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Looking for a photo of a 1940s fete, I came upon this
courtesy of Heritage Plus.
It reminded me of fetes of my childhood, and of something that is now missing – the fancy dress parade. How well I remember, my dear mother who was not much of a seamstress, dressing me as Robin Hood, in head to toe green and red crepe paper, over white vest and knickers, with a crepe paper covered toilet roll quiver for my gladioli stick arrows. It rained. I don’t really need to say more, do I?
Simply everyone joined in with the fancy dress, it was a highlight, and yet today, it is absent, or limited to the very young.
And that this wonderful photgraph should have been taken in Grantchester – a good excuse for a burst of a favourite poet, evocative, heart rending Rupert Brooke, reminding me never ever to take for granted my blessed homeland. How very, very fortunate we are to live in such a spectacularly beautiful, gentle, forgiving old place.
The Old Vicarage, Grantchester
(written at the Cafe des Westens, Berlin, May 1912)
- Just now the lilac is in bloom,
- All before my little room;
- And in my flower-beds, I think,
- Smile the carnation and the pink;
- And down the borders, well I know,
- The poppy and the pansy blow . . .
- Oh! there the chestnuts, summer through,
- Beside the river make for you
- A tunnel of green gloom, and sleep
- Deeply above; and green and deep
- The stream mysterious glides beneath,
- Green as a dream and deep as death.
- – Oh, damn! I know it! and I know
- How the May fields all golden show,
- And when the day is young and sweet,
- Gild gloriously the bare feet
- That run to bathe . . .
- . . .
- Ah God! to see the branches stir
- Across the moon at Grantchester!
- To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten
- Unforgettable, unforgotten
- River-smell, and hear the breeze
- Sobbing in the little trees.
- Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand
- Still guardians of that holy land?
- The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream,
- The yet unacademic stream?
- Is dawn a secret shy and cold
- Anadyomene, silver-gold?
- And sunset still a golden sea
- From Haslingfield to Madingley?
- And after, ere the night is born,
- Do hares come out about the corn?
- Oh, is the water sweet and cool,
- Gentle and brown, above the pool?
- And laughs the immortal river still
- Under the mill, under the mill?
- Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
- And Certainty? and Quiet kind?
- Deep meadows yet, for to forget
- The lies, and truths, and pain? . . . oh! yet
- Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
- And is there honey still for tea?
Rupert Chawner Brooke (1887-1915)
(Don’t suggest you read the rest of it if you’re from elsewhere in Cambridgeshire, and proud of it!)
Today is the day of the Village Fete, and Garden Club Show. Could be the 1940s, right? Well, we’ll see!
Although classes for runner beans and giant onions have changed little – I wonder if the baking classes took place in wartime? I’ll have to do a bit of research.
Not yet though, or my cottage loaf won’t be baked in time to enter!
Update: My bread won first prize, everything else came nowhere, but it was a lovely afternoon, and all the produce is sold off for charity, so all in a good cause.
So my good friend Ali was saying, it’s a bit of a pain, really that we have been doing all this austerity, frugality, self sufficiency stuff for years, and now it’s for real and we’ve got to carry on doing it whether we like it or not.
Whereas, those who have been living the high life for the last decade, revelling in materialism, buying all that stuff, well, they’re ready for it. It’s a nice new challenge. What fun, lets eat cabbage.
She’s right. But on the other hand, it is exciting, because we’re ready. We’ve been practising.
It’s pretty scary, I don’t know how many of us really understand how tight things are going to be – even if like me you’ve watched hundreds of hours of The Waltons but it’s equally great, because it’s Our Time. If we hadn’t been doing this for years, we wouldn’t have the skills, or the knowledge to pass on.
It’s extremely hard to get a job right now, I know because I’ve been trying, but like so many others, I’m restricted by school terms and times, and the fact that I haven’t worked for anyone else in 15 years. So while I’m still planning on launching my box scheme I’m also going to be planting a lot of herbs, which I hope I’ll be able to sell on a small scale.
Using them is one of my passions, and today I harvested sage flowers, which I put into sage flower bread and sage flower yoghurt. Working on a herb recipe file, which I’ll be making available. Sage flowers are beautiful, pretty blue and highly scented, exuding hot volatile oils on a day like today.
