Bognor one

A leisurely drive down to Bognor last week, with the first stop at Billingshurst. Not spotting a tea shop until it was too late, we turned in the 'King's Head', an old country-town pub with a big front bar, nicely renovated at some point. Seemed to be functioning mainly as a club for older gents., retired or semi-retired. And they were able to do perfectly respectable teas and coffees.

Out to investigate the church, which was shut, but which did kick off the shingles hare. See reference 1. We also passed lots of healthy looking pubs, perhaps kept afloat by all the housing estates which seemed to be clustered around the old town. Old enough for a chunk of the high street to be called 'Stane Street', from the days of the Romans.

But forward thinking enough to have erected a women's hall, well before women's liberation kicked off in London.

Next stop was to have been Greatham Bridge over the Arun, said to double as a fine picnic spot, but the road seemed to be closed for repairs, so we pushed onto Bury. Turn off the main road and find ourselves in a narrow lane lined with palatial thatched cottages, presumably catering to the better-off retired. The church was both old and open, old which must have been tastefully restored at some point. Restoration which did not include chucking out the coffin trolley (aka bier) tucked into the store under the tower. But not as grand as those we found in Norfolk, some years ago now, and noticed at reference 2.

Coffin trolley centre, between the post and the bell pull.

Incumbents were listed from 1296, although one suspects that there was a church on the site before that. The list also showed that, having started out as a branch of Fécamp Abbey, the living then moved around a bit, and at some point (1930 or so) fell into the clutches of Pembroke College, Oxford, where it remains.

Back out in the church yard. we met an older lady who first came to Bury, complete with label, as an évacuée from Croydon during the second world war, getting on so well in her second billet, that she wound up coming back for good, as it happened to be married in this very church. As it also happened her father, like FIL, had bad eyesight and was not thought fit for the front line, in his case winding up as a fireman rather than a nurse. I think she said he was a painter and decorator in civil life.

An early flicker of the yew chase, noticed at reference 3. Then, after picnicking in the church yard, we wandered down to the Arun.

First view of the Arun.

Second view of the Arun, not many seconds later. Maybe the sun had come out.

From Bury, the idea was to go to inspect the castle at Amberley, perhaps to find out why they needed two castles so close together, to guard the lower reaches of the Arun. We got near enough to find that it was something of a tourist hot-spot with lots of eager looking older walkers about, no doubt doing the south downs way. There were also what looked like river cliffs in the chalk behind the railway station, but this may have been no more than the scars left by digging out what was needed for the railway embankment, quite high at this point.

And so to Bognor Regis, or at least to Felpham, just beyond the Butlins.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/shingles.html.

Reference 2: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=coffin+norfolk+walsingham.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/yew-trees.html.

Joyce at the Clarence

Part one of our mission for August has been accomplished, with our tracking down the memorial plaque to James Joyce on a house in Clarence Road, Bognor Regis, where he stayed for a couple of months in the summer of 1923, a couple of months which saw the genesis of 'Finnegans Wake'.

Hopefully tomorrow, we will manage part two which is to track down the Earwicker of the graveyard at Sidlesham, the Earwicker who gave his name to the hero of the famous novel. Perhaps also Messrs. Glue, Gravy, Boniface, Anker, and Northeast, all residents of the same graveyard.

With thanks to Peter Chrisp of reference 1, from where I also learn that we owe the important word 'quark' to Joyce's famous song about seagulls, said to have been inspired by the herring gulls of Bognor. Gulls who were in turn inspired by massive helpings of chips supplied by the swarms of careless holiday makers.

Reference 1: http://peterchrisp.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/james-joyce-in-bognor-regis.html. A blog which is still alive and well.

Earwig redux

I am pleased to able to report that the second part of the mission noticed yesterday at reference 1, was satisfactorily completed this morning.

We set off for Sidlesham bright and early, fortified in may case by the quite respectable bacon sandwich turned out by our hotel, to drive through a lot of glass houses, the contents of which presumably accounting for all the Poles in and around Bognor Regis - to the extent of the Sainsbury's there running to a small Polish deli section from where I bought some adequate if not particularly good kabanosi. At least there was no trace of cheese in them. The glass houses also meant that at one point we were driving behind a large lorry from Spalding, so presumably there is some connection between the vegetable growers of Spalding and those of Sidlesham, despite the hundred and more miles between them. Or perhaps between the gang-masters.

Nearly missed the discrete brown sign advertising '13th century church' by the Anchor, but clocked it in time to turn into the lane, to find that the church itself was even more discrete and we had to pass the church gate three times before we clocked that. But there were lots of expensive thatched cottages down the lane, the sort of thing that might attract the comfortably off pensioner, or perhaps even the comfortably off commuter to nearby Chichester. Professionals and business people. A posh enclave among all the agriculture and agricultural cottages - and, I dare say, caravans, although we did not actually notice any of those.

So into the church yard where we inquired of a helpful lady who did not know of the Earwickers but did know someone who might and she went off to consult her.

Thinking that Joyce was not likely to have searched the large grave yard that carefully, we went on to think that the grave in question was probably quite near the church. BH went off to look there, while I was discouraged by the faded lettering on many of the grave stones. Being able to find the Earwicker was going to take a good stroke of luck. At which point a shout from BH announced her hitting the bulls eye, illustrated above. Late eighteenth century and just about legible.

