Sleeping Beauty

Tags

Buscot Weir, cottage, National Trust, Oxfordshire, sleeping beauty

Photo by Candia Dixon-Stuart.  All Rights Reserved.

Gingerbread Cottages

Tags

Charlecote Park, gingerbread house, Midlands, National Trust, Warwickshire

Photos by Candia Dixon-Stuart.  All Rights Reserved.

Chelsea Lovers

Tags

ceramic sculpture, Chelsea porcelain, National Trust, pastoral, Upton House

from the collection at Upton House, NT

Photo by Candia

Shaw’s Corner, Hertfordshire

Tags

Ayot St Lawrence, George Bernard Shaw, Hertfordshire, National Trust, Shaw's Corner

 

Garden of George Bernard Shaw.  Now NT

Today- photos copyright candiacomesclean.wordpress.com

Cotehele 2, Cornwall

Tags

Cornwall, Cotehele, National Trust, viaduct

This gallery contains 6 photos.

Cotehele National Trust

Tags

Cornwall, Cotehele, National Trust

End of May

 

 

photos copyright: candiacomesclean.wordpress.com

Tyntesfield

Tags

National Trust, Tyntesfield, wistaria

 

Tyntesfield – the wistaria scent was so fragrant

Palm Sunday in Salisbury

Tags

Arundells, Babel, Bishop's Stall, Chapter House, Constable, Creme egg, Dom Perignon, Easter, Jobseekers, Julian of Norwich, Living Water, Mammon, Mocha, National Trust, New Sarum, Old Sarum, Palm Sunday, patens, Pontius Pilate, Salisbury, Simnel cake, Ted Heath, University Challenge, Yasser Arafat

A re-blog as it is timely:

I can’t believe that it’s nearly Easter, shivered Carrie.

Quick! let’s go in and bag a table, I said.

Costamuchamoulah cafe was still doing a brisk trade, even on this

grey day.  Amazingly, the smokers were still prepared to sit outside.

We have the routine down to a fine art now: one gets into the queue while

the other nabs a table, much as the disciples snatched a colt.

Yes, Easter’s early this year, I commented, watching a child stuff its face with

a Creme Egg in advance of the Christian calendar.  It’s amazing how such

diminutive creatures can incorporate a whole orb of sickly chocolate fondant

into such a tiny aperture.

I bet they don’t know what Simnel cakes represent, I mused aloud.

What do they stand for? queried Carrie.  Then, seeing my expression, she

added, I’m sure I once knew.

That’s what I say during University Challenge, I replied.

Then I sipped my Mocha, getting a chocolate powder moustache.  You know,

it’s Palm Sunday tomorrow.  Are you going to go to a service? 

Try persuading that lot to get out of bed, she sighed. They used to like to see

the donkey coming into the church, though.  Sometimes they were convinced

that The Dean, giving his dramatised reading, was Pontius Pilate and it scared

them.

Yes, we used to go to Salisbury for the service.  That was when Ted Heath

lived in The Close. In fact..

..you have a poem about it, she smiled.

How did you know?

PALM SUNDAY IN SALISBURY

Polythene wraps New Sarum like an egg.

The sky above The Close is Constable’s.

Cream-robed clergy congregate in cloisters,

bespectacled, brandishing dried gray palms,

under a spire as tall as Babel’s own,

while new choristers mouth All glory, laud

and honour.. without comprehending laud.

The tallest lad hopes that his voice won’t crack.

Girl choristers have not been asked to sing today.

Some miniature Yasser Arafats

in tea-towels and trainers coax an ass

from a spreading cedar into the nave,

where all present pray for its continence.

True blue glass provides a continuo.

Ted Heath’s Jaguar, also blue, is parked

on a reserved space outside Arundells.

What if one should loose its handbrake

and say, The Lord has need of thee this day?

Meanwhile we make intercession for all

unemployed, under and over-employed,

while carefully noting the advertised

champagne breakfast on our service schedule.

Dom Perignon: a foretaste of glory.

The Jobseekers can sip Living Water.

Coffee will be served in the Chapter House

among the exhumed coffin chalices,

patens. The bookshop is doing business

in postcards of Julian of Norwich:

All manner of thing shall be well. Mammon

hasn’t felt stings from His whip of cords-yet.

The head which indicates the Bishop’s stall

has a triple face of circumspection.

The Dean and his ordained wife wear the same

as they stand on repro medieval tiles,

trying not to worry about their lunch.

In the cloisters a chill wind chafes faces.

A chair is overturned, but no tables.

Although we have received the sign of peace,

our palm crosses seem ineffectual.

We stick one on Ted’s windscreen, just in case

his residential permit cuts no ice

with the flaming Being at the Close gate,

who curiously doesn’t wear a badge,

but bears authority from Old Sarum.

