More books I have read during lockdown

‘Bringing in the Sheaves: Wheat and Chaff from My Years as a Priest’ by the Reverend Richard Coles

As is her way, Ruth bought this book some time back and has never actually read it, so I thought I would. Both of us follow the Reverend on Twitter and enjoy his tweets – though they have been rather sadder of late as he lost his partner David back in December to an unspecified illness. ‘Bringing in the Sheaves’ was published in 2016 and was a follow up to the earlier ‘Fathomless Riches: Or How I Went from Pop to Pulpit’, a reference to his earlier career in the 1980s band The Communards.

The book is really a series of anecdotes and reflections, grouped into ‘chapters’ according to themes (‘Hatching’, ’Matching’, ’Dispatching’) and to events in the Church’s calendar (‘Michaelmas’, ‘Epiphany’, ’Passion Sunday’, etc). I enjoyed reading it, though did have to keep stopping in order to look up things: Petertide, Transfiguration, St Egwin of Evesham, and many others. Also ‘thurifer’, which apparently means one who carries the censer in a religious ceremony (Coles: “Mass for Ascension Day, me as thurifer, and I managed to cense the faithful in so violently flamboyant a way they flinch”).

Coles strikes a good balance between expressing his own views on certain topics while managing to keep a light and humorous touch. I’d say the ‘Matching’ chapter is, unsurprisingly, the most strongly expressed, and Coles rails against “the present arrangements in the Church of England, which allow me to bless my friends’ dog but not the gay equivalent of a golden wedding”. He expresses frustration at openly being allowed to marry young heterosexual couples whose union will patently not survive a year, while seeing gay friends who have been with their partners for decades unable (at the time) to get official acknowledgement of their union.

The book’s title (the first part of it) is taken from a 19th-century Gospel song written by a Knowles Shaw, inspired by Psalm 126:6.

‘Treasure at the Youth Club’ by Agnes M. Miall

I picked up a number of old children’s books at the secondhand bookshops in Hay-on-Wye when we used to go there more often. They’re currently languishing in a box at the house and are mostly school stories, although this one isn’t. I should probably formulate some sort of proper plan for whether I’m going to keep them and if so, where I’m going to store them.

‘Treasure at the Youth Club’ was published in 1946 and the action is set in a new youth club that’s just opened in the small town of Osminster. The Tower Youth Club, as it’s called, is based in a historic Tudor tower, formerly part of a nunnery and with some legends attached, one about a ghost and the other about some treasure – jewels – that were apparently buried somewhere on the tower’s premises. Three Club members take it upon themselves to set out to crack the mystery of where the treasure is buried: best friends Blanche and Cherry, and Cherry’s new friend Crispin Gray. As expected, they do succeed in unearthing the lost jewels despite the failed efforts of adults over a number of centuries. They’re almost pipped at the post by a rival hunter, local unsavoury character Victor Step, who has roped in his unwilling stepson ‘Ginger’ to assist him. In the book’s most ludicrous sequence, the teenagers – including Ginger, who switches sides – bind and gag Step and suspend him halfway up the outside of the tower in a basket dangling from a rope.

Everything turns out well and the unhappy Ginger, free of Step’s clutches, is able to return to school with the aim of following his ambition to be an aviator (Step has had him labouring on the farm). Sir George Sakington, the owner of the tower and therefore the jewels, presents the Club with a cheque for a new hall as a sign of his gratitude.

Google reveals limited information on Agnes M. Miall, but she appears to have written a 1916 volume called ‘The Bachelor Girl’s Guide to Everything’, which sounds potentially interesting, as well as a number of books about needlework, which don’t so much.

‘Fever Pitch’ by Nick Hornby

Ray suggested years ago that I read 'Fever Pitch', arguing that it formed a crucial insight into why football is so important to some men. Clearly that recommendation didn’t entice me sufficiently at the time as I’ve only just got around to reading it now, probably about 25 years later.

Nick Hornby became hooked on football, and on Arsenal specifically, when his dad took him to see Arsenal vs. Stoke City as an eleven-year-old in 1968. The book is a personal memoir about his life in fandom – each chapter is framed in the context of a specific match, from 1968 up until the early 1990s. Mostly Arsenal games, but not all. Football clearly provided a way for Hornby and his father to connect (his parents had separated and he lived with his mother and sister) and standing on the terraces with his dad and crowds of other men seems to have additionally provided a way to connect as men – he says of his first match “I remember the overwhelming maleness of it all”.

