Continuing with the gym junkie theme from last week. Given my aversion to unnecessary movement and a low boredom threshold, I keep myself amused at the gym by reading a newspaper. My daily rag of choice is the I (I for Independent). I know buying an actual printed newspaper is rather old-fashioned these days but I like thumbing through the I. It’s an easy read – a digest of the news with minimal preaching. I’m way too set in my ways to be told what to think. The paper regularly features surveys of various everyday activities, and one that stuck in my mind recently was about washing – pertinent when getting all hot and bothered on an exercise bike. Apparently, 34% of Britons don’t wash their meat and two veg when showering. Listen up, lads. No one likes cheesy wotsits in the bedroom.
Many gym bunnies get a kick out of it. Apparently, pumping iron can pump the endorphins too, the brain’s feel-good neurotransmitters. After a decade on the treadmill, I can’t say I’ve ever noticed my mood improve. The truth is, I go to the gym because I have to – doctor’s orders – and not because I want to. Following our move to the village, Liam and I joined the community gym. It’s a small but perfectly formed facility housed in the pretty annex of our local library. We used to belong to a more industrial strength torture chamber in town, encircled by beefy blokes in tattoos and tight togs getting down and sweaty. Our community gym is a more sedate affair with a mostly mature crowd trying to dodge the Grim Reaper – us included. I call it my care in the community.
Keeping the gym going is a constant hand-to-mouth exercise. A grant from the local council helps with running costs, but money is always tight and this requires imaginative ways to raise some dosh. Cue the recent 12-hour cyclathon. On one of the hottest days of the year, 21 members took part. And yes, that’s Liam doing his bit (bottom left).
If you look really closely you can just make out my knee behind him. I was there for moral support.
I’m off-air while Liam and I are perking our pansies on Ithaca. Thankfully, Odysseus’ fabled isle has escaped the terrible wildfires that have torched Southern Europe – and now Hawaii and Tenerife – and brought destruction and misery to many, and death to some. Let’s not kid ourselves, the future’s buggered. Our next-door neighbour and his partner were caught up in the devastating firestorms that hit Rhodes last month and were forced to flee their hotel to sleep in a school playground. They made it back in one piece, I’m pleased to say.
So while we’re here…
…I’ve chosen some random photos that didn’t make the grade, blog-wise, during the past year and ended up on the cutting room floor.
And this is my personal favourite, spotted on the underside of a loo-seat lid on a train to London. It brightened up a dull journey. Who doesn’t appreciate a little toilet humour?
We’ve become part-time groupies for our local village bowls team. To the uninitiated, bowls is a traditional sport beloved of the grey herd in which the objective is to roll weighted balls along a green so that they stop close to a smaller ball at the other end – closest wins. A variant of French boules, the game has ancient roots. That’s all I know.
Following a period of death and decline, a newly invigorated Chedgrave Bowls Club has attracted fresh and younger blood and is on a winning streak, starting with the Marie Curie Cup last autumn. While we don’t really have the first clue what’s going on, it’s a pleasant way to while away a warm summer’s day with a couple of G&Ts – ice and a slice. The fact that the bowling green is adjacent to our local tavern is a bonus.
Can you spot us?
The last time we were on groupie duty, it was suggested we might resurrect the old East Anglian pub sport of dwile flonking. This involves two teams of twelve players, each taking a turn to girt (dance) around the other while attempting to avoid a beer-soaked dwile (cloth) flonked (flung) by the non-girting team.
Here are the rules (according to Wikipedia):
A ‘dull witted person’ is chosen as the ‘jobanowl’ (referee), and the two teams decide who flonks first by tossing a sugar beet. The game begins when the jobanowl shouts, “Here y’go, t’gither” (together).
The non-flonking team joins hands and girts in a circle around a member of the flonking team. The flonker dips his dwile-tipped ‘driveller’ (a pole 2–3 ft long and made from hazel or yew) into a bucket of beer, then spins around in the opposite direction to the girters and flonks his dwile at them.
If the dwile misses completely it is known as a ‘swadge’. If this happens, the flonker must drink the contents of an ale-filled chamber pot (or gazunder as in ‘goes-under’ the bed) before the wet dwile has passed from hand to hand along the line of now non-girting girters chanting the ceremonial mantra of “pot, pot, pot!”.
A full game comprises two ‘snurds’, each snurd being one team taking a turn at girting. The jobanowl adds interest and difficulty to the game by randomly switching the direction of rotation and will levy drinking penalties on any player found not taking the game seriously enough.
Apparently, by the end of play, everyone’s too pissed to give a toss. If it’s not illegal, it ought to be. ‘Normal for Norfolk’ as the saying goes.
Many thanks to Gary Shilling, villager extraordinaire, for the inspiration for this post.
The definition of boredom is cleaning out the bathroom extractor fan with an old toothbrush. Let’s face it, there’s only so much knick-knack dusting a boy can do when home alone. But I’m not yet ready for a meagre diet of daytime TV for the sofa-bound brain-dead – all idle chit-chat from nobodies about nothing. I know it’s only a matter of time before I too become glued to the box with a milky cuppa and a gingernut.
So I went for a walk. We’re fortunate to live close to water, not too close to worry about flooding – not yet anyway – but close enough for a rejuvenating stroll along the River Chet. The cottage is on the Wherryman’s Way, a series of long-distance paths linking Norwich with Great Yarmouth on the coast. The route is named after the north folk who worked the Norfolk wherries, small sailing barges that used to ply their trade along the waterways hereabouts ferrying people and cargo. All gone now of course, replaced by leisure boats for landlubbers.