He tends to let the backpackers pass through,

like Christians, still bearing their large burdens,

or as camels accessing a needle.

But Tory Faithful have to wait in queues,

backs turned to the Celestial City,

while Peter checks their National Trust cards

and the very stones cry, Glory! Glory!

Bunbury, Quincunx and Quatrefoil Re-visited

Tags

cheek swab, milk teeth, National Trust, Roadside Recovery, She'll be coming round the mountains, The American Songbag, Yorick

They were off!  Praise be for Roadside Recovery!

Just thinking…, said Snod, once they had reached

the motorway and he felt that Dru could concentrate.

Mmm?

You never did go into Bunbury, Quincunx

and Quatrefoil, to arrange to inspect the rest of the

jewellery deposited for you in the bank vault.

I know…It’s just that circumstances changed.

What do you mean?  How?

Well, now that you are seeing Virginia, I thought, if you

two get hitched, spliced, or whatever, well…

Snod coughed.

…well, she would be the due recipient of the legacy, being

your- em- wife and therefore Lady Wivern’s daughter-in-

law.

The bumf said it was for your wife, or daughter.

Well, I don’t have a wife and you are my daughter, so, at

the point of Lady Wivern’s death, you were the only valid

beneficiary.  It couldn’t even be argued that Diana was my

common-law-wife, as we never lived together and she was

espoused to Murgatroyd.   I suppose you could give her a

token from the hoard…something you are less keen on,

if you feel you must.  And, if you give Diana a little

something, I will give you the heart-shaped diamond ring

I kept all those years for her.  I don’t think Virginia would

appreciate jewellery bought for someone else and it is

inappropriate for me to give it to your mother now she is

back together with Murgatroyd.

 

 

The only thing that truly interested me was The Tindall

Jewel and, as you know, I signed for it to be left on

permanent display at Wyvern Mote.  At least they verified

my genetic credentials fairly discreetly in order for me to 

assert ownership and do that.

Yes, The National Trust soon co-operated when they

got wind that you were going to be Lady Bountiful to

them, Snod agreed.

I must say I was impressed when the curator came up

with Lionel and Peregrine’s milk teeth in the schoolroom

drawer.  It was so lucky that the little yellow stumps had

been kept in labelled drawing pin boxes, along with their

other childhood treasures.

Yes, my half brothers… A lifetime ago, said Snod sadly.

It certainly saved any ‘Alas poor Yorick!’ exhumations.

All we had to provide was that cheek swab and-hey

presto!-proof of identity for both of us.  That’s Modern

Science for you. And Modern Life.  Somehow spoils the

mystery, though… No, things can’t be changed

retrospectively.  Anyway, even if Virginia and myself do…

Father!  Dru pulled into the inside lane.  Are you telling

me there is a possibility??!

She hasn’t asked me yet, Snod prevaricated.  What

about you and Nigel?  You don’t give much away yourself.

Maybe we will, if you will.

Sounds like that song from The American Songbag, Dru

laughed.  Then she started singing:

She’ll be coming round the mountains when she comes…

She stopped: Who was ‘she’?

A locomotive.  It’s a railroad song.  Let’s just hope we

avoid a train crash in our relationships!

Oh, don’t be so gloomy!  Let’s just hope that she’ll be

wearing silk pyjamas when she comes!  I wonder if

Virginia does?

No, she doesn’t, commented Snod, without thinking.

Neither does Nigel! Dru giggled.

They both burst out laughing and continued lustily:

I will, if you will, so will I!

 

Resume

Tags

Bonnie Prince Charlie, Bosphorous, clarsach, communion chalice, Head Teachers' Conference, hypogonadism, Inklings, lacrosse, Land Girl, lost Faberge egg, model railway club, National Trust, Pele Tower, seamed stockings, Simon Bolivar, Snodland, St Birinus, St Vitus

Candia: You think it would be useful?

Brassica: Well, a lot of people have come in on the action

mid-plot, so-yes- why not offer them a synopsis?

Candia:  Okay- they can skip it if they have been following

since Snod’s story took off.

Here it is, folks:

SYNOPSIS: Snod’s Law

Augustus Snodbury, Senior Master and Acting Head of St Birinus’ Middle School

is ripe for retirement. He loves comfort food, the Model Railway Club and Latin.

He is a role model for Junior Masters, but a bête noire for other staff.

For his entire life, he has taken for granted that he was the product of a liaison

of socialite and erstwhile Land Girl, Berenice Snodbury and A N Other.

Berenice’s sister, Augusta, took on responsibility for the child when her sister

ran off to Venezuela, following romantic dreams inspired by her hero, Simon

Bolivar.

The original Augusta, the girls’ mother. had not set them a terribly orthodox

example, as she herself had run around the Bosphorous with an itinerant rug

seller.

