A Stag In Active August

August 26, 2024 / fgrtommo / 2 Comments

Retirement in August has felt busy so far. There have been several separate events to enjoy. In between these, I have been walking while listening to political podcasts, tidying our field and garden, visiting the local recycling tip with multiple dumpy bags of green (mainly thistle, bramble and bindweed) waste, and enjoying our local community hub: the village pub.

I visited my Dad and sister in Nottingham for the first time since the end of his innovative and apparently very successful cancer treatment. I’m really proud of him; he has stuck with all the hospital visits, the injections and the infusions and they have not only benefitted him, but furthered cancer research. It was great to catch up with them and, for a change, win at our games of Mahjong.

*^{Dad Ringing The Hospital ‘Ward Bell’ To Celebrate His End Of Treatment}*

The football season has restarted and, during my brief stay in Nottingham, I managed to get to Boston in Lincolnshire to see my dear Forest Green Rovers treat me to a rare, stonking win. After two successive, distressing relegations, we seem to have found our natural level again.

*^{Boston Football Club: Nickname The Pilgrims Because So Many Original Pilgrim Fathers Migrated To The Americas From Boston}*

Whilst in Boston I had time to climb the church tower and take in some aerial views of Boston and the very flat surrounding landscape. The church is large and the tower is impressive. The port and its surrounding sluice gate system was also substantial but is now looking run down. Indeed, much of the town looked as though it needs a face lift.

*^{Views Across Boston, The Port And The Church}*

*^{An Attractive Part Of Boston Next to The River Witham With The Tide In}*

Also in August, Jane and I have visited Bath, dropped in on Second Grandchild in Bristol, hosted Youngest Son (YS) as he has worked his way through his busy month of multiple stag dos, weddings and video shoots, and attended a talk on artistic gardening in Stroud.

Amid all this activity the most unusual event for me was the opportunity to attend part of YS’s own Stag Weekend. That was a lot of fun – even though I opted out of the most boisterous activities and those requiring the heaviest drinking penalties. It was lovely to be invited and great to catch up with old friends and meet a few of YS’s best mates who I didn’t already know.

Middle Son kindly gave up his bed to allow me a relatively comfortable, though rather hungover, sleep in a large tent also shared by Oldest Son; it was my first experience of something resembling camping since YS was at Primary School and a lot more restful than then!

The main purpose of a visit to Bath was to equip YS and myself with light suits for YS’s wedding and for the wedding of one of Jane’s nieces in Italy next month. With that aspect of the trip satisfactorily achieved, I visited The Holburne Museum to see a Henry Moore exhibition.

This was a small exhibition of Henry Moore’s small works. Many of his familiar themes such as mother and child, helmets, family groups, reclining figures in stone, wood and metal were covered in a single room. The breadth was admirable but it took a while to get used to the delicacy of the work having been used to the more massive Henry Moore sculptures I have seen in the past. In truth, only a few of the displays in this exhibition really stood out for me but a couple were lovely and it was worth the visit.

On the way out I popped into a separate exhibition in the Museum by Mr Doodle (aka Sam Cox). He is clearly into fun art and the room completely covered in his ‘doodles’ (see below) certainly raised a smile.

Closer to home we went to a talk on ‘Where Gardening Meets Art’ at the Museum in the Park in Stroud. The Museum has a lovely terraced and walled garden that I hadn’t visited since shortly after it was built and planted several years ago. The sun was shining and the garden looked splendid.

*^{The Walled Garden At Museum In The Park, Stroud}*

The talk itself was preceded by an exhibition of gardening and plant inspired artworks by Cleo Mussi, who’s work we know well, and Fiona Haser Bizony, founder of Electric Daisy Flower Farm. I liked several of Cleo’s mosaics, especially the simpler ones, but we quickly moved outside to the garden in evening sun and a small bar offering locally brewed beer.

*^{Cleo Mussi’s Hands Mosaics At Museum In The Park, Stroud}*

Jane had booked the evening and I didn’t know what to expect from the talk. In the event, it was efficiently introduced and a thoroughly entertaining. The main speaker was Charlotte Molesworth who has a renowned garden in Benendon, Kent. She was terrific. She had a lot of good sense to share and did it very amusingly. Her anecdotes were warm and lovely and she had a great answer to every question. The whole evening exceeded my expectations severalfold.

*^{Charlotte Molesworth Speaking About Where Gardening Meets Art}*

August – and, unfortunately, summer – is now drawing to a close. The final week will be punctuated by further visits to The Hog, our local pub, for its Summer Bank Holiday Hogfest (a beer, music and food festival) and then the monthly quiz. I am also looking forward hugely to Forest Green Rovers’ first home game of the season on the club’s brand-new, hybrid (5% plastic) pitch.

But then my thoughts will turn to our family holiday in Italy prior to Jane’s niece’s wedding in Rome. I can’t wait to see the two grandchildren together amongst our sons and their partners. It is going to be a real treat to have everyone together.

Family Stuff

May 10, 2024 / fgrtommo / Leave a comment

The month leading up to my birthday last weekend was dominated by family events. We visited Eldest Son (ES) and his family in Edinburgh, we have had several visits to, and by, Middle Son (MS) with his fiancée and new baby, and we have had a visit from Youngest Son (YS) and his fiancée. Also, my Dad and my sister were able to visit us and to meet up with the new (great) grandchild; it was amazing to have four generations together.

Our trip to Edinburgh was focused on our most extended period of baby-sitting yet. While ES and his wife spent a few days in Spain attending a wedding in a hotel overlooking incredible coastal cliffs in Ibiza, we did our best to entertain First Grandchild (FG).

The first two days of that were delightful. FG had been fully prepared by his parents for their absence. There was only one time in those first two days when we got a sense that, under his effervescent demeanor, he was having to be brave in doing without them. That was when Jane showed FG a picture on her phone of his Mum enjoying the Spanish sun. I saw his lower lip quiver briefly with regret before he recovered his equilibrium with the familiar request to “lets play”.

As usual, FG loved visiting the Royal Botanic Garden (above), the National Museum of Scotland, the private garden that local residents share access to, cafes selling juice and cake, and pizza at Franca Manca. He slept like a log in between.

