AUTUMN EQUINOX

Posted on September 22, 2016 by fordhollow74

Meteorological autumn, but not much colour yet in the leaves. Not surprising as it has been an exceptional growing summer, everywhere lush and grass begging to be mown.

Our nesting swallows departed in the third week of August, but the second brood of house IMG_0956martins  were in the nest until the first week of September taking wing on 6th September. I guess they are over France now. Bon Voyage and a safe return.

The summer has proved that artificial house martin nests are workable. We’ll think about getting some more in place over the winter.

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17th September

Posted on September 17, 2016 by fordhollow74

A memorable date, for me at least, over all the last fifty-seven years. On that day at the end of the 1950s I started the morning as Jonnie Tolson, aka Chip, with breakfast at my parent’s house before my father took me to Bridgwater station. I caught the train to Bristol, changed for Shrewsbury, and then for Oswestry. While I saw no young men of my own age on the first train, there were some on the train to Shrewsbury and a multitude on the train to Oswestry.

We were met on the platform by smartly dressed Army Sergeants with the greeting ‘Good Day, Gentlemen, please make your way to the busses’. The atmosphere changed as the buses turned in through the gates of 17 Training Regiment, Royal Artillery. ‘Get your bloody backsides off those seats and get fell in in three ranks.’

I was no longer Jonnie Tolson, I was 23..17.., Gunner Tolson, J. I have not given my number in full, the eight digit number is fixed in my mind, but used today in various combinations on ubiquitous shopping passwords. It was the start of two years of National Service.

Many young men were hit hard by it, some had never been away from their homes, some were married, a few had their own children, many worked for a living. These were the days of catch up when many who had been exempt were being rounded up, our ages ranged from 19 to even a few, professionally qualified, of 25.

I was fortunate having been to boarding schools, in the Cadet Corps, a student in London, I was happy with my lot. My only salaried employment had been a summer student job on the building of Hinkley Point (A) nuclear power station. Others were suffering chronic homesickness. We all muddled along as much as we could, helping each other with the mindless tasks of cutting off GS buttons from greatcoats to replace them with RA buttons and the competitive task of ‘bulling’ boots. The Army was not unaware of the chronic suffering of a few, a very small few. They were sent home in the first two weeks with an exemption.

My beautiful picture

So began two years during which I came of age and learnt much, most of it spent in West Germany waiting for Soviet tanks to roll over the border.

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ARRIVALS AND DEPARTURES

Posted on August 31, 2016 by fordhollow74

Late August sunshine days spent digging out a drain. It is a winter emergency drain for the time when the heavy rains come and water flows down Sticky Lane, across the bottom yard where a lawn has grown over the years across the cobbled farm yard, and on down to the stream in the valley. 20160830_124544-001Turf has blocked the flow causing the whole area to be saturated last winter, thus a summer task is to restore the water course, a job I would have done in a single day years ago. Now it is taking me three days, with the need for frequent breaks to relax in the shade and sit watching the success of the House Martins feeding their second batch young.

My spring pessimism over our lack of Martins was undone by a single pair now bringing off their second brood, not a huge population by past year’s numbers, but so good after some years with none at all nesting on the house. While our swallows have already gone from here, perhaps grouping further south for their migration, the House Martin flock – the first brood and the second yet to leave the nest – IMG_1129-001make a wonderful sight in the mornings and build real hope of many returning from Africa next year.

And all the time vapour trails across the soon-to-be-autumn sky tell of plane loads of passengers in transit to holiday and business destinations. It is hard to resist turning to the Flight Radar 24 ‘app’ to check on their flights, whether it is Edinburgh to Malaga, Gatwick to Orlando or Lima to Amsterdam. They all track across our airspace.

And soon it will be our House Martins departing, south across Europe, over the Mediterranean and North Africa and further south still. Then seven months, or so, to wait on their arrival home.

Back to my drain digging.

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747

Posted on August 20, 2016 by fordhollow74

An icon of the last decades of the Twentieth Century, the 747, the universally known Jumbo, took a giant leap forward in aviation, circling the globe in style from the 1970s and still flying today, only in decreasing numbers and Boeings production likely to end by 2020. Even so there should be some flying in the 2040s, even in 2050.

