The Third Column

I once met a man who wanted everyone to wear rubber. He said the Fairies had told him to cut rings through the bark round the trunks of trees. He hadn't got his pension book because someone had offered to 'look after it for him' and he'd let them. And he was homeless. At least, he had been homeless until he'd been given a place in a house for men coming off the streets - men who didn't want to live rough any more and might have a chance to settle.

I was staying in that house for a few days, visiting a friend. That's how I met him. The room I was sleeping in had no windows and there was a hole in the concrete floor by the door - so you had to be careful if you got up in the night! It was the first place I'd visited where fleas were as much at home as the humans who lived there.

The conversations I had with him were worrying. Not because of their content - but because I couldn't see the difference between him and Hitler. I'm not wanting to cause offence by saying this. What I mean is that although Hitler was clever and had a philosophy and would never have given his pension book to someone else 'to look after' - he was only able to wreak the havoc he did because other people let him. What if they had found him a place to live instead of making him their leader . . . had cooked for him as they did for the man who wanted to cut rings round trees. No-one called the man I met 'evil', however disconcerting his manner or unpleasant his views. But neither did anyone put him in a position of power so he could put his ideas into practice. Who is evil? Who is not?

I was once stranded in Berlin. I'd gone to a student conference and was planning to go from there to Czechoslovakia to visit a friend in Prague - but it snowed. The Norwegian delegates thought it was hilarious that the trains had stopped - but stop they had . . . and I was stranded.

I'd been billeted with an elderly lady who was organist at her local Church and she let me stay on. She fed me. She took me to her Church with her. She introduced me to her elderly friends. They came to visit - and we slipped and slided together on our way to visit them.

One evening, she talked about her brother. He had been a pilot during the second world war and had been shot down and killed. She was younger than him and had been part of the Hitler Youth. "We all had to join," she said. Then she paused - and changed it. "We wanted to," she said.

She talked about what was, by the time she was speaking to me, the situation in Germany. Students were protesting because society was too strict. When the police intervened strongly, the students protested more - so the police got tougher . . . . It was a vicious circle. "What we need," she said, her eyes brightening and her voice growing deeper and louder, "is for someone to say 'No!' ". And, with the 'No!', she brought her fist down with a smash on the little table where we were eating. She was shouting. It was winter (obviously is was, with the snow) and the room was lit with candles. I'd learnt a new word 'Gemutlich' - cosy, homely, warm and pleasant. It wasn't gemutlich any more.

Then she subsided. "It's hard for you British to understand," she said. "We aren't used to democracy. Sometimes we just want someone to say 'That's enough!'.

I don't know. I don't know how many people thought like her. She was lovely. I still remember her with warmth. She housed me and fed me when I had little money and no-where to go and there was lots of snow outside. She would have liked someone to say 'No!'. She would have liked someone to take control; someone she could follow, who would protect her, who would break the circle, stop things getting worse.

I've been thinking about these people - the man to whom the fairies gave unpleasant instructions and the woman who was trying not to want a dictator . . . because I'm re-reading 'Rebecca' by Daphne du Maurier.

(If anyone doesn't know the story and doesn't want to . . . you'd better stop here because I'm about to give a summary.)

. . . . A young woman, little more than a girl, marries a much older man (Max de Winter). He is handsome and wealthy but harbours a dreadful secret - that he murdered his very unpleasant (though strikingly beautiful) first wife - Rebecca. Overawed by him, his house, his servants, his wealth, his age, his fame . . . the new Mrs de Winter allows herself to be bullied by Mrs Danvers, the sour and dour housekeeper who harbours such a morbid devotion to the dead Rebecca that she sets out to destroy the new wife. In the end, she destroys herself, along with the house and a way of life which could have been gentle and fresh and full of country air and sea breezes. And, in the process, she comes to symbolise female obsession, jealousy and evil for book readers and Hitchcock fans alike.

(I'm talking about a symbol here. How 'female' emotions come to be perceived and stereotyped is a separate matter. Symbols are symbols.)

I don't usually re-read books and, with this one, it's not much fun; I don't know why I'm putting myself through it. (Maybe to prove I'm not a wimp?) All the time, I'm wanting to shout 'Don't wear the dress. Don't wear the dress. Whatever you do - don't wear the dress!'. (You have to read the book to know why.) And all the time, I'm thinking - I don't think Mrs Danvers is the villain here, whatever the tradition. It's Max de Winter. Why didn't he sack the housekeeper? Why didn't he tell his new wife he'd murdered Rebecca? Well, he couldn't have done that - but he might have mentioned that, in his opinion, she was terrible and cruel and not all she was cracked up to be; that he'd stopped loving her long ago. That way, the poor mouse of her replacement might not have tortured herself by thinking (the poor mouse) that she was a gauche failure in comparison.

