Poor old Hopalong has to get round on three legs but his tail’s fine

While our hedgehogs have been hibernating, hopefully among the woodpiles scattered round the garden (remnants of the vicious hedging which used to run along one edge), I have been concentrating more on our foxes and one in particular has been causing me worries.

I noticed him at the beginning of November a ragged-tailed fox who seemed to favour his right hind leg which seemed to give him some discomfort as he put it to the floor.

I kept an eye out for Hopalong each night. Sometimes he turned up, sometimes he didn’t. When he did turn up I tried to spot any regularity in his timings, thinking I could put the food out as close to his normal arrival time as possible.

Unfortunately he did not have a regular time.

Others did, but then they weren’t hampered by what initially seemed to be a tender paw.

I did notice, however, that his coat and tail improved rapidly and I put this down to the fact that he was getting decent food on a regular basis.

By the middle of November his coat, and especially his tail, were beginning to look more like a good winter protection.

Yet as the rest of his body thrived that single leg seemed to be withering more and more each night, dangling and not touching the ground.

Over the best part of last year I have watched my little menagerie of wild animals and birds call in at my garden cafe and I know that some no longer visit because birds fall victim to cats, hedgehogs are prey to large creatures and foxes frequently fall foul of cars and lorries.

I’ll continuer Hopalong’s tale tomorrow.

I still hope he’ll return.

Epitaph on the Tomb of a Child

by Aphra Behn

This Little, Silent, Gloomy, Monument,
Contains all that was sweet and innocent;
The softest pratler that e'er found a  Tongue,
His Voice was Musick and his Words a Song;
Which now each Listn'ng Angel smiling hears,
Such pretty Harmonies compose the Spheres;
Wanton as unfledg'd Cupids, ere their Charms
Has learn'd the little arts of doing harms;
Fair as young Cherubins, as soft and kind,
And tho translated could not be refin'd;
The Seventh dear pledge the Nuptial Joys had given,
Toil'd here on Earth, retir'd to rest in Heaven;
Where they the shining Host of Angels fill,
Spread their gay wings before the Throne, and smile.

It’s a brand new year – can we look after it properly this time round

It’s a funny old world, not necessarily the funny that makes you laugh, although I can still manage a wry smile for the tragedy that is humour.

I started this year with a poem, by Dannie Abse, the poet brother of politician Leo Abse.

I rather pre-empted the New Year by posting this short poem, about last words, an hour or so before the bells and fireworks marked the end to that dismal year called 2023 and ushered in a bright young thing called 2024. Yet I consider that to be my first poetical offering of the New Year

If I was to tell you that tomorrow’s poem is by Aphra Behn I wonder if you will spot the sequence I intend to offer in poetry this year.

I would normally say that I hope to offer you 365 poems but, as I said, it’s a funny old world and as 2024 is a leap year (the year is divisible by four) you will get a bonus at the end of February.

I’m seeing the year ahead as a mighty tree which, if cut down, could be turned into anything from a chair to sit on, or a table to eat at, or paper to write on (write a novel, write a poem, write a letter to a friend).

Yet it could also be a seed from which a mighty oak might grow to suck up the carbon dioxide which could kill us and provide us with the oxygen we need to survive.

We can only have trees, however, if we let them grow apace and produce more trees than we actually use up.

So let us take 2024 and try to look after it better than we did last year.

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda

Last Words

by DANNIE ABSE

Splendidly, Shakespeare's heroes
Shakespeare's heroines, once the spotlight's on,
enact every night, with such grace, their verbose deaths.
Then great plush curtains, then smiling resurrection
to applause, and never their good looks gone.

The last recorded words too
of real kings, real queens, all the famous death,
are but pithy pretences, quotable quotations
composed by anonymous men decades later,
never with ready notebooks at the bed.

Most do not know who they are
when they die or where they are, country or town
nor which hand on their brow, Some clapped-out actor may
imagine distant clapping, but no real queen
will sigh, 'Give me my robe, put on my crown.'

Death scenes not life-enhancing,
death scenes not beautiful nor with breeding;
yet bravo Sydney Carton, bravo Duc de Chavost
who, euphoric beside the guillotine, turned down
the corner of the page he was reading.

