Happy Valley

Stile Above Happy Valley
Stile Above Happy Valley

When it’s dry enough I go running up the steep northern slopes of the Chilterns and along the top of the escarpment — and the ground is so dry at the moment I have no excuse not to.

I’d like to allude to these glorious views in the novel and probably the best (maybe only) way to do so is to have my characters walk or run up there. I wonder whether the metaphorical associations of looking out and surveying a view or of running along pathways might be too obvious for the points I might want to use in the plot. I might need to adjust my chronology a little as well if I refer to the swathes of fragrant bluebells that are flowering at the moment or the distant views of the yellow oilseed rape fields (although the colour yellow is a metaphor I’ve already used).

The photograph above is of a stile on the Ridgeway above the curiously-named Happy Valley. It’s my favourite point on that particular route as the only way is down. It’s on the Chequers Estate and not far from the house itself — quite often there’s a herd of state cows in the field. The distant field of oilseed rape is one very close to where I live and which has deposited yellow pollen everywhere (perhaps another country detail for the novel).

I ran up Coombe Hill on the same run, which is not quite the highest point in the Chilterns (beaten by a forested undulation in Wendover Woods) but with its recently restored monument is the de facto peak. A couple of days ago two huge guns were dragged up there from RAF Halton and a 21-gun salute was fired to celebrate the Royal Wedding.

I tried, as best I could, having run up most of the 150m or so climb, to take a set of photos of the panoramic view from the top of the hill on a nice day. This is going to become one of Kim’s favourite places — as an artist would appreciate.

View from Coombe Hill to the South West
View from Coombe Hill to the South West

That way there be the mysterious circles of Avebury at the end of the Ridgeway, Wittenham Clumps and Cowley too (subjects of Paul Nash paintings).

View from Coombe Hill to the West
View from Coombe Hill to the West

The Cotswolds are in the distance — looking across the heart of England here. This is also approximately where the anciently-named Three Hundreds of Aylesbury are located — going back to the Domesday book but still marked on Ordnance Survey maps.

View from Coombe Hill to the North West
View from Coombe Hill to the North West

The Vale of Aylesbury — the resolution isn’t good enough (fortunately) to pick out Fred’s Folly (the monstrous office block in the centre of the town). Waddesdon Manor, Bicester and Banbury are in the distance.

View from Coombe Hill to the North
View from Coombe Hill to the North

Wendover and, in the far distance, Milton Keynes and Leighton Buzzard. Such a lovely view that it could only be improved by having a 250mph railway line blasted through it. The proposed HS2 high-speed rail line is planned to go right through the centre of this photograph — essentially through the green fields in the middle. It will be on a big, obstrusive viaduct as it emerges into the Vale of Aylesbury. Construction is meant to start in about five years so this aspect of the view may be destroyed forever.

In keeping with my research on the roles of pubs in the community, our village had a Royal Wedding party on the green next to the pub and I spent about 8 hours there solidly drinking. I was told that I’d sat at the same table for four hours. I didn’t feel too wonderful the next day and decided to test the efficacy of ‘sweating it out’ by going for a short run and avoiding steep slopes with viewpoints (although the hills can be seen in the background). Even my hungover spirits were raised by the incredible block of yellow in the field I ran around — the field is enormous, nearly a mile long and a third of a mile wide and takes going on for 20 minutes for me to run round. The white of the hawthorn blossom and cow parsley offset the green of the vegetation and deep blue of the sky.

I’m trying to write a part of the novel in which Kim tries to decide whether she wants to live in London or the countryside. Maybe this might swing it for her?

Hawthorn Hedge and Oilseed Rape
Hawthorn Hedge and Oilseed Rape

The Foolish Joys of Spring

Here’s a photo of a sheep…

Newborn 166
Newborn 166

…and a lamb which must have been a day or two old. I took this about three minutes into a run earlier in the week. The land use around here is a varied mixture of livestock, lots of horses, sheep, cattle and a few goats and pigs and arable, mainly wheat but there’s an absolutely massive field — about 3/4 mile by 1/4 mile — very close which has been sown with oilseed rape this year and will soon be a block of bright yellow that I imagine will also waft a pungent smell for a couple of weeks.

