Willy Poole www.willypoole.com

NEWCASTLE JOURNAL 28.4.05

So, some of you may ask, how was Normandy? It was very nice, thank you. We based ourselves at Carenton and stayed in the Station Hotel. Most Station Hotels in this country have gone downhill with a mighty woosh. This one was clean and spare with excellent beds and a superb restaurant. A double room cost us c. £ 60 per night inc food and wine. We set out to explore the Cotentin Peninsular. The hire car was broken down, so the garagist lent us the works car, which was covered in advertisements, but at 20 quid per day, one could hardly complain. The Cotentin is very pretty country and much of it reminded me of Cornwall – small fields with high banks, which meant in 1944 that every field was a killing field – ask any of the old men who landed there about ‘the Bocage’. We also went and looked at the American beeches, Utah and Omaha. Between them a knob sticks out called the Cap du Hoc. The Germans had massive batteries there which could enfilade both beaches. They thought that the sheer cliffs of the Cap made it impossible for any infantry assault, but the US Rangers did it. They climbed and cleared the Cap, but of the 225 men who started the assault, only 96 remained standing when the Colonel signalled ‘Mission Accomplished’. Standing there on a bright spring day, heavy with the scent of gorse, it is impossible to imagine what if must have been like in June 1944. It is best just to stand quietly and take your cap off, in memory of all the brave men who fought and died there. God rest their souls. We dined one night with some very nice Americans, one a high powered attorney and the other a doctor who specialised in the use of venom in medicine. The attorney’s father had been a paratrooper, who had been killed on D + 5. It was of interest that both men hated Bush’nBlair, both chain smoked and drank deep – there is life in America yet.

Normandy is famed for delicious cider and apple brandy (Calvados). These mean apples. You may remember that DEFRA has declared that all apple orchards must be ripped out for the land to receive the new subsides – an order from Brussels, it says. I asked the Patron in a little bar that we frequented how the Normans would get on with this. He was puzzled. The Normans knew it not. He did say that something similar had happened 20 years ago, but that now Brussels was paying for the planting of new apple trees. We were puzzled. I mean, it cannot be that DEFRA has got it wrong again, can it? Surely not - not our own lovely DEFRA.

The Normans are the most charming and helpful people. Very often we got lost in the network of tiny lanes. People were most helpful in giving us full and somewhat complicated directions. These got us even more lost. Eventually I came to the conclusion that, for the French, knowing the exact way, is like their driving – a matter of machismo. No Frenchman wants to admit that they do not know the way to anywhere and rather than displease you, they will give you the directions to somewhere that they think you ought to want to go to. It all makes for conversation.

Yes, we liked Normandy, but we shall not go to live there – there is no hunting.

I was glad to see that the lambs had come on well since we had left home. They are not my lambs, but as an agistor, it is my duty to run an eye over them. There is nothing nicer than watching lambs soaking up the sun. This reminds me. It is time for my annual plea to walkers in the hills. The hill lambing is upon us. In your wanderings you may well come across an apparently lone lamb lying about. Kind people that you are, you may well assume that it is lost and be tempted to carry it to the nearest steading. There you may find that the Herd is less than welcoming. The point is that the lost and lonely lamb is neither lost nor neglected – its mother left it where it was and will return to it after a spot of breakfast. By removing it you will have created a frantic mother vainly searching for her lamb and a frantic and exhausted Herd who will now have to search hundreds of acres of hill trying to find a ewe searching for her lost (as it will be by then) lamb. Your description of place (“Underneath a gorse bush on that lumpy hill”) will not help. Yes, I know that you meant well, but…

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NEWCASTLE JOURNAL 21.4.05

By the time that you read this, we shall be in Normandy – just a recce, you understand, but as they told you in the Army – ‘time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted’. Several kind people have asked me why we should think of going to France? I can give an answer in one word – space. There is still a lot of space, and especially rural space, in France. 25 years ago, there was still space in Northumberland, but, over the time that I have lived here, it has been gradually whittled away and I cannot see any chance of that changing. The basic problem in this country is that there are just too many people and it is the old thing about trying to fit a quart into a pint pot. This impossibility is the cause of most of the troubles in England. Any stockman will tell you that, if you keep any group of animals in unnaturally crowded and boring conditions, they will develop unnatural tendencies – as it might be feather pecking amongst hens and tail biting amongst intensively kept pigs. Any stockman running his eye over England in the New Millennium can see that most of the human troubles that now beset this unhappy country are rooted in Stress caused by overcrowding. We are becoming a ‘battery nation’ and no good will come of it. I cannot see any solution to this problem, that does not involve ‘nuking’ the main urban population centres, or the arrival of some fell disease like the ‘Black Death’ which wiped out half the population of England in the Middle Ages. I do not feel that either of these options would be acceptable to the Great British Public. So it is my intention to do my bit to ease the problem by making a bit of space that someone else may expand into. Whoever they may be, I wish them well.