Not very deep thoughts. But you've got to think of something while you hack back your garden because it has become a forest instead of a glade. I don't think I would vote for a man who wanted me to wear rubber. But I might be weak enough to let politicians take more power than is good for them and then blame them for the result. And if I were to have a society beauty as an ex-wife, instead of an extra-terrestrial as a husband, I might be half pleased with the memory, hang on a bit to the glory which had rubbed off on me, even if she had been the kind of person best not to marry in the first place.

This isn't a post. Not a regular one. I'm in the middle of a gap. It's just that I'm feeling sorry (and grateful) for (and to) people who have this blog in their sidebar despite the little note underneath which says it hasn't been updated for five weeks. And I thought, I bet I can come up with a better headline than 'WEDNESDAY WORD AND HOUSEHOLD NOTES - ON A THURSDAY' so I've changed it to 'I Once Met a Man who Wanted Everyone to Wear Rubber' instead.

I suppose I could add 'Gloves' - then it might count as boring.

There's a programme called 'Gardeners' Question Time' on BBC Radio 4. It has been part of my life for . . . well, the whole of my life. Like The Archers.

And, from time to time, the questioning gardeners ask about plants and trees which some of the 'answerers' think are patently ridiculous for anyone in England to be growing at all - like olive trees. "Well," they go. "You can grow an olive tree if you like but you won't get any olives". Then lots of other gardeners write in and say things like, "My olive tree has fruit - five genuine olives.". And the people on the panel smirk a bit (I can hear them doing it) and say "Five olives does not make a crop". And people like me think, "Yes it does! - In Dorset!".

This year, I have two bunches with little green dots of olives. BUNCHES! Of OLIVES!
Ha! Gardeners' Question Time. I'm not going to starve if my olive crop fails but I am going to be very pleased with my bunches. (If they ripen.)

I expect it will stop raining one day - the clouds cleared and the sun came out briefly yesterday afternoon.

The word (For Wednesday) was . . . still is . . .

That's enough, thank you.

(Rain.)

For a bit.

A few years ago I grew an impressive group of tomatoes. The plants were huge and fruitful and the wonder of anyone addicted to side-shooting. (I don't.) (Side-shoot.) Secretly, I attributed this success to my recently demised guinea pigs who had had their run on that bit of garden. Then blight set in. Baskets of shrivelling, fossilising, thick-skinned, un-ripening tomatoes with brown marks. Delicious. Ha!

I left it a few seasons.

Last year - tall, sturdy plants with lots of flowers. The flowers fell off.

This year. One plant in the ground. Fruit appearing. Two in pots (with fruit appearing). (Another in a pot too small. No fruit appearing. Ignore that one.)

Rain.

Rain.

Flowers hanging damp and dripping - how's a pollinator supposed to get in there? Self-pollinating? No, everything's stuck. Stuck together petals. Pollen turned to mush.

Oh, the joys of life! Hey nonny-no!

I once heard that the foll-diddle-rolls in Elizabethan madrigals are where the rude bits have been censored - or to hint at things which could only be sung out loud in taverns. Swearing to music!

I think Wessex Water might have resisted the temptation to hand VP an invitation to tour the Sewage Works the very moment she got off the train. That's carrying a Dorset welcome to un-necessarily enthusiastic lengths, I would say.

And I think the park gardener who decided to chainsaw the bushes by the bench where we were eating our lunch-time picnic could have done his hedge tidying before her visit, not have waited until she was here.

The people who tarmaced the way home just about managed to finish in time - as long as we kept moving, our feet didn't stick to the ground.

I think Worthing and Didcott might have asked her if she minded her trainers being caked in grey Lyme Mud . . . or Kimmeridge Clay . . . or whatever it is . . . before they took her on that particular sea-side walk. (That's another route where you have to keep moving. If you don't, you sink. And you keep sinking, or sink as far as your knees (or something) until the Coast Guards come.) (Lucky they kept walking!) It's good for strengthening your leg muscles. Your shoes are much heavier when you reach home than when you started out.

And it didn't rain on the day she arrived.

Or much the next day.

Then it did.

And it still is.

(Raining.)

And I would have quite liked not to have had a fit while she was here. Still, it wasn't a 'bad' one - and that's life, isn't it? Rain and falling off your chair. And having VP catch you when you do. (Begin to fall off your chair!)

(Thanks VP.)

(Mega.)

Hmm.

