Combi

 

A sunny March week, so not much time for blogging. Here are some pics from Combe Martin (in North Devon) last week-end. 

Buffeted by days of constant sea-breeze, and with no TV reception in the caravan, I woozily read through Sean O'Brien's The Drowned Book. I suspended all effort to think what the poems might mean, or what the book might mean. The pages merged together into a single monochrome journey: estuary, sewer, Acheron. I found it strangely compulsive. 

When their history's over,

The rivermouth offers these lighthouses

Sheltered employment: watch, reflect

And let the square white towers

Take the light laid on at dusk and dawn

By Scottish colourists --

White that is blue,

That is nothing at all,

That is water and air, ...

Since coming back to Frome, I've re-read the book but struggled to enter the same space. The poems meant more but did less. Maybe I needed to be out of myself, as I was that week-end. So instead I read about Hull (Drypool and Scott Street, Little Switzerland), about Joseph Chamberlain, about isomers ("the isomers of boredom"), and checked the meanings of "freshets", "revetments" and "staithe". 

They are the isomers of boredom.

Fleeing through a river-door the adult world's critique

You will hear the foul yawn of low tide caught

Au naturel in its khaki-tripe skin

Between the dented ironclad revetments

Of Drypool and Scott Street:

Barges, drowned dogs, drowned tramps, all are

Subdued to its element, worked

Into the khaki, with ropes and old staithes,

Estuarine polyps and leathery excrescences

No one has thought of a name for.

(from "River-doors")

Returning via Ilfracombe and of course a charity shop, I picked up H.G. Wells' Kipps and a Katharine McMahon novel, The Rose of Sebastopol. (I previously read her novel After Mary.)

Since getting back to Frome, I've finished reading Dave Boling's warm-hearted and moving historical novel Guernica. It begins with three boys, virtually orphans, growing up on the farm at the beginning of the twentieth century.

. . . Josepe spotted a sliver of darkness banking in tight circles above the hillside. "Justo, Justo, an eagle -- are there lambs out there?" he screamed.

"Get the gun!" Justo yelled, leaping down onto a bale and rolling off onto his feet.

Pascal Ansotegui's rifle was old before the turn of the century and the boys had never seen it fired. At thirteen, Justo was as strong as some of the men in the village, but Pascual had never taught him how to shoot. Josepe could hardly lift the iron weapon off the pegs in the shed. He dragged it to his brother with both hands at the end of the barrel, the butt bouncing along the ground.

Justo took it from him, raised it to his shoulder, and waved the barrel in the direction of the diving eagle. Xabier knelt in front of him and grabbed the stock with both hands, trying to buttress his big brother's hold.

"Shoot him, Justo!" Josepe screamed. "Shoot him!"

With the rifle butt inches from his shoulder, Justo pulled the trigger. The cartridge exploded in the barrel, and the recoil thrust Justo to the ground, bleeding from the side of his head. Xabier flattened out beside him, screaming from the noise. The shot did not even startle the eagle, which was now applying a lethal clench of its talons into the neck of a tiny, still-wet lamb.

With Justo and Xabier down, Josepe charged. Before he could reach it, the eagle extended its wings, hammered them several times into the ground, and lifted off on a downhill swoop just over Josepe's head. 

(pp. 11-12)

Thirty years later there'll be another attack from the air. 

Still awake at dawn, Miguel left his sleeping wife and daughter in their beds and walked to the bakery on Calle Santa María in hopes of finding something other than grainy black bread for their breakfast. Strangers filled the streets, strangers who were hungry and upset, dirty and homeless.

At the bakery, where he saw nothing worth buying, he was told that there had been a break-in the night before, the first time they'd had such a problem. Some who sat in the bakery shopfront that morning, finding comfort there in their mutual uncertainty, told of hundreds of war-wounded who had been brought to the hospital at the Carmelite Convent overnight. Men from the Loyola Battalion had been burned and disfigured by phosphorus bombs; others had lost limbs or bled to death before they could be treated by the few doctors available. 

Surely, Miguel thought, these were tales from the alarmists, exaggerated like so many stories told in town. From more reliable mouths, he heard talk of cancelling the afternoon market and the pelota games scheduled for the evening. At the last moment, the council agreed that people would have too difficult a time making it through the week without the market, and it would be impossible to get word to the outlying farmers who were already herding stock towards town. And to cancel the pelota games might cause more alarm than necessary. 

The news that all would proceed as normal settled Miguel as he trudged back home without the bread he'd sought. 

(p. 193)

Lauburu : a four-angled leaf symbol popular in Basque culture. It appears on the title page and chapter headings. 

Pelota : a racket game played in Basque regions. 