It’s effectively conveyed – as with 'High Fidelity' (the only other of Hornby’s books I’ve read), Hornby manages to relate feelings and episodes that could reflect unfavourably on him but while still coming across as sympathetic and understandable. An example: bailing on a close friend’s birthday party because it was scheduled for the date of an Arsenal home game, and he HAD to attend all Arsenal’s home games. All the things that can and couldn’t be done as a fan make interesting reading – e.g. how while living in Cambridge for a while he also followed Cambridge United, explaining how this wasn’t disloyal to Arsenal as the two teams were in completely different leagues. It’s also interesting to ponder how the cost of attending football matches must have changed over the decades – could a schoolboy these days attend Premiership games? Hornby relates standing with friends as a young teenager in the Schoolboys’ Enclosure at Highbury, ‘peering at the game through the legs of the linesmen’.

There were some things though that struck an odd note with me, one in particular: when describing the disastrous Liverpool vs. Juventus game at Heysel in 1985, Hornby muses ‘the surprise was that these deaths were caused by something as innocuous as running’. ‘Running’, by which he seems to mean crowds of fans charging the opposing fans, doesn’t sound particularly innocuous to me, and it’s easy to my mind to see how the Juventus fans were scared into running the other way, towards the wall that then collapsed. Hornby maintains that the practice of running was ‘intended to do nothing more than frighten the opposition and amuse the runners’ – maybe so, but as an outsider to football it’s a bit difficult to see.

Ray (a Spurs fan) told me a story of going up to London with his brother Lee (a Chelsea fan) to see Tottenham vs. Chelsea. They separated at the game to go to the opposing ends, and after the game found themselves each in a crowd of their own team’s fans on opposite sides of a road, with mounted police down the middle. Ray recalls stepping over the barrier intending to cross the road to join his brother and immediately being screamed at by police to get back, while Lee apparently looked on in horror from the other side of the road. Ray hadn’t realized that a number of other Spurs fans had crossed the barrier after him, misunderstanding his intention and meaning to join him in charging the Chelsea fans. He and Lee did eventually manage to meet up, I think back at the train station.

‘Fever Pitch’ was published in 1992 and was Nick Hornby’s first book.

‘Lady in Waiting’ by Anne Glenconner

The Guardian journalist Hadley Freeman commented a while back on Twitter that she read this book expecting “posh lolz”, but was taken aback at the strife and tragedy within. That’s pretty much true though it’s not all tragic – the stiff-upper-lipped Lady Glenconner manages to relate the events of her life in a pretty entertaining way.

Anne was born Lady Anne Coke, the eldest daughter of the 5th Earl of Leicester, and grew up at Holkham Hall in Norfolk (as her father contrived to have three daughters and no sons, the rules of primogeniture meant that the estate passed after his death to his cousin). Anne married Colin Tennant, who later became the 3rd Baron Glenconner. My – and quite possibly most readers’ – opinion of Tennant is hard to put into words; you’d have to read the book.

The book is a really interesting read. At her coming-out dance during her debutante season in 1950, Anne wore a dress made from “a dyed pale green and pleated parachute” – post-war rationing meant there were no silks and satins to be had that year. Later, Anne’s mother sends her off on a trip to America to get her over moping breaking up with one Johnnie Althorp (who later became Earl Spencer and the father of Lady Di), a trip from which she is called back after being chosen to be a Maid of Honour at the Queen’s coronation, one of six unmarried aristocratic girls specially picked for the occasion. In the late 1950s Colin Tennant purchased the Caribbean island of Mustique and turned it into a celebrity party island; Princess Margaret had a house built there and evidently spent a lot of time there over the years, and Tennant gave a series of lavish parties; the book includes a photo of Anne on the island in the 1980s flanked by Mick Jagger and Rupert Everett. In the early 1970s Anne became a Lady in Waiting to Princess Margaret, a childhood friend, a role she kept until PM’s death in 2002.

The tragic bits, leaving her husband’s vagaries out of it: Anne’s eldest son Charlie, a heroin addict, died of hepatitis C after causing his parents years of grief (they are obliged to disinherit him to prevent him selling the Glenconner family estate to buy drugs). Her second son Henry, seemingly better adjusted and more successful than his elder brother, leaves his wife and young child after coming out as gay, contracts HIV and dies of AIDS. Her third son Christopher has a near-fatal motorcycle accident while travelling in Central America and spends some time in a coma; Anne throws herself into his rehabilitation which was seemingly eventually quite successful, though it’s implied that there were some permanent after-effects.

Since her husband’s parting shot, which was to leave his entire estate to an employee, Lady Anne has evidently been living at the house near Holkham that her father had advised her to buy for herself years earlier, clearly having sized up his son-in-law early on. In Anne’s words:

I am back at my farmhouse in Norfolk, the place that feels more like home than anywhere else. I owe a lot to my father’s sound judgement all those years ago when he told me I should buy a house of my own due to Colin’s flaky character. If I hadn’t bought it, I have no idea where I would be now.

Thank God for the 5th Earl’s prescience.

