Zeltus

Summer gave way all to easily to Autumn and whilst it was a superb season while it lasted, Autumn is now gently allowing Winter to creep in. Time to start preparing to move out until the warm weather returns in Spring.

The leaves on the trees, after the best display we’ve ever seen, are now dropping rapidly, and it is time to pollard our Poplar trees.

The French are very enthusiastic about the practice of pollarding. And generally I am happy to believe they know what they are doing and follow their example. This decorative pollarding does mean that an otherwise large tree is kept to a reasonable garden size. The French leave a finger on each stump and I blithely follow their lead. I’ve no idea what it achieves but I would hazard a guess it’s to encourage the tree to sprout new growth as soon as possible in the Spring.

The newly pollarded trees look very bare and sorry for themselves. Not at all a pretty result. But in the Spring, they’ll all come good and look very attractive throughout the Summer.

Before coming across this form of pollarding, my understanding of the word was to describe a large mature Elm or Oak that had been completely decapitated in it’s youth as a source of a decent stave, long, long ago and had survived the experience by growing ever more lustily.

Indeed, many of the large, mature trees seen today (or rather, where Elms are concerned, the pictures of large mature trees :-( ) quite probably underwent this treatment. Yet most of us think this is the normal and natural shape of a mature tree. Does anybody still remember the Umbrella Tree, near the bottom of Salford road on the hill up to Cranfield? A magnificent example that like so many, succumbed to Dutch Elm Disease in the 70′s, it was a classic mature pollard.

Finally, despite their love of the practice, the French appear to have no special name for it. They at best make use of the verb tailler – “to prune”. Sometimes, French is a romantic, expressive language. And at other times, it is quite earthy and plain – there seems to be very little middle ground.

This also highlights one of the benefits of the English language – very little of it is English, it’s all been stolen from other languages. And is all the richer for it. The French attempt to protect their language from external influence is, of course, a fool’s errand.

Technorati Tags: autumn, elm, oak, pollard, prune, tailler, winter

Today is Armistice Day, when, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the First World War ended.

It is a public holiday here in France, which is a jolly decent idea. At 11 o’clock – or some time around then – the French are not noted for their timekeeping skills! – D The Maire, attended by all the local Veterans, a bunch of ex-pats, a pleasingly large number of children and other inhabitants of this commune, congregate around the war memorial, just outside our house, and hold a short dedication. One of the children made a short speech, explaining why it is important that this ceremony is relevant and must be continued.

One particularly poignant part of the proceedings is when the Maire, as he does every year, read out the names of all the dead commemorated on the memorial, and at each name we responded “Mort pour France”. That’ll make sure no-one forgets the names of the fallen.

As ever, clicking on the photos throws up a larger, more detailed one.

Of course, my family has it’s own names to commemorate – I recommend a visit to the Roll of Honour. This site is a really good way to encourage both Remembrance and the upkeep and maintenance of all war memorials.

The Maire emphasised that this was not a purely French ceremony. It commemorates all those who fell in all wars. And as such, he thanked us all, les étrangers in particular, for attending. We British do tend to stand out a bit as we all wear our Poppies. The French flower of Remembrance is the Bleuet, or Cornflower. It’s a bit of a shame that they don’t utilise it’s beauty more but simply have a basic stylised motif on an old-fashioned sticky lapel flag.

The event ends with everyone moving to the Mairie, for Pineau (umm, French sherry, for want of a better description) and Kir, so that everyone can meet and greet each other. All in all, a dignified, simple and expressive ceremony that makes exactly the right impression.

If memory serves my right, until the Falklands War, the Act of Remembrance in the UK was rather muted – there was certainly no nationwide two minute silence, T.V. coverage tended to be limited to the laying of wreathes ceremony at the Cenotaph. The general malaise regarding this event was surely best summed up when that twerp Michael Foot turned up at the Cenotaph wearing a brown tweed jacket. Nowadays, most people in the UK seem to make an honest and genuine effort to honour the sacrifices made by the Forces in all wars and engagements. And quite rightly too. I do however have a few qualms about how early Poppies are appearing on lapels, especially on the lapels of politicians and media personalities. I’d like to think it’s a truly respectful statement but the cynic in me wonders if there is not a touch of “I wear mine longer than you, I’m therefore more righteous” creeping in to the whole business. I hope I am wrong.

