Mankell’s Wallander
Posted on | September 1, 2010 | No Comments
I read a lot. Mostly books about things. Mostly things like natural history. I hardly ever read fiction. So it comes as a surprise to me to find myself engrossed in a crime fiction series by Swedish writer Henning Mankell featuring detective Kurt Wallander of the Ystad police.
I first stumbled across Wallander in the British TV series starring Ken Branagh. I had never heard of Wallander or Mankell before but I knew I liked Branagh so we thought we’d try it. I was immediately sucked into the rolling and empty landscape of Sweden’s Skåne county, the beauty of the little town of Ystad and gripped by the imaginative crimes, usually a grisly murder, Mankell devised for the melancholy Wallander to solve.
So when the Beeb started showing the Swedish series tucked away on BBC4 I was thrilled. To hear it in Swedish is superb and reading subtitles makes you concentrate even harder and pulls you into the action even more. Krister Henriksson is Wallander superb.
So now I’ve seen them all, and although we have the lot on DVD, I wanted to read the stories for myself as Mankell intended them, and not to see them interpreted through the film company’s eyes. So far, I’m gripped. And I long to visit Ystad and those wild bleak landscapes of southern Sweden.
Map of Eynsham
Posted on | July 7, 2010 | 2 Comments
To amuse myself while recovering from a trapped nerve, I thought I would do a little gentle doodling in the form of a hand-drawn map of Eynsham, the village where I live.
Click on the map to enlarge it.
It’s my Eynsham and my drawing, so I make no apology for it not being to scale.
It’s not even accurate; huge chunks of the village are not shown, but you could use it to navigate your way around the village.
I drew what I think are the nicest or most important buildings, shops and houses; sketched in some of activities, history, nature and things you can find here or that stand out for me.
Here’s the title with the all important factual geographical information: click to enlarge
.
I could probably do a bit more fiddling on it here and there but it feels pretty much complete now.
If it’s not too pricey, I’m going to see if I can have a few reproduced.
Here’s the area by the river. Click to enlarge. What’s that highwayman doing there?
Winter hare Christmas card
Posted on | July 2, 2010 | No Comments
I have painted a new design for a Christmas card, ‘Winter hare’. Gratifyingly secular and with lovely strong colours to brighten up a dull grey winter’s day, I really hope you like it!
I now need to estimate how many to get printed. If you like the design and you think you might want to buy some when I’ve had them printed, please can you let me know how many you might want? I will be selling them in packs of 10 (with envelopes) later in the year and sending them out to you in early November. I don’t need paying until then, and of course, you can always change your mind.
I anticipate one pack of 10 will cost about £3 to £3.50 or as near to cost price as I can produce them, plus a few pennies for postage.
Eynsham Morris dance for the May
Posted on | May 3, 2010 | No Comments
Eynsham, my home for more than a decade, is a wonderful village. Its sense of pride in itself and its history is tangible.
This is never more clearly nor joyously expressed when than when the Eynsham Morris dance in the Square for the May.
Villagers; families, neighbours, friends, many born here, gather in the Square…
…to watch a bunch of blokes of all ages, including this year, a new intake of young lads, to make music and dance…
Any excuse to wear a hat bedecked with flowers and down a few pints of ale. No wonder he’s happy.
Eynsham under snow
Posted on | January 6, 2010 | No Comments
My village of Eynsham in west Oxfordshire rarely gets snow. But yesterday it began to fall about 4o’clock in the afternoon and continued to fall for the next 12 hours. I went out about midnight last night to see what was going on. The view down the Pug Lane alley at the back of our house looked so pretty:
And Mill Street looked beautiful with three inches of snow:
The Bartholomew Room in the Square still had its Christmas lights on:
At the village Post Office all was quiet:
This morning nearly eight inches of snow lay on the ground.
I haven’t seen snow where I live so deep since the winter of 1981. I went for a quick potter round the village. The roads hadn’t been treated and there were no buses:
My favourite shop in the world was open for business:
The snow had settled very picturesquely on the church tower and porch:
I trudged down towards to the tollbridge to see if any traffic was getting through anywhere. But judging by the tracks, only a few cars had braved the elements:
Down by the Thames, the snow lay deep on the branches making everything look like a Japanese print by Hokusai:
I was fascinated with the birds I saw; a dozen long-tailed tits flitting, a goldfinch singing by the Wharf stream, and best of all, perhaps 30 redwings plucking berries from a tree. Here’s one I managed to get quite close to:
They were suddenly startled by a hungry sparrowhawk – I saw his unmistakable silhouette swoop over me against the white sky.
