Perhaps now more than at any time during the last 30 years we are all looking for ways to transcend isolation.
Reminiscing about happier times is perhaps more natural now than at any other time as the hawks seem to be swirling above London.
Coming Home
I wanted to write about that peculiar feeling we all get after a long journey as we approach home. More specifically the satisfaction it gives you as you see the familiar surroundings of home after the strangeness of far away places. In my childhood this meant bicycling to Ringstead on a 5 mile trip through the park but it felt like I had travelled much, much further through different landscapes with different people and customs. Alas, globalization has changed our perception of what is exotic and exciting to such a degree with cheap air travel.
In Norfolk I used to get that familiar feeling as I came down Chapel bank from Hunstanton to Old Hunstanton. First, there would be a narrow road with big hedges on both sides with sparrows flying between them. Then the big beech tree where you turned right onto the footpath into the wood with naturalized Alexanders on both sides. Past the gardener’s cottage and compost bins and down the path with spots of sunlight in summer and coarse, large nettles stinging your legs as you hurried onto the gate and duck pond.
Then St Mary’s church spire appears with the St George’s flag and through another gate (close to Colonel Hamer’s hollyhocks) and into a small alley of yews in the churchyard. This lead to the graveyard with smugglers’ graves and a big mound like , as we imagined as children, a giant had been buried there. Through another gate under the old apple tree and through the long grass of eight oak field. Under the fence and through the pine plantation to the wobbly bridge with the quacking of ducks and scuttling of the big feet of moorhens. Finally, a bank of primroses, cowslips and daffs under a statuesque Scots pine by the old ice-house before arriving at the almond tree and gravel infront of the Clocktower. The home I shall always dream about.
But coming home here in East Dulwich is no less romantic. As I reach the ‘crest’ of Upland road I can see down onto Canary Wharf lit up in all its splendour for the residents of the ‘little Alps’ of South London to see as they stumble home from the pub or more likely work.
It makes me feel very much part of London without actually having the deal with it’s ferocity (we can see the stars in Dulwich!).
Jeeves and The Impending Doom
The greatest literary connection to the part of Old Hunstanton that my family home, The Clocktower is in is with P.G Wodehouse ( who wrote the famous series of Jeeves and Wooster books).
Apparently he often stayed at Old Hunstanton Hall and used the eccentric aristocratic way the house was run as a template for some of the other stately homes that he used in his books such as that of Bertie’s formidable Aunt Agatha’s Steeple Bumpleigh.
But recently I discovered a very short book of his that directly references a very distinctive building in the grounds of Old Hunstanton Hall called The Octagon.
The Octagon is a smallish building that is on an island surrounded by the water of a small spring that starts close-by in the park called The Bishops Bath. It was suggested that one of the ancestors of the Le Strange family , who have owned the estate since the days of William the Conqueror, built it to practice the violin because his wife could not stand the noise he made when playing it.
Anyway, P.G Wodehouse playfully used the building for a scene in the book- Jeeves and the Impending Doom in which the hapless Bertie is stranded with the cabinet minister on the top of the Octagon having been attacked by a very territorial swan. As usual Jeeves comes to rescue by disarming the swan with an umbrella.
The book is the usual parody of the way the upper class British society was pre-second world war but it is such a coincidence to have such an obscure but personal connection to such a well known and celebrated author.
Big Pants
Perhaps the most popular snippet in my book, Down The Garden Path( published in 2019) was the reference to Lady Chatterley and her game-keeper friend. Of course, it actually has very little to do with gardening but its amazing what a little bit of smut can do to book sales!
So to elaborate on the theme and to justify its inclusion in the book as referenced from my childhood I will add this- when I was growing up in Norfolk I used to spend a lot of time cycling (illegally) through the old park of Hunstanton Hall. The fear was that Sadler, the game-keeper, would catch me and have a few stern words to say.
In fact he wasn’t really that interested as long as you left his pheasants alone. He did make a pretence of being cross but there were never any real consequences.
Unfortunately, the new game-keeper when Sadler passed on was much more fascist in his outlook and one meeting with him made me realize( as an adult) that I better not trespass in the park unless I wanted to be shot.
Looking back on it perhaps Sadler’s mind was on other things. My mum thought it was hilarious (when we cycled past his cottage) that the washing line outside was strung up with an assortment of big knickers ,probably alongside the compulsory rabbits, as smoke curled from the chimney.
Ironically, I discovered that these matched the selection offered in the Warehouse Clearance shop in Hunstanton. I do not want you to think I spend my whole time browsing the ladieswear section of the fine shopping establishments of Hunstanton but there you are….
If you are interested in purchasing my book with all sorts of memories of this sort in it I can send it to you , if you live in the UK, for £6.50 including P+P. If you live abroad or prefer the convenience of Amazon then here is the link to buy the book-
A gardener out of this world 