Quince Jelly

This week in the small mountain kingdom of Trelystan we are getting to grips with our quince harvest. The Nation's jam pan has come off the shelf and been dusted down for some jelly-making action.
Of our 3 small trees, all of which we planted not quite 4 years ago, 2 have fruited abundantly. The furry, yellow fruits hang heavily and with this week's windy weather have been ripe enough to fall. Time to get picking. Just gathering those from the ground and those within easy reach yielded a good sized basketful. I dust off the curious downy coating and chop them into chunks. No need to peel. Cover with water and lob in a squeezed lemon or two. (Just In Case. I can't remember if they are rich in pectin or not.) Let them bubble away gently until they 'fall'. The kitchen is infused with their sweet honeyed perfume - far prettier and more exotic than that of the apple.

The Quince is a fruit with history, greatly revered in ancient times - its cultivation may well pre-date that of the apple. Were quince the 'golden apples', the paradisal fruit, in the Garden of the Hesperides or the apples in the Song of Solomon? Even in Britain, not too many centuries ago its taste and fragrance were much admired - but like so many things which take time and patience in preparation quince seem to have gone out of fashion. What a shame that is - they are the most wonderous of fruit. I treasure our little trees - not only at this time of year when they reward us with fruit but in the springtime too when delicate, papery, pink petals unfold over waxy dark leaves. Heavenly.


I've gone off at a tangent....

What next? We let the softened fruit drip through a jelly bag overnight - the resultant juice is pink and clear and fragrant. Sugar is added, stirred and dissolved. It takes about 10 minutes at a wonderful rolling boil to reach setting point - at last the jelly flakes off the spoon. I know it will set now. All is well. But just why does a golden yellow fruit become a crystal clear red jelly?

My basket of fruit makes 12 jars of Quince Jelly, now neatly labelled, to go on the shelves to eat with scones or toast, or alongside pork or poultry - something bright to lighten the long dark days of winter.

How to cook one's goose...

Go on. Ask me a question. Anything. (Well, try and avoid anything mathematical, scientific or about cars obviously.)

How about something to do with roasting meat? Thanks to my new useful little gadget I can probably come up with the answer. Temperatures, cooking times and suggested accompaniments. My teensiest complaint is that the temperatures are not in celsius - but back in the day no one trusted foreign muck like olive oil, garlic and metrification.
Doesn't it just knock spots off the give-aways in today's papers and magazines? CDs and DVDs, multi-size summer flip-flops, Directories of Decorating Ideas, Free Seeds and gee-gaws galour - all transient dross. Look, it even has a little hole so it will hang on a handy nail next to the cooker. How old is it? Something about the graphics suggests Festival of Britain - those brave new world Formica colours, neat tri-colour pointer and charcteristic type face. (I think it's one of the Modern family of fonts - can anyone confirm that?) So 1950s perhaps. Perhaps though, having read 'Woman and Home' magazine and concluded it's never actually been at the forefront of trendy living I could confidently add 2 decades to that.

Still, 50p well spent I think.

A walk in the woods - or where the wild things might be.

Alan says 'Take a stick'.

I don't think I'll need to fend anything off but I ask the question anyway, 'Why? Do you think there might be tigers or something in there?'

'No,' he replies 'but it's useful and will make walking easier. Take one of my beating sticks.'

Whatever. I forget.We've lived here for more than 4 years now and been around for something like 7 but I don't think in all that time I've hopped over the fence at the bottom of the field and done a proper bit of exploring in Badnage Wood. I've lurked around the edges and dabbled in the stream that forms its boundary. I've listened to the wind sighing through its dark conifers and watched twists of cloud wind across its face, I've heard the birds and beasts that make it their home and basically, well - just loved it being there.

