‘Be very careful, Susans, I have find an adder in the wheelbarrow.’
‘Nah, it’ll be a grass snake, Spiros.’
Stern glare. ‘Susans, don’t forget I am from Corfu.’
‘OK, it’s an adder.’
All God’s creatures are welcome here — but an adder? I was treated for my wasp allergy by Professor David Warrell, a world expert on venoms, snakes a speciality, and he says, ‘Never underestimate the humble adder.’
Oh, don’t worry. I now know what to do, am reassured that adders do not strike out at random and the household is on high alert to wear Wellingtons in long grass at all times. Naturally the adder has vanished. Spiros says it emerged to bask in the one day of warm sunshine this summer. Shakespeare agrees.
Badgers are no more welcome. There is a subterranean maze of their tunnels here and they are not the dear old stripy Brocks of The Wind in the Willows. They are wild boar on short legs, and present an exciting challenge to the Border terriers. Last week, they escaped — again — and little Poppy returned in a sorry state, having shoved her snout into a badger hole and encountered the inhabitant. There were deep claw marks down her face, and a nasty open gash under her chin. Sedation, stitches, injections, tablets, several journeys to the V-E-T (we don’t say the word aloud in case they hear). But when you ring the out-of-hours vet they reply immediately and open up the surgery no matter what — and if you cannot transport your wounded animal, they willingly come out to you.
When did you last manage to speak to a GP out of hours, let alone get a home visit? Meanwhile, badger numbers increase, carrying TB and other foulness, lumber across roads causing accidents and are a general rural menace, but they may not be gassed, shot, or otherwise culled. Give me adders any day.
I spent happy times with my grandmother and the great-aunts — Elsie, Flo, Hilda, Clara, Nellie, Muriel… They were all superstitious and passed their beliefs on, terrifying me as a small child. ‘Never bring lilac indoors/put new shoes on the table/open an umbrella in the house/leave knives in the sun — it means A Death, as does a bird flying into the windowpane.’ Everything meant A Death. Did it come from living through two world wars? Elsie had brought lilac indoors the day before their only brother died in the trenches; Flo’s son was shot down the day a black-bird hit the window. I am not superstitious myself, but I am sure that the place for lilac is on the bush, and for new shoes on feet or floor, and I shudder if a bird crashes into the glass. I know that eating crusts will make my hair curl and if the wind changes when I am making a cross face it will stay like that, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.
The séances the great-aunts held were fun though. At five or six, I was strictly banned from the darkened room, but there was a floor-length chenille cloth over the table so I just hid beneath it. Do many people hold séances in their front rooms now? Of course, my grandmother was vaguely psychic and her house haunted. I even thought I heard ‘Fred’ once, coming in through the front door and clumping up the stairs. The great-aunts nodded sagely.
It wasn’t all death and ghosts, but I despaired of hearing their delightful sayings again until someone said recently, ‘Just another thread in life’s embroidery.’ But the best is what Aunt Flo always said when retrieving her underwear from the line. ‘Eee, it’s raining, better fetch in my Harvest Festivals.’ It took me years to work it out.
‘There’s a bright golden haze on the meadow…’ Indeed, though the corn is no longer as high as an elephant’s eye. The old ones are the still best. One sort of heaven would be an aeon watching the Top Musicals Ever. (Supply your own list.) Perhaps surprisingly, I rarely wish that I was young again but when I remember being in the amateur chorus of Oklahoma! and Annie Get Your Gun at the Open Air Theatre, Scarborough, I would go back to being there aged 15 in a heartbeat. Ah, the red and white gingham skirt with petticoats, the blue dungarees, the plaits, the lights coming up as the sun set in the sky, the sound of the audience murmuring expectantly on the other side of the lake, the opening bars of the overture. Times of being completely happy and knowing it are rare and golden in the memory and those come high on the list of my happiest. Just don’t tell my family about the dungarees and the plaits.
Bud is thinning out the spinney, which mainly involves cutting down the overgrown firs to let more light in. He fells, saws into logs and stacks six huge trees a day, all by himself. Bud can turn his hand to anything and you want to hang about listening to him talk for hours, in spite of the teeth-aching chainsaw, because he comes from Georgia, USA. An added bonus is that I now know all about American college football and why I must support the Georgia Bulldogs.
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