And how would I wish to go.
Not as in opera - that would offend -
nor like a blue-eyed cowboy shot and short of words,
but finger-tapping still our private morse, '... love you,'
before the last flowers and flies descend.

Life is hell without a car – but thanks to my daughter I’m back on the road

A new month and a new start in many different ways.

The greatest, however, is that I am no longer carless.

As I mentioned three months ago I drove my Chevy to the levee . . .

Well not really, for levee read scrapyard and the only driving in this case was them sending a car transporter around and loading my Chevy before driving away in the rain.

Yes, those were raindrops rolling my face, honest.

I said then, and I’ll say it again now, a car is a means of transport, and it is a means of transport that I control. Unlike a bus or a taxi. It is not something I feel strongly about. That feeling is reserved for books.

It doesn’t mean I won’t feel a loss. Thirteen years with the same car is a first for me and I will have to see how I do with its replacement.

It has actually taken the best part of those three months to track down a new (by new I mean secondhand but new to me) car and that search has led to two more firsts.

The first of these was that the car would be an automatic and this, along with wanting a petrol car not a diesel, was a major factor in the hunt.

All three of my children have laughed at the fact that I have only owned manual gearbox cars. They point out to me that life is much easier with an automatic and only one foot is needed to do all the work.

My darling wife also thinks an automatic will take some of the strain off driving. She knows well that the long journeys these days are not as easy on my legs and feet as they were 40 or 50 years ago.

Not that I haven’t driven automatics before. I may be mistaken but I am sure Harry Corbett’s Range Rover was an automatic and I often drove it on the tour. Also I have driven many cars on test drives, especially when I ewas working in the Middle East.

The conditions of an automatic, petrol-powered secondhand car do tend to narrow the choice, and wanting to view within 30 miles of home narrows it even more. That distance was on the basis that I would have to be driven to a viewing by my dear daughter and, as she is a school teacher (well, deputy head actually), this meant either weekends or a school holiday.

I finally narrowed it down to 12 and then the hard work began on the matter of making a final decision.

Information provided meant some were taken out of the mix, too short an MoT certificate; a history of accident damage which had been repaired; even colour. But finally we had it down to three.

Distance and direction meant it would be difficult to see all three and then make a choice, but happily one was ruled out because it was sold on the very day we would be going out to view.

The two left were in completely opposite directions so I had to choose the best for a view and if that was ruled out we would probably have to go and view the other one the next day.

They were pumping up two of the tyres when we arrived and then gave the car a power hose down – it had been parked under some trees.

In viewing online, and knowing what the car would have looked like in the day when it was a top of the range saloon, it actually looked quite small, but that was more a trick of the eye as it was parked between two SUVs, or Chelsea tractors as many of us call these abominable machines.

It was brought out into the open space and the bonnet and boot were opened up to allow a full inspection. My daughter and I put on our “we know what we are looking at” faces and had a good look at it, including getting them to power up and rev up so that we could listen to the engine.

It was actually quite smooth and quiet considering the power of the engine.

Next came the obligatory test drive and by the time we returned I had decided the car was just right. Now it came down to settling on a price, including delivery.

I have done my share of haggling but here I passed it over to the expert, my dear daughter who has done a lot of travelling to exotic places where tradespeople feel cheated if you don’t haggle.

It paid off because she got £200 knocked off the price with delivery included. She’s due a big box of chocs.

All this is why I am now the proud owner of my first ever Ford and Henry F would appreciate it that the car itself is black.

The downside is that the car turns me into Blair’s target voter – Mondeo Man. Yes, my new car is a Ford Mondeo Ghia X.

What is worse I have another link with Mondeo Man, I lived in Essex for a number of years, not only that but it was Basildon in Essex where I lived and worked.

In actual fact the whole Mondeo Man was a bit of a set-up because the Essex man Blair met, and who revealed to Blair that he was the up and coming man who wanted his own car and to own his own home, actually drove a Ford Sierra.

By the time the 1997 election came round the Sierra had been phased out in favour of the new Mondeo. But that didn’t phase Blair. He just changed the single word in his little tale and Mondeo Man was born.