We'd like to believe its name 'Badnage Wood' came from that of St Padarn. A native of France’s Bretagne region, Padarn journeyed to the British Isles, and settled in Wales as a monk sometime in the 6th century - not hereabouts but at Llanbadarn Fawr, Aberystwyth. The link is tenuous and hard to prove. More certain is the fact that this area has been associated with religious practices for well over a millenium. The little church at Trelystan which sits alone, way across a field on the edge of Badnage Wood, was most probably founded in the 9th century, and, we might speculate on a site of a pre-Christian significance. It feels to me like a place which has secrets and holds them close. Old too. Who did walk this land? There is more to tell of course - but this is not for here. You'll have to buy The Book.*

Sorry, sorry. Got waylaid by a bit of history. Anyway, today I promised myself I'd get amongst it and explore.
Over the little stile and into the dingle - don't get confused - there are loads of dingles round here. Think steep wooded valley (any size) and stream (s, m or l) therein.
I decide against walking along the stream which would be the best route. Wet feet and all that. I struggle up onto the slope and try and make a path there. It is my plan to follow the dingle and discover what lies in the hidden clefts and hollows of our landscape; the bits we do not see from the road. It's hard going - I stumble over fallen and felled branches and am tripped where brambles have taken hold and thrown out snaky grabbing tendrils which snatch at my ankles. Pitfalls are many; mouse and vole have made runs through the forest bed of soft pine needles and when I am not being tripped I plunge into their holes and tunnels. There is little to grab - sticks and stalks are either rotten of spiky. My route takes much planning and much studying of potential paths. There is time to stand and lean and look up through the tree canopy to the sky.

I know I am not alone. I just sense it. Little eyes, ears and noses, hunkered down for the day are tracking my passage most certainly. I think I am creeping along but this is a quiet place and each step I take snaps a twig with an earthshattering CRACK. I alarm a couple of buzzards and a raven which wheel and cry above me. Reassuringly there is nowhere for anything large, and with sharp teeth, to hide. I think.
Away from the stream and the light it's a dead place - little grows in the gloom beneath the conifers. Under the canopy of these tall slim trees is a thick acidic bed of pine needles. A few deciduous trees cling to life - ash, birch, and mountain ash - others have given up and fallen like a mega-game of 'pick-up-sticks'.

It's quite interesting here but I must say that after about 100m of this environment I'd had enough. By 50m in I'd decided that I'd be crushed by a falling tree in the next storm, nibbled by voles or starve to death if I found myself here post-apocalypse. Nothing for it then but to trudge on...
The conifers gave way - after what seemed like miles but in reality was only metres - to grassy broadleaf woodland, to oak and holly and, over a rickety fence, pastureland. I stroked this tree for a while. Just how often does one meet a woolly tree? Bless.

The way home - the easiest way home that is - was over the stream and up a logging path to the road. We're in shooting country here and young pheasants were in abundance, hanging around the release pens. I did my best not to alarm them too much, hating the idea of a wood-full of shrieking terrified birds taking off around my head. There were guinea fowl as well - a rasp? a confusion? - the watch dogs of the bird world and here to give voice if the fox comes too close I imagine. I crept around them too.
Finally there is a gate to the road and these bits of wood awaiting collection. Can anyone suggest a better collective name than 'Things wot to stand a Christmas tree up in'?

Yes, we have them here. In October. In Badnage Wood. Christmas is coming folks!

* 'Marton - The Story of a Shropshire Village' to be published spring 2010.

Bird orchestra

6.43pm. Dusk, time to shut the hens in. Grey fleecy clouds puff about overhead. There is a gentle 'plip' or two as leaves fall from the sycamores in the dingle and my feet scuffle through those already fallen. Do I need a torch? I have one anyway.

In essence the evening is still, but what is that racket? Over in the dark conifers of Badnage Wood it sounds like a birdie riot has broken out. The panicky cries of a thousand pheasants going to roost and the metallic 'caws' and 'gronks' of rook and raven split the air. In the nano-seconds between screech, caw and gronk there's the merest 'whoo' of owl too. I listen carefully - this time to the sounds from the garden. The whistle of a wren in the logpile and unidentified tweets from titmice in the trees are delicate grace notes in this crazy bird symphony.

