Sunday Lunch

There was a time when Sunday lunch in the Haylett household was an occasion, whether at my mother's or at our house. This picture, taken in late 1988, shows our family with my cousin Susan and her husband Bobby at my parents' home in Fambridge Road, Maldon. There are three absentees from the picture - Katy, who took the picture, Rachael, who was born in 1989, and my father, who had just died. Despite this, the Christmas decorations are up.

My mother had a limited range of recipes for the main course on Sundays. Usually we had a roast - chicken, lamb or beef - but we were also presented with salt beef - not so popular - and curry. The curry was served with a number of side dishes including dried coconut, banana, chutneys, roasted cashews and peanuts, cucumber and diced dates.

It was common to ask others to join us for the Sunday meal. A guest I well remember was my 'Cousin Bay'. Helen (Bay) Liddell, my mother's cousin, a fearsomely intelligent and sharp lady who had been on the staff of the Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House, where she had been their expert on German affairs. Bay, who had very different political views from my father, thoroughly enjoyed a good argument, its intensity being fuelled by a glass or two of sherry and wine with the meal. Bay was a fairly frequent guest, driving over from Lewes when my parents lived in Hastings. In later years the meal was often delayed as Bay was late: she had dementia and increasingly frequently became lost along the road. This continued until, finally, she could drive no more.

While there were times when we wished that we weren't quite so tied to this weekly event, in general I have very happy memories of those meals. Despite the occasional argument, they brought the family together, something which cannot happen these days with the family so far apart.

A New Orchid Season Opens

Today opened a welcome new phase of the year, the orchid season, with the discovery of this heath spotted along a forest track. Some of the next of the local species to appear....

....the northern marsh, are already up, though I have yet to find one.

One of the pleasures of orchid hunting is the hope that one might come across something really unusual, like....

....a slipper orchid. This species is very rare in the UK but we came across some on one of our trips to British Columbia. On the same walk we also stumbled upon....

....this beautifully delicate orchid.

I could have spent the rest of my life in the beautiful river valley in the Rockies where we found them as I was sure there were other species waiting to be found.

Something Special

I wandered through the woods below Beinn Bhraggie this morning in warm sunshine and found new 'firsts' for the year, like this speckled wood, but was more than usually conscious of the beauty of what I saw around me. It must be a function of advancing age that every small thing, be it a butterfly or what might be termed....

....a rather ordinary small bird like a dunnock seems more special, more unique, more deserving of attention and appreciation.

Perhaps that appreciation of the wonders that are all around us is heightened when one finds something, like this 2cm long beetle, which appears to be unusual. There are reputed to be over 4,000 beetle species in the British Isles alone, and I spent an hour when I reached home trying to find this one amongst them - but failed. So perhaps this is even more special. Or perhaps not.

A Deserted Beach

We sat in the sunshine in the lea of the dunes to escape this morning's rather vicious westerly and looked northeast along Littleferry's beach and....

....southwest along the beach and saw not a soul; nor was there much in the way of bird life, just a few gulls and a scattering of oystercatchers but amidst the grasses of the links at the back of the beach we found more to indicate spring's arrival including....

....a mass of saxifrage amongst a bank of blue, pink and white 'bluebells' and....

....occasional splashes of the brilliant colour of purple milk vetch. However, the highlight of our walk came as we returned to the car....

....in the form of a single small copper.

Red-Breasted Merganser

It was a grey morning today along the waterfront below Dunrobin Castle with the occasional rain and little to see until....

....I spotted this pair of ducks which looked likely to be red-breasted mergansers. They were courting, the male....

....alternately stretching out his neck and....

....flopping onto his side while, at the same time, they were trying to put distance between themselves and me.

While the pictures are disappointing, the merganser being at extreme range of my camera, I'm quite thrilled to have seen this courtship display.

There was something else, too. Usually, the male merganser has the distinct white collar seen in this pair, photographed some years ago in Kilchoan Bay, but this morning's male lacked it, so I assume he's either an interesting local variant or an immigrant.

Poetry

At this late stage in my life I'm trying to write poetry. It seemed a logical thing to do after blogs, short stories, novels, and non-fiction such as the little booklets I wrote while on Ardnamurchan about the lives of some of the people there, about the lovely church of St Comghan's, and on the history and archaeology of the area. The decision was helped by the discovery of a small poetry group which meets every Tuesday evening in the village library, where we encourage each other to write and to look at the poems of our (much) betters. So I've dug into my memory of being 'made' to read poems at school and found myself thoroughly enjoying them again - 'Spanish Waters', 'Ozymandias', 'Morte d'Arthur' - and also discovering new interests in the poems brought in by the others.

So, for those of you who can bear it, here is my first effort:

    Guadeloupe

    The year’s first snows now shroud the bens
    laid by an east wind off the sea
    that lifts dark waves to burst against
    the harbour wall which runs below me.