I flew countless miles in Jumbos in the 1970s and 1980s, little in comparison to their aircrews, but always an excitement to me. The late Pan Am was the launch customer, I watched with wonder as the first to land in Hong Kong picked its banking flight into Kai Tak. And it wasn’t long before I got my wish to share the comfort and elegance, 1970s style, of the great beast itself. In those days I was a frequent flyer throughout the Far East and whenever I could I opted for the 747s.

On one occasion I was on the leg from Tokyo to Hong Kong, TWA as I remember, on the last leg of its transpacific journey, when the were fewer passengers than crew, twenty crew and eighteen passengers. On another occasion my eastbound flight from Heathrow via Copenhagen to Tokyo was cancelled, but within an hour I was airborne westbound with Pan Am via New York and Fairbanks to Tokyo. I was impressed by the individual service a stewardess was giving to a couple sitting near me in the spacious First Class cabin. All was explained as we disembarked in New York – ‘Bye Mum, bye Dad, see you later’.

Yes, the 747 was a wonderful plane, a unique experience. I am glad to have shared in those early days in a small way. Well done, Boeing; you broke the mould.

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STAGE PLAY

Posted on August 16, 2016 by fordhollow74

Submitted a stage play yesterday, full length in two acts – won’t say where as it is competitive. I wrote it a while ago, but it remains relevant today. The brief called for fifty per cent female characters; my play has seven players. There are four female, aged twenty, in her thirties, in her fifties and the fourth one publicly in her sixties, but in fact older.

Truth comes knocking breaking down the uncomfortable secrets of long ago.

Let’s hope the assessment stage goes OK and the play gets some traction and comment, even a table read if it doesn’t get into production.

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GRIME’S GRAVES

Posted on July 24, 2016 by fordhollow74

Motoring through Thetford Forest on our long way around from Yorkshire to London, we chanced on an English Heritage sign for Grime’s Graves, a foremost Neolithic site in Breckland, Norfolk. It is the only Neolithic flint mine in Britain open to visitors. I was unaware of its significance, but Clare who has a great interest in archaeology, knew exactly what the site represented. Quarter of a mile past the notice we did a U-turn to make our way through woodland to the pock marked lunar-like landscape that is Grime’s Graves.

The Anglo-Saxons named the site Grim’s Graves, meaning the pagan god Grim’s quarries, or ‘the Devil’s holes’. 20160703_121210They are, in fact, five thousand year old mine shafts dug to extract a rich seam of flint by our Neolithic ancestors, and later filled in by following generations and tribes. Flints were used for all manner of cutting processes. A modern reproduction of a flint axe was on display, an axe capable today of holding its own felling a tree.

There is one mine shaft, excavated over a century ago, down which the public can descend using a nine metre ladder.

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Descending into the flint mine

In the dark, those who don a hard hat and climb down, can crouch to examine the mine workings of millennia ago.

We visited in the first week of July in the days after the Centenary Commemorations of the Battle of the Somme. Standing on the site, looking out over its pock marked landscape, with a skylark climbing, in full song, high into the a perfect summer sky, such as was witnessed in The Somme valley on 1st July 1916. It was a moment of reflection of ancient tribes perfecting their sourcing and manufacture of tools and mankind’s relentless pursuit through the centuries of the means of ultimate destruction.

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SANDSCAPE ARTIST

Posted on July 15, 2016 by fordhollow74

Day one of shooting by Somerset Film of my 2014/2015 Scriptwriting Competition winning script went well today on the beach at Burnham on Sea, despite dogs and walkers straying into the shot and the intrusion of jet engine noise from the incoming flight path to Bristol Airport.

But the day was good, 20160715_105858the rain kept away and by the close shooting was ahead of schedule and the evening rushes looked good.

The script is the story of an artist painting a beach scene, interrupted by a young man eating chips to the artist’s annoyance. But when they get talking they strike up a friendship. The young man, Randall, is a soldier who has overstayed his leave, he is troubled by the scenes he has witnessed on active service. 20160715_152139He finds an understanding person in the artist, Gerard, and a mutual interest in drawing and painting. Randall is persuaded to report back to his unit.