Mus: bewildering bidding and betting card game, with partners. Basque origin, but popular throughout Spain.  

Txingas: a contest to carry weights (one in each hand) as far as possible around a circular track. 

Baserri: traditional housebarn farmhouse.

Basque jota: "The Jota, by virtue of its presence at most gatherings, seems to be the national dance of the Basque people. Even though most Basque dances are danced by men, Basques of all ages, all vocations, men and women, know and participate in the Jota." It's unclear how or if it relates to the jota of Aragon and Castile.  https://www.sfdh.us/encyclopedia/basque_jota_lester.html

Irrintzi: traditional high-pitched cry. https://walkonthebasqueside.com/en/irrintzi-the-basques-ancestral-scream/

Kuttuna: darling

Makila: traditional Basque walking stick, carved from medlar wood. 

Egun on: Good morning.

Pintxoak: = Spanish pinchos (spikes), snacks pinned to a slice of bread with a cocktail stick. 

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Passing by a book sale at the Frome Museum last week I eagerly snatched up John Sutherland's The Life of Walter Scott, which I've wanted to read for ages, and which I'll surely write more about. 

Guernica came out of one of the half-dozen book exchange boxes in Frome's parks. It's time to move on a few items to make room for these new ones, so here are some passing notes. 

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Eighty Years of Frome, 1894-1974, a brochure to commemorate the passing of the Urban District Council. (Thus began Mendip District Council, now facing its own demise.) 

Frome in 1894: "An old town and a hideous... the streets are narrow, crooked, steep and irregularly built, not to say dilapidated" (R.N. Worth: Tourists Guide to Somersetshire); Frome had not recovered from the decline of the wool trade. Luke Ellis defended it in the Echo (May, 1894): "But apart from the interesting church and the wide, sunny street, my memory dwells on that walk through Holly Wood, and the smooth winding path chequered with the shade of Holly and oak, and the sunny glades sparkling with rich colour, where the gorgeous pheasant struts." I have never heard of this Holly Wood, nor does the internet supply any answers. 

Frome was a small town then, still mainly cobbled and with Catherine Hill at its heart. It expanded enormously in the twentieth century and is now doing so again. 

The 1974 ads caught my eye too. "Wally Weston's" (Wallington Weston & Co Ltd) were "Manufacturers of Fromotan, Fromocene, Fromide" (kinds of plastic). The Mendip Lodge "which changes its name from Motel this year" offered "Dining and Dancing every Wednesday and Saturday". 

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Michael McGarvie edited the above booklet, and also another local book that's passing through: The King's Peace: The Justice's Notebooks of Thomas Horner, of Mells, 1770-1777 (1997). (Michael McGarvie is Frome's renowned local historian. I used to fix his computer when we both worked at Marston House.)

Thomas Horner was fond of hunting and shooting, landscape gardening, drinking, robust humour and serving at "the alter of Venus". He seems to have been a diligent and fairly moderate magistrate, for the time. His notebooks are mostly populated by the rural poor.

7th April 1774 -- At a sessions held at the Talbot Inn in Mells. Present myself, Mr. Edgell and Mr. Harris.

Made an order respecting a female bastard child lately born in the parish of Frome of the body of Mary Tucker singlewoman. John Sedgefield the reputed father to contribute 2s. per week, said Mary Tucker 1s.

....

James Case of Frome cordwainer being apprehended by a judge's warrant granted on an indictment for a riot, and unlawfully taking away sixty pounds weight of butter and other things, from Anthony Rymil, found sureties for his appearance at next assizes to answer said indictment.

....

Examined Betty Carr an intruder into Frome parish, and granted an order to remove her to Horningsham in Wiltshire, the place of her settlement. 

Examined Jonathan Carter and granted an order to remove him and his family from Beckington to North Bradley in Wiltshire.

Examined Sarah Mitten of Beckington singlewoman as to the reputed father of a male bastard child lately born of her body in that parish. She refusing to discover the father, was committed to gaol. 

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Two perceptive and lively books by Julian Lovelock that deserve better than to be given away after skim-reading. From Morality to Mayhem: The Fall and Rise of the English School Story (2018) -- on Hughes, Farrar, Golding, Buckeridge, Blyton, etc -- but I was sorry about the complete absence of Molesworth, the undisputed hero of my own youth. As for Swallows, Amazons and Coots (2016), it's a brilliant guide, but is too dangerous to hang on to; it would inevitably draw me into reading all twelve of Arthur Ransome's series.  

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At Combe Martin there weren't many plants in flower yet: Blackthorn, Gorse, Great Wood-rush (above) just starting, Lesser Celandine of course... And on the sheltered coast path heading east from the village, Greater Stitchwort and Lady's Smock.