    I lean upon the hard steel rail,
    so cold and wet, so very lonely
    and remember….
    a palm-fringed beach in Guadeloupe
    and a love that used to be.

A Farlary Morning

One of the attractions of the walks around Farlary croft is that they traverse a variety of habitats which means that we're always likely to see a range of wildlife, particularly around the lochan - once a quarry - and the small ponds which the crofter has built.

We arrived this morning to a scolding from a furious male stonechat after which we found the first of several 'firsts' of the season....

....two small tormentil plants each with just one flower. Tormentil, with its characteristic four-petal flower. is, to me, one of the Highland's flowers of summer, so perhaps these are an indication that the season isn't far away.

A second 'first' came with the finding of three purple milkwort plants, all in the same place, followed by another 'first' with....

....the sighting of several orange-tip butterflies - the only species of butterfly we saw - with these two very anxious to ensure a next generation.

However, for me the highlight of our visit was the sighting of the first damselflies, less than half-a-dozen in all. I think they were immature male common blues, particularly as we've seen common blues at Farlary before.

Everywhere we walked we were surrounded by the songs of warblers, of which I could only identify the chiffchaff and this one, the willow warbler, which was in the majority. However, we were well aware that, as we walked round the croft, we kept hearing the call of a cuckoo which, very likely, was looking for warbler nests in which to lay her eggs.

After the scolding from the stonechat it was good to have a gentle farewell from this little bird, possibly a meadow pipit, which moved close to us even though it was well aware of our presence. 

It was such an uplifting walk, a wonderful antidote to all the woes of the world. If there was a down-side, it was that we didn't see a buzzard, which must be another, rather dismal 'first' for our Farlary visits. However, on Loch Farlary, where we stopped briefly on our way home, we did see, at some distance, a pair of greylag geese with six goslings in convoy.

Buzzards

When we lived on Ardnamurchan spotting buzzards was part of everyday life. We used to smile when visitors said they had seen six eagles on their way down the peninsula - we were certain they were buzzards which, when seen at a height from below, can be difficult to tell from golden eagles.

We were then surprised when we moved to East Anglia to see far more buzzards in the air than we'd seen over Kilchoan. I recall one afternoon's walk when we saw seven buzzards wheeling over us.

Throughout our time in Golspie sightings of buzzards have been disappointing. I recall one day when we saw three together from the path beyond Dunrobin Castle, and we've seen four together towards Farlary, but these days we become quite excited if we see one - like this one which was calling high above us yesterday.

As with all such things, not keeping a careful record means I can't be certain but I feel that we are seeing fewer each year, and that's both sad and worrying. 

Sedge, Rush or Grass?

Large areas of the local woodland floor, and the shady banks of some of the damper-sided lanes, are carpeted by this plant. Such is the depth of my ignorance that I'm not sure whether it's a rush, a sedge or a grass, which makes identification - which is something I am always driven to attempt - rather more difficult.

I suspected that this might be a rush, and the internet tells me that there are only 32 species of British rush or wood-rush, so I felt I should be able to identify it. 

It has distinctive characteristics. The plant has a fairly broad but elongate leaf, is about 400mm high, and the flowering part divides and divides again. About as close as I could get to it was the sharp-flowered rush, Juncus acutiflorus, or the blunt-flowered rush, Juncus subnodulosus.

However, I'm now fairly certain it's great wood-rush, Luzula sylvatica, the largest British rush, which is described as favouring woodland and damp, shady places.

It and the other plant that covers the forest floor - the bluebell - seem to be pretty exclusive: you either have the one or the other.

A Small Boy

There was a time, long ago, when I was very good at doing nothing except let my imagination roam free; I didn't need other people, I could conjure them if I needed them; and I was centre of a small universe in my mind. I was called a dreamer, Jonathan-Jo with a mouth like an 'O', and, happily, left to roam in my own world.

That changed. Gradually the expectations of my schools, my parents, the people around me, told me I should be doing something constructive. I needed to stop the time-wasting dreaming and concentrate. I should show some determination, ambition, drive. So, slowly, reluctantly, perforce, I did, and over the decades these became built-in. My expectation of myself was that I wouldn't waste time, wouldn't squander my life doing very little. I wouldn't be hugely successful at anything but nor would I be a failure. So, for example, I wasn't an outstanding teacher, but nor was I bad at what was a multifaceted job; I like to feel that I had the respect of both my pupils and my colleagues. Later we ran a business, and I hope that the tiny community on the west coast of Scotland that our shop served would say that we did well for them.

