Horus's blog

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[  Mood: Happy ]

I feel in a poetic mood today, I was out this morning for a walk before lunch and decided to take my camera and have a look to see if the Bluebells were in full flower. For those of you who are unfamiliar with them the British Bluebell is a wild woodland flower that appears in mid April to May depending upon the mildness of the weather. It preferes sunny dappled shade within wooded areas and in older woodlands they can form large swathes of flowers covering many acres. On sunny days they give off a lovely perfumed smell and attract lots of Butterflies and Bees. Due to the mild weather they have put on a very good show this year, so I have posted a few pictures for you to look at.

“The start of May! I think I should, go take a walk in Bluebell Wood
And see the myriads of flowers, cascades of blue beneath the bowers”




“Bright Silver Birch, now clothed in green, swift tides of blue flow in between
the dappled shade, in every hue, from Indigo to powder blue”




“A headlong rush beneath the trees, the home of Butterflies and bees
Who sip the nectar while they may, from break of dawn, till end of day”



“But soon this miracle will pass, fast hid by brambles, ferns and grass
They softly steal themselves away, to lift our hearts another day”
Horus




Here are a few more pictures that I took today.
This one is an unusual 'Albino' Bluebell, I found several growing in just one small patch. It looks like the mutation is taking hold as I could see perhaps a few dozen dotted within an isolated patch of several thousand.



A close up of the Bluebell flower, notice how the brambles and ferns are already starting to out grow them.



Here is a 'Peacock' Butterfly that cooperated very well in having it's picture taken.

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So on I walked, past the marshy ground between the playing fields and on towards the lake. It is a small but picturesque lake, almost perfectly round and contained within a raised mound of higher ground that surrounds it, walking up towards it from the fields the impression is of a small volcano cone filled with water.

Approaching the pool



It is completely surrounded by trees and bushes with open spaces inter dispersed around the rim where the anglers sit and fish, I stopped to take a couple of photographs and noticed that I was being watched by a couple of people, one man about forty years of age, with a mouth full of gold teeth and a pair of very heavy silver rings piercing each of his ears. The other looked to be around thirty years old and had a friendly look about him. “Just taking a couple of snaps of the pool, I used to fish here as a lad” I said. It turned out that the older man was the water bailiff and we had a long chat about how the fishing used to be in this area.

The Angler's Pool



The conversation moved on to the name of another pool hidden deep in some woods about a mile or so further on. I had mentioned that it was on my route for today’s walk, it has an unusual name, which is ‘Blood Pool’ and this prompted the younger man to say that it was given the name due to the fact that ‘gypsies’ used to drown their unwanted dogs in the pool. I asked the one who was the bailiff if there were any fish in that particular pool and he said there were not. “Have you ever visited the pool in early summer?” I asked. He said he had and I asked him if he ever saw the broad leaved water weeds that completely covered the water at that time of the year. “If you see them when they first appear the edges are all curled up and show the red undersides” I said and that is why it is called ‘Blood Pool’. They both became more interested in my explanation, “then why are there no fish in the pool” the young one asked. I then explained that the water that ran into the pool from the surrounding area was heavily saturated with iron oxide polluted water, still seeping out from long abandoned shallow coal mining operations. This together with the dying and decomposing weed during the winter months, deprived the pool of Oxygen, hence the lack of fish, I decided it was fast becoming a day of identifying long lost water sources.

I continued around the pool in a clockwise direction and picked up the remnants of the sunken cow lane as it swept in from my left and I joined it like a car joining a motorway.

The 'Cow Lane'



They say it is possible to judge the age of an ancient hedgerow by the variation of the trees and shrubs that comprise it’s make up. The rough rule is one species for every one hundred years, so I started to count, Oak, Beech, Sycamore, Hawthorn, Holly, Black-Thorn, Chestnut, Elder and more. I knew that this area had a Roman connection and that the farms had once been linked together by this sunken track.

Continuing down the lane, soon the Bluebells will be in flower on each side of the lane.



Early signs of a good show



I had read somewhere that it was popular with the Romans due to there being nine natural springs in the area. Here we go again! Springs and water sources! I started to think back to my childhood and see if maybe I could identify where these springs would have been. So far I have identified three, one that I mentioned earlier.

I identified one of the others by recalling a local name for one end of the sunken cow lane; it was ‘Pump Hollow’ it all made sense now, a name from my childhood gave me the location of what would have been the village pump! Most likely tapping one of the nine springs. The other came to mind when I remembered a plot of land that my father used to rent from a local farmer. He kept chickens and had a vegetable garden there. I would go down and dip a bucket into a small reed encircled hole in the ground to water the chickens and the vegetable plot, eureka! This must have also been one of the springs. That farmer tried on many occasions to sell the plot of land to my father for what today would have been a small amount of money. But he had a young family to bring up and was not particularly well paid, so he never took him up on the offer. Half a century later, there now stands a well established housing estate on the farmers field and the only access to it is through the plot of land where I used to water the chickens. It must have become a very valuable piece of land, I am reminded of Topol in 'Fidler on the roof' and start to whistle "If I were a rich man"