Harley

Our bunny Harley was sadly put to sleep (don’t like that expression any more than I like ‘passed away’, but ‘euthanised’ seems a bit brutal) on Monday 1 June, after suffering with an abscess on the side of his head for a number of months. Ruth had been warned that the abscess wasn’t treatable but had agreed with the vet to monitor him for the time being, as his behaviour still seemed reasonably normal (though rabbits’ comfort levels are notoriously hard to assess as they do that concealing pain thing that prey species do). I’ve already done a bit of a eulogy to Harley on Facebook as per below, so have limited myself here to looking over past blog entries that mention him.

We adopted Harley from Reading Rabbit Rescue in June 2009, along with his first companion, the late (and fluffy, solid and somewhat intransigent) Lola. During his first couple of months with us, he mastered climbing the staircase, and also escaped from our garden into next door:

I continue to be surprised by Harley the Bunny’s spiritedness and agility, especially in comparison with Ruth’s previous rabbit Jake, a more nervous creature who disliked the outdoors and never to my knowledge even attempted climbing stairs. Harley has now completely mastered the staircase, which is steep even by Victorian terrace standards and is treated with some respect by visitors to the house. He also eagerly escapes into the garden at every opportunity and we are discovering by trial and error which part of the perimeter isn’t actually rabbit-proof. On Saturday he disappeared into a clump of bamboo and vanished from sight – Ruth’s calling of him resulted in the reply of “Are you looking for a rabbit?” from over the fence; she looked up to discover our neighbour Terry standing on his lawn looking down at a tiny adventurous rabbit. She went next door to fetch him and carried him back with some stern words, but he appeared not noticeably chastened.

Lola and Harley

We were warned when adopting Harley that he had long teeth that could prove to be a problem, and indeed he ended up having two or three teeth raspings under general anaesthetic during the time we owned him, including this one in September 2011:

Harley duly had his surgery last Friday, and by the time I arrived home in the evening seemed pretty much back to usual, though he didn't eat properly until Saturday afternoon, meaning that Ruth had to feed him through a pipette with some vile-looking food supplement supplied by the vet. We are hoping that his newly-shortened teeth will now enable him to eat lots of hay, as proper bunnies are supposed to.

He recovered fine from all the anaesthetics, but our hope that he might start helping himself by eating more hay to help wear his teeth down proved misplaced - despite all Ruth’s attempts Harley was never keen on hay, though most of our female rabbits have been happy enough to eat it. I'd noted Harley's disdain for hay a couple of years earlier, while also noting that he'd nibbled the spines of several of my books:

Rabbits apparently do need to chew constantly in order to keep their teeth worn down, so chewing is to be applauded, but they are provided with a plentiful supply of hay for this purpose. Lola enjoys hay but Harley appears to spurn it in favour of, this week at least, 'Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway' and 'The International Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs'.

Eating the wallpaper, with Lola

The chimney incident referred to in the eulogy happened in early January 2012, during the time that the third bedroom at the house was languishing in a shell-like state.

Since Ruth took the door to bedroom 3 off its hinges to strip the paint, we have had an awkward situation whereby we have had to put a board over the door to the room to stop Harley going in, given that since the removal of one of the chimney breasts the shaft that ran down to the dining room fireplace has been exposed. Too small to be a danger to us and it’s in the corner of the room anyway, but given Harley’s seemingly intense curiosity, we had been a bit worried that he could fall down it. On Monday evening, while I was sitting relaxing over a herbal tea and an episode of ‘Sherlock’, he duly did – urgent call from Ruth of “We have a problem” followed by inspection with a torch from above (apparently fine if slightly grey-looking bunny looking up at us) followed by Ruth having to dig a wad of stuff out of the dining room chimney to release him. On release, he wriggled out of Ruth’s arms and scampered straight back upstairs, where I pursued him shouting something along the lines of “Have You Learned Nothing!” Board over door now wedged tight with a chair – evidently a fatal gap must have been left.

The chimney rescue

Bedroom 3 proved the scene of another incident a few months later when he nearly strangled himself with a loose curtain thread:

Saturday started well when we became vaguely aware, while still in bed, of Harley making noise at the entrance to bedroom 3, as he has been on an intense quest to gain access to the room ever since his way was barred, including, evidently, shredding the bottom of the curtain that's currently hanging in the doorway. Something prompted me to get up and see what he was doing, and after a moment or so I registered that he had a cord from the curtain tightly around his neck. After yelling to Ruth to fetch a pair of scissors, I released him. Her immediate response was "Oh Harley, are you all right?", whereas I think mine was along the lines of "YOU STUPID STUPID RABBIT". That's the second time he's cheated death. Given that rabbits are renowned for dying all over the place at the slightest provocation, he can't have many lives left.

