Scything

Tags

Alan Bates, Andrew Marvell, Antiques Roadshow, Babylon, barmkin, Ben Batt, Corydon, Damon the Mower, Deep Heat, Downton Abbey, eclogues, Farmers' Markets, Fiona Bruce, Four Horsemen of Apocalypse, Green-Winged orchid, Grim reaper, Hayter, Highgrove, Lammas, meadow management, Mower to the Glow-Worms, Mr D'Arcy, One Man Went to Mow, pastoral, Pele Tower, Ph.D, Pig-gate, Poldark, Schroeckenfux, scything, snath, Stag's Breath liqueur, The Go-Between, troubador, Voltarol, wu wei

Diana Fotheringay-Syylk was administering embrocations

and a little tlc to a recumbent Murgatroyd, who is, as some

of you will recall, the owner of a Borders Pele tower.

Privately, Diana thought that he had been over-doing things

and Voltarol was not really having a great deal of an effect on

his lumbar aches and pains.

It had not helped when he had lugged plastic crates round the

local Farmers’ Markets, selling his Empress Bangers and porcine

medallions.

Yes, Dear Reader, Pig-gate had already struck, before the

Cameronian variety hit the news.

(Photo:Alpha from Melbourne)

Once he had cleared out the pig-pen area he decided to

re-seed it, to please Diana, who had been upset when their

gardening firm had rotovated the wrong field and inadvertently

destroyed their recently established Highgrove-style wildflower

meadow and a group of what she took to be Green-Winged Orchids.

(Photo by Didier Desouens)

From then on, Murgatroyd had decided to do away with mechanical

Hayters and, Diana, having been inspired by Aidan Turner, like so

many females d’un certain age, had booked him in – Murgatroyd, that

is – for a Lammas weekend scything course in Brighton, where he was

going to learn the sociology of the bar peen.

His back-ache had been exacerbated by carrying the large A4 pack of

information he had been given at the start of the course.  Someone had

probably gained a Ph.D in Rural Studies from producing it.

That meant she could watch the boxed set of Poldark in peace, while

he practised with his new, Austrian light-weight, zero-carbon

Schroeckenfux.

However, her pastoral idyll had been disturbed by Murgatroyd’s

complaints, not in the manner of a Corydon, or passionate troubador,

but more in line with the average husband who experiences muscular

twitches, or sciatica.  He was recumbent and had hung his instrument on

the equivalent of a willow tree, while he lamented his estate, as if he

had been exiled from Babylon.  He felt as if one of the Four Horsemen

of the Apocalypse had wounded him – perhaps that skinny one with the

hoodie and the big scythe.

He groaned.

We’ve run out of  ‘Voltarol’.  You’ll just have to use the ‘Deep Heat’ until

the shops open tomorrow and  I go down to the pharmacy, Diana

informed him, noting that The Go-Between was on later that evening.

What a pity she didn’t have a little gopher, like Leo, to pop upstairs

with the tube of emollient.  She was fed up running up and down stairs

pandering to the invalid.

Having taken him a Stag’s Breath liqueur and having poured a generous

shot for herself, she settled down with the remote in a comfy armchair, in

the barmkin.

This had better be good, for she had enjoyed the Alan Bates version.

For some subliminal reason, she hummed One Man Went to Mow, Went to

Mow a Meadow…

It wasn’t too long before she found herself re-winding to check the length

of the snath handle Batt was implementing.  Impressive-and that was just

his wu wei.

Meanwhile Murgatroyd was looking at a John Deere catalogue while Ben

Batt cut a swathe through Downton‘s viewing audience and no one could

remember what Fiona Bruce had been rabbiting on about on The Antiques

Roadshow.  For, there was an attempt to high-jack a Mr D’Arcy moment for

posterity.

Later, in bed – the spare bed – Diana could not clear snatches of eclogues

from her overactive mind.  She kept thinking of Andrew Marvell poems, such

as Damon the Mower, The Mower to the Glow-worms and Mowing Song.

Snippets of the verses repeated themselves:

Sharp like his scythe his sorrow was,

And withered like his hopes the grass.

and

How happy might I still have mowed,

Had not Love here his thistles sowed.