Another highlight was taking FG to a birthday party for a little boy of one of his Mum’s friends. This was a pirate themed party and FG had been kitted out with what turned out to be the best costume at the party (courtesy of a £5 purchase on Ebay I believe). FG was easily the youngest at the party and he found it a little overwhelming after a while, but we all had a good time on a lovely sunny day.

*^{First Grandchild As A Jolly Pirate (Without His Splendid Pirate Hat!)}*

Unfortunately, the last day of our baby minding was dominated by FG falling ill. In between his physical sickness he was subdued but seemed to recover. But poor Jane was holding him each of the four times he was sick. She quickly became very acquainted with the washing machine and tumble dryer and we had some extended viewings of the film ‘Madagascar’ while having quiet time with FG on the sofa.

*^{Circus Lane, Edinburgh. It’s A Lovely City We Can Still Envisage Us Living In At Some Point}*

It was only after we had returned home, and heard that his now returned Mum had caught the same bug and was quite ill, that we realised how lucky we had been fortunate enough to ‘dodge that bullet’. Having done so, we look back on the Edinburgh visit with a lot of pleasure and also pride in FG’s resilience in the face of his parents’ absence and then his sickness. Of course, we are his grandparents so we are bound to say it: he is wonderful!

Also wonderful is Second Grandchild (SG). It’s a treat to have the opportunity to have him relatively close by and so see him relatively frequently. Its great too to see how his parents are doting on him despite the challenges of new parenthood (primarily sleep deprivation!) They are coping with those well. Certainly, SG’s smiles suggest he is very happy and we love seeing and holding him.

*^{Son And Dad, Eye Contact and Smiles}*

Youngest Son (YS) popped over to England for a photo shoot and his fiancée joined us for a lovely, long weekend during which they were able to meet SG for the first time. One of YS’s Australian friends, now based in London, was able to join us. He, YS and I spent several hours watching football on the Saturday – first in the pub, then live at Forest Green Rovers (their last game in another miserable season which has seen us relegated for the second time in succession), and then on the telly back at home. Meanwhile, Jane and YS’s fiancée cooked and baked to replenish MS and his partners’ freezer with ready meals and cakes to enable their focus on their new baby. Everyone happy!

*^{Looking Across Buttercups Towards Forest Green Rovers’ The New Lawn Stadium (On The Horizon, On The Right)}*

YS and partner are very busy with work in Belfast but they are also finding time to visit Edinburgh in a month or so. It is so heart-warming to see the brothers together, with their partners, and, now, with nephews to hold and play with. We are lucky that they all get on with each other despite, or perhaps because of, their different characteristics.

We are lucky too that so much of our time can be taken up with looking at videos on WhatsApp that the different branches of the family send us showing their young lives, and with planning of more visits to Bristol, Belfast and Edinburgh to experience all this family stuff first hand. Edinburgh is already planned in for June and we haven’t given up on getting to Belfast again before YS’s September wedding there…….

A Bath Trip and Interesting Fungi

February 16, 2024 / fgrtommo / Leave a comment

As part of our joint New Year Resolution to get out and about more when the sun is shining, Jane and I went to Bath earlier this month. We always enjoy visiting Bath, in part because the architecture reminds us of Edinburgh which we have also come to love, but also in its own right.

*^{One Of The Georgian Crescents Below Sion Hill, Bath}*

Jane always seems to find a treasured, discreet parking spot on Sion Hill. The walk from there to the centre of town takes us past takes us past Georgian terraces and crescents and through big open grassy slopes with broad vistas. It is an early treat on our visits, especially on a sunny day. Then in the city centre, there are the impressive squares and circuses of intact Georgian houses, the river and its bridges, and the Roman Baths and Cathedral, all clad in wonderful local stone.

A highlight of most of our Bath visits is the opportunity to pick up sourdough bread from Landrace bakery in Walcot Street. It is simply our favourite bread. This time we also visited The Fine Cheese Company a few doors along. The service from the French chap behind the counter was a little snooty (perhaps because we enquired about English cheese) but he was very efficient in giving us a taster of the smooth and luscious Old Winchester cheese which we went away with.

Jane had spotted that there was an exhibition of Gwen John’s work on at the The Holburne Museum and, for all the attractions of picking up top quality bread and cheese, seeing that was the prime purpose of our Bath trip. I was only vaguely familiar with Gwen John following a recent conversation with friends in our village who had seen an exhibition of her work in Chichester. They had recommended it and, anyway, I trust Jane on choosing worthwhile exhibitions like this one.

The exhibition proved to be small but interesting. Gwen John was clearly a formidable and influential woman. It seems that her popularity has grown since her death but in life she mixed with, modelled for and inspired a wide range of other artists and produced attractive and innovative paintings. I particularly liked the set of paintings on show called the ‘Convalescent Series’. These are portraits with muted colours with an unusual surface texture apparently produced by the oil paint soaking into a chalky glue mix which caused bubbles and then small perforations in the finish.

*^{‘Woman Seated’; Part Of ‘The Convalescent Series’ by Gwen John}*

When Jane and I met up outside the exhibition room afterwards we both said how much we had enjoyed John’s paintings but, amusingly, we both through that the best painting on show was one that was hung to illustrate her influence on other artists. This was an interior with a single female figure by a Dane, Vilhelm Hammershøi. We both thought it lovely.

^{‘Interior With Writing Table And A Young Woman’ by Vilhelm Hammershøi}

I recall seeing a Hammershøi painting in the Musee D’Orsay in Paris last year when I began to appreciate his work for the first time. I love his understated views of rooms, his grey palette and the ambiguity that stems from not being able to see the faces of the figures in his pictures – or the lack of a figure at all in the case of the painting I saw in Paris.

Alongside the Gwen John exhibition was a small exhibition of rather strange works by Gillian Lowndes. The point of these seemed to be to mix as many different materials as possible so they looked like weird debris dug up from a brownfield industrial site somewhere. The results weren’t uninteresting but I wasn’t moved by them.