Technorati Tags: armistice, bleuet, ceremony, lovesey, parker, poppy, remembrance, war

The train was quite crowded, so the U.S. Marine walked the entire length looking for a seat, but the only seat left was taken by a Poodle owned by a well-dressed, middle-aged French woman.

The war-weary Marine asked, “Ma’am, may I have that seat?”

The French woman just sniffed and said to no one in particular, “Americans are so rude. My little Fifi is using that seat.”

The Marine walked the entire train again, but the only seat left was under that dog. “Please, ma’am. May I sit down? I’m very tired.”

She snorted, “Not only are you Americans rude, you are also arrogant!”

This time the Marine didn’t say a word, he just picked up the little dog, tossed it out the train window, and sat down.

The woman shrieked, “Someone must defend my honour! Put this American in his place!”

An English gentleman sitting nearby spoke up…

“Sir, you Americans often seem to have a penchant for doing the wrong thing. You hold the fork in the wrong hand. You drive your cars on the wrong side of the road. And now, sir, you’ve thrown the wrong bitch out the window.”

Technorati Tags: humor, humour

My Dad was born and bred in Cranfield, on the western edge of the small county of Bedfordshire in England. Other than fairly rare visits to my Grandparents as a very young boy, I really didn’t take too much notice of the place.

But when Dad left the Army, he moved to Cranfield. And in the 80’s, I moved there as well. At which point I started taking a lot more interest in it’s history. Like most villages, there is any amount of gossip and rumour regarding it’s history: the Churchyard contains a distinctly square plot of land within it’s boundaries that everyone knows as the Plague pit. And during the height of the Industrial Revolution, it’s rumoured that a lot of Parkers were forcibly moved to the Manchester area, to work in the Cotton Mills, rather than be a burden on the local Parish. And so on.

But here is a bit of history that I have not seen anywhere else – by chance, whilst browsing in a junk shop in Newport Pagnell, I came across a very faded (and tres expensive!) photographic postcard of a Cranfield pub I didn’t recognise. Dad identified it as the Fox and Hounds, sited where Mill Road meets the High Street. Apparently, this Public House closed sometime during World War II. The earliest memory of this part of the village I have is of a small cinema, with a derelict Windmill just behind it. Today, the village Chemist occupies this spot.

I was extremely doubtful about buying this postcard, as it really was rather more than I wanted to pay for it and in very poor condition. But in the end, I did purchase it. And now I’m rather glad I did. Thanks to Adobe Photoshop, it really was very easy to scan it in to my PC, and with but a few clicks, adjust the colour balance, the contrast and a few other settings. I expect that if I put some real effort into it, I could improve it still further. But on the whole, I think the look I have achieved is authentic enough for me.

Technorati Tags: bedford, bedfordshire, beds, cranfield, history, house, inn, old, pub, public, pubs

Whilst idly browsing the ‘web, I came across http://www.datejs.com/ – This javascript library, which despite being an alpha release, looked remarkably useful and already has a thriving support forum. It’s taken me no time at all to install it and write a small piece of code that calculates the date of the next Stir-up Sunday, as a test case.

And that piece of code is now installed and working in my Christmas Pudding recipe page – that should ensure it is always up to date. The source of that page shows how simple and intuitive to use this library is. Well, reasonably intuitive, anyway.

I expect I’ll be working with this library a lot more, altho’ PHP is still my first choice for non-interactive web page code, as I am more familiar with it.

Incidentally, I had to do a fair bit of investigation as to when Stir-up Sunday actually occurs – originally, it was the 25th Sunday after Trinity Sunday, which is a floating date based on Easter. But, in typically archaic language, the Church declared that it could be moved closer to Advent if necessary – it’s intention was to prepare the great unwashed for the season of Advent, which is a fixed date and begins four Sundays before Christmas.

Note that the 25th Sunday after Trinity Sunday fell on 9th November this year, due to Easter having occurred very early in the year. A long time before Advent, that’s for sure, and I suppose one of the reasons why the modern Church allowed the date to be tagged to Advent rather than Easter.

Anyway, most authorities have it that Stir-up Sunday occurs on the Sunday before Advent.

But there is certainly a lot of confusion about the calculation. For instance, some information sites are quoting the 30th November as Stir-up Sunday for 2008. But that is the first day of Advent. I seek further enlightenment, but until I receive it, I believe such sources are plain wrong.

Technorati Tags: calculations, date, datejs, dates, javascript, LinkedIn