David Wheeler plays Gerard and Danny Chase plays Randall. Deb Richardson is the Producer / Director, 20160715_122751-001Ali Campbell is DOP and Phil Shepherd is on Sound, all for Somerset Film.

Posted in Film Scripts, Uncategorized | Tagged | 3 Comments

SOMME

Posted on July 8, 2016 by fordhollow74

On the First of July, along with others, I was in Huddersfield, the home town of my great uncle, Robert Huntriss Tolson, Robert Huntriss Tolson 001a thirty-one-year old married employee of Beckett’s Bank, who volunteered and perished with so many other thousands, on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, leading his platoon of the Leeds Pals into the maelstrom of machine gun fire.

It was a good commemoration, the names of Huddersfield men were remembered, old soldiers from later conflicts stood tall, school children planted poppies with barley stalks and cornflowers, twenty planted, each to represent a thousand men dead on that awful day, 1st July 1916. The Last Post was sounded and we remembered them, too many of them.
That summer, Robert’s young brother, James Martin Tolson, left school and volunteered despite his grieving father’s pleading. 20160701_145529-002Through 1917 and 1918, he was wounded, later gassed, but again returned to his regiment in France. He died from shrapnel wounds three weeks before the Armistice, aged twenty.

It was thought provoking to look back on that centenary date to consider the actions of our grandfather’s and great uncles, and many grandmothers and great-aunts, who answered the call then, and of their children who answered it again in the Second World War.

Now I am a great-uncle and grandfather, whose youngest generation is at school and at universities. It is awful to contemplate another call to arms that might send them into conflict.

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MAY ENDING

Posted on June 3, 2016 by fordhollow74

The month of May ended on a good note here at Fordhollow, fine weather, a good County cricket result (Somerset winning having contrived to concede a 300 defecit to overcome in the fourth innings)IMG_0956  and contrary to my earlier anxieties over House Martins returning, they are visiting every day and spending time in the nests.

Also we have a splendid display of blossom on our Wisteria. The trick is to get the autumn pruning done at the right time. Last year we pruned in October, and got the right degree of cutback. IMG_0962.JPGIt is not the finest wisteria in the land, but it is old – we have seen a photo of the village school outing eating their pieces in front of the plant taken before the Great War.

If readers have the chance to see the bi-monthly free magazine LAMP, edited by Lionel Ward of Brendon Books in Taunton, which covers matters of Literature, Art and Musical Performance over much of Somerset, the June/July edition has  a good article on finding writing ideas by Chella Ramanan, the founder and moving force of Writers Anon, the Taunton Writers Group. The same edition has published one of my short stories – The Cat On The Wall.

Posted in House Martins, Uncategorized, Writers Groups | 2 Comments

HOUSE MARTINS

Posted on May 29, 2016 by fordhollow74

May is ending and the House Martins are not nesting under our eaves, again, this year. Their presence, and numbers, was a strong attraction of this old farmhouse when we moved in over twenty years ago. The line of mud nests, worked with diligence and care using the slightest anchor such as the little raised lintel over a window to provide a footing to base the nest tucked in under the eave, were a wonder to watch.

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Nests under the eaves

There were many nests, some new, others rebuilt from the remains of a previous year, using mud from the pond in the manner of a clay pot made from little lumps worked together to make a rope along the curved nest wall. The nest appears too small, but the building birds fly back from their foraging flight and with only a split second’s pause enter the small opening at the top.
There have been disputes. Sparrows try to claim nests for their own before the Martins return, but their strident behaviour ends with smashed nests. Sometimes this happens with a winter roost of many wrens squeezed into the refuge on stormy nights, resulting in the nest breaking away from the wall as the last wren pushes in through the gap.
It isn’t as if no House Martins have visited our eaves this month. Two or three pairs have swooped in, checked out the site, even entering the artificial nests we put under the eaves two summers back, but they looked then went elsewhere.
Our eaves have fallen silent. There is little doubt the overall number of House Martins in the country has diminished, but whether it is an overall reduction in population, or that they are going to other breeding grounds, time will tell.
We miss them, always immaculate in their DJ plumage.

STOP PRESS. No sooner had I posted the comment above than, in the sunlight of the late May morning, House Martins, two pairs, have come back to examine the eaves of thye farmhouse again. Fingers crossed they may choose to stay.

 

 

 

 

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