*^{Two Of The Works By Gillian Lowndes On Show At The Holburne Museum}*

The Holburne Museum also had a display by Lubaina Himid called Lost Threads. This involved piles and streams of beautiful, brightly coloured Dutch textiles strewn across the floors of the museum rooms and woven between the pillars at the front of the building. Jane and I had been to see a substantial exhibition of her work at Tate Modern a couple of years ago. Like then, while we enjoyed the vibrant colours, we weren’t bowled over by works.

*^{The Holburne Museum Clad With Textiles By Lubiana Himid}*

Having got a dose of culture, we went for lunch at Oak. We had a very tasty lunch of vegetarian small plates. These arrived at a relaxed and, for us, ideal pace – always a pleasant surprise in small plates-oriented restaurants where, too often, things seem to arrive with a timing to suit the chef not the customers.

My life back at home has been largely routine. The weather hasn’t been very conducive to gardening and, while I have recommenced work in the field, there is still a lot to do to ready the vegetable patches for the new season and to plant some pot-bound trees I acquired a couple of years ago.

The weather hasn’t stopped some good local walks. Indeed, between the bouts of rain, we have had some lovely sunny days.

I’ve enjoyed the displays of snowdrops and the growing enthusiasm for the coming Spring being demonstrated by small birds singing their hearts out.

I have also spotted some interesting fungi which seem to be thriving in the mild damp. Just yesterday I saw a great pile of some sort of puff ball mushroom.

*^{Crazy Mound Of Puff Balls Looking Like A Pile of Discarded New Potatoes}*

A little earlier this week I saw, for my first time, a myriad of small bright red fungi growing on felled tree trunks and branches and dotted through a few square yards of undergrowth. These are Scarlet Elf Cap fungi. A friend tells me that it is from these little red cups that the wood elves drink the dew to refresh themselves each morning; nice story and a lovely sight.

While I have taken myself off for leisurely walks or lounged around rather too much, Jane has been very busy organising an exhibition of local artists work as part of the village’s cultural festival (called Horsley Unwrapped). Trying to tie down artists to various deadlines for facts about the work they want to display and any sale prices has been like ‘herding sheep’ at times, but the display boards have arrived and hanging of the work has started. After the exhibition this coming weekend, Jane is suddenly going to have a lot of discretionary time available!

*^{On My Way To Get The Newspaper: Winter Sunrise}*

My only contribution to the festival so far has been supporting Jane with some of the collateral materials for her exhibition. However, next week I am organising a Fun All-Comers Darts evening as part of the Festival. Goodness knows how that will go – I haven’t played darts for a few decades! I’ve bought some darts and am ready to go. More on this next time perhaps….

Football Footnote: Forest Green Rovers, who I support through thick and thin, have just had their first league win since October 2023 following a run of 15 winless league games. Incredibly there is a team worse than us in our Division (English Football League 2) and the win took us off the bottom. This one win has turned hopelessness into absurd levels of hope that we can avoid a consecutive relegation this season. But as someone on the FGR Fans Forum often says, ‘it’s the hope that kills you’. Hope will either burgeon or turn to dust again this coming weekend as we play again the team we beat last October. My fingers are crossed….

A Lull In Proceedings

October 2, 2023 / fgrtommo / Leave a comment

A few weeks ago we were in Ireland and Edinburgh. Later this week we are spending a few days in Belgium. In between we have slowed down into more usual routines and come to terms with the fact that, despite unseasonably warm weather, the trees are starting to turn and Autumn is upon us.

*^{Some Of The Last Big Dahlias From The Garden This Year}*

There is still a lot to do in the garden before closing up for Winter. I’ve made some progress in that I have brought in an excellent harvest of potatoes and onions, have started to pull down the climbing beans and their frames and have collected the wood remaining from some cut trees from out of the field.

*^{Some Of This Year’s Bumper Crop Of Onions, Potatoes and Squash}*

However, I need to weed the currants and leeks, and harvest the squash and Jerusalem artichokes. I also need to dig over all the vegetable beds to give the bindweed and creeping cinquefoil another almost crippling blow before the end of Autumn. I say ‘almost’ since it cannot be eliminated, only managed.

^{Preparing For Winter – Wood Turned Into Wood Store}

A further project is to tidy up the compost heaps which have become very dilapidated. Jane will be upset that I will once again put together a rather improvised set of heaps using old pallets rather than use the purpose-built wood frames that she bought for me years ago. I continue to save those for when we move to our ‘Tin House’ (currently rented out) in Jane’s nearby childhood village of Amberley. The timeframes for that are vague but my short-term solution for the compost heaps will suffice in the meantime; I just need to get my skates on and do it.

*^{My Over-Full, Collapsing Compost Heaps}*

That effort needs to fit in alongside getting a grip on my small allotment in Amberley which I have held onto as another sign of our intention to move to the ‘Tin House’ at some point. Also, we have taken on a mini-project to help Middle Son (MS) and his partner to design and enhance his new garden in Bristol. This was a requested alternative from MS to a more typical birthday present. We really enjoyed delivering our first instalment of help while he cooked us a lovely roast lunch.

A low light of the last few weeks has been watching the steady decline of Forest Green Rovers (FGR) – the football club I support (enthusiastically through often through gritted teeth). Relegation last season following glorious promotion the previous season wasn’t entirely unexpected especially after our now much lauded manager left abruptly for Championship and, more recently, Premiership football. But we are struggling again this season and the disconsolate and disappointing defeat in the last match was very dismaying. What goes up can come down!

*^{FGR At Meadow Lane, Notts County. A Proper Football Stadium}*

On the other hand, a highlight in the last few weeks has been a weekend in Nottingham with my sister and Dad. I saw FGR play Notts County while I was there – we lost again, though only narrowly and a little unluckily – but what was most encouraging was seeing my Dad fighting his way back to the level of activity and health he had earlier this year. For a while this summer he was really struggling with a side-effect of the innovative, and seemingly successful, cancer treatment he has been on. Now that side -effect has been addressed, he has his mental agility and much of his strength back, and his treatment has restarted.