After Lola’s death in August 2013, we took Harley back to Reading Rabbit Rescue for ‘bonding’ with a second female companion. The decision-making process went thus:

We were shown three female rabbits who were currently without companions – two, Patches and Lexie, whom Sandra had identified in advance as potentially suitable, and a third, Cherry, whom she included mainly because she’s been at the rescue centre for over two years. Ruth settled on Lexie, a largish and seemingly quite boisterous bunny, as her potential mate of preference, deciding (unfairly, I thought) that Cherry was too timid. Patches dented her chances by biting Ruth during the inspection.

Despite RRR's coy references to 'husbuns' and bunny moon suites, Ruth and I had our doubts about Lexie from the start:

At the moment I have my reservations – a few days in to the new couple’s bonding, Steve and Sandra discovered that she had given Harley a bite for which he has had to go on a course of antibiotics. When I spoke to Ruth on the phone at the weekend, the two of them were apparently about as far away from each other as they could get. Time will tell if things improve.

Things didn't improve:

When we collected [Lexie] and Harley from RRR last Sunday after spending the weekend at my parents’, we regaled Sandra in a light-hearted yet mildly barbed fashion with Lexie’s faults, at which she tittered sympathetically before adding chirpily “Sold as seen!”. As we arrived, Sandra's opening sally had been to claim that Harley and Lexie seemed to get on together better than he had with Lola, at which point Lexie aggressively mounted Harley, staying on board as he raced around the enclosure trying to shake her off, and thrusting in a less than ladylike fashion. When Sandra eventually managed to coax/prise her off, poor little Harley had a large sucked patch of wet fur on the back of his neck. As we were leaving, Sandra somewhat shamefacedly thanked us for adopting her.

We did subsequently decide Lexie was not the bunny for us (or Harley) and returned her to RRR in May 2014 for re-homing. We subsequently adopted the lively and destructive Willow. In terms of being a companion for Harley, she wasn’t that much better than Lexie, albeit a little less violent; unlike Lexie, however, she charmed Ruth and me with her friendliness, and we kept her until she unfortunately became ill and died about a year later. During Willow’s time with us, Harley spent a noticeable amount of time upstairs under the bed in the master bedroom, rediscovering the ground floor after her death:

Since Willow’s death, Harley has been re-exploring the ground floor, having been more or less banished upstairs by Willow during her residence. Ruth swears she spotted a binky in the living room during his first weekend without her. Willow was given to chasing Harley out of the living room if he dared to enter, sometimes tearing out a lump of his fur for good measure.

Willow and Harley

Following Willow’s death in 2015, Harley spent about a year as a solo house rabbit, though Ruth was nudged periodically by Sandra at RRR regarding getting him another companion, as per this conversation in early 2016 where she tried to suggest to us that Harley’s troubles with females might have been due to his being a bit of a sex pest:

Sandra again raised the question of whether we were intending to get another companion for him, and we raised concerns that she’d have to be a female who wouldn’t bully him and banish him from the ground floor as per Willow. Sandra then, quite kindly, voiced her opinion that Harley is “a little bit of a sex pest”, and that some of his rougher treatment by females might essentially have been asked for. We felt similarly to how parents must feel who have been claiming to the headteacher that their child is being put upon by other children, only to be told their child is in fact a bit of a sod.

Later that year we adopted another RRR rescue bunny, Beau as Harley's fourth companion. Beau proved a good companion for him but sadly died after only a few months with us. About six months after Beau’s death we adopted a young female as Harley's fifth companion, supposed to be named Pippa but we immediately nicknamed her 'Catherine Howard', which has stuck.

Beau with Harley

In 2018 Harley went on to a daily painkiller after the vet thought his hips seemed a bit stiff. He loved this concoction, which he stayed on up until his death.

Whatever the mixture is, he seems to like it and hops up to Ruth eagerly to take it. From our observations it seems to be doing him some good; he has seemed livelier, even to the extent of chasing the much younger Catherine Howard around the room friskily each morning.

Although we don’t know Harls’ exact age, he was believed to be around a year old when we adopted him in 2009, so should be about 10 this year, which is a respectable age for a rabbit though no doubt living in a centrally-heated house has helped him.

I'm sure it did help him - indeed he always had some respiratory problems, sneezing a lot, and Sandra at RRR reckoned that his longevity was most certainly due to being a house bunny.

Harley rootling in the garden

Harley is now buried in the garden, along with Jake, Lola, Willow and Beau. It's becoming a rabbit burial ground.

Books I have read during lockdown (so far)

‘An Unkindness of Ravens’ by Ruth Rendell

Left to myself I’m not sure I would ever have picked up one of Rendell’s novels, but Ruth’s aunt passed two on to us a while back, seemingly under the (erroneous) impression that Ruth is a fan. Ruth would have put them straight into the charity pile but I thought that as they were there I’d give them a go (the other one was the later-published ‘Simisola’, which I read a few months back).

