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Pigeon in a hole - St Botoplph's Priory, Colchester - established 1095

Day Three at Mersea. Yesterday - Day Two - we drove over The Strood and onwards to Colchester which proudly boasts that it is England's oldest town. And they are probably right as The Romans established a major garrison there between AD43 and AD50. 

We parked near St Bodolph's Priory, the oldest Augustinian priory in England and then we visited the Minories Arts Centre where we chatted with the friendly director before heading into Castle Park. This is where some of Colchester's oldest architectural treasures may be found - including the Norman castle, a Roman wall and the foundations of a Saxon church. I also spotted some fine swans on the boating lake.

Then we wandered around the shopping streets before heading back to the Minories for lunch.

Back on Mersea Island, we headed for the hammerhead jetty and soon upon a whim we paid for a short harbour cruise that took us around The Packing Shed Marsh Island where oyster fishermen once prepared barrels of  local oysters for transport to London and beyond. Later, Shirley drove me over to the hamlet of East Mersea so that I could undertake a five mile walk along the coast and back to West Mersea, reappearing at our apartment just before six. Soon after that we ambled round to "The Fox" for our evening meal - great value homemade roast beef dinners with lubrication courtesy of IPA ale and French Merlot.

This morning a sea mist cloaked Essex coastal areas and all day the sun struggled to make an impact. Half a mile inland there were blue skies but at the coast a Sherlock Holmes fog swirled. We went to Clacton on Sea and then on to Frinton and Walton on The Naze. It was only when we turned up in Brightlingsea that the sea fret receded for a while and allowed us to experience some of the sunshine that had been bathing the rest of the British Isles all day.

Brightlingsea is less than half a mile from Mersea but there is no ferry and no bridge so you have to drive eight miles north to Colchester to cross The River Colne and then eight miles south to get back to the island

We went straight to the local curry house for an excellent Indian meal. When we came out it was getting dark and the sea mist was thicker and chillier than before. We are hoping that Day Four won't be shrouded in fogginess but the forecast looks similar - sunshine everywhere else but clouds over the Essex coast.

Sandcastle at Brightlingsea

Mersea

The Clocktower, Coggleshall

We are in Essex, four hours from our Yorkshire homeland. To be more precise we are on Mersea Island which sits away from the Essex mainland at the point where the estuaries of two rivers - the Colne and the Blackwater merge with the sea.

On the way here, we stopped for lunch at "The White Hart" in Coggleshall. A delightful small town with an architecture that is distinctively different from what you might see in the north of England. How sad that in modern times, regional building differences are becoming blurred as new construction seems to follow a more standardised pattern.

Our apartment is called "Oakleaves" and it is really very nice. So clean, spacious and well-maintained with everything we might need for a five day stay. It's really the modern annexe of a family home but we have our own driveway, entrance and private patio area. 

After unpacking, we went for a stroll down to the beach and along the coast for a mile or more. Though Mersea is an island it is linked to the mainland via an ancient  causeway called The Strood. This can be flooded  and impassable during particularly high tides. Anyway, here are a few pictures from this afternoon...

Shirley liked the needlework on the hassocks (kneeling cushions)
in St Peter and St Paul's Church

Easter

At Stanedge Pole - with top section removed

Our offspring have been at home this long Easter weekend. Knowing I would have the Sunday dinner to make later on, I was keen to have a bit of exercise beforehand so I drove up to the reservoirs at Redmires intending to walk along the old drovers' track to Stanedge Pole. It's a route that the Romans also used as they moved between settlements at Templeborough and Buxton via Brough in The Hope Valley.

The pole is an important moorland landmark and would have once guided the travellers of bygone times. When I got up there I was unhappy to find that the old wooden pole is now half the size it once was. There's a notice affixed to the remaining stump. explaining why The Peak National Park Authority decided to remove the top part of the pole. Apparently it was getting dangerous. Well, I hope they erect an extension before too long.

Long Causeway - an ancient track

The most westerly property within Sheffield's city boundaries is up on the moors near Stanedge Pole. It is called Stanedge Lodge and was built in the nineteenth century as a hunting lodge for grouse shooters and wealthy revellers. I would love to have a look round it but public access is forbidden. I believe it now has a commercial use - as  some kind of training centre.

After my little jaunt it was back home to prepare the leg of lamb. I made incisions and squeezed in fresh sprigs of rosemary and little spears of garlic before seasoning it and splashing a little rapeseed oil over the surface. Three hours in the oven and then there were roasted potatoes, carrots, spring cabbage, broccoli, Yorkshire puddings, mint jelly and gravy. Another feast to commemorate Jesus's crucifixion. Lamb for the lamb of God.

Stanedge Lodge

Before

Those poor passengers aboard the ill-fated Germanwings Flight 9525 - if only they had known what was to happen. That March morning so much of life lay ahead - seemingly endless with yet more treasures to discover. But that was before. They had no way of knowing what was to come and they had never even heard of Andreas Lubitz.

And the same was true of John Kennedy on the morning of Friday November 22nd 1963. Before the bullet exploded in his skull, he had no idea that it was coming. He and Jackie had had breakfast together in The Hotel Texas  in Fort Worth before an official event in the hotel's Crystal Room and all of that happened before the fateful drive east to Dallas.