Snod’s lonely, institutionalised existence is interrupted by a climactic revelation

that an affair which he conducted with the ‘lax’ (lacrosse) mistress of a

sister establishment many moons ago engendered a child. That ‘child’ is now

a Housemistress at St Vitus’ School for the Academically-Gifted Girl, the school

in which her mother originally taught. (In fact, Gus has unwittingly met his

daughter on a number of occasions, at joint educational functions.)

The reason that his relationship broke down was owing to a Hardyean

twist of fate. A missing communication which contained his marriage

proposal now re-surfaces during re-furbishment for a school let. Diana,

the retired lax mistress, is exposed as having been deceitful.

She married ‘on the re-bound’, foisting her child on Murgatroyd-Syylk,

picture dealer and restorer. The pair subsequently divorced and now

Syylk is completing a restoration project of a Pele Tower in the Borders.

Drusilla, the Housemistress, attempts to encourage her parents to meet.

Will their romance re-ignite? Initially, it is a damp squib.

On Berenice’s death, a mysterious package arrives at school. It contains

a signet ring which Augustus’ apparent half-brother was asked to send

over to England. It bears an insignia associated with Wyvern Mote, now a

National Trust property.

Drusilla and Gus visit Great-Aunt Augusta and take her out of Snodland

Nursing Home for the Debased Gentry for the day, partly to introduce her

to her great-niece, and partly to investigate Wyvern Mote. There they see

a photograph in the schoolroom of two of the original heirs, with their tutor,

Anthony Revelly. The facial resemblance is clear: Gus is his offspring; Revelly

his father, rather than Lord Wyvern.

Lady Wyvern had had the child by her sons’ tutor on the death of her

husband. The tutor was permitted to live in a grace-and-favour apartment

in the stable block, for life, when the property was handed over to The

National Trust.

Berenice, who had been a Land Girl in the vicinity, had been paid an

undisclosed sum to acknowledge the child as being her own. A good time

girl, Berenice had tired of the responsibility, eventually absconding and

leaving her sister to arrange his schooling at St Birinus. Augusta had

once been Head Girl of St Vitus’, so knew of the boys’ prep school

establishment and its reputation.

Now Hugo, in Venezuela, has to be disabused of his belief in his

relationship to Gus.  They decide to leave Aunt Augusta in the dark.

The latter gave her ‘great-niece’ a present of what resembles one

of the famous missing Faberge eggs.  It turns out to be a fake and

yet, Dru’s visit to her step-father in the Pele Tower makes up for her

disappointment, as she is promised a communion chalice which Bonnie

Prince Charlie used before his fateful final ride south, on Syylk’s decease.

(The Pele Tower turns out to have been in Lady Wyvern’s family in the

past, so there is a neat circularity about Drusilla’s future inheritance of

the restored property, as Murgatroyd’s sole heiress.

The Head Teacher of St Birinus’ had an unfortunate ‘turn’ at the Christmas

Eve Midnight Service and was diagnosed with hypogonadism. His mid-life

crisis leads to him taking time off in order to make a motorcycle trip across

The Sahara, much to his wife’s relief. Unfortunately, Gus has to ‘stand in’,

but when his previous boss decides to abdicate, he does not apply for the

permanent post. Nevertheless, a position of Deputy Head is created for him,

in order to boost his pension. Poskett, Milford-Haven and Drusilla Fotheringay-

Syylk apply for the Headship, but are unsuccessful. Will the latter two decide

to throw over their careers and try to make a musical success of their lives

together?

Drusilla has shone in various musical concerts, by playing her harp for both

schools. She has been the focus of attention from Nigel Milford-Haven, the

rather wimpish Junior Master who is beginning to sing solo tenor in some

school productions and Geoffrey Poskett, Choirmaster. She seems to favour

Nigel, since she has asked him to come to the Borders with her in the school

holidays, to stage a concert for clarsach and voice.

She hopes to raise money for Murgatroyd’s roof repairs. Nigel is nervous, as

his mother usually draws on his decorating expertise in the school holidays

and she is not going to be too pleased at his bid for independence.

Meanwhile ‘Snod’ has settled into a friendly relationship with Diana, the mother

of his child, who has sold her cottage and moved back to the Suttonford area,

in which both schools are situated. However, his attention has been attracted

to Virginia Fisher-Giles, the widowed seamed-stocking-wearing PA. An invitation

for coffee chez elle after she has run him to a Head Teachers’ Conference

turns out to be more intimate than either anticipated.

Will he succumb to a projection of future domesticity with Virginia? Will he

resurrect the corpse of his relationship with Diana, or will he continue his

‘Inkling’ existence of bachelor bliss?

The lure of retirement is like an ever-receding pot of gold. He has a year

or two to serve as Deputy Head under the new regime. Will he be able to

preserve the old ways, or will the introduction of a new system create a

tsunami of bureaucracy that will threaten to engulf him?