from Coco the Clown.
                  brown bread = dead

                  mince pies = eyes

                  Joanna = piano

                  boat race = face

                  kettle = pocket watch, that's from kettle-and-hob for fob, a fob watch. Would you Adam-and Eve it?

Take care.



                  
                  

Hello, Me Old Duck!

 Hmmm...who's that person sitting on my patch of grass?

 You can get back in the river if you want,

I'm going to take my usual place.

 That's my mark, see,

my speculum,

It means I have the right to sit here

 I'm warning you!

 I should think so too!

That's sorted that out then.

Take care.

The Foster Family

In Trumpington there's a street called Foster Road. It's just a rather plain residential street, though in its time it was probably rather forward-looking, being built around three sides of an open space. But Ebenezer and Richard Foster, the two brothers after whom it's named, left plenty of monuments of their own around the city.

Perhaps the best known, certainly the one that dominates the skyline, is Fosters' Mill, though lots of people call it Spillers as that was the company who owned it most recently. Nowadays it's been converted to stylish apartments. The Fosters owned three mills in the centre of Cambridge but the University blocked all attempts to build a railway anywhere near the town centre, so in 1898 Fosters built this huge mill next to the railway station, away from the centre. The castellated turret on top always looks to me to be a little act of defiance towards their opponents.

They did not confine their activities to milling flour but also got into banking, originally in these rather attractive premises in Trinity Street. The building has had a number of uses in its long life including being The Turk's Head coffee bar. The rooms above were at one time occupied by the poet, painter, occultist and mountaineer, Aleister Crowley and his lover, the female impersonator Jerome Pollitt. Crowley said of his time at Cambridge, "I was surrounded by a more or less happy, healthy, prosperous set of parasites".

By the end of the nineteenth century the Fosters banking enterprise had outgrown its quaint Trinity Street premises and commissioned a magnificent new building by the architect Alfred Waterhouse. It exudes the grandeur and confidence of the late Victorian era and many tourists photograph it believing it to be something to do with the university.

Although it's now occupied by Lloyds Bank it still says "Fosters' Bank" above the door.

The clock tower with its ornate clock face gives some idea of the elaborate decoration within. As it is still used as a bank they are understandably concerned about security and so photography is not allowed inside. However the door is always open during the day and I strongly recommend anyone passing to take a look. You'll find the central banking area to be high and light with a magnificent domed roof, the whole area being lined with colourful, glazed, ceramic tiles. In its way it's every bit as impressive as some of Cambridge's more celebrated interiors.

Both Ebenezer and Richard went on to be Mayor of Cambridge, as did their descendants Charles Finch Foster and Henry S Foster. Ebenezer and his heirs resided in Anstey Hall in Trumpington, which is now a wedding venue.

Richard Foster was also the major backer of The Roman Baths which were constructed in Jesus Lane. It was, however, not the resounding success to which the family had become accustomed and closed down after less than a year, the folks of Cambridge much preferring to bathe, for free, in the river! The building then became for many years the meeting place of The Pitt Club, a right wing University political society. Believe it or not the elegant rooms are now occupied by Pizza Express. Thus have the mighty fallen.

Take care.

Natural Selection

A selection of books about nature and landscape that I've been reading recently: 

Foxes Unearthed by Lucy Jones

There's no animal that provokes such complex emotions in our islands as the fox. It's by no means as simple as "all country folk want them exterminated and city people think they're cute". Country dwellers are often full of admiration for them, while urban foxes are frequently not tolerated. 

Lucy Jones (whom British readers might remember being interviewed by Chris Packham on the Springwatch TV programme) investigates the matter from all possible sides in this fascinating and well-written book.


You'll find out what makes naturalists, huntsmen and hunt saboteurs tick; as well as the fox, both urban and rural, of course. 

Deep Country by Neil Ansell

Just one man's time spent living in a remote Welsh cottage with no modern amenities - a kind of Welsh Walden, if you like. But here's the difference: I've read and re-read this several times while I always struggle with that other book, picking it up, putting it aside, going back to the beginning.... 

There's a kind of deep philosophy and spirituality in these pages but it's hidden away in the everyday happenings and events - lighting the fire, mending the roof, friends visiting, going on walks, watching the birds, digging the garden, a bit of forestry, helping out with some ornithological research...

This is a book about patience, belonging, calm, harmony, understanding,  acceptance...yep, I like it!

Collected Writings 1933-1989 by Peter Scott

Anyone who's stood on the Norfolk coast on a midwinter's evening to watch the geese fly across the darkening sky to their roost will be touched by a little wild goose madness. So it's no surprise that I find this collection of Peter Scott's writings enthralling; he is after all the man who set up the Wildfowl Trust to protect and promote the well-being of these mysterious birds. 

The early stuff is fascinating as he moves from wildfowling to research to conservation. He was right there at the beginning, figuring out ways to net birds and ring them, and how to interpret the findings. He visits the interior of Iceland to find where the birds nest, journeys to Antarctica and even slips in a short story about being torpedoed during the war.

The essays and articles are written for children's books as well as for more learned publications, so there's a fair bit of repetition as he explains things to various audiences. But all that doesn't matter - it's his endless enthusiasm that shines through.

60 Degrees North by Malachy Tallack

An exploration of the life and scenery to be found at the latitude of the Shetlands, the adopted home of the author. So we venture from Shetland to Iceland, Greenland, Canada, Alaska, Siberia and the Scandinavian lands, before returning once more to Shetland. 

Besides exploring the geographical, historical and political realities of these marginal lands, Malachy Tallack meets some diverse characters and has some interesting adventures and discoveries, but more importantly it's about a young man finding his way in the world and trying to reach a safe harbour, having been ripped from his moorings following the death of his father.

The Invention Of Nature by Andrea Wulf

Alexander von Humboldt's name survives today in the names of many geographical features - there are mountains, counties, an ocean current and even an area of the moon named in his honour - but few these days would be able to tell you much about him. But Andrea Wulf can, and does, in this grand book.

Humboldt was one of those infuriating scholars who wouldn't settle down to study and pursue a regular career. Instead his insatiable curiosity forced him to travel as much as he could, at least till the money ran out. He wanted to understand everything he saw - botany, geology, meteorology, oceanography, astronomy.....and he was always seeing connections and parallels within his various fields of interest.

It was in synthesising all these strands that his true importance lies and it can be argued that he was the first ecologist and the first person to realise the influence of man on the environment.

Most biographies end with the death of their subject but this one goes on to consider his influence on others - Goethe, Thomas Jefferson, Simon Bolivar, Charles Darwin, Thoreau and John Muir all read his works and were changed by them. Quite a list for someone who's largely forgotten these days.

The Shepherd's Life by James Rebanks

There are a lot of books about the English Lake District and all of them seem to be written by people who've come from elsewhere. This is the only one I know that's been written by a Lakeland shepherd, albeit one who's been away to university. 

As an insight into the working life of a modern day farmer it's about as good as you'll find; it's all there - the quad bikes, foot and mouth disease and the economic tightrope of balancing the books, as well as the scenery, social hierachy and ties to the land.

But even more relevant are his observations about the tourists, poets and authors who have a very different relationship to the wonderful landscape of the lakes and fells.

Take care.