Very pleased with ourselves. And even more pleased when the helpful lady came back and told us of more Earwickers on the other side of the grave yard. Modern Earwickers, quite possibly in direct male line of descent from our Earwicker.

We then got to thinking about how Joyce might have got there, settling for walking, with most people of his time thinking nothing of the ten mile round walk from his boarding house in Bognor Regis.

Back home, I checked in my Ellmann, which does indeed report the holiday in Bognor, but is silent on the question of the all important name, the name of the hero of this famous book.

I then checked my copy of  'Finnegans Wake' and failed to find either Earwicker,  HCE or H.C.E (for Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker). Thinking this a little odd I then turned up a searchable copy of the book at reference 2, to find that there are very few occurrences of 'Earwicker', less than ten, and even fewer of H.C.E. Odder and odder.

I then took a look at the wikipedia entry, which confirms that Earwicker is indeed the hero of the book, a married man with three children. It also explains that he goes under a considerable variety of pseudonyms, which goes some way to explaining why I could find so few Earwickers. But I worry about the quality of the text. Where does it come from? Where was the quality control? The website at reference 3 was most unhelpful. Searching for 'Maud Chartrain et Denise Leneveut' produces nothing useful. So I let the matter drop. A slightly unsatisfactory ending to an otherwise satisfactory mission. We have tracked down the birth of H.C.E. to a grave stone; redux indeed.

PS: the search key 'hce' has already been used in connection with a visit to Hampton Court Palace, so is not available for use here. From where I wonder whether Joyce ever went in for visiting stately homes and such like. It seems a little unlikely.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/joyce-at-clarence.html.

Reference 2: http://www.chartrain.org/PDF/Finnegans.pdf.

Reference 3: http://www.chartrain.org/.

Group search key: ewb.

More pies

Yesterday we found another value proposition at the Galleon café of York Road. I took my third pie in as many days, this one in the form of a steak and kidney pudding. Pudding rather larger, but vegetables, while including some crinkly cabbage, not quite as good as those of the West Street Caffé noticed at reference 1. They had, perhaps, been sitting in the bain-marie a little too long. But, in the round, a good meal and good value for money. No nonsense with drizzles on the food or flowers, plastic or otherwise, on the tables.

Similar clientèle to that of the other establishment, with the difference that there was a touch of the Sunday best on this occasion, it being a Sunday. We wondered whether the survival of establishments of this sort reflected the probably low standard of living of many of the inhabitants of central Bognor. As opposed to the probably high standard of living of the inhabitants of the many grand villas of outer Bognor.

We also wondered about the odd mixture of old and new buildings in the town. Was there a lot of building after the second world war when Bognor was riding high as a seaside resort? Was there a lot of war-time damage, the result of proximity to Portsmouth, very badly knocked about at that time, and to airfields such as Tangmere?

In which connection I might mention that the town does sport a rather grand club building for the Royal Air Forces Association. See reference 2.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/cabbage.html.

Reference 2: http://www.rafa381.co.uk/.

Bognor four

Our penultimate full day at Bognor was actually spent at Littlehampton, on the other side of the Arun. Another town which turns out to have a fine esplanade, with a fine new concrete corner dividing it into two sections, one running north along the eastern bank of the Arun, back into the old town, the other running east along the beach. I did not think to take a picture at the time, but the aerial photograph which follows gives the idea, with the pale triangle roughly in the middle being the fine new concrete corner. The wild and woolly beach that we visited on a previous occasion visible bottom left, underneath the golf course. See the end of the post at reference 1.

Lots of people about, this being a fine but not particularly hot Sunday. One of the stall holders told us that the place was often packed out on hot days.

We started out by heading east along the esplanade, with first stop at a piece of public art which doubled as seat and climbing frame. Just a bit of fun, not making a point or a statement about anything and body parts nowhere to be seen. Most refreshing. The shoes are my own, as regular readers will know, Merrells from Cotswolds. 

Second stop at what looked a marine version of a cabbage, but I don't suppose that they are actually related.

By which time it was getting on for lunch time, so we headed back to the corner and hung a right up the Arun. 

Even more gulls were sitting on the roof when we first approached this stall, which turned out to be a wet fish merchant rather than a chipper. But we pushed on and found a large chipper with indoor, outdoor and takeaway departments, from which we got some fine fish and chips. The indoor department also included a fine brown wood model of H.M.S. Victory, about six feet long and made in Mauritius from plans sent there for the purpose.

Lunch done, we pushed on into town, past the other boat, noticed at reference 2, where there was, as one would expect of a town which built ships for Henry VIII, plenty of older housing, some of it in Surrey Street. Was there any connection with the Earl of Surrey who was unluckily beheaded at the very end of the reign of Henry VIII on a charge of treasonably quartering the royal arms. The Earl was, it seems a rather vain scion of the Howard family, now headquartered up the road at Arundel, a scion who carried his vanity a bit too far on this last occasion.

Also a lot of new building, so we wondered whether the town had been bashed around during the second war. But what accounted for the long standing gap below? Surely a development opportunity for someone?