I listen up for the mew of a buzzard - but that's the sound of daytime and here we are at dusk. On some nights like this a vixen yelps too; an eerie, eerie sound that makes me shiver at the thought of the wildness out there.

We, who are so clever, think we have this world tamed, but even in this small corner the night is still a terrifying place for the denizens of field and forest; the prospect of sharp tooth and claw ever present.

I shut my hens in most carefully.

Catch it while you can...

Now you see it........and now you see through it.
...and probably tomorrow it will be gone. Flattened. A space where a shape used to be. Marton Village Hall, loved but unlovely; the scene of many happy memories for village folk. Can't really count myself amongst them but I do know what ghosts a musty, dusty space can muster.

A weekend in Harrogate

'Don't do it kids' we say, 'How d'ya know that the cyber chums you've chatted with over the months won't turn out to be axe murderers and/or perverts?' After all, tales of sweet young things being beguiled by horny old geezers off the internet are the stuff of legend.

We've all warned our children and yet here we are, not heeding our own advice.....

'Here' was Harrogate, for a weekend with a group of intelligent, witty and kind fellow bloggers who turn out to be as good company as anticipated. We are by no means strangers, having blogged about most things over the past 3 years - homes and families, the happy, the sad, the tragic and the embarrassing. Some of us have met already and have fitted faces and real names to avatars and blog titles but there are still some surprises; the little blond lady who should be tall and dark and the brunette I envisaged as a slinky blonde. No matter. Those names now have real faces and personalities.

There was a morning for shopping and an afternoon strolling through the gardens at RHS Harlow Carr where the the autumn colours were rich and glowing. (I resolved to try harder in my own garden.) So much to see, so much to do and so much left undone. I am now a Harrogate fan.

The wonderful Betty's Tea Room drew us like a magnet. SBS and I drank tea on arrival and drooled over the patisserie and Halloween treats in the window. We had tea and cakes at Betty's Tea House at Harlow Carr and finally, on Sunday morning back in Harrogate, indulged in a big Betty's breakfast accompanied by a tinkling piano. How very, very civilised.
Then all too soon it was time to zip back to Shropshire which basked in a gloriously sunny afternoon. Back in the reality of home it was as if the weekend had never been - as if it had existed only in the vague-ness of cyber-space.

Did it really happen? Was I really there? Well yes, and I have the little felt bracelet to prove it.

Questing.

There's always something to be found out isn't there? This and that - and why?

In our case it's the line of a road, the shape of a field or that field's name that provide the clues and starting points.

A question.....and we're off, off on another quest.

Which is why, at the end of last week, my patient fellow sleuth and I were at the Powys County Archives in Llandridod Wells anticipating, if not answers, then some very good questions. Does that make sense? I don't think we actually know what we want to know - but what we discover will very well help us to find out. What a conundrum indeed.

The seat of government in Powys, while not exactly marble-halled, is a very fine building indeed. Modern and functional with nod to the grand hotel it replaced, its grounds landscaped with pools, pebbles, water spouts and luscious leafy planting. I am reminded in a small way of the visual might that the medieval cathedral builders achieved - huge and powerful edifices overshadowing the hovels of the peasantry in the surrounding countryside. There was and is, no doubt who was in control. We were not quite in the right place however - 'Reception' waved a vague Friday afternoon hand and directed us 'Over there - the flat building across the way'. We wandered 'over there' in the direction of a low brick-built building, perhaps the old gardeners' bothy, rang bells and were admitted. Is this it then? At first glance 'this' seems to be couple of desks with the instructions 'Pencils Only' sellotaped to them and a wall of books. There are some micro fiche and film readers too. Hopefully somewhere in the bowels of this place are the real treasures.

Well, there are and there aren't. Sadly we were not to get our mitts on anything original but fairly good photocopies were produced. Oh look, here it is: the small mountain kingdom of Trelystan circa 1844; The tithe map and accompanying schedule.

I'm vaguely disappointed - larger than the Vatican city but probably smaller than Andorra. Ambitious, avaricious and land grabbing? Moi? No definitely not - it's the most perfect little township a person could wish to see depicted. I recognise woods, lanes and field shapes - were I a bird or an angel flying over, then or now, I would know exactly where I was.