(I'm hoping she'll come back some time. Then we'll be able to have the coffee on the beach we promised her - and as we would have done if it hadn't rained . . . and take her to see the woods-which-I-thought-Ming-had-taken-her-to-except-I've-just-discovered-he-took-her-to-see-his-favourite-road-instead. (Favourite road indeed!)

Why do we not like maths?

Some do. I know that. But most don't. And for those of us who make up that 'most' - the answer seems obvious . . . maths is difficult . . . and, (we say) most of it is irrelevant - we never need it once we've left school . . . except . . . except . . . there are lots of things (difficult and irrelevant) which we a happily do (and with interest) long after we've left school; for the whole of our lives, indeed - so how can our resistance be explained . . . ?

I think, I think it's because there aren't enough boxes in maths. By a box, I mean a context which shows something is complete. And by a 'context', I don't mean a real life one or a useful one . . . but one which bestows the satisfying sensation of having seen something right through to its end. A bit like a crossword. A crossword is irrelevant and useless and doesn't contain all the words in the world - but we feel satisfied when we've filled in the answers . . . and if we don't get them all done today, we will let them simmer in and out of our minds until the last clue falls into place . . . and, if it doesn't, who cares? It's only a game. And because it's a game, we might come back and do another puzzle, another time. But maths . . . well, it seems open ended, far too open ended, it goes on and on for ever and we never seem to come to the end of any of it.

I was unwell for a couple of days in the last week and sat in bed trying to work out how to make three columns on a blog. Html is about as frightening as maths and the page went blizzy in front of my eyes. It simply merged into a blodge. I should have been resting, not sitting up trying to make three columns - but I couldn't stop, I simply couldn't stop until I'd got them.

And the experience was liberating. If I could spend a whole day making a page with three columns and extras when I had absolutely no need for them - and feel, not that I'd wasted my time, nor what an idiot I must be to take have taken so long - but pleased instead that I'd learnt something new - why couldn't I spend a day doing just one algebra question and go to bed happy knowing the hours had been used well? Or working out why a negative multiplied by a negative is a plus . . . . ?

My skin has broken out in a sweat.

I've gone cross eyed.

When the moment comes, when I set aside time to tackle negatives, I won't want anyone to see what I'm doing. Nor will I want them to tell me it's easy. Definitely I won't want that! Because it isn't. (Easy.) If I owe money then borrow twice as much more, then I'm three lots of money in debt, not suddenly and miraculously in credit. (Have you noticed the withering glances of mathematicians if you advance this objection? It's a terrible faux pas.) I managed to fail my maths G.C.S.E. four times - mainly because I was so frightened of numbers my vision went all wrong and I could see only a big, white, emptiness where the page should have been. If I concentrated, I could make the mists clear in little patches and catch glimpses of small groups of equations or triangles. It was like looking through a telescope. How can you pass an exam if you physically can't see the questions?

Sometimes, if I'm trying to work out how to do something on the computer, someone will come by and say 'Oh, you just press this, then this, then this, then . . . there, I've done it for you! See?' Am I pleased? NO! I'd rather spend HOURS trying to work it out for myself, I'd RATHER FAIL than have someone interfere and do it for me! So why don't I chose one difficult box - the multiplication of negatives (instant clammy skin) and work it out for myself? If I got three columns by using html, I reckon I should, given time, be able to multiply negatives and land up with positives.

I've even found a use for three columns. (This blog!)

Maybe I'll find a use for negative numbers.

(Sounds like spinning straw into gold to me.)

This may, or may not, work.

I was fiddling around with gadgets and the looks of things when I came up with the idea of making a window - so people can climb through to a selection of Dorset blogs . . .

. . . not a very wide group of blogs admittedly, not at present anyway - but the blogs written by me and my neighbours, Lucy ((Loose and Leafy and Pictures Just Pictures) and Mary (Hugh and Camellia).

They've got different readerships, this group of blogs, but there is an overlap and a window might be useful for overlappers. And a way in for new readers too.

Then, having decided to make a window, I began to wonder whether I might have an advert on it . . . for people to come to Dorset . . . or buy magazines about Dorset . . . something like that.

I wouldn't have adverts on other blogs - ones that aren't windows. Nor would Lucy or Mary. And all our other blogs will trundle on undisturbed and as usual. But a window is like a shop front - which might have notices about cleaners and gardeners on the glass. You wouldn't expect to have the same little cards stuck on your apples, bananas or books though.

Do you see what I mean?

That's a warning. You might not want to have anything to do with such a place. (You could wear a gas mask, I suppose.) (Or wellies.) (Or a bee-keeper's suit.)

But here it is.

The Third Column

This is (more or less) the same post as the one appearing on Esther's Boring Garden Blog - and all the other elements here are bits and bobs from elsewhere too - but that's the idea - and I stuck them on (as if it's a scrap-book) to make it look like the beginning of something (which it is).