Once in town we ran down a Sainsbury's where I was able to buy bread and kabanosi against the projected evening picnic. Can't manage two full-on meals in one day any more. Kabanosi turned out to be not bad, not great, but not involving either chicken or cheese which was good.

All in all, not a bad place at all, reminding us somewhat of Topsham, some way further down the coast, on the Exe rather than the Arun. If Bognor comes unstuck for any reason, maybe we will wind up here instead.

PS: I find that google maps provides much higher resolution and generally better quality aerial photographs than bing maps, at least of this bit of Littlehampton. So the aerial photograph above comes from google. On the other hand, Windows 10 has the nice feature of automatically saving screen shots to OneDrive without having to mess about with pasting them into something like Paint and saving them by hand.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/arun-1.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/companion-piece.html.

Bognor three

Our third day started with a perfectly respectable sausage sandwich. Intriguing how it has become quite OK for quite fancy restaurants to serve bacon or sausage sandwiches these days, sometimes rather spoiled by their affecting to call them butties. Not to mention the rather good bacon and egg sandwich I had and noticed at the wine bar on the balcony at Waterloo station - a notice which I cannot now find, all the words involved popping up all over the place. It would probably have been easier had I not taken so many bacon sandwiches at Whitecross Street, having got their via Waterloo Station.

Breakfast completed, we settled on a trip with Southern to Arundel, starting off at the once busy station at Bognor. Trains fine, ticket collection feeble. Almost on a par with that on the Island Line on the Isle of Wight. But perhaps the new franchise holder there - Stagecoach having just lost it, in the middle of the major refurbishment at Waterloo just completed - will take things in hand - provided that is, that they do not just close the irritating little line down.

First stop at Arundel was Belinda's a very proper sort of tea shop for a tourist honey trap like Arundel, complete with lots of dark beams and dark wood furniture, possibly old. Rock cake unusual but good. Entertainment provided by members of the Arundel chapter of the red hat society at their fortnightly gathering for tea, coffee and cake. We learned that their most recent annual convention had involved a parade in Liverpool and the mayor. Furthermore, ladies who were young at heart not only wore red hats but also carried red small clothes in their handbags to wave at passing gents. See references 1 and 2.

On into the castle where we settled for a pair of gold tickets, rather than paying the extra for gold star tickets which would have entitled us to see the ducal bedrooms, the ones said to be actually used by the duke and his family. Presumably on an occasional basis. Not too sure that I would want the great unwashed creeping around our bedroom here in Epsom, taking a close look at all our books and bottles.

Started improperly with birds of prey, which you were allowed to touch for a fiver, and chaps dressed up as knights in armour taking swipes at each other with swords. Much clanging. Must have been hard work if you had to keep it up for hours.

Started properly with the Fitzalan chapel, already noticed for its fake at reference 5. There was also a notable tomb, with a knight in full-dress armour on the upper level and with the same knight in shrunk and decayed condition on the lower level, it being thought wise in those days to stay on top of eventualities, not to lose sight of the end game.

Moved onto the Earl's Garden, also already noticed for its fakes at reference 4. It also included a small scale version of the beech walk in the privy garden at Hampton Court. A walk which we learned the hard way was not very waterproof.

But in among the whimsy, there were some interesting plants, for example the first lupin that I recall seeing this year. In among all the upended trees roots, a feature of this part of the garden.

Into the house, which, inter alia, housed a notable collection of paintings, arms, armour and old brown wood furniture. Not terribly well displayed; they would have done a better job at the V&A. The house also sported a huge great hall and a big dining room. We wondered whether either had ever been used for real. Perhaps you can hire them for weddings, although the expense of moving all the art out on a temporary basis would be considerable. Overall, the place rather reminded us of Castle Drogo, another cod castle which takes in visitors to top up the coffers. We asked a trusty where all the Arundel money came from and she thought that the answer lay in one of the Arundel people marrying a Sheffield heiress, presumably rich on steel or coal or both, after the manner of the Sitwells of nearby Renishaw. While Castle Drogo was built by a 19th century grocer, relatively speaking, new money.

The castle chapel, where, we are told, his grace occasionally pays his respects to his lord. Or maybe he had one of those little sitting rooms built into the side of the chapel so that he could pay his respects in comfort. We were not allowed in, so I was not able to check. According to the BBC, Louis XIV certainly had such a thing at Versailles, as did the people (bankers rather than knights in armour) in the big house at Stourhead. See reference 8.

We took a light lunch in the café, where we were entertained by an older gent. from Paington who was happy to chat, rather than to march around the castle. He and BH were able to swap stories about Devon. He knew all about both Teignmouth Grammar School (now a community school) and the mansion built by the Singer family with sewing machine money, noticed at and around reference 7.

Penultimate stop was the Catholic cathedral, a rather grand place inside but which looks rather truncated outside, as if the Duke pulled in the purse strings half way through. Had an expensive problem with the central heating in the main castle, or something of that sort. In any event, the occasion for reference 3.

Last stop was back at Belinda's for more tea and rock cake.

A young carex pendula spotted on the way back to the railway station. The first of the day.