Also put up some sage flower oil.
Looking for some nice bottles to store some up for Christmas presents.
Right now, there is a body of opinion which says, the earth is getting hotter, and that climate change is attributable to the actions of man. Our greed, our consumption, our lack of restraint, has caused us to rape and destroy our planet home.
Then there’s another body of opinion, which says this may possibly be tosh. That in actual fact, what is happening is just happening, and nothing we can do will change it. The earth will self regulate.
Then there’s another body of christian opinon, which says man cannot be causing global warming, since God is sovreign and He is bringing the earth close to it’s demise, as He prepares to bring about the new heaven, and the new earth.
Now, this was a bit distressing to me, when I first heard it, because I had to admit, I liked to study things environmental. I was doing, no am doing, no hope to soon be continuing, no WILL be completing, a degree in Environmental Studies with the OU.
I took English, Art and History to A level at school, because I was good at English, and because I was a girl, and because that’s kind of where I ended up. I even started in humanities with the OU – because, well that’s what I did.
I was forty five years old, when I realised, I was actually a scientist. I love learning about intermediate technology. I love studying energy use, and cropping patterns, and solving global issues locally.
Today, in quiet prayer and contemplation, hoe in hand, sun blazing on my back, I had a great and beautiful revelation.
Is it us? Or is it Him? Is it really a threat to our future? Or just a blip?
I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.
To serve and love a sovreign God who created something this awesome, this beautiful, is to protect it with your last breath, and to cherish and nurture and create and defend with every ounce of joy and courage and dark, crumbling earth you possess.
If it ends, I only pray it will end with my garden bursting with fruit, and food, and love. And that when He returns, He finds me hoe in hand, or pink watering can, tending beautiful, fecund food. Dancing, with tears in my eyes.
Well, our general election is over, but we don’t have a new government.
I would have liked a definite outcome, and David Cameron would have been my choice, but in the current historic circumstances, I just hope a coalition can be arrived at before too long.
What is certain is that whoever forms our next government, the measures which will have to be brought in, to try to sort out our economic situation, are going to be grievous.
Austerity is not something we are used to. Even those who, like us, have been through both voluntary and enforced poverty of a kind, have lived in a generation of plenty. We don’t really know what austerity is.
Nella Last in Nella Last’s Peace spoke of how post war austerity was worse than war. While the nation had a common enemy, and was being pushed beyond its natural limits, there was work to do.Every day, women put on their bright lipstick, ‘dodged’ meals together out of next to nothing, and went to their work, both voluntary and paid.
They had a sense of purpose and were needed.
Once the war was over, and the austerity measures set in, depression soon followed. The slog seemed so long, so hard and so unjust – this was victory?
I’ve talked to my sister about the post war period. She was born in 1942, so can’t really remember much about the war, but has clearly etched memories of austerity. She was one of those children who did not know what a banana was, and didn’t meet her father til she was two and a half. It can’t have been easy, either the living as a single parent family, or feeling half starved all the time.
I do honestly believe now, that this is what we have to come. I do pray we’ll be as tough, resilient and cheerful as our 1940s counterparts.
My suggestions to help gear up for the inevitable payback.
- If you don’t grow your own veg, start now. However small or large a scale.
- Don’t look at it as a fashion thing, see it as survival. If you have room, an allotment for example, start getting good at growing carrots and onions, as well as frilly red lettuce. Or, if necessary, instead.
- Learn to mend. If you have time, learn to sew, but definitely learn to mend.
- Better yet, learn to alter garments in size and fit.
- Learn to cook from scratch, it’s honestly not hard, and think about your expectations, and those of your family – consider being grateful for a square, balanced meal, without pretensions to fashion or glamour.
- Settle in for the long run. We can do it.
- Take a leaf out of Nella’s book – in and after WW2 women wore bright lipstick, plucked their eyebrows, and made an extra effort to make sure clothes fit well, and generally present a morale boosting appearance, not just for themselves, but for the country at large. I’m not a red lipstick girl, don’t know about you, but we have got very lax about our appearance. Lets go feminine!
- Smile. Lets all smile.
Really raining today, good for the ground, equally good for the weeds, sadly.