I stayed with my sister in her new house not far from my Dad, but spent the days with at my Dad’s house where we reminisced over tea, lunch and a game of Mahjong. We played with a lovely, intact, bone Mahjong set that has been in the family for ages. The feel of the bricks and the counters that substitute for money is wonderful. Dad was able to demonstrate his powers of mathematics were undiminished as he worked out who owed who and how much after each round. I lost all I had won when we last played back in May last year.

The rest of the month has flown by through a routine combination of the village men’s Talk Club (restarted after a summer break), a morning a week at the Food Bank, local walks solo or with friends, shopping for and then cooking good home food, and evenings of streamed television.

Our current streamed television of choice is Fauda on Netflix. It’s a gripping action series that develops interesting male and female, Israeli and Palestinian characters over four series. We are about to watch the last episode and we shall miss it a lot when it’s over. The last series is partly set in Belgium. I think later this week we will be visiting rather different parts of the country from the vast, labyrinthine housing estates depicted in Fauda!

Fragmented Summer

August 16, 2023 / fgrtommo / 1 Comment

June this year was wonderfully sunny. The vegetables would have appreciated a little more rain but July certainly made up for that. Indeed, July and, so far, August have often felt autumnal and summer has only come in fits and starts. The sunny periods may have been intermittent but maybe that has helped us to appreciate the sun more on the occasions when it has shone on the unusually verdant countryside.

*^{Intermittent Bright Summer Sunshine On My Daily Walks Into Town}*

Our summer has sometimes felt as fragmented as the weather. The lack of any ties to school holidays and, much more recently, my retirement has meant that we don’t tend to book blocks of holiday through the summer months. As a result, we don’t have centrepiece diary commitments to schedule around. Instead, we have moved towards multiple shorter trips including those to our sons in Belfast and Edinburgh, plus a couple of day visits to Nottingham to check on my Dad during a period of ill-health.

^{The Wonderful Variations Of London’s Skylines}

Retirement means flexibility too. I was able a few weeks ago to piggy back, at relatively short notice, onto the back of a visit Jane was making to London to see a friend of hers. We could share the driving a bit and I caught up with an old friend of my own. I also took the opportunity to visit an exhibition of the sort that was part of my routine when we had a flat or sons in London. I miss those exhibition trips a lot. This one was a visit to the rather wonderful White Cube in Bermondsey.

*^{Anselm Kiefer At The White Cube Gallery, Bermondsey}*

I have been to this gallery several times and one of the most memorable visits was to see an exhibition by Anselm Kiefer. I wrote briefly here about that back in January 2020 just before Covid disrupted things. The monumentalism and scale of that exhibition is repeated in his latest works at The White Cube. I loved it and the White Cube spaces were perfect for it!

Kiefer’s works this time were based around the novel by James Joyce called Finnegan’s Wake. The novel is apparently (I’ve not tried to read it) a fractured mix of dream world and grim reality that deploys invented and combined words. The language of the novel is strewn across most of the works on show. While most of the phrases and sentences are nonsensical in this context, they added somehow to the mystery and sense of a dystopia as I moved from room to room.

*^{Detail From Various Anselm Kiefer Works At The White Cube Gallery}*

Goodness knows how the White Cube is funded – the exhibition was, as usual, free – and I fear removal of some of the works will require repolishing of the extensive polished concrete gallery floors. To be honest the huge piles of debris in a couple of the exhibition rooms were, for all their scale, harder to appreciate than the pictures on the walls. These were dense art works including rural scenes that worked for me close up and from observation across the huge rooms.

*^{‘Woman Will Water The Wild World Over’ By Anselm Kiefer}*

Those rooms were linked by a vast corridor stuffed with huge, dusty vitrines and crude floor-to-ceiling shelves full of… well, what were they full of? Just stuff! It was like walking through a museum of detritus but it was strangely compelling and all underlined by the sheer scale of the thing.

Another recent highlight has been a visit to Cambridge where I once – several decades ago – studied. I had not been back for quite a while and the reason this time was the wedding of my Best Man (BM). He lives nearby and we took up an Airbnb (which turned out to be outstanding) in his village and travelled into Cambridge twice: once for the formal registry element of the wedding and then again for a ceremony and reception held in BM’s and my old college, Peterhouse.

^{Our Outstanding Airbnb (Just the Left-Hand Portion Of The Building) From The Grounds}

^{Peterhouse Main Quadrangle and Chapel (Left) And My Old H Staircase In Gisborne Court (Right)}

The whole weekend was a delightful mix of ceremony, catch up with a few old friends and meetings with a number of new acquaintances – both local and international – who were very interesting and easy to talk to. They really helped to make the whole weekend event lovely. The event generated some nostalgia too as the reception dinner was held in the main Peterhouse Dining Hall where, about 50 years ago, I ate college meals every day. I didn’t appreciate the history or the grandeur of the college buildings half as much when I was living there as I did during this fleeting visit.

One other prompt for a less welcome bit of recollection was that Jane, and a few others at the wedding, contracted Covid there. Fortunately, I have avoided it again but it was a reminder that the pandemic was not long ago and that damned virus is still very much around.

During our stay in and around Cambridge, Jane and I went to Kettle’s Yard to see an exhibition of Palestinian embroidery over the last century that Jane had read about. Even someone like me with no real understanding of the intricacies of embroidery could appreciate the delightful patterns and muted colours of the clothing on display in the first room of everyday women’s wear.

*^{Palestinian Embroidery At Kettles Yard; Everyday Wear In The 1920’s}*

The exhibition went on to show more formal and more ornate wear and the way each local area had its distinctive styles and motifs. The exhibition then tracked the changes in Palestine embroidery brought about by history since the Second World War.

*^{Palestinian Embroidery: Formal Wear (1921)}*

First the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947, the subsequent displacement of about 70,000 Palestinians, and then the 1967 Six-Day War all disrupted and then broke much of the cottage industry of embroidery crafting in the Palestinian villages. Enforced movement of Palestinians mixed up the local pockets of unique styling. Materials such as silks from France became unattainable and were replaced by cheaper products. Small handicraft workshops were often replaced by factories. The end results, outside of a few traditional, small-scale operations, became bland and almost garish.