The field outside our bedroom window (currently home to convalescent cows and calves) and which we know as 'The Little Triangle Field' turns out to be formerly known as Wainhouse Meadow. Its neighbour is White Leasow and beyond that, Marlin Piece - descriptive names - as are Broomy Leasow, Brick kiln Piece, Pant y Maes (field in the valley/hollow) and the less prosaic Cow Pasture and Eight Acres. My garden is called 'Patch' - a name which holds true even now, 150 years later. It is just that, still defying more detailed definition.

The little farm whose barn we now live in comprised a little over 139 acres and tithes of £8 19s 6d were payable to the Rector of Worthen. But Wainhouse? Where was the 'wainhouse'? Hardly likely to be way up the field but neither do I think where I am sitting right now was a cart shed back in the day.....or what about the hovel Alan so lovingly reconstructed? Hardly big enough there either. So where? I think I need to keep looking. We leave with photocopies of photocopies to pore over on the long winter evenings.

So. I've spent a soothing half hour, pencil in hand putting names to numbers - wondering how much or how little is still known by those names. I obviously need to get out more. If only to ask farmers questions about field names....

Magical moonlight with owls.

Tonight there is a full moon in a mackerel sky over the small mountain kingdom of Trelystan. Owls too. Magic.
24 shots of magical moon - each one a bummer. Sigh.

On Toast.

The Toast catalogue dropped into our über cool stainless steel mailbox this morning. Kerplunk.

Anybody familiar with Toast? No, no, not the stuff you put under poached eggs or slather with marmalade. It's 'mail order' clothes and stuff; accessories for the home too in a nicely produced little booklet, silky to the touch and promising the benefits of the simple life for a king's ransom. Hard to categorise but Laura Ashley meets Johnny Boden perhaps. Country clothes I think but not for country sports - rather stuff for drifting wistfully and enigmatically in.

Flicking through the pages I fancied me a little dress - perfect with opaque tights and sturdy boots, a 'boyfriend' cardigan and leather bag; the perfect 'look' for rambles through crisp autumn leaves under cold clear skies. Then home, I imagined, to sit in front of a roaring fire snug in my sensible PJs, wrapped in a merino Braemar blanket before hopping into bed where a hot water bottle warms those candy striped sheets. Ah, bliss.....

I go online to buy the dress that will make my autumn perfect. It only takes a few clicks to discover that for some unfathomable reason it is currently available only in size 8. Sigh. I could never diet fast enough to get into that. Size 8 doesn't seem a very 'country' size - apart from elves and will 'o' the wisps us country gals are made of sturdier stuff.

I flick through the catalogue again - perhaps something else will take my eye. Something cosy for the home perhaps.

That candy-striped bed linen needles me slightly. It's the candy striped bed linen of my childhood. (Cosy flannelette from before the days of sparky-slidey-ezee-care Brentford Nylon sheets - another nightmare.) Except Toast's candy striped bed linen is made from organic cotton and has two rows of satin stitch on the pillow cases.

Slowly I begin to understand Toast. Like all the others it sells the dream. Is this one the shabby chic and country cottage dream? I've been here before though in my childhood homes - and don't get me wrong, they were the best of times - but the clothes (with the exception of my velvet party dress) were horrid and houses draughty.

Layers of wool and wellies, sheets, blankets and hot water bottles were necessities and not life-style choices. I'm not sure we did life-style choices back in the day, not in size 8 anyway. We've come a long way and I don't want to go back. Give me warmth and light and choice - lots of it.

But it doesn't stop me wanting part of that dream. A pair of felted wool slippers perhaps. If they have my size.

That's entertainment.