A view of Arundel Station. Presumably built for the crowds in the days when Bognor Regis was riding high and motor cars had not been invented. 

Back at Bognor, we did what we have never done before and took our dinner at the Lobster Pot Café, for the second day running, with the same choice of food and drink as on the day previous. We even earned a word with the lady proprietor, who wanted to know where we were staying and what was wrong with their food. Which left us with the thought that it is very hard for a hotel restaurant to compete with the likes of this café, with its cheerful ambience and good food. I suppose the hotels had a better time of it when there was very little competition and they got enough trade to put on a decent show.  Whereas on both Friday and Saturday, our hotel dining room was very quiet in the evening, despite the food being perfectly respectable and the hotel being fullish if not full.

PS: the bacon and egg sandwich mentioned above has now been run to ground at reference 9. I though I had it cracked when bing told me that the place used to be owned by Corney & Barrow, whoever they might be, which did turn up a couple of references to the right place, but the wrong references. Persisting, a Windows Explorer search with 'cabin bacon egg sandwich waterloo' on the blog archive turned up rather a lot of hits but I got lucky on the second one that I investigated.

Reference 1: https://www.redhatsociety.com/.

Reference 2: http://belindastearooms.com/.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/rubbish.html.

Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/fake-7.html.

Reference 5: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/fake-8.html.

Reference 6: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/drogo-4.html.

Reference 7: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/two-follies.html.

Reference 8: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/pew.html.

Reference 9: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/master-builder.html.

Housing

Central Bognor might be a little run down, but there is some very swanky housing to both east and west.

I think the snap left is the entrance to the Fairway, in Aldwick, in West Bognor, some kind of private estate with a management company - a company which clearly cared a good deal about the planted environment, although one of the trees to the right looks a little unhappy. I imagine they have the matter in hand.

In fact I don't think I have ever seen a housing estate quite like it before, at least not in this country. But it did remind of some of the gated communities that I came across when on important business in California - with the difference that here we do not have a proper guard house and they only reserve the right to control entry, rather than actually doing it on a day-to-day basis. I wonder whether they have any bother with drug fueled beach parties running on through the night? Do they manage the odd shooting, like we do here in Surrey?

Down side for us was that one could not easily get at the correponding stretch of beach.

PS: sufficiently swanky that streetview does not seem to work there.

Got the bracelet

We have now had our day trip to Butlin's at Bognor (Regis) and we have the bracelets to prove it. A visit which was in part prompted by a two page spread in a recent Guardian covering the circus there - a circus which turned out to have packed up last week with the end of the school holidays. The up side was that we did not have to pay very much at all to get in.

First impression was of the quality of the planting. Plants of all shapes and sizes all over the place, nicely chosen and well looked after.

Second impression was of quality generally. There was, for example, very little litter. The buildings looked fresh and clean. The staff were uniformly pleasant and friendly. Ditto customers.

All helped along by it being a fine summer day, not too hot but bright and sunny. I dare say such a place would not be so clever in the rain - particularly if you had had a week of it with a couple of children in tow. That said, there was plenty for children to do indoors, including what looked like a well-flumed swimming pool. And today, there was plenty to do outdoors, although we forgot to give the adventure golf a go, so we will not be able to report back to Horton Golf Club. See reference 2.

Very impressive central tent, more impressive for me as a piece of tent engineering than for what was inside it.

A variety of options on the accommodation front, including self catering with fully equipped kitchen. And for people of working age there was a conference suite. An onsite Spar for corner shop stuff and a big Morrison's a hundred yards down the road for lentils and such like. Indicative prices for accommodation sounded very reasonable, compared with, for example, what we usually pay for an independent self-catering. And if you want to eat their food there was a good range of very reasonable looking eateries. Not posh, but well up to the standard, say, of Wetherspoons.

Two seater bicycles available for hire, for use on the complex. Good fun, but quite heavy going, partly because of sturdy construction, partly because of there being no seat adjustment, making our bicycle quite heavy on the knees. Luckily there was a very good brake.

Two down sides. One, there was a fair amount of noise about the place. Two, no direct access to the beach and one had to leave the complex by one of the checkpoints to get to it. But this last was fair enough, with one of the selling points to young families being controlled entry and exit.

And a down side for the staff was the seasonal nature of the work. You got a brand new zero hours contract each year, although if you face fitted you could be reasonably sure of getting a contract each year. Zero hours contract meant that things would be a bit thin over the winter and many of the staff would be on benefit for its duration. A thinly disguised state subsidy for the place.

PS: smoking arrangements seemed very fair, with smoking banned indoors - I did not ask about the privacy of one's own room - and largely banned outdoors, but with plenty of well-signed designated smoking areas.

Reference 1: https://www.butlins.com/day-visits/bognor-regis/.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/rumble-in-jungle.html.

Group search key: bta.

Bognor five

The last thing to report from Bognor is the matter of the pie, it having been pie night at the hotel on the last night that we were there.

Bad start with a full-on and entirely unnecessary 'have you got a reservation' performance, for a hotel dining room which was busy enough but by no means full.