And any ordinary person, before their car crash, before the heart attack, before the lottery win, before their stroke, before the divorce, before the cancer diagnosis. They look in the mirror. They grab their keys. They venture out to meet another day, oblivious to what is about to happen. In the bliss of ignorance. Before.

If only we knew what was coming, we would make different arrangements, say different things, act differently - even if we couldn't actually avoid the event just ahead. We would be prepared.

Of course there is a sense in which we are all living in the land of before. Squandering time before something life-changing happens to us or to our nearest and dearest. It will come. And when it happens we might look back on how it was before - as if to a world of innocence - a land of smiles when troubles were quite microscopic in comparison. The golden, beautiful land of before.

Thursday

These boots are made for walking.

Thursday was a lovely spring day - sandwiched between two mean and miserable days of drizzle and early April greyness. My friend Jon - currently teaching in Taiwan - was due at 3pm with his little daughter - Alexa. Consequently, I couldn't go very far for my constitutional walk. 

I parked up at Totley and set off to Gillfield Wood which has been a working woodland for many centuries. It is right on the border between Yorkshire and Derbyshire so of course I made sure I had my Yorkshire passport on me. 

Totley Brook in Gillfield Wood

Through the woods and up to Woodthorpe Hall then along Fanshawe Gate Lane to Storth House. Down the hill from Storth House by the nascent Totley Brook - bubbling down a meadow then back into the woods. I had to make my own stepping stones to cross the swollen brook  before taking a woodland path that emerges from the woods within sight of Totley Hall - built in 1623.

It was another day when it felt very good to be alive. When Jon arrived we had tea and pastries on the decking before we all went up to "The Wheatsheaf" for the early evening carvery. By this time Princess Alexa was soundly asleep.

Fanshawe Gate House

The infant Totley Brook moving down the hill

Totley Hall (1623)

Butter

Butter is lovely stuff. I have always preferred it to those plastic tubs of allegedly healthy yellow-white gunge. You know what I mean - low in cholesterol or polyunsaturates or made from olive or rapeseed oil. Now researchers are telling us that there was not much wrong with butter all along. Those plastic tubs of lookalike butter were probably all part of one enormous marketing con trick. I am glad I stuck with butter.

But there's a practical problem with butter. When it is cold it is hard and quite difficult to spread thinly. I think that is one of the reasons why some people still like their tubs of yellow-white gunge. That stuff usually spreads well straight from the fridge. But butter stays hard if it is not allowed to soften at room temperature for an hour or two.

So now we come to the point of this short blogpost. To soften butter, put the amount that you think you will need in a suitable container. Personally speaking, I generally use a glass ramekin. Then stick it in your microwave and heat on full power for about five seconds. Your butter will then be lovely and soft and ready to spread. Larger amounts of hard butter for baking may need a bit longer in the microwave.

This kitchen tip comes to you free of charge courtesy of  The Yorkshire Pudding Corporation - "Advancement Through Innovation".

Visitor

A surprise visit from my brother Robin yesterday. He lives in southern France and was mainly back to replace his car. Now he's got a big black and shiny Audi 4x4 vehicle. The previous one was silver coloured. We went out for a spin. Where Ringinglow Road leaves the city the speed limit is 50mph but he was doing almost ninety. Quietly I mentioned that this was where the boxer Naseem Hamid nearly killed a local man, speeding along the same road. Robin slowed to seventy. But once through the tiny village of Ringinglow he applied the rocket boosters again and instead of slowing round the moorland bends he was accelerating so that you felt the centrifugal forces would turn the car over.

Once in the Pyrenees, Shirley and I were in the back of his car and we were thrown about like teenagers on a fairground ride. No chance to admire the view on a white knuckle ride. At least yesterday I was in a front seat - like a co-pilot with the crazed maniac beside me. Eat your heart out Jeremy Clarkson!

From left to right - The Pudding brothers in 1958 - Robin,
Yorkshire, Paul and Simon

Robin has always liked machinery and speed. He has twelve motorbikes and a pilot's licence. He has owned many different cars. His very first one was a souped up Mini Cooper that he maintained with the kind of engagement that I reserved for reading, writing or music. We are very different that way. To me a car is something to get me from A to B within speed limits and without any kind of collision. I drive a bit like Reginald Molehusband while he's more like Dick Dastardly.

It's the same with money. I have no real interest in it. Never have. It is something to buy the groceries with. Something you need for holidays and when the washing machine breaks down. Something you dig into to help out your kids. But Robin knows about money. He knows where to invest it and how to squeeze deals to get the best possible value. You squeeze till the pips squeak. Unlike the rest of us, he has often sold his cars at a profit. They increase in value as mine depreciate.

For all of that, he's a good guy. Hard-working and ambitious in spite or perhaps because  of his dyslexia, he achieved a lot in his working life that saw him flying to the Arab world and South America as an export manager where he pulled off various profitable deals - mostly with bonuses attached. But he cares deeply about other people. He remembers acts of kindness, experiences nostalgia keenly and sees the funny side of things perhaps more readily than I do. He has lived with relish - a zest for life - just like my oldest and late brother Paul. Often in frenzied overdrive while I tend to be in cruise control - just motoring along.

I might go and stay at the French house in May. Robin and his girlfriend Suzie are going sailing around Corfu - and he is of course a qualified sailing instructor - but they will need someone to care for their cats back home. I think they have eight now or is it ten? Anyway, we'll see....It was nice to catch up with him yesterday. Friends may come and go but siblings are forever.