Downland: part four

The village came into sharper focus: the square tower of St. Peter’s church significant above the tree line, the roof of the estate house, a spiral of smoke curling skywards from a gardener’s bonfire. Skirting the buildings of the estate farm on the edge of the village, Ridler felt some apprehension. There was little enough light for him to be indistinguishable but an unknown figure in the village, when all were at hostelry or home, would always arouse suspicion. The first time he had come off the Downs this way, a man had called after him as he passed the pub - Ridler had not stopped - and since then he had cut through the grounds of the estate rather than navigate the final part of the village.

Ridler paused at St. Peter’s. The path to the church was marked by the war memorial. In the weak light, he could still make out the names, those very English names. Backshall, Clouting, Collingham, Notley, Unstead: the fallen of the Great War. Ridler had not fallen; many times he thought he might fall but he had caught himself and had come through physically unscathed. Other names: Cornwall, Loftus from the second war. Ridler had tried to enlist for that one too but although the Consul in New York had been polite and accommodating, Ridler knew that he had not taken him seriously. He looked down the hedge-lined path to the church; he could see no light. At one time, he would have always chanced a visit but he had not been in for a year now, even though he had several times been in the porch, at the door, before turning away at the last thinking better of it. The village was warm, still and quiet; he could see an open-doored cottage across the way but nothing stirred within. Eating in the parlour perhaps; tending their own modest crop at the back after a day of toil at another’s; sleeping in a chair by a window. Ridler coveted the simple pleasures of these simple people but not the narrow confines of their narrow experiences. Those who saw some of the world through the prism of a war were not here now: they did not come back.

He turned again towards the church and headed down the path. Ignoring the door on the village-side of the squat, Norman church, Ridler passed clockwise around the northern end of the building before coming into the porch of the south door. At closer quarters, he had seen some feint light from within as he skirted the building; this did not mean there were occupants. The flickering of votive candles had been common when he had visited the deserted church before. He listened carefully at the door. He could hear nothing. He lifted the latch and eased the heavy oak door. Candles had been lit but, beginning to gutter now, the devotees had long gone.

Stronger Together

Having allocated £40m of its budget on the road to nowhere – the Bexhill/Hastings Link Road – East Sussex County Council is now gearing up to saving £60m over the next three years by cutting services used by the most vulnerable in the county. The fact that it is sitting on reserves of over £400m make the decision that they are preparing to take at the next meeting of the full Council all the more scandalous.

Under the budget proposals cooked up by the Council’s cabinet committee, children with special needs, disabled people, victims of domestic violence, older people, young people at risk, young parents and the homeless will all have services reduced or cut. If you look at the make-up of the cabinet – white, middle-class and middle-aged down to a man (and I mean that literally; no women, let alone a young person or someone from a different background) – it does go some way to explaining how a decision that requires such a lack of empathy could be made. That, and the fact that over the past two years it has been made clear from the very top: it is the same old nasty Tory party attacking the weakest targets they can find.

However, Lewes Stop the Cuts, a coalition of individuals, trade unions, charities, students and community groups, is committed to fighting these cuts to public services. A lobby of the next Council meeting is being held on Tuesday 12th February. Any individuals or organisations who can support this lobby should meet at the main entrance to County Hall, Lewes from 9am onwards to let the councillors know that those they think are the weakest are - together - the strongest.

It's Cold Outside

Now that the story of the death of Princess Diana is completely exhausted of any news mileage, some august journals have become fixated with the weather. It is strange that middle-market tabloids, dyed-in-the-wool climate change deniers, should use the extremes of weather we have experienced over recent years to make their daily bread, but they do. The endless rain and the countless flood alerts have been the subject of obsessive coverage throughout 2012 and, in the grip of winter, the potential for cold weather has got them very excited. They feel safer with the cold; their attitude seems to be: Global warming? Really? When it’s that cold outside? And now, with forecasts of snow, their shrieking has reached hysterical levels.