Then things started to look up when I was able to reserve the last steak and kidney pie. But when it turned up, it was not a patch on the turkey pie which we had taken earlier in the summer, at the Bugle in Brading, and noticed at reference 1. To be fair though, it was a proper pie with both top and bottom and it did contain a fair amount of steak and kidney.

But the pastry was dry, thick and heavy. And the gravy which was needed to soften it up a bit was very dark and rather sweet. Not much like the gravy which I used to make in the proper way, rouxing up the dripping from the roast.

And no cabbage, not having thought, on this occasion, to play safe and bring my own. This being the place where I had done just that on a previous occasion.

A rather disappointing meal, but helped along by another drop of Chablis 2014 from Laroche.

PS: we wondered about where the pie, which had been cooked in its own little pie dish, had come from. It seemed a bit unlikely that the hotel would make them up themselves; much more likely that they had overdone the microwaving a bit. On the other hand, if it came from the freezer, why would there be a last one? Did they come from the celebrated pie people at reference 2? In any event, on our next visit, we shall look them up. Illustrated above.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/fragonard-fail-aka-yaverland-five.html.

Reference 2: http://www.turnerspies.co.uk/.

Donkeys

Three smartly turned out donkeys in the otherwise unoccupied bandstand on the esplanade at Bognor Regis.

In the charge of a small team of friendly and knowledgeable people from the Hayling Island donkey sanctuary. See reference 1. We learned some stuff about donkeys.

Donkeys, like humans and dogs, have friends. In a place like the sanctuary, donkey A may get on with donkey B, spend quality time with donkey B, but not with donkey C. Donkey A is apt to grieve if donkey B goes missing.

Donkeys get a bit tetchy if they don't get out and about a bit. So these ones seem to like their outings to Bognor. They also like and need a bit of serious exercise.

Donkeys are very hardy and very strong for their size, although regulations limit the weight they are allowed to carry to 8 stone - so most children but not many adults. For his famous ride into Jerusalem, Jesus probably got some kind of exemption from the sanhedrin, an early version of the Health & Safety Executive (aka HSE, which once used to include AI, the alkali inspectorate, rather than artificial intelligence, not then invented, in those far off days when we had both intelligence of our own and alkalis to inspect). In the case of children, stirrups are more bother than they are worth, so the saddles are provided with steel hoops at the pommel which the child can grab hold of. I thought that this might be an idea with horses, but the team said that this would make bending forward uncomfortable, something one does quite a lot of on a horse.

Reference 1: http://www.haylingislanddonkeys.co.uk/.

Small chains

It being rather a wet day, we spent part of Monday in the High Street of Bognor Regis. A town which is rich in charity shops and Polish groceries, and which also sports a Wimpy Bar, a chain which was important when I was young, but which has more or less vanished from view. While reference 1 suggests that it is not just in Bognor where it is hanging on. I also learn that Wimpy Bar was invented by Lyon's Corner House.

We declined the Wimpy, but a bit further along the street, came across the Poppins Café, which we accepted, which turns out to be one of a chain of such scattered across the towns of southern England - but new to us.

I opted for cheese omelette with salad, which turned up looking very bright and fresh, with the omelette being very neat and round. On investigation it turned out to have been cooked in a pan, in the ordinary way, but inside a special contraption, about the size of a microwave, which heated the bottom of the pan and grilled the top of the omelette at the same time. Not quite the same as an omelette which had been slowly & lovingly turned by hand over a slow heat, but as I have already said, bright and fresh - and entirely eatable.

An establishment which was run by two men and two women, all four foreign and middle aged, possibly two couples. With manners and presentation which suited the business well. I expect they did a good trade with young families and with pensioners such as ourselves.

Reference 1: http://www.wimpy.uk.com/.

Reference 2: http://www.poppinsrestaurants.co.uk/.

Final report

Following the interim report at reference 1, by the time we came back from Bognor, around the 22nd August, the remaining nuts were rather unappetising.

Most of the nuts were empty apart from some fibrous brown material and dust. Some contained fat maggots. Some contained rather shrivelled nuts. A few contained decent nuts.

So the nuts which had started out OK had either been eaten or had shrunk away. The first problem might be why nuts you buy in shops have usually been kiln dried, a process which maybe kills both eggs and maggots, the remains of which are perhaps not noticed when you eat the nut some time later. The second problem might be why most commercial nuts are grown in hot countries, or at least countries with hot summers, where they ripen faster and have lower water content, and so shrink less on both counts. Oddly, I do not remember maggots in nuts from childhood at all: raspberries and peas yes, but not nuts. Also oddly, it was only this morning that YouGov was asking whether I went in for gathering food from hedgerows. I think this was in the context of a list of rather unusual hobbies - but I have no idea who would have paid them to ask.

All rather off-putting, so the remaining nuts, maybe half of what I picked in the first place, are now in the compost heap.

But I thought I would ask google about nut pests, and the most comprehensive summary comes from the government of Ontario, although both Oregon and Australia express interest. Filbert worms and filbert weevils both look quite like our maggots, but neither pest seems to come to Europe.

Sadly, the IX International Congress on the Hazelnut, held in Turkey, clashed with our visit to Bognor Regis. But hopefully they will publish their proceedings in due course, one of the RHS libraries will get a print copy and I will be able to bottom out the matter of the maggots.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/nut-report.html.