‘An Unkindness of Ravens’ was published in 1985 and was Rendell’s thirteenth ‘Inspector Wexford’ novel. The story focuses on the disappearance of Rodney Williams, a marketing manager for a paint company; Williams’ body is discovered fairly early on in the proceedings and the bulk of the story is taken up with Wexford trying to find out whodunnit. A quote from The Times at the front of this book reckons that Rendell has a “mesmerising capacity to shock, chill and disturb”. I wouldn’t say I’ve quite thought that about either of the books of hers I’ve read so far, but I did find the book pleasantly readable, though the twist in the end is more confusing than chilling, and it’s never adequately explained why Inspector Burden’s wife has gone a bit doolally on discovering her unborn child is a girl (in the event, the amniocentesis was wrong, and it’s a boy – phew).

These collective noun thingies are a fun curiosity for quizzes but some, like this one, must surely have just been made up by someone having a bit of fun. This Country Life piece lists a whole load of collective nouns for birds. Confusingly, some types of bird have more than one – for ravens, this lists both ‘unkindness’ and ‘conspiracy’. Off to see if I can spot a booby of nuthatches.

‘Burial Rites’ by Hannah Kent

This was meant to be our March Book Group book – Alison’s choice – but it’s not clear yet whether we’re going to attempt some sort of remote discussion of it. Someone did suggest trying to meet via Zoom, but I’m not quite sure how that would go – my mother’s book group did attempt this, though Mum bowed out of attending so I’m not sure how it went.

Burial Rites was published in 2013 and was Hannah Kent’s first novel. It was apparently shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. It’s set in early 19th-century Iceland and the action takes place among a series of rural settlements in the north-west of the country. Kent has woven a story around the real-life execution of Agnes Magnúsdóttir in 1830 for her part in the murder of two men at an isolated farm.

Agnes was the last person to be executed in Iceland. As I usually avoid reading any forewords, author’s notes etc until after I’ve read the actual story, I didn’t realise at the outset that it was based in real life and was hoping until quite late on that Agnes would be granted a reprieve, and perhaps receive an offer of marriage from the nice Reverend Tóti. ‘Twas not to be. It’s not clear quite how much Kent had to go on in terms of known facts about Agnes’ life, but she has certainly managed to construct an absorbing story that represents Agnes as essentially a victim of her circumstances, but also as an intelligent and literate woman angry at where things have led and at the lack of choices open to her as a servant.

‘The Secret History’ by Donna Tartt

A few months back a friend lent me a copy of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, reckoning that it was a good read and I should give it a go. So far I haven’t been greatly tempted by the imposing hardback brick, and am not any more encouraged by discovering it won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014 – the only other Pulitzer Prize-winning novel I’m aware of having read (Philip Roth’s American Pastoral) was almost completely lost on me¹. Mum recently finished wading through The Goldfinch, but didn't seem overly enthused by it. In any case I decided that if I was going to read one of Tartt’s novels, I’d read The Secret History, especially as Ruth conveniently has a copy of it on her bookshelves. So I did.

Admittedly the current lockdown situation probably helped, but the fact that I romped through a >600-page novel in less than a week must be testament to something. It’s a great read and very well written. It’s set in a fictional ‘liberal arts’ college in New England (supposedly based on the one Tartt herself attended) and centres on a small élite group of students who have been admitted to the Classics degree run by eccentric professor Julian Morrow. The story is narrated by one of the students, Californian Richard Papen, a talented ancient Greek scholar from an ordinary background (his father runs a gas station) who has had to jump through all sorts of hoops to get to the college in the first place and then to get onto Morrow’s course. Papen is deeply impressed both by Morrow and by what he perceives as the glamour of the other five students on the Classics course, lying about his background and buying clothes in an attempt to dress like them. It soon turns out that the others aren’t quite including him in everything they do. Events escalate and things don’t turn out all that well for most of the group, though Papen is at least alive at the end.

The Secret History was published in 1992 and was Tartt’s first novel.

‘The Black Stallion’ by Walter Farley

First in a series of 1940s children’s books about, as the title suggests, a black stallion. I’d never heard of these books but Ruth has a number of them in the attic, brought back to the house along with several boxes of stuff from her childhood. I remember as a child being aware of some ‘horsey’ series – quite possibly books by the Pullein-Thompson sisters but I also remember the older My Friend Flicka, published the same year as The Black Stallion. Not being interested in horses – then or now – I never read any of them. I did read K. M. Peyton’s Flambards, though that’s more of a ‘people’ story with horses as a background.