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It was a lovely day today and there I was stuck indoors cramming for an exam on Friday. No, I am not some young early twenties student type, in fact although I don’t consider myself old, I have memories that go back more than half a century. Today was promised to be the best one so far this year, although from my window it was decidedly cloudy and quite breezy outside. My internet connection started to slow at about 2 pm so I thought “That’s it, I am off for a walk” it would clear my head. I decided to take a walk that I had not done since my childhood, as separate parts yes, but not as one long walk for more years than I care to remember.
I started off by crossing a busy arterial trunk road and found my way to a gap in the hedgerow opposite a row of old terraced houses, now desirable ‘town houses’. I remembered the old gate that used to be located here that led down past a farm set in green meadows. That farm once belonged to my great, great, Grandfather, but it is now the site of municipal football fields, I intended to cross the fields towards a pool that I used to fish in as a boy. I was met by a rather terse sign informing me that I was trespassing on council land, well as I used to play around here as a child and my ancestors used to own the land, I felt quite entitled to ignore their sign.

The ground had been landscaped many years previously to give a flat area for the football pitches, so I took the high ground of the embanked earth that rose up towards the road. I was now walking behind and parallel to a small wood that we used to gather conkers in, I stopped to take a break and looking down I saw a fan shaped area of marshy ground lying between the two football pitches.

The marshy ground, the old farm stood where the far goalposts now stand and the 'Cow Lane' would have followed the tree line at the back


I remembered an old sunken cow lane that ran from the farm (that would have been on my left) and around the far side of the football fields. This lane disappeared into a small wood then emerged to skirt the pool I was heading towards, alas that section had long gone under the developer’s diggers and a new housing estate now stood there. I wondered how many of the new residents would know that their streets and roads with names like Ashen Hough Close, Fox Gardens, Harecastle Road etc. were all named after farms in this area, all sadly are now long gone.

As I looked at the marshy ground a long lost memory stirred itself in my mind. I looked around me and yes I was right! I knew the reason for the marshy ground!
Many years ago, we would cut through this meadow at a place that we called ‘Little White House’ for indeed that was what it was, a tiny house built from stone with tiny windows, you would not have been surprised to see Hansel & Gretel or the Wicked Witch coming out of the tiny door. It was surrounded by a small garden and had a burnt lime white-wash on the outer stone walls, but more importantly, it had a spring. This spring never dried up or froze over and many of the terraced houses that I mentioned earlier would use this as a reliable source of water in an emergency or in severe cold weather when the water pipes could sometimes freeze up.

So now I knew the answer to the marshy ground, long ago the little house had disappeared and so had the farm, the local council had purchased the land and proceed to level and landscape the whole area. They never were aware of that spring at the top of the hill and probably wonder why the ground is so boggy. So as time goes by it is possible that I am one of the few people to know the spring’s whereabouts, hidden under the new hillside, slowly leaking water out of the hill as if by magic.

The site of the 'Little White House' and it's hidden spring.



I continued my walk and made many more observations along the way, but that is enough for now.

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[  Mood: Happy ]

[  Currently: Working  ]

Thank you all for your comments I was surprised that anyone actually reads my blogg, but some of you obviously do It was while reading Hepzi's comment about Africa that my mind started wandering, it doesn't take much now days to start that off

I was looking at some carvings that we have, they were made for us in Africa and thought that you may like to see some of them. The photographs are now quite old and have been digitally scanned, so the quality is a bit poor. The first one shows some of the ones that we had in our African home at the time, they have since spent many years in the loft after we returned but around ten years ago they got a reprieve when I built a new conservatory and decided that a few African artifacts would liven the place up a bit.

I managed to dig out a picture of some of the carvings actually being made. I recall we would jump into the car with the kids and drive off into the bush where these guys would be working and either buy something they had made, or give them a commission to make something special. They used no modern tools and everything was hand crafted using adzes, chisels and old rasps to shape the wood. they would then sand them down by hand and polish them into how they look in the first picture. They would use local wood, mainly Acacia, but I do have some that are made from Ebony. I bet you cannot guess what they used to polish them with?
Shoe Polish Mrs H will still use it on them today

My only regret is that as you may see in the carvers picture, they would also use Ivory to carve into shapes or to enhance a carving and to my everlasting shame, I do own some of Elephants with real Ivory tusks and Mrs H owns a lovely Ivory bracelet. My only excuse is that at the time, Elephants were not as endangered as they are now, I have to be philosophical about it and say to myself "Well I own them now and no amount of regret will bring the Elephants back again" although I must say that it is something that I am totally opposed to today, older and wiser I suppose. Strange how your desire to own one thing of beauty can lead to the destruction of something much more beautiful such as the Elephant.

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I suppose that I should say "Welcome to my Blog" but as most people never bother to read them anyway I could just as well say "Why don't you all bugger off and read something more interesting" I only did this one to show Goddess how it actually works So here I am talking to myself and just noticing that my nice wooly cardi that I have been wearing all day, is actually on inside out How come no one bothers to tell you these things? More exciting news to follow, so watch this space.