Three years without Rebecca
Posted on | January 4, 2010 | Comments Off
On this day three years ago my best mate Rebecca van der Putt died aged 38, another victim of cancer. Sister of Debs, daughter of Mavis, wife of ‘the arresting’ Kate, oh-my-godmother to Rupert and much loved friend to just about everyone in my family, we all still miss her. If you knew her you were so very lucky.
There’s not much she liked more than a nice cup of tea and a chat. Except perhaps real ale. Cheers, girl!
The Onedin Line
Posted on | January 1, 2010 | Comments Off
During 2009 Moth and I watched an awful lot of 1970s TV drama series, notably Poldark, Colditz and for the past couple of months we have been avidly working our way through all 91 gripping episodes of The Onedin Line which we finished just before midnight last night. Magnificent!
Readers of a certain age will remember it fondly, and if you’re not of that certain age you may just remember the title sequence: majestic tall ships in full sail, cutting their way through the seas to the sound of Khachaturian’s Adagio from ‘Spartacus’. Here’s a little clip to remind you:
Colditz
Posted on | November 12, 2009 | Comments Off
When I was growing up in the late 60s and early 70s there seemed to be a lot on the telly about World War 2. The masterful The World at War, narrated by Laurence Olivier, seemed to run every week throughout my entire childhood. Episode 20, Genocide was how I learned about the holocaust and it haunted me for years. 
And then there was the BBC TV series Colditz. I was only nine when the first series was broadcast so I don’t remember all that much about it, but I do remember that is was, somehow, a national event and something to be proud of.
Moth bought all 28 superb episodes of Colditz on DVD. And I can barely believe we’ve already watched 19 episodes. The superb and subtle acting and the terrific scripts make up for the poor picture quality. And the long winter evenings are flying by!
The one that got away
Posted on | October 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Yesterday we went fishing on the Thames near the beautiful, polite riverside village of Pangbourne. Our friend Martin recently bought himself a little boat and asked if we would like to join him for a spot of pike fishing in a weirpool just by Whitchurch toll bridge (the other privately owned Oxfordshire toll bridge which legally rips off the travelling public – for 40p a time, would you believe).
Three lovely men in a boat: Martin, Moth and Rupe
I joined them after having visited Martin’s lovely wife Nat. The river was alive with birds; herons, grey wagtails, kingfishers and even a pair of Egyptian geese.
But it was the fish we were after, and when I joined them after they’d been fishing two hours, they hadn’t even had a bite. As the afternoon sun sank lower signs of life in the water became visible; a few bubbles here and there, ripples from little fish scared up to the surface by predators. There were fish down there all right.
Finally, Rupe was ‘in’ and judging by the bend on the line, it was big! He played the fish for a few minutes and finally got it close to the boat.
As its head surfaced, I thought it looked more like a crocodile than a fish; the diameter across its head was six inches, and we could see it was three maybe even four feet long! That must weigh 15lbs, we reckoned! Martin reached for the landing net, got the net underneath the monster (which was going to have bend a bit to fit in it) but at the very last moment, disaster! It came off the hook and disappeared back into the dark water. Luckily, Moth’s photo shows I’m not exaggerating:
We were left with only the memory of the one that got away.
A verse about meeting Sir Dave
Posted on | October 17, 2009 | Comments Off
A glimpse of Sir David
He’s shown us all the natural world
And brought such viewing pleasure
For 50 years we’ve watched him now
He’s a national treasure
He’s told us all about the lives
Of creatures great and small
Of how they rise, and grow and breed
And eventually fall
He’s shared some great moments of his life
With us on the telly
Like when he met gorilla friends
And turned us all to jelly
For three hours I queued with hundreds more
For him to sign my book
We waited patiently in line
Just to get a look
An old man with a pen in hand
Sitting at a table
As I meet him I’m overwhelmed
To speak I’m hardly able
Not on a screen this time, oh no
He’s there in front of me!
He signs his name and then looks up
It’s my face he wants to see
The things that his old eyes have seen!
Beast, bird, bear and bat
And for this brief moment of his life
It’s me he’s looking at!
shopping basket