Reference 2: http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/crops/facts/12-009.htm.

Reference 3: http://www.hazelnut2017.org/.

Bognor books

At one point during our visit we had a trawl through town, turning up various treasures.

First stop was a junk shop staffed by a rather interesting crew, and containing a fine selection of books, complete with dust jackets, by Dornford Yates, never before heard of, but clearly a force to be reckoned with in the period between the wars.

Wikipedia tells me that he spent most of his time at Oxford doing amateur dramatics and probably in consequence only took a third, which meant it was a bit of a struggle to get into law, winding up as a criminal barrister. Honourable service in the first war, mainly in the Middle East, after which he became a full time writer. Emigrated to East Africa after the second war.

He presumably did alright, with the book illustrated bottom right running to a library edition reprinted 20 times between 1921 and 1944 - a total of over 120,000 copies. Published by Ward Locke, whom I remember as the publishers of the Red Guides which used to be used for my family holidays as a child, while BH remembers them as the people who published the sort of novels you could buy in Woolworths. Light fiction for ladies. While the junk shop people said that one lady who had come in a few weeks previously had gone weak at the knees as, after many moons searching, she was finally able to plug the gaps in her Dornford Yates collection. BH has now read both of them, liking bottom right, rather in the Jeeves & Wooster vein, rather better than top left.

So he was a very well known man in his day; now more or less unheard of. What chance the rest of us? Sic transit gloria mundi.

The shop also offered a bedside locker which had been decorated in découpage, a technique I may have come across before, but not for a very long time. As it happened, a technique which cropped up as a form of all-over wall decoration in an adaptation of a P. D. James novel, 'A Certain Justice', which we watched on return to Epsom.

Next stop the Bognor Regis museum housed in a former Public House. Stuffed full of all kinds of memorabilia, including the sort of refrigerator I remember having as a child. Also a room full of ancient radios and televisions. And also a case memorialising a black day for the Royal Sussex Regiment. It seems that three battalions of this regiment - the 11th, 12th and 13th - were given the task of creating a diversion just before the Battle of the Somme was due to start somewhere else. The colonel of the 11th battalion, when he saw the plans, refused to perform as asked. He was sent on leave: perhaps the recent death of his son on active service was deemed enough not to treat him more severely - which I am sure the letter of military law would have allowed. I associate to Siegfried Sassoon's experiences after he mounted a protest. See reference 1. The colonel's consolation prize was that his battalion was switched into reserve from attack. The 13th battalion was subsequently more or less wiped out and the 12th battalion lost 446 officers and men, killed, wounded and missing, around half the starting total.

And thirdly, a second hand bookshop, which on first appearances appeared to function mainly as an exchange for paperback fiction for holiday reading. A function it had been filling, we learned as we got further inside, for thirty years or more. Further inside still, I found the other two books illustrated. Bottom left, a sort of history of everything, from around 10,000 years ago until the present, strong on Borneo and surrounding areas, where I think the author did a lot of botanical field work. Looks interesting enough, but I have yet to make a proper start. Top right, an Esperanto dictionary, a dictionary that is in the same sense that the Oxford Dictionary is a dictionary of English - so being entirely in Esperanto. First impression is that Esperanto looks rather like Spanish and the dictionary is just about intelligible, at least in parts. Further reports on both in due course.

PS: one of the D-Y dust jackets did not survive the reading and has now been mended with a slice of white printing paper (Staples blue wrap) and Pritt Stick. Much better than mucking around with bottles of glue, the glue in which has usually gone off by the time one wants to use it,

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/sassoon-not.html.

Bognor two

The meal at the first night at the Beachcroft hotel started with a fish soup, good but rather rich, rather a lot of cream. Also unusual in that it contained half a dozen or more prawns in their shells, which needed to be extracted from the soup and shelled in order to eat them - my not getting on very well with the shells. Too crunchy for me. Bread took the form of miniature brown loaves, warm, either plain or cheese flavoured. Followed by baked cod on top of a mound of mashed potato, as seems to be de rigueur these days. Baked cod was good, certainly by the standards of restaurants, but the mashed potato was distinctly stale, clearly warmed up from some previous life. Washed down with a bottle of Petit Chablis 2014 from Laroche, an outfit which reference 1 claims has been at it for 1,000 years. Chablis was OK in any event.

The miniature brown loaves made a second appearance for breakfast, by this time a little tired, but no other bread was on offer. I made the mistake of thinking that 'fresh Scottish kippers' might be something like that, but turned out to be the usual shrink wrapped fillets, warmed up and doused in butter. Not my sort of thing at all, but BH rather liked them and wound up having them two or three times in the course of our stay.

Being bright and fresh, it was clearly a day for a walk west along the esplanade day, as far as the café on Marine Drive West, a stretch with beach huts, roughly at gmaps 50.779372, -0.693194. Tide was going out and we were able to walk on the sand below the stones for most of the way. Beach attractive in the bright sun. Some breeze, with the seagulls seeming to prefer to sit in small flocks, head to wind.