My transport as of 1 November 2023 – a top of the range /Mondeo

Even a drunk rugby club crowd can not outdo Swift in bawdiness

In my wayward youth I did spend time carousing in pubs and in the rugby season my friends and I would head off to one of our favourite pubs and, once we had consumed an appropriate amount of alcoholic liquid, we would entertain ourselves, and many of the other patrons, with a variety of what were called “rugby songs”.

These were ribald rhymes which, depending on company, could be very ribald indeed.

One of these was a song called “After the Ball” telling the tale of the belle of the ball returning to her room well after midnight and slowly removing all the accoutrements she had used to improve her looks before heading off for the ball.

There were many versions but most of them began with:

After the ball was over, after the break of dawn,
After the dancers' leaving, after the stars are gone;
Many a heart is aching, if you could read them all;
Many the hopes that have vanished, after the ball.

The verses that followed were varied with the name of the belle changing depending on the performers.

One example was:

After the ball was over, 
Bonnie took out her glass eye,
Put her false teeth in water,
Hung up her wig to dry
Put her peg leg in the corner,
Hung her tin ear on the wall
Then what was left of poor Bonnie
Crawled into bed - after the ball.

As in many rugby songs there were embellishments as each verse was sung and poor Bonnie would put more and more of her artificial adornments on hooks and dressing tables and in the corners and crannies of her bedroom.

I leave you to imagine how far down that road we rugby fans could go,

Yet this extremely bawdy, sexual parody was based on a 19th century song which made its way into films, including Showboat, and even onto a Bing Crosby album.

The point is that the Victorian ballad about lovers torn apart by a misunderstanding was not the true origin of the bawdy song we know and love today. That lies in the 18th century and its author was one of the greatest writers in history – Jonathan Swift (the creator of Lemuel Gulliver and the Lilliputians).

A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed

by Jonathan Swift

Corinna, Pride of Drury-Lane,
For whom no Shepherd sighs in vain;
Never did Covent Garden boast
So bright a batter'd strolling Toast;
No drunken Rake to pick her up,
No Cellar where on Tick to sup;
Returning at the Midnight Hour;
Four Stories climbing to her Bow'r;
Then, seatred on a three-legg'd Chair,
Takes off her artificial Hair:
Now, picking out a Crystal Eye,
She wipes it clean and lays it by.
Her Eye-Brows from a Mouse's Hide,
Stuck on with Art on either Side,
Pulls off with Care, and first displays 'em,
Then in a Play-Book smoothly lays 'em.
Now dextrously her Plumpers draws,
That serve to fill her hollow Jaws.
Untwists a Wire, and from her Gums
A Set of Teeth completely comes.
Pulls out the Rags contriv'd to prop
Her flabby Dugs and down they drop.
Proceeding on, the lovely Goddess
Unlaces next her Steel-Rib'd Bodice;
Which by the Operator's Skill,
Press down the Lumps, the Hollows fill,
Up goes her Hand, and off she slips
The Bolsters that supply her Hips.
With gentlest Touch, she next explores
Her Shankers, Issues, running Sores,
Effects of many a sad Disaster;
And then to each applies a plaister.
But must, before she goes to bed,
Rub off the dawbs of white and red;
And smooth the furrows in her front
With greasy paper stuck upon't.
She takes a bolus ere she sleeps;
And then between two blankets creeps.
With pains of love tormented lies;
Or, if she chance to close her eyes,
Of Bridewell and the Compter dreams,
And feels the lash, and faintly screams;
Or, by a faithless bully drawn,
At some hedge-tavern lies in pawn;
Or to Jamaica seems transported,
Alone, and by no planter courted;
Or, near Fleet-Ditch's oozy brinks,
Surrounded with a hundred stinks,
Belated, seems on watch to lie,
And snap some cully passing by;
Or, struck with fear, her fancy runs
On watchmen, constables, and duns,
From whom she meets with frequent rubs;
But, never from religious clubs;
Whose favour she is sure to find,
Because she pays 'em all in kind.
Corinna wakes,  A dreadful sight!
A wicked rat her plaster stole,
Half eat, and dragged it to his hole.
The crystal eye, alas was missed;
And puss had on her plumpers pissed.
A pigeon picked her issue-peas;
And Shock her tresses filled with fleas.
The nymph, tho' in this mangled plight,
Must every morn her limbs unite.
But how shall I describe her arts
To recollect the scattered parts?
Or shew the anguish, toil, and pain
Of gath'ring up herself again?
The bashful muse will never bear
In such a scene to interfere.
Corinna in the morning dizened,
Who sees, will spew, who smells, be poison'd.