The story: teenage Alec is on a sea voyage back from India where he has spent several months visiting his uncle. The ship calls at an Arabian port, where a magnificent black horse, along with his owner, come aboard. The ship is wrecked in a storm, and the black horse and Alec are the only survivors. They spend several weeks bonding together on an uninhabited island before they are rescued by another ship. They both are eventually returned to Alec’s home city of New York – Alec having assumed ownership of the horse – and Alec arranges for a neighbour to stable him. The neighbour, Henry Dailey, turns out to be a former champion jockey who spots champion material in the horse, and he and Alec set out to train the horse for racing.

The story is ludicrous but fun and feel-good enough. I think it would have been a bit Boy's Own for my tastes as a girl; Ruth claims that as a tomboy she went for these books over what she perceived as ‘girlier’ horse stories. There are evidently a number of sequels, though I’m not sure whether I’ll read them. They include The Black Stallion and Satan – I had had visions of the BS engaged in a life-and-death struggle with the very Devil himself, but it turns out that Satan is one of the stallion’s colts.

The Black Stallion was published in 1941; Ruth’s copy is a Knight Books edition from 1975. The book was the basis of a 1979 film of the same name.

‘A long way gone: memoirs of a boy soldier’ by Ishmael Beah

This was one of our Book Group books in 2008 (I’ve just checked – how time flies), but I abandoned it after a few chapters and must have skipped the meeting. It’s been languishing in the attic ever since, presumably because I had some sort of vague idea that I ought to read it before giving it away. Lockdown has presented an ideal opportunity to gather my strength and tackle it again; not that it’s a difficult read but it is, as the subtitle might suggest, somewhat harrowing.

As a 12-year-old in Sierra Leone, Ishmael Beah was visiting a neighbouring town with some friends when rebel RUF (Revolutionary United Front) forces overrun his home village, after which he never sees his family again. He wanders from village to village with various other boys for some time, before ending up in the town of Yele, in the south of the country. This village is protected by soldiers fighting for the government, who offer the boys food and give them work to do – but then issue the boys with guns and make them join them in fighting the rebels. Helped along by the drugs the boys are given, Ishmael seemingly becomes a pretty effective soldier. Two years on, he and other younger teenagers are rescued by UNICEF personnel and taken to a rehabilitation centre in the capital Freetown. Rehabilitation proves a struggle, but Ishmael is eventually found a foster home with an uncle and his family.

The civil war in Sierra Leone went on for most of the 1990s before being declared over in 2002. A long way gone was published in 2007. One of the worst bits of the book is when the RUF arrive in Freetown, just when you had thought Ishmael was safe and able to pick up his life again. It’s not to be, and he eventually manages to escape the country altogether into neighbouring Guinea. In the end, it’s partly a stroke of luck that saves him. While in Freetown, he had been picked along with another boy to go to the United Nations in New York to talk about his experiences as a boy soldier, and at the conference meets an American woman, Laura Simms, who befriends him and sends him money after he returns home to Sierra Leone. This money helps him pay for his way out of the country and – although this is not detailed in the story – he evidently eventually got to the US with Laura’s help, where she provided him with a home. He was certainly overdue some luck.

¹  Actually, scanning the list of Pulitzer winners, I've also read Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad, though I remember precisely nothing about it.

Sneaky bit of Lakeland walking

Returned on 19 March from joining Ray in the Lakes for a few days – which now, as at the time of writing, feels like a lifetime ago. That week turned out to be the last week anyone was allowed to go on holiday for what could be a while - our planned family break in Snowdonia at Easter has had to be postponed, and Ruth's and my break in north Norfolk in mid-May looks distinctly unlikely to happen. Although it was (obviously) before the current lockdown, the week was overshadowed to some extent by the Coronavirus business and following the developments, but it was still a pretty good escape.

We stayed at The Old Laundry at Croft Courtyard in Clappersgate, just outside Ambleside. The imposing yellowish-coloured mansion The Croft occupies a prominent position on the A593 going out of Ambleside towards Coniston. The house was built in the nineteenth century and has now been converted into apartments after apparently lying derelict for a while.

The Croft, Clappersgate

Partly because of the long drive up there, we made the decision once we were there not to use our cars but just to walk each day from where we were staying. This obviously placed some restrictions on where we went, but we didn't feel particularly restricted as Clappersgate proved to be an excellent base for a variety of walks.

Before I arrived Ray had been to the tourist information place and picked up a pack of useful ‘Lakeland Leisure Walks’, giving a selection of walks easily accessible from Ambleside. We worked our way through most of these over the course of the time I was there.

Entrance to Croft Courtyard

Walk 1: Vale of Rydal, 5.8 miles

Our first walk, on the afternoon of the day I arrived. We walked into Ambleside and through Rothay Park, crossing over Stock Ghyll. Crossed the bridge over the Rothay and joined a lane (Under Loughrigg). Passed what looked like long-disused gates to a Fox How, apparently once the home of the poet Matthew Arnold. Further along we passed the stylish-looking Riverside Terrace holiday homes.

