Archive | March, 2012

Fabric, Follies and Fumbling Boys

9 Mar

Years ago, in a university English department that was shaded by leafy jacaranda trees in summer, the most earnest and cleverest of boys (it was always the boys) would push their glasses against spotty bows,  call upon notes made feverishly in the small hours and make grand pronouncements that generally included words like ‘intertextuality’. Being broadly less studious, I’d roll my eyes and gaze out at the mauve blossom in the neighbouring courtyard, for the belief was that if a flower fell on your head you’d pass all your exams…I stood beneath a lot of jacaranda trees that year.

However, in the same very, very loose way in which I approached most of my English essays back then, intertextuality popped into my head earlier this week while I looked through the website of St Jude’s .  I had come upon this pretty fabric, ‘Painswick’, designed by Ed Klutz:

Do you see those lovely follies clever Ed has drawn?  Well, they come from here, Painswick House,  which has a rather fun garden in the Rococo style. At this time of year it is full of snowdrops and is a pleasant place to spend an afternoon, as we did last weekend.  Of course, it is impossible to visit the garden without noticing the follies, particularly those which are painted a stark and rather hard white…perhaps the colour is historical but Ed has done them rather a favour in this fabric. Also, in the small orchard, there ‘grazed’ several fibre-glass sheep which looked realistic from afar but on closer inspection brought to mind the MPs’ expenses scandal of some years ago. Duck houses are so passé these days, don’t you know?

This, my favourite folly, not painted white, was tucked away in a woodland walk. It made a super focal point at the end of the long walk, which I’m tempted to call an allée, but I don’t think it’s quite that.

And a few flowers

You might notice a faint watermark on these pictures.  It’s an experiment inspired by the current infatuation with Pinterest – I’ve noticed that, in most cases, by the time an image has been repinned for the third or fourth time,  all attribution has been lost.  I’ve resisted this kind of labelling in the past because I felt it seemed selfish, miserly  even, but I’m going to give it a go and see how I get on.

A Date with Laurie Lee

1 Mar

Thick mist this morning. In the garden, a spider’s web, heavy and sparkling with dew, suspended from the knobbly branches of a rose bush.

At lunch I stepped out and bought a copy of Laurie Lee’s Cider With Rosie, which is something I read as a child and have meant to revisit ever since I moved out west to Gloucestershire. Stroud of course has a terrific farmer’s market on Saturday  mornings (I am a dedicated follower of Windrush Valley goat’s cheese) and Slad, the village made famous by Lee, is only a few miles further up the valley. These days the area is more of a hide-out for celebs than home to young ragamuffins. If I am not mistaken, Lily Allen was married in nearby Cranham, while Damien Hirst is reputed to be fond of Lee’s old local, The Woolpack. But here’s a beautiful paragraph from the first few pages of the book, in which Lee describes the water that comes out of the pump in the scullery of his new home:

…It came out sparkling like liquid sky. And it broke and ran and shone on the tiled floor, or quivered in a jug, or weighted your clothes with cold. You could drink it, draw with it, froth it with soap, swim beetles across it, or fly bubbles in the air. You could put your head in it, and open your eyes, and see the sides of the bucket buckle, and hear your breath roar, and work your mouth like a fish, and smell the lime from the ground. Substance of magic – which you could tear or wear, confine or scatter, or send down holes, but never burn or break or destroy.

About a year ago Fella and I walked from Stroud to Painswick via Slad. The route took us up hill and down dale, past watermills, through woods and along muddy ditches, with stops for sandwiches and coffee from the thermos now and then. Gorgeous. We ought to do it again soon now that spring is almost here.