I used to have a similarly childish obsession with the weather – when I was a child. As a kid in London, I was familiar with the place name Herstmonceux for two reasons. First, I was slightly annoyed with it for nicking the Royal Observatory from up the road at Greenwich. Even though it happened in 1947, I felt I had somehow been deprived and that all the tourists milling about outside the building at the top of Greenwich Park were being conned. The second reason that Herstmonceux was familiar to me was because it frequently cropped up on the weather forecast; well, not so much the forecast, as the review of the day’s weather that Jack Scott or Bill Giles sometimes gave at the start of a forecast. If there had been extremes of weather – temperature, sunshine, rain, snow – very often Herstmonceux would be mentioned as having the highest or lowest of whatever was being measured. I am sure that other places were mentioned just as regularly, but an observatory thief with an unpronounceable name with the letter ‘x’ in it, stood out. In my naivety, I assumed that the Meteorological Office knew what the weather had been like across every inch of the land, and I was fascinated with the idea that Herstmonceux was the epicentre of extreme weather in southern England. I never made the connection between the observatory and weather; and so it never occurred to me that the reason it experienced more sunshine or the lowest temperature was because there was a weather station there to measure these things.

In 1990, the Royal Observatory moved again to Cambridge but gradually throughout that decade its various functions – astronomy, particle physics, hydrography – were scattered to different locations. I am not sure when the Herstmonceux weather station would have moved but it is now in West End, a minor road leading out of Herstmonceux village to Gingers Green and Stunts Green. Since ending up living in Herstmonceux, I pass it every day I go to my allotment. It is a very unassuming single-storey wooden building, protected by tasteful racing green metal security fencing as it is unmanned and automatic. Equipment there measures air temperature, atmospheric pressure, rainfall, wind speed and direction, humidity, cloud height and visibility. The station produces constant observations and transmits them to the Met Office in Exeter; the minute-by-minute readings can be accessed on the Met Office website. It is said that weather balloons are launched twice daily from the station but I have never seen one. A friend has, and sighting one myself has now become a minor obsession. The Met Office has over two hundred weather stations around the country but only a handful are still manual. It’s a shame: I think I would be quite good at looking out of the window of a wooden hut and then phoning in the news that Siberian Snow Chaos Hits Britain.

Downland: part three

Arriving at Firle Beacon, exposed to the full westerly current as it travelled across the landscape to meet the land mass, this was Ridler at his most free. Away from the cell’s dimensions of the caravan, the narrow minds of the village, the puritan judges of a world stiff with conformity, he was alive. The ochre sun, now drowned in the horizon, coloured the very top of the spiralling clouds above him. He discarded his jacket and shirt and - bare-chested, arms spread wide, head thrown back – felt the strong, warm breeze on his stigmatised skin. Below him, the panoramic vista he had grown to rely upon: the wheat-packed fields mapping away from him to the cloud-mirrored ridge of the Weald; the county town of Lewes, cradled in the creases of the surrounding hills; the tied villages, standing firmly at the centre of their feudal estates; and the Tower, that single turret of sturdy split flint that so mocked his own Englishman’s castle. The solid and unchanging landscape of tradition, of England. Ridler, himself born so English, had made himself so foreign; and now he felt connected to this pastoral idyll, this England, but not to its people. He inhaled deep and long through his nose and exhaled loudly and capaciously from his mouth until his breath became first a bellow and then a roar. A roar of affirmation, a roar of freedom, a roar of innocence: he could not be blamed for the way the Writer’s brief stay had ended. Way down in the village of Firle, had anyone looking up been able to see or hear clearly, they would have made out a variegated bestial figurehead on the bow of the Beacon, sailing away in the fading light, proclaiming the clarity of his conscience.

Replacing his jacket and shirt, Ridler draped a scarf over the top of his head and held it in place with a battered, broad-brimmed felt hat he had taken, with the scarf, from his jacket pocket. Tying the scarf under his chin, in such a way that only eyes, nose and mouth were visible, he began the climb down to Firle picking his way carefully down the gradient. He could see the car lights on the Lewes Road, fuller now but still a dull, lazy amber, and a cloud of steam as a train was leaving Glynde station. These – the road and the rail - demarked the two lines he would need to re-cross before he could feel less threatened. When he would be walking in the cool and quiet of the tree-lined lanes that led him home, he would be happy. As he descended, the stiff breeze of the Downs subsided and the flat land rose to meet him.