The evening opens with the singing of Jerusalem. It appears to be the honky-tonk version and set in a key which only the reediest of voices will ever reach. No matter, voices soar enthusiastically - only to be lost in the vastness of Churchstoke Community Hall. It's a crudely lit barn of a place, all hard surfaces - acoustically awkward - a public space suitable for nothing in particular but accommodating the undiscerning masses. And here we were. Some 100 members of the WI at our annual group meeting, just waiting to be entertained. We are seated at little tables, each with a neat tablecloth and flower in a vase. Our flower is a fluorescent pink dahlia. As late comers my little group are ushered to the last remaining table. At the front. (Note to self: endeavour to arrive early in future. Those speakers are too close for comfort.)

Enter Idris and Geraint stage right.

Idris is 'the man in black' and Geraint, his side-kick, fills to overflowing a large polo shirt - 'the 'man in white'. Idris, by way of warming up his expectant audience, tells us an 'amusing' anecdote before launching into an indistinguished song with an allegedly infectious chorus. The ice has not yet been broken and the audience sit, for the most part, stony faced. They press on regardless - the stories become slightly more risqué, the songs more familiar and the audience a little more responsive.
It is hard to imagine a venue less atmospheric, less condusive to 'a good night out' than here - these two have their work cut out. Slowly however as the old favourites roll out the audience warm up and sensibly shod WI feet can be seen tapping. We're talking Country and Western here - with full orchestral backing courtesy of Geraint's sound system - song after song after song after song.

I am reminded of the time we lived in Westbury, where our back door and garden faced the village pub, The Lion. Friday night was music night - and we could enjoy every last note from the comfort of our own home. Fine sometimes after a glass of wine or three when feeling mellow - otherwise we would just shut the door. Tonight, door shutting was not an option.

No strong drink available either - just the prospect of tea or coffee during the interval when supper was served - the usual generous WI spread. I had a bowl of sherry trifle too - it's called comfort eating.

And there is a second half. There is more of this to endure. Second only to compulsory hockey this is my notion of hell. I know. I know. I know I'm a po-faced party pooper - and why, you might ask, have I imposed this upon myself? Duty. Next year will be Marton's turn to organise a group meeting and we'll be hoping for some support in return. Quid pro quo and all that. I am now looking for an escape route - this organisation and I should part company - but that damned sense of duty and commitment keeps getting in the way. Humph.

Second half. Compose face into semblance of goodwill and interest even when Geraint treats us to 'Ole Man River' and 'Sonny Boy'. He's a mellifluous growler (I'm sure there is a musical term to describe the depth of his voice) who would give Al Johnson a run for his money.

Finally - there is a finally - they sing 'Delilah' - hugely popular with the audience. The irony of the song's closing line.....'I just couldn't take any more' - was for me at least most apt.

We leave. The night is cold and clear. And silent. For this I give thanks.

History

History's been preying on my mind a bit lately, what with the deadline for the village history book creeping ever closer, then closer and closer until suddenly it's been and gone.

History - it seems is stuff one knows, is sure of - but ha! perversely every known fact is like an island in a sea of uncertainty. For each bit we know there is something which remains a mystery. I wish we could just go back for the afternoon - to the c17th for example - just to find out what it really was like. No chance of that though - I'm stuck firmly in the here-and-now with a to-do list that appears to multiply like an evil bacteria.

Two years ago we put an exhibition together, D & I, and the inevitable question was - what to do with all the information we'd amassed? A book was the obvious answer and since then D has written thousands of words and I've chipped in with my two-penn'th of photos and maps. We've cajoled a friend into doing us some line drawings to illustrate those periods where only the imagination can now describe what life was like.

We've delivered, on time, to our publisher - giving him words and pictures on memory sticks, which somehow seem too small to hold the span of four millennia our book embraces.

A home for the little yellow tractor

The menfolk are building a field shelter - it's looking impressive already.

I may soon be able to reclaim my car space in the garage and all those ugly plastic wrapped stacks of timber that are dotted around my garden can be hidden from view.

Orders taken.

The word of the week....

...was 'scutter'.

Our Mancunian construction site son made good use of it last week while we were in Greece and it has sort of ear-wormed itself into my head. It's a good descriptive word. I like it.