Night time raiders who treat our garden with complete disdain

/

One of our friendly hedgehogs bumbling around in the dark

You, my readers, have probably realised by now that I enjoy nature and love our garden (mainly created by my dear Marion) as well as all the visitors – well, maybe not all, in fact definitely not all.

We have always welcomed birds to our garden, providing safe feeders for them as well as water for them to drink and bathe in.

There have been some surprising visitors over the years, including a pheasant in the front garden, a heron (not actually in the garden but it perched on the roof opposite), and the occasional sparrow hawk.

Yes, I do consider the sparrow hawk a welcome visitor, it is part of nature’s broad spectrum and, like others, has to survive. I would prefer it not to kill birds in our garden but if it happens, it happens.

When you think about it sparrow hawks may kill sparrows, and other small birds, but those birds also feed on insects and worms, both of which can benefit the garden. If I don’t try to stop the little birds eating worms why should I deny the raptor’s right to its prey?

We also do all we can with planting to attract insects to the garden, this includes wilding some areas as well as planting more normal garden plants – flowers, shrubs and trees.

I don’t forget our nocturnal visitors eithers.

The hedgehogs are a joy to see on the videos from our garden trail camera. They bumble around at night, looking for insects and enjoying a snack at our garden café, or a quick drink, before getting on their way again.

The foxes are also a delight and at times I get glimpses of them from the conservatory, if I keep still and quiet, with the light off.

There are two kinds of visitor I do NOT welcome, however.

The first of these is the rat and I have made my views on these very plain and I think that after three casualties they have got the message and now keep as far away as possible from our garden.

The second is CATS.

The evil leader of the nighttime feline raiders – evil incarnate

I am not opposed to cats per se. We had one when I was young, along with our dog – Scrap. It never bothered me, it spent most of the day sleeping.

In the 70s we actually had three kittens which we called Tom, Dick and Harriet, and late on we had another called Missy and she was a right little missy at that, forever yowling outside the window letting all the tom cats in the area know she was ready and willing.

No, cats in their place are not a problem,

That place is NOT in our garden, eating food we put out for wild animals.

None of the cats using our garden as a feeding place, a toilet and a super highway to allow them access to other gardens to shit in, is a stray. They are clearly well fed, above and beyond what they steal from our wild animals, and most of them have collars.

It would be like people with a good job, a home and all the trimmings went out at night and barged to the head of the queue of homeless people lininbg up to get their one decent hot meal of the day.

No, as far as I am concerned these animals are the spawn of the devil and deserve a soaking from a water gun. They are lucky I am opposed to the use of real guns and to killing in general (rats don’t count)

The thought fox

by Ted Hughes

I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business
Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks.
The page is printed.

Triple trouble or a family affair

When I first started filming the wildlife in our garden at night it seemed fairly straightforward.

We had at least two hedgehogs because at they both turned up at the same time one night. In fact the one we named Horace appeared to be bullying the smaller hedgehog.

We also knew we had two foxes, one of which we called Ferdinand and the other Francesca. It was easy to tell them apart as Ferdinand had half the hair on his tail missing.

At the same time Francesca appeared to be smaller and easily spooked. She would take a single piece of the food and run off, returning a couple of minutes later to snatch another

Ferdinand, on the other hand was cock of the walk and would even stand on his back legs with his front paws on the stone table as he chomped away at the night’s delightful offerings.

Although we never saw them together we began to believe they might be a couple. Ferdinand would clearly mark the area around the table and the bowl of water – basically by urinating on the area, including in the water bowl.

Although he left these olfactory signs Francesca would still turn up and have a feed – and a drink of water.

This would appear to indicate that Francesca was his mate and so not scared off by the scent markings.

Then one night recently we saw a new, younger fox, arrive with one of our adult foxes, The youngster stayed slightly back from the adult, who we believe was Francesca.

After this we once again only saw one fox at a time and it began to be difficult to differentiate as Ferdinand’s tail appeared to be bushing out.