Pale White Light

For an end-of-year post, I was thinking of writing about the teachers’ nemesis, Michael Gove. But the intention of this blog is to be celebratory; there are plenty of blogs that negatively moan on and on – I know, I used to write one. (The reason I wanted to write about Gove was because I took a group of sixth form students to the cinema to see the new version of Great Expectations at the start of the month, and someone innocently asked me whether I would be able to claim back the money I paid for my ticket. I said I didn’t really know, but why would I expect the public to pay for something that was for my enjoyment? And then, as I and countless other teachers put our hands in our pockets to buy sweets, biscuits and mince pies to celebrate the festive season with our students, my mind turned to MPs' expenses and that culture of claiming for every single one of life’s little outgoings. Gove has spent 2012 turning the word ‘teacher’ into a pejorative term: telling us that we don't work hard enough, we are propping up a corrupt exam system and we are over-rewarded with our gold-plated pensions. So, I thought I would remind myself how he fared in the MPs’ expenses scandal – where he sits in the something-for-nothing culture. Of course, he was as rotten as the rest of them. As well as making a dubious claim for £13,000 in moving expenses, in 2009 he had to pay back £7,000 he had claimed for equipping his second home. These items ranged from luxury furniture from his mother-in-law’s interior design company to a cot mattress from Toys R Us. What shocks me most about this information is the revelation that Michael Gove is married with children…) So, I decided not to write about Gove.

I was also thinking of writing about the incompetence of George Osborne: how he has demonised people on benefits as unemployed layabouts when the welfare bill overwhelmingly supports pensioners and the working poor; how savage cuts in the public sector have stalled the circulation of money that capitalism relies on; how he has missed target after target after target and, despite all the misery, the deficit has not gone down. But I don’t want to write about him, either; John Lanchester’s magnificent essay, Let's Call it Failure, on the London Review of Books website, demolishes him with much more elan than I could ever muster.

And I had thought of writing about the proliferation of technology for its own sake. A year of gigs spent alongside people either watching the band through their phones as they film them, or heads bowed ignoring the band and praying to the pale white light, has made me realise how, for so many people, life is lived vicariously and is only real if it is mediated through a screen. I could have written about the marginalisation of books and the invasion of the classroom by e-readers, tablets and apps; I could have written about the demise of Sussex Sedition as a physical fanzine but its survival as a blog. I had even found quotations from two writers on the subject this year:

“Speed cameras, recording angels on lampposts, our phones, our computers…a nation that could look at everything and see nothing.” - Andrew O’Hagan

“Watching has become mere gaping; open-mouthed and slow-breathing.” - John Banville

But I don’t want to write about any of that; it's all too depressing.

Leeks Midwinter

After a fairly dismal harvest from the allotment this year, the only crop that has made it to the bleak midwinter is the trusty leek. The brassicas were massacred, the carrots and parsnips failed and what little there was of a potato crop has already been eaten. So, on a blustery Christmas Eve morning walk with the dogs, I stopped off at the plot to harvest the last of the leeks, determined that something home-grown would make it to the Christmas dinner table. And there they were, standing upright in splendid isolation: the final four leeks. If the nuclear winter ever arrives, I swear it will be the leek that will be the first to regenerate, condemning generations of survivors ever after to wear leeks in their buttonholes in remembrance. And in the austere spirit of the times, I will make use of the whole vegetable. Here are two recipes: one that uses the traditionally eaten stem, the other the green leafy tops.

Creamy Cheesy Leeks

You will need:
40g butter
4 leeks
1 onion
A few sprigs of thyme
1 glass of white wine
150ml double cream
250g grated cheddar cheese

To cook:
Trim the leeks but set aside the green tops.
Melt the butter in a frying pan.
Thinly slice the leeks and chop the onion.
Gently fry the leeks, onion and thyme until soft.
Add the wine and simmer for 5 minutes to reduce.
Add the cream and warm through.
Put in an oven dish, add the cheese and bake for 25 minutes at 180c.