A quiet day for us all, and feeling really positive about the church we’re still visiting.
Lively music, great role models for the girls, sound preaching, and friendly faces.
Too soon to be sure, but really, really positive.
There aren’t so many socks around these days that you can darn. Some of Neils, the ones he wears to work, actually can be darned, so I try patiently to improve my skills.
We talk about frugal, about cutting back, being thrifty, but you know what, we’re not on the same page as our mothers and grandmothers. Mend socks? When you can buy new ones, cheap?
But if child slave labour, cheap oil, and economic stability all disappear – then what?
 You’ll notice these greyish marlish socks have been darned with green wool. Yes. Well. I thought it would show better, and they live in disreputable work boots, so vanity is not an issue!
My mum showed me how to darn, many moons ago. I relearned from Make Do and Mend and I can say – I don’t believe anyone will just pick this up after a brief glance at the book. When we were home educating last year, I bought this book for Harrie, who was doing the second world for history. The purpose of the exercise wasn’t so much that she should learn to darn, or mend, but that she should experience what it would feel like to be a young woman, a mum maybe, who desperately needed to get these skills to survive, and had just Mrs Sew and Sew’s leaflets!
It was a shock. Yes, the instructions are clear enough, but when you are used to photographs, internet tutorials, tv programmes, videos … a half dozen line drawings and a few words come as a bit of a shock to the system.
But you know, it works. You do what it says. It doesn’t look special. You do it some more. It gets better. You pick up the skill.
What amazes me is the level of skill assumed in these publications, when it comes to basic household sewing and mending. We really have lost something precious.
Long days, sunshine, children out of doors all day long, riding ponies, walking puppies, looking like they used to – brown faced, smiley and relaxed.
Housework beckoned today though, so work had to wait, but I am building up to relaunching my veg box scheme, sorting out my memberships – Wholesome Food Association and WWOOF and wondering what on earth to do with my recalcitrant and problematical goats!
There’s Scallywag who’s easy these days, Poplin who had menigitis and survived against all the odds – and has tiny teats and is very difficult to milk at first, but it is always a blessing that she is so alive and well, so strong and cheeky. Then there is Paisley, who is producing so much milk, but has what Harrie lovingly calls non – directional teats – which means that half the milk goes in the bucket, and the other half goes all over me.
This cannot possibly of interest to anyone but me. And my washing machine.
and it’s all down hill from there. Mind you, it’s 9pm now, and Neil is not yet home, he leaves the house at 4.45am. It’s actually getting beyond a joke even for lambing.
Today was Boo’s piano exam, and we managed to get the Rural Music School without getting too lost, and sit in the dark and foreboding waiting room, surrounded by floor to ceiling dusty manuscripts in alphebetical order while Boo disappeared into the interior, and faced The Grand Piano.
Apparently it all went ‘OK’ and we expect the result in a week or so.
Went and bought a grakle noseband and a flymask for Cormi on the way home, and let them have gross burgers and grosser icecreams as a very very rare treat.
Unfortunately, all these comings and goings and the weather being as foul as it can muster, gales blowing, rain sleeting, mud sludging, are not helping on the garden front.
Lots to do, seeds coming up indoors, weeds coming up in the polytunnel, and all over the rotovated veg garden in fact, gazillions of plastic lids awaiting their conversion into raised beds.
Chickens to clean out (mud and chickens. ew.) and goats to lead train – show schedules to ponder and newsletters to write. The small matter of a business to build.
But it’s the Easter Holidays, and children must come first. Children and ponies. And puppies.
Otherwise time will pass, and like pollen off a catkin, their childhood will be gone. Double take yesterday to find Harrie perusing Ag College Prospectuses, and pondering Equine Degree Courses as against Agriculture Degree Courses …. and her toddling days don’t seem so long ago.
My ageing legs tell me it is past bedtime. I hope I will have progress to report sometime soon!
and too busy to take photos after breakfast … however … before breakfast, and with apologies for the woeful quality of photos taken on my phone, which spends too much time in my pocket …..
frosty ponies needed bringing in from sparkling fields, handsome puppies needed feeding, Panda the lamb needed her bottle, and Linen and Lace the goatlings really really needed to eat the phone.
Long days, short blog posts!
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