I'd assumed it was Mancunian construction site argot for general detritus; the sort of stuff that gets littered on pavements and table tops, bits of tacky Car Boot tat - that sort of thing. My cryptic crossword brain would like to think it was an amalgam of scuzzy and clutter. It would make sense wouldn't it?

However, nowhere can I find it defined in that way; contributors to my favourite Urban Dictionary use it as a derogatory term to describe the unwashed, couch-potato low-life at the bottom of the social scale - and even to describe a part of the male anatomy which rarely sees the sun. The OED notes it as a variant of 'scurry', to run or move hurriedly often with short brisk steps. Bor - ring. I feel imperious today and declare it to mean 'bits of tat'.

I rolled the word around my tongue a number of times in Greece; we were on Paxos, an island so picture postcard pretty that one would think the word 'scutter' could never apply. It does, however, have a rough and ready, unsophisticated quality which is part of its charm. Up north they'd say 'there's no side to it' - meaning unpretentious. It's not a place to strut and swagger but a place to stroll and be one's comfortable self. I feel the luxurious yachts and floating gin palaces that occasionally tie up in the little harbour at Loggos are slumming it and that their natural habitat would be the more flashy moorings of somewhere like Puerto Banus or Marbella.

Paxos is slightly scruffy, so sometimes it is best to look at the bigger picture and ignore the small detail; take in the turquoise Ionian, the pretty fishing villages and the hills with their columnar Cypress trees and twisted Olives. Let's gloss over the defunct olive oil presses and the crumbling boats abandoned up in the olive groves, the unfinished building projects and the abandoned old houses disappearing back into the rocky soil. Sadly there is litter too - and litter is completely without charm. Why, I wondered as my eyes left a magical panorama and caught a glimpse of the rubbish heaved into a deep ravine, why lob your rubbish down here? A rusting moped. Builders' rubble. Cans and bottles. A shoe. A fridge door and an olive oil can. Sigh. Get that scutter shifted.

Anyway. Can't complain about much else. Our week away was just what the doctor ordered and hot, hot, hot. A couple of quick thunderstorms refreshed the air and provided a few moments of drama as people ran for cover and taverna owners lifted tables and chairs in out of the rain. Otherwise we could just bask in the sun or snorkel and swim. Look at that blue sea. Look at that blue sky.

We noticed few changes - Loggos has a new litter bin! A couple of the older folk and their antiquated 3-wheel vehicles were missing. Perhaps now they prefer to sit and sip their ouzo at home.
Good food and drink once again, but oh dear, things were expensive. I know the euro is almost on a par with the pound but prices seemed to have risen too. We bought the usual can of olive oil from the 'shop' in Gaios, which as well as the vast vats of oil sells cigarettes, wine and a few spirits from its gloomy cave-like interior. The oil has quite a distinctive flavour - too heavy for mayonnaise but a treat for a dressing to remind ourselves of summer's sunnier days. We find ourselves dipping wedges of the crusty, chewy local bread into it and savouring the heavy, almost smokey, taste - and feeling fairly guilt-free about this indulgence.
That's it now - we're home - glad to arrive back to a few days of sunshine which eased our passage from Ionian isle to Welsh hilltop. Today is cold and I have lit the Aga, a small task which seems to sign off summer for us.

We're back to our usual tasks. The Glamorous Assistant is making great progress with his field shelter. More of that later....

The biggest fungus in Trelystan

What a whopper - as my dainty Birkenstocked foot, included in the picture for scale, shows.

This monster and a number of lesser monsters have sprung up around the base of our beech trees. My Glam.Ass. reached for his big book of Mushrooms and Toadstools and is now fairly certain it is Trametes versicolor. This is not good news. Firstly it is in the section dedicated to extremely poisonous varieties and is accompanied by a natty skull and crossbones symbol. Secondly he has decided it may sound the death knell for our trees as it prefers to live on dead wood.

Here we have another example of our differing outlooks on life. G.A. sees the tree as dying while I continue to see it flourishing, ie Not Dead Yet for Heaven's Sake.