The green tops of leeks usually end up in the compost; but washed and cooked in butter they are a great addition to the table for the midwinter feast on the 25th.

Leek Tops

To cook:
Wash and finely shred the leek tops.
Melt a couple of ounces of butter in a saucepan.
Add the leeks and cover.
Cook over a medium heat until the butter bubbles.
Stir and turn to a low heat.
Season with salt and pepper and cook for a few minutes more until soft.

A Christmas Wassail

From the Middle English greeting ‘waes hael’, meaning ‘good health’, the ceremony of wassailing takes its name. From Kent and Sussex in the east, to Devon and Somerset in the west, the tradition of drinking the health of the apple trees has existed for hundreds of years. A procession moves through the orchards, singing, shouting and banging pots to drive away evil spirits so that trees will be bountiful the following autumn. Toast soaked in wassail - hot mulled cider or beer - is then hung from the branches. The ceremony usually takes place on the eve of twelfth night, 5th January. However, because of the calendar change of 1753 when 11 days were lost, some insist that the ceremony should be on 16th January. It does not really matter when it’s meant to be: it involves so much drinking of wassail that, by the end of the evening, no one knows what day it is anyway.

In more recent centuries, wassail as a drink became associated with the yuletide season. Beginning on Christmas Eve, the wassail bowl would be drunk from all through the twelve days of the holiday. Dickens probably compounded this tradition. In The Pickwick Papers, Mr Pickwick and his entourage arrive at Mr Wardle’s Dingley Dell:

“'This,' said Mr. Pickwick, looking round him, 'this is, indeed, comfort.'
'Our invariable custom,' replied Mr. Wardle. 'Everybody sits down with us on Christmas Eve, as you see them now--servants and all; and here we wait, until the clock strikes twelve, to usher Christmas in, and beguile the time with forfeits and old stories. Trundle, my boy, rake up the fire.'
Up flew the bright sparks in myriads as the logs were stirred. The deep red blaze sent forth a rich glow, that penetrated into the farthest corner of the room, and cast its cheerful tint on every face.
'Come,' said Wardle, 'a song--a Christmas song! I'll give you one, in default of a better.'
'Bravo!' said Mr. Pickwick.
'Fill up,' cried Wardle. 'It will be two hours, good, before you see the bottom of the bowl through the deep rich colour of the wassail; fill up all round, and now for the song.'
Thus saying, the merry old gentleman, in a good, round, sturdy voice, commenced without more ado-
This song was tumultuously applauded--for friends and dependents make a capital audience--and the poor relations, especially, were in perfect ecstasies of rapture. Again was the fire replenished, and again went the wassail round.”

Outside the home, wassailing became something that moved from the orchard to the street and was bound up with carol singing: those less well-off would visit the homes of the wealthy and sing for food and drink - “oh, bring us some figgy pudding and a cup of good cheer”. The cup of good cheer was the wassail.

There are a huge number of variations in modern recipes for wassail. Some use brandy and sherry for the kick while others use rum and beer - some even use lager and vodka. And some use cider instead of apples which seems heretical to me: for a traditional wassail, there must be apples. Dickens again:

“they sat down by the huge fire of blazing logs to a substantial supper, and a mighty bowl of wassail, something smaller than an ordinary wash-house copper, in which the hot apples were hissing and bubbling with a rich look, and a jolly sound, that were perfectly irresistible.”

This recipe uses brown ale and sherry; and apples that will hiss and bubble when your wassail is simmering on the top of your stove. You will need:

* 8 medium eating apples
* 6 bottles of real or brown ale
* 500ml sherry
* 150g brown sugar
* 2 teaspoons of mixed spice
* Sliced orange
* Lemon peel
* Large cooking pot with lid for oven and hob use

To make:

*Remove one strip of skin from around the middle of each apple.
*Put the apples, brown sugar and one bottle of ale in the cooking pot.
*Cover and cook for 30 minutes in a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees.
*Remove the apples and set aside.
*Transfer the pot to the hob and add the remaining ale, sherry, fruit and spice.
*Bring to the boil and then simmer for 5 minutes.
*Return the apples and keep hot on a low heat as you serve.

This should serve six drinks. Waes hael!