What about the French then? Is a question that I am often asked. Well what about them? They are just…French and they are immensely proud of that fact. All I can tell you is that over the years, I have spent some time in France and have found the people immensely welcoming and friendly, always provided that you remember that it is their country and you should take the trouble to try and fit in with them and their ways.

But they don’t like the English? I have never met any anti – English feelings except on one occasion. I was in a profoundly rural part of France where the ‘last war’ is still the ‘Hundred Years War’ (13 something to 14 something – Crecy and all that) which you may find it hard to credit, but it is so. And there is no doubt that the English archers did behave rather badly.

A friend of mine was in a bar having a quiet drink, when a nearby Frenchman rounded on him and said (in French) – ‘The Prince of Wales burned my farm.’ Then the French man walked out leaving the Englishman more than a little perplexed – I mean surely Prince Charles wouldn’t… would he? The Patron was laughing quietly behind the bar and explained –‘He is talking about the Black Prince’. I had a somewhat similar experience when, at lunch, I sat next to a very old lady who did not speak until she rounded on me and said – ‘The English burned Joan of Arc’ (quite true) I summoned my rather limited French and said – ‘Yes but the French brought the firewood’, (also true). The old lady did not speak to me again. Rural memories run deep and long and never, never talk about the Hitler War – the scars also run deep and long.

There are the remains of an old settlement up on the hill top, which always intrigues me. It must have been a substantial place in the Middle Ages – you can still see the stone walls. No one knows why it came to be deserted, but I suspect that it might have been the Plague. Beyond the old settlement is the bog. Now that is a really creepy place. It is covered in with ancient Scots pines that turn the bog into twilight no matter how bright the day outside. To walk through it, you have to track your way between deep pits that are full of green scummed water. The pits must be man made, but to what purpose I wonder. No birds sing in this twilight world and it has an indefinable sense of menace. I cannot but think that something nasty must have happened there. They say that every happening leaves a finger print on time. I shall never know what it was, but what I do know is that I do not like going in there and I am always glad to emerge into the daylight again.

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NEWCASTLE JOURNAL - 14.4.05

Where has bloody spring, bloody well gone, eh? Of course that is a stupid thing to ask in Northumberland. I still, in my heart, yearn for the gentle springs of my Cornish childhood, but, very likely, they have gone the way of many things that I remember fondly – with old age comes a certain amount of knowledge and with knowledge one is certain to accrue some bitterness and cynicism. I should have learned better about spring after c. quarter of a century in Northumberland. I was warned when I moved here that the Northumbrian climate means 3 months of winter and 9 months of bad weather. April can sometimes produce a short approximation of fine weather, but it is like fairy gold – touch it and it turns to ashes. Some time in April, it will come a ‘lambing storm’. There is one that particularly sticks in my mind. It was just about this time in April. On the Friday morning I was working in the lambing pens in stripped shirt. We put the first lot of ewes and lambs out into the Home Field to soak up the warm spring sunshine. Just about tea time there came a sudden blow out of the N.West. By mid evening the sky had turned black; the wind turned to a scream and drove a stinging blast of horizontal sleet before it. The temperature fell like the proverbial stone. At 10 pm the wife and I went out with torches and drove all the ewes and lambs back into the shed. They were, of course, all mixed up, but at least they were under cover. This was just as well, as the storm howled and roared all through the night. We had a lot of mothering –up to do in the morning, but we did not actually lose a lamb. Not like some poor chap down by the coast who went out the next morning and piled 150 pathetic little corpses into the link box on the tractor. That is spring in Northumberland and if you don’t like it then move south, learn to drink lager and go shopping with the wife.

I was rather amazed by the Bishop (Salisbury, I think) who suggested that Prince Charles should apologize to Brigadier Parker – Bowles for nicking his wife. Apart from the fact that the good Brigadier would be profoundly embarrassed by the idea that anyone should have to apologise for adultery, the good Bishop seems to have missed out on the idea that caused the founding of the Church of England and its split from Rome. The Church of England was founded on adultery. Henry V111 wanted to get rid of wife No1 (I think, I always get rather muddled over Henry’s wives) cut off her head and marry his mistress. The Church of Rome would not play, so Henry said – ‘Soddit – I’m the King – I’ll start my own church then and rob all the monasteries. If I get any stroppy Bishops, I’ll roast ‘em’. So I think that Sarum should think again. He should remember what his church stands for and think on. Not that I believe him to be in any danger of incineration. Most of the modern Anglican clergy are so wet they wouldn’t burn anyway.