…there among the grass fell down,

By his own scythe, the Mower mown…

T ‘is death alone that this must do:

For Death thou art a Mower too.

Well, she reflected, Life is too short for meadow

management. I think we will just pave it over again

and get some pots with pelargoniums.  I’ll go to the

Garden Centre after I’ve been to the chemist’s.

And she decided that Alan Bates had, after all,

been more satisfactory.

Coming!

His Master’s Voice

Tags

1812 Overture, Bang& Olufsen, Birinus, Christmas, chronos, David Cameron, Downton Abbey, epiphany, Gary, Hyde Park Corner, Jack Russell, kairos, Lord Soper, O Little Town of Bethlehem, Silent Night, Tony Benn

At primary school Gary had been overlooked by all and was never picked by his year group for sports teams.

His parents once forgot that he was strapped into a high chair in a pub and were half way home, in Cameron style, before they realised that he was not in their car.

It’s a problem, Janet, his father had said.  It’s not that we mean to ignore him, but he’s just so boring.

Gary’s mum and dad used to play vinyls on their teak Bang& Olufsen radiogram in the Seventies.  Gary was fascinated by the record labels and hinted that he would like a Jack Russell dog.  They indulged him as they felt guilty that he had a deeply soporific effect on them.

Then, one evening, he asked, What is that thing beside the dog?

His father looked down, having thought that the pup had committed a misdemeanour on their new swirly carpet, but it was the illustration of the hypnotic gramophone on the record label to which Gary was referring. (Note that I did not end my sentence with a preposition.  Atta-girl!)

Well, Gary had, at least been successful in acquiring half of the logo and he called the perky little pup Nipper, after the original, but his parents did not give him a gramophone. They had forgotten his stupid, boring requests and ignored them.  He started trumpet lessons instead, so that he could blow his own.  His parents gave him a mute that Christmas.

When he was in the upper school, he took History and Politics and used to go up to Hyde Park corner, stand on an upended orange box and pretend to be Tony Benn or Lord Soper.  No one took the slightest notice of him until he vented his rhetoric via a megaphone.  Oh, the power!

Highclere Castle (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

He was passed over for promotion at work and his wife told me that she preferred watching Downton Abbey to having any interface with him at the weekend.  There is nothing unusual about that, I hear you say, dear reader.  But she didn’t know what she would do when the series ended- maybe buy the boxed set?

However, as the clocks changed in the Autumn, Gary’s time arrived.  You see, Gary became the Man with the Megaphone at all municipal events, whether it be firework displays or Pre-Christmas celebrations of Santa coming to town with late night shopping in the pedestrianised streets.  No one knew who had appointed him to stage-manage and control crowds, but he was in his element, as no one in Suttonford could fail to notice him.

He gave a running commentary, stating the proverbial obvious and self-evident, all at top pitch.  He scared toddlers sleeping in their buggies and banished all avian wildlife from the local rivulets.

In good voice then, Gary? joked one of his more charitable peers.

Yes, I like to control everyone, Gary confided, but forgot that his megaphone was on maximum volume and so his wife had to shout at him to turn it down a notch.  It then emitted an ear-splitting screech like a teacher’s nail being drawn down a blackboard in the old days.

Looks like you’ve married a control freak, so that makes two of you, quipped a man standing half a mile away, but Gary’s voice was practically drowned out by the eruption of some sparkly, whizzy things that screeched like banshees. Obviously leftovers from November 5th. Then The 1812 Overture started up in a tinny sort of way and Gary was moved to exclaim:  Isn’t it exciting, kids? at a million decibels.  However, he was obliterated vocally by the cannon.

Then Santa’s reindeer arrived, wearing ear muffs and Gary took amplification revenge on the choristers from St Birinus who angelically sang Silent Night and the verse from O little Town of Bethlehem : How Silently the Wondrous Gift is Given, by bellowing for everyone to join in.

Everyone had had enough.  All the mothers shushed him in a huge stream of : Schhhhh!

And, in that magical moment when chronos time stood still and kairos time encapsulated the moment into an eternal present, Gary had an epiphany. He heard, from a distance the delicate sound of sleigh bells and he laid down his megaphone, which was immediately crushed under a reindeer hoof, and he announced, quietly and with reverence: Santa’s here!