Finally, following and during the Intifadas of the 1980s and 1990s the embroidery became a means of protest. The exhibition showed how the defiance of the Palestinians led them to incorporate the Palestinian flag into their embroidery designs as a symbol of resistance.

The exhibition was an interesting mix of video and clothing, and of art and history.

*^{Palestinian Dress Post Intifada With The Palestinian Flag Embedded In Designs}*

Back at home the advent of the new football season, together with the Women’s Football World Cup, is starting to take up time at Forest Green Rovers’ football stadium and in front of the telly.

*^{Evening Football At Forest Green Rovers – We Lost (Again) But It Was A Nice Sunset}*

Also, we have entertained Eldest Son, his wife and First Grandchild (FG) with a number of relatives who were keen to meet the little one. I had a great time with FG and my phone is full of video of him that Jane and I watch on repeat. Now we are looking forward to entertaining Youngest Son, his partner and some of their (and our) friends from their time in Australia. Then we are off to Ireland for another wedding. For a quietly retired chap like me, summer may feel a bit fragmented but it also feels pretty full!

Seeing Football, Missing Football

September 15, 2022September 15, 2022 / fgrtommo / 2 Comments

To Long-Suffering Wife’s (LSW’s) occasional frustration, I have been careful up to now to ensure that our trips to Edinburgh to see First Grandchild and his parents haven’t clashed with home fixtures for my football club, Forest Green Rovers (FGR). I have a season ticket and, quite apart from my desire (obsession?) to see my team play whenever I reasonably can, I’m the sort of person that wants to get full value from my season ticket investment.

However, I am not going to be able to keep this up since First Grandchild (FG) has a birthday around a weekend when FGR are playing at home. Even football doesn’t take precedence over celebrating the end of his first year with us.

That birthday is in November but I am already going to miss another home game later this week when I am accompanying LSW to her long-weekend college reunion in Buxton, Derbyshire. I regret missing the game but, in truth, it is going to be nice to get away for a change of scene again given that we haven’t had a proper holiday this year.

In any case, I have just been able to engineer seeing an away game at Charlton in London during a trip ostensibly to attend my annual dental check-up and to fix a recently broken tooth. So, I have managed to keep up my support in person at a good number of FGR’s games so far this season.

Unfortunately, following promotion as Champions from English Football League 2 last May, this season in a higher league is a struggle. The scale of the clubs we are playing, the impressiveness of their stadiums and the quality of the football is all much greater than in the past. As a result, positive results have, so far, been hard to come by.

*^{A Minutes Silence For The Queen at Charlton Athletic}*

So, it was great that I was able to see us wobble through to secure a draw and a well-earned point at Charlton Athletic – one of the ‘big’ teams who were once in the English Premier League but who now have to cope with us in English Football League 1 (EFL1). Even better, I was able to meet up with a great Australian friend of Youngest Son (and devoted supporter of FGR) at the game and catch up, and sing along, with him. Based on the performance in our last two games, I remain hopeful that we can consolidate our position in EFL1.

*^{Edinburgh’s Inverleith Park: Picnic Panorama}*

More on my brief London trip another time….. Earlier, our August trip to Edinburgh was, as usual, lovely. It was, of course, great to see how much First Grandchild had developed since the last time we have seen him some 6 weeks or so previously. It was nice too to see how Eldest Son (ES) and his partner have settled into their new flat (including a newly decorated kitchen) and have got FGs sleeping at night more under control.

A major change since visits earlier in the year was that, whereas we used to take FG out in his buggy when it was time for him to sleep, now we take him out between naps to keep him awake. That makes the walks around Edinburgh more interesting for him and us. I can envisage that by the time of our next visit, FG won’t be so content to be in his buggy and will want to try out his embryonic walking skills.

*^{Aerial View Of Part Of The Royal Botanical Gardens, Edinburgh}*

We did our usual trip to, and around, the Royal Botanic Gardens. The gardens are interesting all year around and FG particularly likes the running water and waterfalls in the Rockery. For me, the highlight was the Kitchen Garden in front of the Botanic Cottage which was planted with wild flowers. The mix was varied cleverly throughout the planted space so that, when standing in the middle, the colour palette shifted as one turned around.

FG was much more impressed by our visit to the National Museum of Scotland. I’m going to love taking him here every time I get up to Edinburgh. For a small child, there is so much going on, so many buttons to push and so much movement. At this stage, FG seems more interested in the other children than the exhibits but I can see hours of fun ahead.

*^{National Museum Of Scotland, Edinburgh}*

We also had a lengthy walk to The Meadows to the south of Edinburgh centre. Because the timing of our trip coincided with the Edinburgh Fringe – a gathering over a few weeks of a staggering multitude of performance artists from all over the UK and, indeed, the World – the central streets and cafes were crowded.

The streets were also dominated by piles of rubbish because our visit also coincided with a strike by rubbish clearance workers in Edinburgh that had been going on for over a week. The huge piles of trash everywhere underlined how much rubbish we generate in a typical big city and how dependent we are on public services to hide the issue of rubbish disposal from our day to day lives.

Although the overflowing rubbish bins were not a great advertisement for Edinburgh (the workers dispute is now resolved), the city remains a great attraction for LSW and I. The architecture in the centre is stunning, the galleries and museums are befitting of a capital city, the area ES and his partner live in is close to interesting shops, and even the playgrounds we took FG to seemed better appointed but more accessible than average.

We are both looking forward to our November birthday party visit hugely – even though I will miss the delights of watching Forest Green Rovers play live!

A Pensionable Age

May 13, 2022 / fgrtommo / 3 Comments

It was my birthday last week and I am now, officially, a pensioner. I can’t wait to get my bus pass and try it out!

I had an absolutely wonderful birthday week and, for the first time in what might be decades, I spent my actual birthday with both my Dad and my sister who has her birthday just the day before mine. She is staying with my Dad and so I popped up to Nottingham to see them both on the way to see Forest Green Rovers’ last, critical game of the season in Mansfield, and then on to Edinburgh.

The weather in Nottingham was kind enough to enable some pleasant local walks but the highlight of my stay – apart perhaps from our joint birthday meal out at a local restaurant – was an evening playing Mahjong.