Along the way, intrigued by the advertisement above. How did Ogwen Mountain Rescue get in on the act?  Was there some jobbing gardener in the neighbourhood, scratching enough of a living out of the people who had retired to the fancy thatched cottages to the east and west of Bognor, to fund scrambling up rock faces in North Wales? See references 2 and 3.

Also on the way, took in the gardens at the Steyne (presumably named in honour of the one at Brighton), illustrated in the snap above. Someone, presumably the council, are doing a good job on the gardens, but the square itself is a bit seedy, ripe for gentrification. Plenty of foreigners about, including one obstreperous & noisy drunk, this being before noon. Luckily he had a someone with him, leading him home.

The pub, centre right, did not look as smart as I remember it. I feel sure we took afternoon refreshment there on some previous occasion, with the interior involving quite a lot of brown polished wood, fifties style. Rather a clubby feel to the place. Can't trace the visit now.

Rather an inferior bacon sandwich at the café, bread OK but bacon both rubbery and salty.

Mysterious structure in the sea to the west of the beachside café. Maybe the remnant of a second world war jetty?

Strolled back to the hotel for a siesta, meeting a couple who had retired to Walberton from Uxbridge a few years ago. A couple who looked to be quite similar to ourselves in wealth, habit and outlook . He knew all about the drug smugglers being processed through the Uxbridge courts there and might well have been a retired civil servant. Aeroplane noise not an issue, with the flight path maybe five miles away. But no longer the market town on the outskirts of London, not unlike Epsom, that it used to be. That said, I got a whiff of their missing the bright lights. Countryside all very well, but Chichester not quite the same thing as the West End.

Later, we repaired to the nearby Lobster Pot Café for a fine crab salad: dressed crab packed into the shell, green salad and small new potatoes in their skins, half boiled half fried. Touch of New Zealand sauvignon blanc to wash it down with and some kind of cake for dessert. All very good. Clearly a place which is doing well with lots of cheerful young waitresses.

The slip-way below the Lobster Pot, with the concrete much worn by the pebbles thrown about in winter storms.

The off-shore wind farm continued inactive, with none of the propellers turning, despite the fresh breeze from the west. There was some kind of small rig in attendance, so perhaps the farm was not yet finished, with the drill being that you don't turn anything on until you can turn them all on.

PS: current view is that gmaps is better for most of my purposes than bing maps. I think this is more than just being more familiar with it. Maybe MS is not matching the Google spend.

Reference 1: http://www.larochewines.com/fr.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/yaverland-three.html.

Reference 3: http://www.ogwen-rescue.org.uk/. From which I learn the interesting new word 'cragfast'.

Parham

On our way to Bognor we paid a visit to Parham House, an originally Elizabethan House which has escaped the clutches of the English Heritage/ National Trust oligopoly. Just to the north of the south downs and complete with its own church.

The building, the squat water tower at the centre of the snap left was renamed the potato tower at some point, perhaps having been allocated the homely function of potato storage.

You can get a good idea of the layout of the place at gmaps 50.9183277,-0.4934163. The image there is of a surprisingly good quality, so perhaps the aerial photographer is instructed to zoom in, or to fly low over places of public or national interest.

House, then moving right on the snap, taken from the car park to the east of the house, a couple of large courtyards, one once the stable yard (complete with Polesden Lacey style tower), then vegetable, flower and pleasure gardens. A detached dovecot. The whole surrounded by park, complete with deer. Once, one supposes, the owners of thousands of acres around.

Owned by a successful civil engineer between the two world wars, successful enough to be able to afford to tour some of the many closing down sales of similar houses at that time and stuff his own house with the treasures so acquired. So contents better than the usual run, including a lot of portraits by Sir Peter Lely. His wife was keen on fabrics, needlework and embroidery so there is quite a lot of that too.

The house including a very long long gallery, perhaps the longest in the land, decorated rather nicely by an interior decorator fashionable at the time of the engineer.

Group search key: phs.

Tea stains

About 18 months ago I was going on about funny tasting tea and tea stains. See reference 1, a reference which I tracked down on this occasion using my monthly backups. Sometimes Windows folder search plus Word document search actually does better than the mighty google.

While in the interval since that going on, the funny tastes have largely vanished, perhaps because of more careful cup hygiene, we did experience very bad staining in Bognor, when using the mugs and kettle provided in our hotel room.

Stains which start life as brown films which slide around the sides of the mug in a rather unsightly way while one is drinking the tea and which then dry on when one has finished. The odd thing was that serious elbow grease, even when coupled with soap and hot water, failed to remove them, which is not the case when we are at home. Elbow grease, or more precisely thumb grease, even when coupled with soap and hot water, failed to remove them, which is not the case when we are at home. BH thought that the difference might be the absence of milk - with my preferring tea without milk to tea with milk-pot milk.

Pot does not seem quite the right word here, but it is the word used by Amazon to describe those above, very much the sort of thing you get in hotels.

Something to keep an eye on.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/kitchen-life.html.

Kindle

Yesterday evening we watched the penultimate episode of the elderly BBC version of 'Anna Karenina', a version which we have been watching in a rather dilatory fashion for some time now, despite its many qualities. See reference 1.