Stock Ghyll in Rothay Park

Old gates to Fox How

We were amused by the stepping stones across the River Rothay signposted to the A591: certainly not usable when we passed, though the first few were visible under the water. Here’s a photo of them not underwater. According to this, the current stones are new ones built to replace the previous set which were washed away in the floods of 2015.

Stepping stone river crossing

We turned left for a bit past Pelter Bridge car park towards Rydal Water, then down to the river again and across the A591. Crossed the road and up the lane leading to Rydal Mount. Turned right to pass round the back of Rydal Hall. Not sure what Rydal Hall is currently used for; the site has rather the look of a youth hostel about it. We saw the Rydal Beck waterfalls and the little building called The Grot. Continued back through Rydal Park towards Ambleside, rejoining the A591 for the last bit.

Rydal Beck waterfalls

Our route in red below showing start and end point in Clappersgate. Rydal Water top left:

Walk 2: Loughrigg Fell, 7.5 miles

We took a footpath leading off the A593 not far down the road from where we were staying. It climbed quite steeply giving some great views of Windermere and a glimpse of our old holiday place Huyton Hill, now Pullwood Bay, among the trees. Also looked down onto the Holy Trinity Church at Brathay.

We came out onto a plateau and did some faffing about a bit trying to find the right route, including doing a bit of a detour we didn’t need to do. Eventually came to the pretty little Lily Tarn by an unnecessarily long route. Followed a path westwards for some while. Had elevenses sitting on a bench with a great view of Loughrigg Tarn.

Lily Tarn

Loughrigg Tarn

Followed a lane for a while and then via Deer Bolts Wood out on to Loughrigg Terrace, a popular viewpoint over Grasmere. From here until Rydal Water there were a fair few people. We followed the path down to the shores of Rydal Water where we stopped to eat our sandwiches. After that we followed the route past Pelter Bridge car park again, and the hopeful ice cream van, and along the lane back into Ambleside, where we had tea and cake at The Rattle Ghyll.

Grasmere from Loughrigg Terrace

Lunch by Rydal Water

River Rothay from Pelter Bridge

The Rattle Ghyll, Ambleside

Our walk skirted around Loughrigg Fell without going up onto the top, but there were plenty of people heading for the top. This National Trust page refers to Loughrigg as a ‘sprawling hump’, and as one of Wainwright’s ‘midget mountains’.

Ray told me about Scarf’s equivalence between distance and climb, which seems to be a way of approximating what you’ve actually walked if the gradient is taken into account. Meant for those walks where you can appear to have covered a disappointing number of overall miles despite having been hauling yourself up and down hills for what feels like a couple of hours. This happened to us at the earlier part of today’s walk, where we seemed to have slogged what felt like a fair way up onto Loughrigg Fell, only to have the tracker dispassionately announce that we’d covered one poxy mile.

It's based on the older Naismith's rule, which was aimed at calculating how long it would take to hike an intended route as a way of allowing for the impact of gradient on total mileage. It seems to involve an 8 to 1 rule whereby 8 units of distance are equivalent to 1 unit of climb. Applying this formula to today's walk gave the following:

i.e. the distance in km plus the overall ascent (1139 feet according to MapMyWalk, converted to 0.347 km) times 8. This gives a result of 14.9 km, which converts to 9.3 miles, as compared with the 7.5 that MapMyWalk tracked it as.

Route below. Starting point at our accommodation in green; finish point in Ambleside in red (I stopped the tracker when we went into the Spar for some dishwasher tablets, but obviously we did then have to walk back to Clappersgate).

Walk 3: Windermere and Jenkin Crag, 6 miles

We started out walking along the A591 out of Ambleside towards Windermere, then through the Low Fold car park and turned right onto Old Lake Road and then soon after left onto the tiny and steep Skelghyll Lane. Passed a surprising number of houses, all of which must have great views but must be buggers to get to in a car. The lane eventually becomes a stony track and passes through some pleasant woodland (Skelghyll Wood) before you get to Jenkin Crag – today a somewhat slippery rocky outcrop, but we did duly stand on it and admired the views of Windermere. We continued up the track to pass through the farmyard of High Skelghyll Farm.

Stencher Beck

Ray on Jenkin Crag

Soon after leaving the farmyard we turned right downhill across fields, eventually coming down to the back of the Low Wood Hotel, where Ray and I once went swimming on a long-ago Lakes trip in around 1994. We were staying a couple of nights at the Waterhead Hotel in Ambleside – then a Best Western, now looks rather posher – which had some sort of partnership arrangement whereby guests could use the health and leisure facilities at Low Wood. Low Wood looks as though it’s been significantly enhanced and extended since then and is now calling itself the Low Wood Bay Resort & Spa.