My Dad (and now my sister) has inherited a fine and thankfully complete bone and hand painted Mahjong set which my Grandad brought from India when he returned to England. The game is a delicate balance of luck and skill but the pleasure really comes from the handling of the bone bricks and counters. Playing again as a family was such fun although we all missed the fourth hand in the game – Mum.

*^{Three-Player Mahjong; My Winning Hand (Hehe!)}*

Of course the next highlight was Forest Green Rovers’ game at Mansfield. We needed to achieve a better result on the day than Exeter City (who were playing at home in Exeter) to win the English Football League Division 2 Championship. We came from behind twice against Mansfield with two fine goals right in front of us to gain a draw. Then, a minute after our result, we heard that Exeter had lost; we are Champions! Joy was unconfined on and off the pitch!

I had to leave those celebrations early and quickly to get my train north to Edinburgh. I arrived just before midnight in the midst of First Grandchild’s (FG’s) sleep training. I was quiet and careful not to disrupt the discipline of feeding him at fixed times and of forcing him to settle himself when waking during the night. FG’s progress during my few days in Edinburgh was transformational but not entirely linear – nor will it be continuous going forward. But the direction of travel is extremely positive and, for Eldest Son and, especially, his partner, the huge reduction in FG’s demands during evenings and the night is already life changing for them (and FG).

*^{Big Beach And Big Sky: Portobello, Edinburgh}*

Seeing FG again was a real treat and I had such a great time in Edinburgh again. I visited the Royal Botanic Gardens once more (with a sleeping FG). I am now familiar with the gardens but, of course, it is now Spring so everything looks different – and even more interesting – than it did during my last visit. The last of the tulips are out and the rhododendrons are looking gorgeous. The trees are freshly in leaf and the birds are super-active. Fortunately, FG slumbered throughout.

*^{Royal Botanical Gardens: Tulips In The Demonstration Garden}*

It is at this time of the year that one can see that, indeed, the Botanical Garden in Edinburgh has the largest collection of rhododendrons in the world. There is such a variety on show and now is peak flowering time. A small but interesting exhibition in Inverleith House set out the characteristics of rhododendrons, their world distribution, their history in gardening, and the challenges to indigenous plant-life some varieties have caused as they have escaped into the wilds of the northern hemisphere, including Scotland.

*^{Edinburgh Royal Botanical Gardens: Fresh Leafed Trees And Flowering Rhododendrons}*

I also went to a superb exhibition of Barbara Hepworth’s work at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. It was a straightforward retrospective but, I thought, the pieces on show were not only excellent illustrations of the progression her art took through her life but were, in several cases, just astonishingly good. I loved the exhibition.

*^{Barbara Hepworth At The Scottish National Gallery Of Modern Art}*

In part, as I have noted during previous visits to Edinburgh galleries, my pleasure was heightened by the fact that there were no crowds vying for views of the work on show. Exhibitions in London may be more high profile but they can also attract crowds that can detract from the show. Being another capital and highly cultural city, Edinburgh can attract big names and marvellous works but without the huge audiences – at least, outside of Edinburgh Festival timings.

*^{More Hepworth At The Scottish National Gallery Of Modern Art}*

My final cultural exploit in Edinburgh was to see the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. The big ‘wow!’ here is the Great Hall of the building itself. As one walks into the building for the first time, it is a jaw-droppingly beautiful space.

*^{The Great Hall At The Scottish National Portrait Gallery}*

The art on show is, predictably, almost exclusively portraiture. I can only take so much of that and I may have overdone it as the chronologically organised galleries became a bit of a blur after a while.

*^{The Library At The Scottish National Portrait Gallery}*

There was however, a mixed but, overall, interesting exhibition on the Scottish census. This included a piece of a project by Kieron Dodds to photograph ginger-haired people. These tend to be in distinct geographic pockets around the world – apparently, for example, 13% of people in Scotland are have ginger coloured hair and there are distinct preponderances of ginger colouring in parts of the Caribbean and Russia. The project felt relevant given that FG’s current hair colour is also a little ginger.

Then it was back to London to carry out a chore or two in the Barbican flat prior to sale (we hope). I saw The Northman in a cinema – my first cinema visit for a long while. It was worth seeing on the big screen if only for the amazing Icelandic scenery but, apart from one twist exquisitely delivered by Nicole Kidman, it was, for me, no more than a bit of moderately entertaining, macho-violent, Nordic swashbuckling.

I capped off birthday week with breakfast with Middle Son – always a treat to get an update on his shifting plans. Then home to get my bus pass application in……

Big Month and Bacon

May 2, 2022 / fgrtommo / 1 Comment

April 2022 was a truly memorable month. Eldest Son (ES) and his partner (plus First Grandchild) bought a flat – the first of our sons to become a home owner. Also (and I’m afraid ES, at least as significantly) Forest Green Rovers were promoted to English Football League Division 1 (EFL1)!

I have supported Forest Green Rovers Football Club since the family moved to Gloucestershire almost 25 years ago. I was finding it increasingly fraught and onerous to take our boys the 70 miles there and back to my boyhood club of Reading. I wanted them to like football and have the opportunity to watch it live and so I turned to the ‘biggest’ local Club: Forest Green Rovers.

When my support started, the Club had just been promoted to the National Conference League (the fifth tier in England) and offered a poorly attended, but viscerally intimate, version of semi-professional and then fully professional football. I watched the football while the boys messed about one the terraces with each other and with Lego.

The Club were perennial underdogs at that time. However, the Club was transformed progressively following investment from green energy industrialist Dale Vince in 2010. Dale uses the Club to promote his green and vegan values – we are reportedly the ‘greenest’ football club in the world – but has also applied finance, ambition and vision to the Club. Promotion to EFL2 followed via the playoffs and a truly remarkable day at Wembley. Now, just 5 years later, we are promoted again to EFL1. Next year will be very difficult but it has been a wonderful journey for me and all the other fans of the Club.