Learning to have a little drive, ambition, to be successful, came slowly but fairly easily. At the other end of life, learning to do less, to relax into retirement, has been much more difficult. I tried to let myself into this 'retirement' state slowly, doing steadily less rather than giving up a whole lifestyle in one go, as my father did when he left East Africa. I had hoped that continuing the battle to be a success in my writing would help. Now that those ambitions have faded, now that I'm at the wrong end of my eighth decade, I can justify doing nothing, nothing in a positive sense, yet I feel guilty. I should be volunteering. I should be socialising through clubs and societies. I really ought to but don't make the effort. I'd just love to be back in the uncomplicated world of that small boy alone on a tropical beach, re-immersed in my imagination.

Gulls & Fungi

Now that we're taking almost daily walks along the shore to the north of Golspie we've become more aware of the changes that are happening. For example, there are far more seagulls on the rocks off the beach - herring gulls, common gulls and several pairs of the big black-backed gulls - than there were a few weeks ago. We've also noticed that the number of cormorants sitting on the rocks amongst the gulls has plummeted, those still here being juveniles with their pale chests. Presumably the adults are off nesting somewhere where there are suitable cliffs.

Each day the ground is ever more covered in bluebells, in amongst which are a scattering of white- and pink-bells. These bluebells have benefited from the felling of some of the larger trees which has allowed more light to ground level but has also....

....provided the wood chippings from the chain saws for these fungi to exploit. 

Where they're fully open they display very warm brown gills but I haven't been able to identify them, nor have I had any luck with....

....these fungi, some which are the size of soup plates, growing off a rotten tree stump close to Dunrobin Castle.

Lack of names doesn't really matter. What does is that it's good to have some fungi appearing again for us to find and admire.

Sandy Beach Memories

We are very fortunate to be spending our twilight years within easy reach of some fine sandy beaches, including this one at Littleferry which we visit around once a week to 'stretch our legs'. It's a great beach with over a mile of sand but it lacks something which, in my memory of my life's favourite beaches, most East African ones had in quantity....

....flotsam along the tidelines. I don't understand why our local beaches so lack it but, to me, it is one of the essentials of a good beach, even though the flotsam inevitably includes human rubbish. Of course the East African ones are blessed with being east-facing onto the Indian Ocean, with prevailing southeasterly and northeasterly winds to help bring the flotsam ashore. As a result, they collect....

....all sorts of interesting things like violet sea-snail and spirula (above) and sea-beans. I recall as a boy loving walking along the high-tide line searching for things of interest, particularly when we lived at the Hoey house which was right on the beach.

 

Sadly those lovely beaches are all in my past now, so I have to content myself with memories of them, the photos my mother put in the little album she gave me when I went off to school in England, and the photos I took on our three visits to Tanzania - of which the above is one of my favourites, looking up the beach to where the sun is setting, promptly at six, over the continent of Africa.

Tracks

The Estate has been cutting down trees in areas of woodland near Dunrobin Castle and someone has been good enough to put up some warning notices, particularly useful as these tracks are often used by casual visitors to the castle to stretch their and their dog's legs. This was a timely warning as we, dressed in our full walking gear, found....

....parts of the track difficult to negotiate.

At first sight the forestry in places like this looks a bit of a mess but the removal of some trees does open the place up to the light, and all the noisy machinery certainly didn't chase the birds away, as they were in full song.

There's a small area of grass between this area of forestry and the shore and one of the people we meet on our walks advised us to look for this - a narrow track made by the frequent passage of an animal. She suggested to us that it was made by an otter which has, perhaps, a holt in the dense shrubbery seen in the background, and uses this. track to get to the sea.

Cliff Avenue House

I lived on-and-off in this house in Cliff Avenue, Mombasa, between the ages of five and twelve. I say, 'on-and-off' because the first half of our time there was interrupted by leaves in England, the second part because, from the age of nine, I spent most of each year at prep school in England. Despite this, my memories of the house are, in general, happy ones, though the recollection of the misery of leaving it each September to return to school in England hangs like a pall over it.

The house came to mind because of the swallows' recent return to Golspie. This house was where I first became aware of these small birds' existence. In particular, I recall their excited, chattering cry as they swooped up under the eaves of the house and, when night came, how their place in the sky was taken by bats.

At the time I wasn't particularly interested in 'nature'. If you asked me what other birds I remember from the Mombasa of that time I would say....

...."mouse bird" because, for reasons which are now beyond my comprehension, we thought this bird evil and used to hunt it with our catapults. Only later, as we moved from this house to the Hoey House at Nyali beach, did I start to notice other small birds, in particular....

....the spectacularly-coloured weaver birds that came to the bird bath each evening as we sat and enjoyed our sundowners.

Looking back, my ignorance is so sad for, as we discovered during our visits to Tanzania in 2010, 2011 and 2012, the East African coast is exceptionally rich in bird life, yet I have no recollection of being encouraged to take any interest in the natural world which surrounded me.

A good friend on a visit to Mombasa some ten years or so ago told me that the house still stood, while the house further along Cliff Avenue, where we spent the last three years of our time in Mombasa, was demolished some time ago.