It’s fascinating to observe the rhythm of the seasons in events like lambing and it’s something I want to do in the novel — both literally and metaphorically in terms of the plot — decay and rebirth and so on. It’s been re-assuring, after the persistent snow and extremely low temperatures in December — I calculated about -15C at least in my garden — that hibernating wildlife seems not to have been affected. I’ve seen plenty of bumblebees and loads of ladybirds.

I get BBC Countryfile magazine and the new issue comes with a ‘free CD of British birdsong’. I guess there’s a trainspotter aspect involved — learning the individual songs of each bird if you can really be that diligent — but I imagine that the people who will play it most are those who don’t get the benefit of natural birdsong. (Before Classic FM was launched the engineering test transmissions played birdsong, which proved very popular with listeners.)

Fortunately I haven’t dashed to play my CD as the birdsong in the garden is at its seasonal peak — with the birds busy pairing off and making nests. We’ve got a few resident blackbirds who sing most beautifully perched on the tops of trees, especially at dawn and dusk. It makes me realise one of the best investments I’ve made in a long time was a 16kg bag of bird seed which saw us through most of the winter and has meant the residency of countless sparrows, finches, blackbirds, robins, starlings has continued. But I’m not sure it’s delivered on the promise of the first species on the sack, I’ve not had the pleasure of seeing those in the garden in the winter, more’s the pity.

Great Tits
Did It Do Exactly What It Said On The Tin?

Another joy of spring in the non-natural world is the April Fool. I was a bit remiss myself as I’ve enjoyed doing a few spoofs myself in the past — all I could do is post a very unconvincing status update on Facebook at 11.55am. Maybe it’s because of the recession but there were a lot of amusing hoaxes this year — there’s a round up here.

Legoland Vandalism
Legoland Vandalism

The Guardian has done some good April Fools in the past and this year it tried to convince its readers that it had changed position to wholeheartedly support the royal wedding. If you accepted this unlikely reversal of its stance then there were some very amusing stories on a supposed live wedding blog. My favourite was the desecration of the Legoland model of Buckingham Palace — a suspected trial run in miniature for the big day (see photo below linked to Guardian website).

Best of all — and my favourite for a long time — was the spoof Ken Bruce show on Radio Two. Like all the best hoaxes, and the sort of humour I like in general, this was done with such a light touch that it might just possibly have been serious.

I turned on in the car mid-way through the show and thought ‘this isn’t Ken Bruce, I wonder who’s sitting in’. But the lightly-accented Scottish voice claimed he was Ken Bruce. I twigged fairly quickly, especially after ‘Ken’ completed a whole link by burbling gibberish, that this was an April Fool and tried to identify who was the impersonator. Many other people took it literally and complained that it was Ken Bruce himself having his own joke — or that he was even drunk (which isn’t too far fetched given the rumours about another recently departed Radio Two presenter).

I nailed it as Rob Brydon fairly quickly — although the fact he’s on just about everything anyway helped narrow down the odds. His impression of a lecherous, incoherent egotist was so spot on that I felt a bit sorry at the end when the real Ken came on as he’d been so thoroughly skewered. (From a personal note I used to work for someone with a very similar drawl to this ‘Ken Bruce’ and he was also an occasionally lecherous, alternate monstrous egomaniac and paranoid neurotic so I did particularly enjoy Rob Brydon’s creation).

I’ve listened to the first half hour on the iPlayer — and I’ll try and listen to the whole thing again as it’s so funny.  There was perhaps a bit too much smutty innuendo for my liking — not because I’m prudish about these things (as some blog postings will attest) but because remarks about knobs are a bit lazy, like shock swearing, for a comedian to resort to — thankfully I didn’t hear any puns about garden birds and female anatomy.

But there were some inspired moments — particularly when the other presenters were trying to be serious. Hearing ‘Ken’ saying that Jeremy Vine had come in to ‘bore us all to death’ was priceless but I think my James might have been shaking the radio in rage.