Opinions welcome.

What is the point of the internet if you can't be who you want to be when you are on it? (The internet.)

When I started 'Esther in the Garden' I decided to give myself two Victorian Greenhouses (they were always in my mind) where grow grapes and orchids and pineapples - sustained by the heat generated from a wood-burning stove in an adjoining brick shed and pumped through a complicated system of under-earth pipes in raised beds.

I also gave myself long, lavender-lined walks, a vegetable garden, a sundial and a lovely statue of a naked lady contemplating lilies I don't have because there wasn't room enough left (what with the potting shed and the gardener's cottage, the swing in the pear tree and the wheel-barrow-painting business).

So we've been busy building scenery - of the Ealing Studios / Blazing Saddles variety. Mrs Rustbridger complained. (Of course she complained. She complains about everything.) First she said we were making too much noise. Then she said our pretend Greenhouses block light from her garden. (She lives on our North Side.) "Why couldn't you have used glass?" she wanted to know. "Because painted hardboard windows look more realistic," I told her. "And stop bothering me. I've got enough to worry about already. We haven't a cook, or a maid or a gardener or a gardener's boy. Whatever will VP think? Whatever are we going to do?"

Mrs Rustbridger volunteered to be the cook on condition we dismantle the fake greenhouses before next Friday.

Her grandson will be the gardener's boy. (He's bought braces (of the trouser-holding-up variety) better to look the part.)

Miss Martin's chauffeur will be the gardener.

I will tell VP I've given Mary-Jane a few days off to visit her sick mother. (That's the traditional excuse. No-one accuses one of lying. It's a bit like saying one is not at home - when one is.)

Then there's the house to sort. We've painted the walls (too white, but it's done now) and I'm hoping VP will turn out to be short sighted so she won't notice the paint on the newly cleaned carpet, or the coffee stain on the stairs (where Ming dropped his mug and it bounced down several treads while he was trying to mop up the paint) or the mud everywhere because Worthing is so pleased with his new walking boots that he won't take them off. Ever.

You can't blow bubbles in milk-shake without drinking some first, especially if you want to make the bubbles rise above the rim of the glass.

This is what has happened to our house. The bubbles have risen. We had to do a bit of tidying so we could get to the walls to paint them so we piled everything into the middle of the living room and began to sort. Most of it is still there. We're almost getting used to it. The trouble is, the more we sort, and the more we throw away, the more space is needed by what is left.

This morning, I have been tearing up milk bills from 1997. They all have neat little ticks on them to show they have been paid and dates to show they were paid on time. (Not like the 1998 Wessex Water Bill and final demand which says I was about to be cut off. Can't remember why that happened, or how it can have happened when I pay by direct debit.)

I also came across a 'Messenger and Reminder' magazine from the Bincombe with Broadwey, Upwey and Buckland Ripers Parishes. (Year unknown but in with the milk bills - so there's a clue.)

They (Bincombe, Broadway, Upwey and Buckland Ripers) had been planning to hold a 'Strawberry Tea at Batchfoot' - but it had been called off and crossed out in biro. Imagine having to go through the Bincombe with Broadwey, Upwey and Buckland Ripers 'Messenger and Reminders' magazine to cross the Strawberry Tea at Batchfoot advert out of every copy!

I've been wondering what Victoria and Emma do all day at The Independent Newspaper and Magazine. Now I know!

But the best bit ( in the Bincombe with Broadway . . . . Reminder and . . . ) is the Rector's Letter.
I won't type it all out here - but the first two paragraphs are the best.

Here they are, word for word.

I don't properly follow the next sections but I think it shows that Jesus is not a member of the Dorset Constabulary and the citizens of Broadwey etc. . . . do not want God to be a law enforcement officer (so he isn't) and that Jesus came to set us free from speed restrictions and, in particular, to leave the residents of Buckland Ripers (et. al.) to do anything they like, as long as they do it peaceably and in an un-American way - for if they put their trust in Him, they will be forgiven everything.

I wish Ming hadn't stood in the middle of the garden to swung his paintbrush until every plant was spattered with little white dots.

Or leaned the paint-tray against the ammonite.

* * * * *

I hope a wind doesn't knock down our scenery. The Greenhouses look rather good.

* * * * *

I hope Mrs Rustbridger doesn't get swine flu until after she's been our cook.

* * * * *

If the pretty little white flowers hadn't fallen off our coffee tree I could have pretended they'd been grown by Miss Martin's chauffeur in the Greenhouse and not on the living room window sill.

* * * * *

I'm off to buy a pineapple.

Wish us luck!