Forward planning

tomorrow

tomorrow
will be a better day
God willing
I will put away my hating hat
find my compassionate beret
put it in cheeky fashion askew
on my very bemused head
and stop wishing myself ,
and everyone else,
would drop down dead

Annie Elliott

The Professor of Anatomy at my teaching hospital was then the current editor of Gray's Anatomy. I struggled in anatomy, but one of the girls in our anatomy classes was the great-granddaughter of Thomas Pickering-Pick who had been an earlier editor of Gray's Anatomy until 1905. She was brilliant and one of the professor's favourite students. She was also a good sailor, and I once crewed for her when she had to deliver the family boat out of Weymouth along the south coast to their mooring in Christchurch. The boat was one of the "Old Gaffers", and took part in the Old Gaffers regatta each year.

Though still in my scruff sailing gear, I was permitted to take tea with the family, a formal affair overlooking their lawns through the open French windows, when they told me a little of the history of the old place. It used to have some large oak woods attached, where the trees had been planted particularly closely together at the time of the Napoleonic wars, when many of the old oak trees had been felled to build boats for Nelson's navy. By planting them close, the branches of these new trees were forced to curve upwards as they grew, so their timber could be used for the curved frames of the hulls.

The old bird-table

Oak trees take up to 200 years to reach maturity when their wood can be used. To our present-day minds, this is unimaginable forward planning; those forebears clearly believed nothing would change in 200 years, and we would still be building wooden-hulled fighting ships of the line. Now, most of their old woods have been sold off for housing, and those valiant old trees felled.

Yesterday, our son-in-law Sam erected the old bird-table my father had built for mum. She loved her birds and fed them everyday, threading peanuts on string, or tying bacon rinds to the hooks. Dad too built things to last, and his bird-table is more than 50 years old, and as solid as he first made it. Sam also built the Saloon behind the garden, which is equally solid and built to last. These times of change and uncertainty make us long for some stability and durability in our lives, and such strength and quality are a reminder of the value of good workmanship in continuity.

In this throw-away society, the NHS dispose of everything when it's been used once, whereas they always used to have quality materials, even for the face-masks, which they could sterilise and reuse many times. Now they are running out of disposable essentials. We might not welcome the old recurrent European wars, but we could certainly do with some of their stability and forward planning. It is surely time to return to old-fashioned quality and durability.

St George's Day comes to Hundon

Today is St George's Day. Walking back through the village with the dogs, one solitary flag was raised in honour of our patron saint by David and Pam, opposite our own house. They were a family of four generations in our village; Pam was born in this house, as was her own son, who lived in the village with his own child. We are three generations now in the village; yet still we feel we are newcomers, outsiders to the old generations who were born here. Hundon life, like villages everywhere, is very cliquey, with a small group of people who are "in". We are definitely still "out", but as we don't socialise much, we are happy to stay so. St George may bind the nation, but he could never bind a village together.