There is a roadside van where I sometimes stop for a bacon butty and a mug of tea. I always drink black tea, but the nice van man tells me that after a visit from the Trading Standards people he is no longer allowed to offer ‘Black Tea’ or ‘Black Coffee’ it has to be ‘Tea / Coffee without milk’. As you will know, I am no great admirer of PC. I have always had the feeling that one day the whole thing will become just so ridiculous that it will disappear up itself and implode – I do hope so. I have always understood that our dark complected cousins were ‘proud to be black’ – not that the colour of a person’s skin makes any difference. I mean they can hardly be called ‘persons without milk’. My son is getting married next month and his very charming bride to be comes from the village of ‘Black Boys’ in Sussex. The name comes from the fact that it used to be a centre for charcoal burning, but surely it cannot be allowed to maintain in these days of enlightenment – it is both racist and sexist – let us change it to – ‘The Village of Young Persons of Undefined Colour and / or Gender’ - pretty snappy name that. Now I am in the groove we must do something about ‘Snow White and the 7 Dwarves’. How about ‘Milk Coloured Female Person and the 7 Persons Of Restricted Growth’? we can shorten it to ‘Percil and the Porgs’. Look don’t blame me, I didn’t start it.

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NEWCASTLE JOURNAL - 7.4.05

I went for one of my long hill walks. This took me along a ridge that looks across the Breamish Valley. It was a beautiful Spring day (and about time too). The sun shone – there was a refreshing S West breeze which cooled my sweaty brow. It is a long hard lead up to this ridge and I managed it without breaking breath, something that I could not have done a year since. My new regime has done me a power of good and I have reverted to the same waist measurement that I had in 1990. People ask me what diet I am on – there are so many – Atkins, Hay, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all. They are all a waste of space – the only long term answer is too change your eating habits and to stoke fewer calories than you burn. You lose weight slowly over a long period, which gives your body time to adjust and to take plenty of exercise. The result is good for both mind and body and gets you to the top of the ridge without thinking that you are about to die. The view from the top was worth having a pause for and anyway I had to wait for Pip who had put up a hare and had disappeared into the wild blue yonder. I knew that he would come back in good time and that I would not be cross with him, even if he was doing something illegal – bad laws are meant to be broken and it is no more possible to stop a dog following his instinct to hunt anymore than it is possible to suppress mine own – what’s bred in the bone comes out in the blood. I had a wonderful view across the valley and as I sat and puffed my pipe the view conjured up a host of memories of great hunting days in the past. I was also able to watch and wonder at all the burgeoning signs of Spring. I heard the first wild whistle of the curlew – one of my favourite birds. I could watch the amazing aerobatics of the peewits and the larks in their jerky ascent. It was a moment of peace, until I felt a wet nose on the back of my neck – Pip was back. I rose somewhat stiffly from the bull snout and we ambled on together along a sheep trod.

Walking is a good time for the thinking and I thought of many things. I thought about the coming election and the distinct possibility that NuLab might be re-elected. There has not been a more corrupt government than this one since the time of Walpole. Should the Great British Public give it another ticket for 5 years, it should accept that NuLab will regard as a mandate to take the country into Europe and an even greater stew of corruption. Most NuLab MPs long for this. Their faces glow and their palms sweat at the thought of being able to stick their noses into the Euro-trough (all those lovely exes and pensions). ‘Ok’ some may say –‘but what about you then? You’re thinking of moving into this corrupt Europe’. That is very true. But the cynical French have always accepted that all politicians are corrupt. They accept that their Pols will sign up for every scrap of EU nonsense; they just do not expect them to try and actually screw them with bits of totally useless and meaningless Euroism. The French Pols know that if they tried to do this, there would strikes and riots – cars would be burned and cobble stones ripped up. Our government thinks that it couldn’t happen here, but ‘It might now, Michael, so it might’. This government is playing with fire and it just might get singed.

At this time of year, the marshy end of the pond is usually a heaving, croaking mass of frogs and if you don’t know what they might be doing, please ask your father. This year there has been minimal activity and very little frog spawn as a result. I have no idea why this should be. 3 years ago, there were so many that their activities spread out onto the pond side track. However on the plus side the Captain (he was house sitting whilst we were in France) found 8 toads and a newt in the garage. I am excited about the newt. Many years ago the Coal Board presented mw with a jar full of newts, which I tipped out into the pond. I have not seen hide nor hair (not that newts have hair, but you know what I mean) of them since, but I hope that the garaged newt indicates that they are alive and well and breeding – I rather like newts.

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