Four Muses of Chavenage

Tags

Chavenage, Cotswolds, Gloucestershire, Muses, Poldark

Photos by Candia Dixon-Stuart of the fireplace in Chavenage,

Gloucestershire. (Don’t even want to mention the Poldark

connection!)

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!

Permission Granted

Tags

BIrnam Wood, Browning, Dickens, Dunsinane, Gove, Hamelin, Human Rights, in absentia, mojo, Moselle, Musicians of Bremen, Narrative Verse, Pied Piper, Poldark, radon, Riesling, Rip Van Winkle, Schlachte Embankment, Scrooge, scything, St Birinus Middle School, Va-va-voom, Weser

Mr Augustus Snodbury, Senior Master at St Birinus Middle, opened the parental

letter which he had insisted should be sent.

Mum will send you an e-mail, sir, Peregrine Willcox Junior had simpered.

Paper notification is what I require, child, Snod underlined.  I don’t trust

new-fangled technology for record-keeping.

Blimey! thought Peregrine-or something to that effect.

And so it was that a letter, curiously addressed in childish,

round cursive script, landed on the form desk.  There was no

accompanying apple, with, or without a resident worm.

Once the bell had rung and the boys had filed out to Assembly,

Snod took a closer look.  You will have detected a reckless dismissal

of his need to attend such ritualistic gatherings.

At least the missive did not terminate in the infamous:

Signed,

My Mother.

So… Mrs W was in the travel business.  Might be good for an upgrade.

He had heard of teachers who had taught boys who had become pilots.

Such students frequently proved to be good contacts when a favour was

required from the airlines.  He was short on such sources of beneficence.

But, no-this mother was complaining about the Gove effect.  She could not

comprehend why she could not take her offspring on holiday during

term time.

(OGL image)

Nothing much gets done in the last couple of weeks, she observed.

In your opinion, thought Snod, but in the case of your bratlet, nothing

much gets done all term.

Mrs W went on to recognise that she could face a fine of £60 per day.

She made the point that she would be saving that amount (and more)

by travelling off-peak.  She did not fear the Birnam Wood of prosecution,

nor the Dunsinane of incarceration.  She seemed to fear no man of woman

born.

Aha! reflected Snod.  Never underestimate the power of metaphor.  A wood

did come towards Dunsinane!

He anticipated the appeal to Human Rights and was not disappointed.

She quoted the CEO of a Cornish tourist board who advocated family

enrichment weeks.  Cornwall- that was where that wretched Milford-Haven

hailed from.  The Junior Master didn’t seem to have been enriched by his

upbringing down that neck of the woods. Perhaps it was the radon that

had affected him.

This woman seemed to think that Snod should turn up to teach whether

her child was in absentia or not.  She suggested that staggering the school

holidays might be a good idea.

I would be the one who would be staggering, fumed Snod.  I’m practically

a stretcher case by the end of June as it is.  When am I expected to re-

charge my batteries?  I will not utilise the ghastly phrases about losing my

mojo, or va-va-voom.  I just need to vamoose.  Preferably for eight weeks.

This out-dated long summer break is tied to our agrarian past, continued Mrs

W.  It might have made sense when children were needed to bring in the

harvest.  Things have moved on.

I wouldn’t agree with you there, Snod scowled, though mollified that she

had used a Latin based adjective.  The only interest the children of today

have in land management is an unhealthy curiosity in scything, as

demonstrated in Poldark.  It would do them a lot of good to bring in the

hay, whether the sun shone, or not.

He suddenly remembered how he had assisted the groundsman in his

school  holidays, when no one had collected him and he had not been

invited home with any chums.  He had felt abandoned like the youthful

Scrooge in Dickens’ heart-rending tale.

The summer holidays had stretched out forever.  How bitter some of his

experiences had been back then.

Suddenly he felt quite benign.  A snatch of that awful song from a

Disney film came to his mind.  Let it go!  It will be one fewer ink

exercise to mark.  He, or she, who pays the piper calls the tune.  And,

yes, Mrs W pays the school fees, whether her son attends or not.  It is

just a pity that a greater proportion of that payment doesn’t filter down

to the rats who, as in my case, are contemplating leaving the sinking

ship of Education anyway.

And was he a piper then?  He had no intention of leading his students

into a Rip van Winkle cavern.  Maybe he did induce sleep in some, especially

on a Monday morning.  That would be his drone.  Piper…drone!  Puns had

always amused him.

No, the boy could go.  What did he care?

Felicitously, Snod didn’t have to worry about what to teach in Period

One.

The woman had jolted his memory of how successful a source

Browning’s poem could be.  Now where was that copy of Narrative Verse

through the Ages?

Maybe his tolerance and compliance might be good for an upgrade after

all.  Hamelin– he didn’t think he had been there.  Maybe he and Virginia

could take a river cruise down the Weser?  He wondered if that might tie in

with the consumption of some fine German wines.  He would ask Mrs W for

advice.

No problem, Mr Snodbury.  We can arrange a Hanseatic cruise for you with

a two day Schlachte Embankment break.  Tell you what- we will throw in a

complimentary Musicians of Bremen beer garden experience at no extra

charge, in view of all that you have done for Peregrine since last year.

It wasn’t exactly Moselle and Riesling, but at least that was some of

the school hols sorted.