At one time I began to believe that it was only one fox until Saturday night when we saw two foxes on the video at the same time with one of them top one said and slightly behind its companion.

I am now going to have to go through previous recordings to try and find identifying marks on each of the foxes.

I believe that it is a family of three, Ferdinand and Francesca and their remaining offspring Freddy or Freda.

I’ll let you know how I get on.

Emotions to the fore as I say my last farewells to a trusted companion

It has always been my belief that Cymro (that is our name for ourselves as opposed to Welsh, which is what the Saes call us) are passionate and not afraid to show their emotions, whether it be joy or sorrow or even anger.

I can be passionate about much in life but mainly about people, music, food and especially my love for my darling Marion.

I do not believe that I get emotional or passionate about “things”. By that I mean objects that we use almost every day whether it be a simple glass to drink water from or the plate from which I eat my food.

I have “liked” various things in my life and this includes many of the cars I have owned, or used as part of my job, or even just test-driven and written about in whatever paper I was working on at the time.

Some cars have been more than “like”, such as my first ever car, a British Racing Green Morris Minor, and my second, a black Austin Cambridge A55.

Even those, however, were still just objects, possessions, whatever you want to call them, which provided me with the means to get from A to B at the time I want to travel, rather than relying on trains or buses, or even other people prepared to drive me from A to B.

This is why I surprised myself this week with my reaction to the demise of my current vehicle – a black Chevrolet Lacetti, VA07 HYB.

This car, which has served me faithfully, well fairly faithfully as it has needed quite a lot of work on it in recent years, for almost 13 years, has finally given up the ghost. It is a dead Chevy; it has deceased; it is not resting it is dead; it is demised.

When it overheated on a drive back from town and had to be restarted four times on a 100 yard stretch of road near home I was lucky to have a guardian angel turn up, actually a guy in a hi vis jacket and a hard hat, who pushed it around the corner off the main road while I steered.

As he started pushing he was joined by his mate, also hi vis jacketed and hard hatted, and we got it far enough from the junction to be safely parked.

When I tried to offer them a tenner each as a sign of gratitude they refused

The smoke or steam, I know not which, from the engine compartment started to ease and once I was sure it was safe I locked it and left it, intending to come back later, put in some oil (the oil lamp had kept flickering) and probably water before driving it the few hundred yards back home.

This I did the following morning and although it was not willing to start (starting had never been a problem in the past except for the time the battery completely died on me) it eventually limped home.

I sent a message to Martin, the mechanic who has kept me on the road for the past eight years, outlining the problem and he said he would call round the following morning.

Even then I think I knew it was curtains for the Chevy.

Why did it make me feel sad. After all it was just a car.

I had bought it 13 years ago when the car itself was just three years old.

It was the closest I have ever come to buying a new car.

My first two were 1955 models I bought the Morris in 1967 when it was 12 years old, and the Austin the following year when it was 13 years old.

The only time I have ever driven a new car was when I did a test drive or when the appropriate company provided me with a vehicle for my personal use as well as for work.

The 13 years ownership of the Chevy was the longest period I have ever owned a car, the previous longest was about five years.

If I thought really hard about it I could probably identify most of the cars I have owned or driven but it would not be as easy as naming my top ten books or my favourite writers, or my best-loved poets.

Why then did this one hurt so much?

Martin came round the following morning, lifted the bonnet, and as soon as he took out the oil dipstick I knew by the look on his face that this was terminal. He said he could smell it, by “it” I think he meant the cylinder head gasket, it was that or something similar and the cost would be far more than the car was worth.

It was only later that I realised why this car was so special.

I bought it in 2010 from a dealer in Redditch.

It was the year my mother died and was reunited with my father.

She had left an estate which, once bequests to each of the grandchildren had been made, was to be divided between my brother, my sister and myself.

While the ins and outs of probate and sale of her property went through we each received an initial amount from bank accounts and similar savings and Marion and I decided to put that to good use and buy a car which, although not brand new, would last for a considerable time.

I am not saying that the car kept my memory of my mother alive. That, and that of my father, would never die until I do. What I am saying is that the purchase of the car is something that she would have approved. Something that would last for many, many years.

My mother was a very practical person.

The car did last for many years and has repaid me over that time.

Now we have to decide whether or not we will replace it.