June is a good time of year for old Ma Nature. She puts on her best show in exuberant emerald before, come August, she gets a bit frazzled and floppy.
On my walk I passed a small herd of grazing cattle. The white-faced bovine at the centre of the image above stared directly at me. I’ve seen that face before; I knew what she was thinking – come on then, if you think you’re hard enough. Memories of my last encounter with a white-faced alpha cow came flooding back. She was back and ready for another pop at me. Praise the Lord for the watery ditch between us.
Liam’s back tomorrow to save me from terminal tedium and mad cows.
Shortly after we moved to the village, the good lady wife of our local pub landlord popped round to the cottage with a housewarming gift. She said, “I saw this and thought of you” and handed over a pot plant. It was an echninopsis lageniformis f. monstruosa, more commonly known as a penis cactus. And you can see why.
I did extensive research – ok, I googled it – and in Italy the plant is known as cazzone – that’s dick to you and me – so that’s what we called it. I also discovered that Germans call the prickly plant frauenglück or happy woman. Ouch! Oh, and a word to the wise. There is some evidence that Dick contains mescaline, a psychedelic drug. So no licking Dick.
I wasn’t quite sure how to look after a desert plant in a centrally heated house on an island with a temperate climate but I did my best, placing Dick next to a south-facing window, and dribbled a little water into the soil once a week. I didn’t hold out much hope but, to my great surprise, Dick lived. Then, just recently, I noticed that Dick was sprouting a brand new appendage. As it’s a bit on the small side, we’ve called it Little Dickie. We’re hoping it’s a grower. Either way, the publican’s missus is a happy woman.
My dad took the King’s shilling in the late forties and made a career out of soldiering for the next twenty-something years. Despite swearing allegiance to the monarch, Dad was a soft leftie, voting Labour all his life. He liked and respected the Queen but he didn’t think much of the motley crew of incidental royals – the ‘hangers on’ as he called them. My mother, on the other hand, was a devoted royalist and had a picture of Her Maj hanging on her bedroom wall.
In my adult years, I’ve always been conflicted about the entire notion of a hereditary head of state. My head questions its relevance in our modern, more egalitarian world but my heart tells me different. I was genuinely saddened by the Queen’s death. I can’t explain why. Maybe it’s my age. And when I look around the world at the assortment of elected nobodies, ne’er-do-wells and nasties, particularly those who would sell their children to the Devil to cling to power, I think, well, if it ain’t broke…
Today, we have the right royal do of the Coronation with Charles and Camilla riding the golden Cinderella coach to their ball at Westminster Abbey, the venue for such rituals for nearly a thousand years. The Crown Jewels will be dusted down, oaths will be sworn, heads will be anointed. And yes, we will be joining the locals at our local for a glass of bubbly to watch the fairy tale on the big screen.
Across our twin villages, the streets are decked out in fluttering flags and bunting of red, white and blue, and shops have gone all out to put on the best stately display. Here’s a taste…
And tomorrow, our villages are throwing their very own right royal do with a big Coronation party. We’ll be joining the festivities because let’s face it, we could all do with a party right now.
Every month without fail, Chet Contact drops on the mat. Produced by the Chet Valley Churches, the community magazine is packed with handy information about local community groups and services for believers and non-believers alike. There’s a lot going on round these parts. From bells to balls, bats to bowls, cakes to quizzes, pumping iron to eyeing up the birds, from stage to the silver screen, arts and crafts, knitting to nattering, foraging to growing your own, and much more besides – all country life is here.
I like the regular history piece in the mag. I knew Loddon has old roots – the earliest written reference to the village was around 1042 – but I was surprised to read that there’s been a pharmacy in Loddon on the same site for over 180 years. It’s now a branch of Boots. Long gone are all those jars full of potions laced with opium and mercury from the apothecary’s handbook of old wives’ tales. Maybe that’s why, back then, life expectancy was only about 57.
The last time I was at a school play, I was in a school play. That was 1976 and it was Midsummer Night’s Dream. No, I wasn’t typecast as one of the fairies. Shame on you for thinking it. In fact, I was ‘Snug, a Joiner’, who was also ‘Lion’ in the Bard’s play within a play. I was terrible. My lion’s roar was particularly lame. Roll on nearly half a century and school plays have come a long way. Back in my day, there was no technical wizardry with lights, mikes and music, just a few spotty teens mooching and mumbling.
And judging by the recent production of Matilda, the Musical, at Hobart High, our local secondary school, the quality of the performances has come a long way too. There was some real talent on that stage and the complicated ensemble song and dance routines were a pleasure to watch – harmonious and pretty much step perfect. The enthusiasm was infectious, warming up the audience on a cold midwinter’s evening. And the fact we knew some gifted kids in the cast made it even better. Mothers cried with joy.
With energy costs and inflation as they are, for many, going under is the new gettingby. This year, Christmas will be particularly tough. Village people hereabouts know how it is and don’t just stand idly by. From free Christmas hampers to the recently opened Chet Valley Community Larder, help is on hand for those struggling to put food on the table. It really gladdens the soul. It’s all amazing but the larder is particularly innovative. Run by volunteers and supported by Loddon and Chedgrave Parish Councils, Chet Valley Churches and Loddon Co-Op, the larder is based at Loddon Library. People can pop along to give what they can and take what they need; no forms, no fuss and no questions asked.
Perking the Pansies 