*^{After A Win Versus Oldham Athletic Which Virtually Guaranteed Promotion}*

Unfortunately we are likely to just miss out on finishing top of EFL2 following a relatively poor run of recent results. But one chance remains if we can win our last game at Mansfield next weekend. In a slightly crazy itinerary, I am going to that game via my Dad in Nottingham and then onwards to Edinburgh to see ES’s new flat. The start of another memorable month perhaps…..

April was not solely dominated by football. I also attended an alumni event in London with people who were exact or approximate contemporaries during my first 2-3 years of work way back in the 1970s. It was a great to catch up and also an opportunity to tidy our Barbican flat ready for sale and to see a London exhibition.

I chose to visit the Francis Bacon, Man and Beast Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. It’s hard to say I ‘like’ Bacon’s art since it is so menacing and challenging but I do enjoy seeing it and admire it hugely. I had last seen an exhibition of his work almost three years ago at the Gagosian Gallery in London. That had highlighted Bacon’s interest in animals and the new exhibition at The Royal Academy followed that wildlife and animal theme.

In practice, some of the work on show was only loosely linked to his fascination with wildlife and the parallels between wild animals and humans (much of which seems to have stemmed from his early life as a horse-breeders son). There were a number of works that one almost expects to see at a Bacon exhibition and the links between these to apes, bulls, birds (but never horses) sometimes seemed tenuous.

*^{Royal Academy Exhibition: Typical Images By Francis Bacon (Head VI, Figure Study II) And, More Unusual ‘Landscape Near Malabata’ (Bottom Right)}*

Nonetheless, it was an excellent exhibition that told a fascinating life story and that was well worth seeing. I found the triptych’s at the end of the exhibition particularly daunting but impressive.

*^{Royal Academy Exhibition of Francis Bacon Triptychs}*

I was lucky too that I was able to attend as the exhibition opened when it wasn’t too crowded. That enabled time and space to take in all the skewed wildness and menace in some of Bacon’s best work.

*^{‘Two Studies From The Human Body’ By Francis Bacon – Probably My Favourite Painting In This Royal Academy Exhibition}*

Back home, we had a very family oriented Easter with Youngest Son, his partner and pretty much all of Long-Suffering Wife’s (LSW’s) close relatives. The weather was kind enough to enable us to spill outside for a lot of welcome catch-ups with LSW’s nieces and nephews. We hadn’t seen YS since Christmas so it was just great to see him and his partner over the long weekend too. We must plan another trip to Belfast……

*^{One Of The Signs That Spring Is Here: The Annual ‘Amberley Cow Hunt’ – ‘Mootallica’ and ‘Calf Awake’. Two Of Over 30 Displays}*

Spring hasn’t fully warmed up yet but gardening has started in earnest – I can tell from the muscle aches and the good nights’ sleep. Preparing the ground for vegetables at this time of year by digging it over and clearing weeds is one of my favourite tasks; there is no pressure yet to protect stuff from deer, voles, mice and badgers or to actually produce any vegetables yet. It’s just good old physical work and I don’t have so many vegetable beds that I need to overdo any exertions.

*^{‘Everest’ Crab Apple and Camassia In Our Garden}*

It’s is lovely and lucky to be doing that gardening in such a pretty and relatively untroubled part of the World.

*^{The Cotswold Countryside Appears To Be Supporting Ukraine}*

Overstepping The Mark To Normality?

October 29, 2021October 29, 2021 / fgrtommo / Leave a comment

Over the last couple of weeks I have done a number of things that have pushed my risk of catching Covid 19. I haven’t caught it – presumably thanks to being double vaccinated – but have felt in jeopardy on a few occasions. With the exception of our planned trips to Scotland (lockdown restrictions permitting) when Eldest Son and his fiancés’ baby arrives and then for Christmas, I plan to reduce my exposure to the pandemic a bit in the next few weeks.

For the first time since the pandemic struck, Long-suffering Wife (LSW) and I went to a large indoor event. We attended two very interesting talks at the Cheltenham Literary Festival along with a few hundred others who were mostly masked and who were, by and large of the age that would have been double vaccinated. Any feeling of risk of contagion was quickly overtaken by my interest in what was being said.

*Feargal Cochrane And Patrick McGuire Discussing Northern Ireland At The Cheltenham Literary Festival*

The first talk was about the Labour Party and whether it has any chance of winning an election any time soon. The conclusion between three Labour party sympathisers seemed to be a resounding ‘no’ but the reasons and the possible deflections to that verdict were well set out in arguments that seemed to spill new thoughts and ideas every few seconds.

The second talk concerned the recent history of Northern Ireland. This is of particular interest because Youngest Son (YS) and his Belfast-born partner are now making their careers and lives in Northern Ireland. Having visited a couple of times, we love the country and want it to succeed. The risks to that success are rooted in history there, recent disinterest in Westminster, and the touch-paper lit by Brexit. It was a fascinating talk and increased my wish that the current difficulties around the new Northern Ireland Protocol agreement with the European Union can be resolved soon and relatively painlessly.

Then, last week, I travelled up to London. I hunkered down in a corner on the train up and then walked across London to our flat. On the way I visited the new Marble Arch Mound. The Mound and the view from it was a lot less impressive than the scaffolding on which it is built but the light show inside was a nice bonus.

*One Of The Lightshow Exhibits (Left) Mirroring The Scaffolding Underpinning The Mound Itself*

The main purpose of my London trip was to visit my dentist there for a check-up and hygienist appointment that had been postponed several times over the last year due to the pandemic. The Covid protocols in the dental surgery made me feel very safe and I got away with just a couple of bloodied gums and some new dental hygiene advice.

I felt less safe on the tube to and from a football match (it wasn’t quite coincidence that my football team – table topping Forest Green Rovers – were playing at Leyton Orient the day after my dental appointment!). Despite guidance that masks should be worn, only a minority did so. Fortunately I only needed to be on the tube for four stops each way.

At the match itself, masks were completely absent but the excitement of the football always swamps any feelings I have of Covid risk during games.

*Celebrating Shared Spoils After A Tight Game (Nice Orient Mascots!)*

The visit to London was a lovely break. I visited an unusual and stimulating exhibition by Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama at the White Cube gallery in Bermondsey. His art there incorporated old maps (which I love), ideas about colonialism and the story of his renovation of a bat infested grain silo complex. The White Cube is a wonderful space and it’s free to visit.