A fault, to my mind, is the sense of tragedy which hangs over the whole thing. Virtually from the off, we know that it is all going to end in tears.

Then this morning, thinking that the book was not really like this - that the tragedy there was slower growing, slower moving, slower to move even - I was moved to turn up the Kindle version (translated by Constance Garnett), the first time that I have turned the Kindle on for some weeks, despite having charged it up for our visit to Bognor. In which version, I am struck anew by the structure of the plot with its three marriages: those of Anna, Dolly and Kitty. Dolly settles for second best, but trundles along, sometimes happily enough. Anna goes for broke, for the grand passion, and ends up dead. Whereas Kitty, as far as I can recall, after the odd hiccup, lives happily ever afterwards. With all this being written by a man who was himself something of a libertine, taking plenty of liberties with, I think I once read, the peasant girls on his own estate. Inter alia. Or perhaps it should be inter alias.

Point of correction: Anna does not go for the grand passion, although I believe that there are people who do do that. Who seek such a thing out, something to give some colour to their otherwise drab lives. But this grand passion goes for Anna, rather than the other way around.

Point of wonder: I say struck anew, but I wonder how anew it is. How did I react to all this when I first read the book, probably when I was fifteen or so, a time when I suspect I knew what the words meant, what they added up to, what was right and wrong - but a time when I had little or no personal knowledge of any such feelings? I remember writing an essay about Lawrence's 'Women in Love' at about that time, for a school magazine, where again I might have done the words but could not have done the feelings. Would it be illuminating or embarrassing to read it now? Or both?

How did I react when I read it again, as I almost certainly did, as a young adult? No idea now - and it seems unlikely that I will recover one.

PS: as I type this, we have the young Burman cat from next door in a stand off with a rather grey looking and much larger fox on the back lawn. Sometimes he goes into full stalking mode, ventre à terre, for which see reference 2. Fox just wanders off. A few minutes later, they have both gone off, more or less together, and one of the two black cats which visit our garden now holds the field.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/frou-frou.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/margins.html.

The Butlin's bike

The  Butlin's bike mentioned in the last post, with the all important brake visible above and to the right of the unused steering wheel, in the way of the steering column mounted gear shifts of cars and vans of old. Snapped in the alley behind the oldest block of chalets, with the perimeter fence visible right.

Interestingly, BH's steering wheel was entirely decorative, but she nicely demonstrated the tight coupling between perception and action parts of the brain by energetically steering, despite knowing full well that her wheel did nothing, steering as if it were the steering wheel of a car with power steering, rather than the more bicycle flavoured action which was needed. Long time since she has been on a bicycle.

The following morning, I demonstrated something else when I tried to insert our hotel room key into one of those hand held contraptions which take money from one's credit card. In my defense, I can only say that it was the same sort of card, in so far as size, shape and construction were concerned.

With further evidence of neural degeneration provided by my difficulty in navigating the maze of roads and roundabouts at the back of Bognor. I did not seem to have enough time to process what seemed to be the large amount of information on what seemed to be the very large number of signs and practise did not seem to be of much help. And things were made worse by a sprinkling of aggressive drivers and the age of our map, which sported a price sticker saying £3.10, just about one third of today's mail order price from OS, so it must be pretty ancient.

Group search key: bta.

Inside a hotel

A tea and coffee opportunity, served by one of the surprisingly few mainland Europeans on view in and around Bognor in hospitality functions, this despite their clearly being present in large numbers in the town.

No doubt the yellow tubes would have been called artworks, complete with explanatory plaques, had they been in the Festival Hall in London. Although, to be fair, I suppose that noticed at reference 1 is rather more elaborate. Nevertheless, I wonder whether Mr. Butlin has missed a trick here.

Note the discrete video camera on the right hand wall, very like those used on tube trains.

PS: I do not think that we saw anyone drinking alcohol during our visit, although one might have thought that plenty of the residents were well up for that sort of thing. Perhaps with children, they very properly waited until the evening, by which time we were long gone. On the other hand there was a fair amount of smoking to be seen, although not by staff, for whom it is presumably forbidden, certainly in view of the customers.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/art.html.

Group search key: bta.

Trolley 41

Continuing the trend of around one a month, this trolley nearly a month after that noticed at reference 1.

The first M&S trolley for a while and probably the one which was furthest from its home, just outside Ewell West railway station. The framework looked to me as if it had been outside for some time, but I did not think that detracted in any way from M&S's duty to take it back.

It was also getting on a bit and I decided against pushing it back to Epsom, catching the train instead, perhaps a 10 minute wait. Journey uneventful apart from the ticket machine at the station being very slow and delivering a different ticket, albeit printed on the same blank, to the one which one would get from Epsom Station. Perhaps a Southwest Trains machine rather than a Southern machine?

Getting the trolley on and off the train not a problem, but I decided against taking the thing down the stairs at Epsom, using the lift provided instead.

No-one at M&S objected to the slightly scruffy state of the trolley.

So a first; the first time that I have taken a shopping trolley on a train. Perhaps the next venture would be to take one down to Bognor for the day, using it for one's picnic and beach gear. How many people would comment? Or would they all look the other way and pretend that you were not there?

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/trolley-40.html

Group search key: tya