We skirted round the back of the hotel and had to join the A591 for a bit, heading back towards Ambleside but after half a mile were able to turn off through Jenkin’s Field and walk along the lakeshore path. We sat on the bench at Holme Crag to eat our sandwiches (albeit it was only about 11am). Looking across at both Huyton Hill-as was and at Wray Castle. We continued along the lakeshore to rejoin the pavement by the A591 just before Waterhead Marine. We walked along the little promenade for a bit and then into Borrans Park. We skipped visiting the Roman fort and walked back into Ambleside.

Windermere from Holme Crag

Continuing the theme of old gates, we passed several other intriguing old gates during today’s walk – these, which presumably once led to a house called ‘Skelgarth’ (although internet snooping failed to reveal any house of that name currently) and these gateposts and gate which were set on quite a steep hill, and seemed rather curiously located. A long-ago pedestrian route to church, perhaps?

Old gates to 'Skelgarth'

Curious gate into a field

Route of today's walk in red below:

As it was still early, and as we knew rain was forecast for the afternoon, we decided to take a bus ride to Hawkshead (the Stagecoach 505 service). I had been convinced that Hawkshead is on the shores of Coniston Water, but it isn’t. The closest lake is Esthwaite Water, so we set out from the village to have a look at this. We set out along the road leading south along Esthwaite’s western shore, and turned left onto a path signposted to the lakeshore. This led us past a water treatment works and then diverted us onto a field shortly before the track reached the Water Side B&B. The path became increasingly boggy such that we abandoned the attempt to reach Esthwaite’s shores and retraced our steps back into Hawkshead. So a bit of a non-event. We did have tea and crumpets at the Minstrels Gallery Tea Rooms and then browsed around the Hawkshead outdoor shop while we waited for the bus back.

The Minstrels Gallery Tea Rooms, Hawkshead

Walk 4: via Skelwith Bridge, Elterwater, Grasmere and Rydal, 10.9 miles

We set out down the B5286 and crossed the bridge over the River Brathay, then turned right onto the charmingly-named Bog Lane. We followed little roads until we reached Skelwith Bridge. The slate gallery and adjoining café used to be a favourite family place to visit in longer-ago Lake District trips; I suppose the last time I went there must have been some time in the 1990s. We spent some time scouting around trying to find out what was still there that we remembered. The slate workings had clearly closed; Kirkstone Quarries, which had its headquarters at Skelwith Bridge, was placed in administration in 2012, according to this piece in The Westmorland Gazette.

River Brathay near Clappersgate

The building that used to house the shop and café has been taken over by a company called Chesters. There is still a café there, quite posh, with an open-air terrace beside the river, where Ray and I stopped for coffee and a pastry each.

After this we set out to follow the river north towards Elter Water. We passed Skelwith Force, which had a goodly amount of water in it; Ray walked down to the little viewing platform but I didn’t fancy getting that close to the raging torrent, so contented myself with taking photos from higher up. Above Skelwith Force, the Brathay meanders through a green valley. The Cumbria Way footpath also passes along here and we followed it from Skelwith Bridge along the northern side of Elter Water as far as Elterwater village.

Ray by Skelwith Force

The Brathay above Skelwith Force

From Elterwater village, we walked up a little hill road before turning off it onto a footpath heading uphill past Huntingstile Crag. This got a bit boggy on the top. We paused near Red Bank Wood to eat our sandwiches then carried on down a footpath towards Grasmere, coming out onto a little road. We walked down to the lakeshore and then turned right along the shore, passing along the foot of the lake below Loughrigg Terrace. Then along the River Rothay for a while, crossed the A591 (after making use of an extremely useful set of public toilets) and along a harder-going than expected path that runs parallel with the road looking down onto Rydal Water. At Rydal Mount we returned to the main road and made our way back to Clappersgate via Under Loughrigg.

Herdwicks by the road

Grasmere

I was more than usually struck on this week’s trip by how many thumping great houses the Victorians built themselves in the Lakes. On Grasmere’s western shore (the one without the A591 running up it) there are several large houses standing around prominently and louchely in their own grounds. Took this photo, attempting to squeeze two such into one picture. The one on the right with the veranda thing appears to be called The Lea; the one higher up on the left of the picture is Hunting Stile.

Route of walk in red below. Grasmere and Rydal Water at the top; the top bit of Windermere bottom right.

Early evening we managed to stir ourselves again and walked into Ambleside (after Ray tried and failed to organise a taxi) and had dinner at an Italian restaurant called Misto.


Verdict: it was a lovely few days and was lovely to be back in the Ambleside area again. Looking forward to going back in due course.