*Variety Of Ibrahim Mahama’s Work At The White Cube Gallery, Bermondsey*

*Ibrahim Mahama’s ‘Capital Corpses’ – 100 Rusty Sewing Machines That Bash Away On Vintage Desks (Its Quite a Noise!)*

I also got to see Middle Son (MS) and his partner at the football match but also for dinner and lunch. It was great to catch up with what they are up to. Dinner at Bottega Prelibato was excellent and felt pretty safe.

However, it was during that dinner that I decided that I would forgo another planned London trip the following week during which I was scheduled to see the band Tourist with MS. The idea of being in a cavernous, enclosed space with several bouncing and singing, young and partially vaccinated people felt like an overstepping of the Covid risks. MS and his partner were able to use the tickets and I’m left with regret but well-being.

Other safe events were a visit by YS and his mate on their way to a holiday in Wales and a simultaneous visit by a couple who have been decades-long friends from London. All had gone beyond the call of duty by having recent lateral flow tests – something I need to get in the habit of doing – before visiting us. It was an extremely convivial weekend full of chats, walks, good food and a local art exhibition by a West Country chap called Stuart Voaden. His day was made too by the fact that our friends purchased some of his work. We all had fun.

*Stuart Voaden’s Exhibition At The Three Stories, Nailsworth*

What felt less safe – although it was fun too – was a visit to the local pub last week. For a few weeks now, since the weather got colder, I have been drinking inside rather than in the pub garden. Even during the busy recent Quiz Night the environment felt relatively Covid-free. However, the ‘Jam Night’ last week was a night of full blown sing songs and, as I left after a few noisy beers, I wondered if that had been my peak risk of infection during the last few weeks. I’m going to go to the pub on quieter nights for a while.

Everyone has a different feel for the balance of risk in relation to Covid. I know that I’m lucky that I can choose how much risk I take. The last few weeks have been interesting in helping me determine what is and what is not ok for me in advance of my booster jab and, one hopes, a final decline in Covid cases.

Postscript: Just one more shout out for our Café-au-Lait dahlias which have given me so much pleasure as cut blooms over the last few months. They will continue for a little while yet until they are blasted by the first frost.

Also, I am pleased that my limited range of vegetable harvest has been decent again this year. I can’t grow a lot of things since I struggle to protect them from mammals both large (deer, badgers) and small (voles, mice). However, some basic fencing and conservative plant choices have meant we have plenty of squash, chard, beetroot, onions and potatoes stored in the old stables as we enter winter.

*Home Grown Veg! The Crown Prince Squash (Top Right And 1 of 5) Is A Whopping Stone In Weight*

A Surprise Test Event

September 25, 2020September 25, 2020 / fgrtommo / Leave a comment

The undoubted highlight in what has been a further two weeks of Covid-19 quietude was a surprise test event held at Forest Green Rovers Football Club (FGR) – my team! Test events to ‘test’ the efficacy of running sporting events that are open to the public during the pandemic have been scheduled across several sports for some weeks. Because of the latest surge in infections many have been cancelled but apparently FGR were asked, at short notice, whether they wanted to hold one. They obliged by inviting all their season ticket holders to take part.

Once I knew that my allocated, socially-distanced seat in the stand wouldn’t be in any potential driving rain, I jumped at the chance. In the event, it was a sunny day. The attractive, hilly walk to the ground felt like old times, and the whole occasion was a very exciting break from Covid-19 routines.

There were socially distanced queues for temperature checks and then to get into the stadium. The imposition of face masks muffled my cheers of team loyalty and those of the other 500 supporters. But, not only did was event an emotional highlight, it felt safe.

The game itself was one FGR should have won. However, following two players being sent off (the opposition), a missed penalty (us) and a scorching last-minute-of-injury-time equaliser (us), we had to be content with an eventful and dramatic draw.

*FGR vs Bradford City; The Only Professional Game I Will See Kick Off Live This Season?*

Unfortunately, the increasing progress of the Covid-19 infection rate means that this event is likely to have been a one-off. Further attendance of live FGR games feels a long way away again. But I feel lucky that I had a brief reminder of the visceral pleasure of live football in a stadium. (And we didn’t lose!)

As another highlight, Long Suffering Wife’s (LSW’s) mother took us out for a very pleasant lunch (only our second restaurant lunch in 6 months) at The Potting Shed. We also walked to the relatively new Wild Carrot Cafe on the very rural edge of the Parish and have made a few visits to our local and increasingly pandemic restriction-bound local pub.

Otherwise, waking life has been a merry-go-round of walks, day-to-day shopping, meals and catch up television. Outlander (just Series 1 so far) has been our latest TV box set plough-through. That was very watchable except for the rape and torture scenes during which I tended to go off to make my warming evening drink!

There have been a few little frissons of excitement courtesy of nature. I saw my first lizard (other than slow worms) in the garden. We also had a huge dragonfly perch briefly on our garden table. The friendly pheasant is back.

Indeed, the garden continues to be a bountiful pleasure with masses of chard, huge but tasty beetroot, courgettes (of course) and masses of wonderful dahlias from two plants that have survived the cold of the last two winters.

*They Just Keep On Coming: ‘Cafe Au Lait’ Dahlias*

The walled garden we had built three years ago is still laced with lots of white, purple and pink flowers among the tall grasses and shrubs.

Meanwhile, achingly slow progress is being made on a new garden behind and above the house. LSW loves a project and, when the builders have finally completed the terracing and walling, there will be loads of work for us to do to clear unwanted plants (bind weed and hypericum is rife, is hard to eradicate and both LSW and I hate it) and renew the area with new ones.

We are so lucky to have the space to be able to enjoy a garden and enough cash to be able to remodel it. The garden has been such a boon during these weird, pandemic times. It’s such a shame though, that this weirdness will continue, as most of us feared, into autumn, winter and beyond. I look forward to my next sporting test event – whenever that may be – as a sign that these weird times may be ending. Stay safe, all.

My Retirement Journey

I've Retired! What Next?

Forest Green Rovers